Covid doesn’t control the weather Club page
RORC
The J Cup and IRC UK Nationals, run on consecutive weekends in September, had the weather you would expect of a beautiful summer’s day with stunning racing to boot. The Landsail Tyres J-Cup, to give it its full title, was organised by Key Yachting and run by the RORC, attracting more than 50 boats and 200 crew. I accepted a ride on a chartered J/70 with past RORC committee
member Tor McLaren who is in between boats having sold his Mat 1180 Gallivanter. It was a fabulous weekend for a return to inshore racing on the Solent with conditions from fresh to frightening on day one to light and shifty on day three. It was a perfect reminder of why we love this sport and what we’ve been missing all year. The race management was exceptional (as RORC CEO you’d
expect me to say that) even with reduced numbers on the committee boat. The PRO was Etchells double world champion Stuart Childerley and his communication with the fleet clear and concise. Stuart also
numbers had been increased to 80 per cent of each boat’s IRC crew number it still made for busy manoeuvres for all onboard. IRC 1 consisted of five Fast40s plus Tony Langley’s TP52 and
was won by the irrepressible Ránteam with owner Niklas Zennström driving. IRC 2 had a diverse fleet of 11 boats from a Club Swan 42 to David Franks’ J/112e Leonwho had a hard time fighting for clear air but managed good consistent results to win the class overall. In IRC 3 John Howell and Paul Newell, racing with their sons in their relatively new (to them) A35 Arcus, posted six firsts and two seconds to win class and take the overall title of UK IRC National Champion. Also running consecutively on Saturday and Sunday was our Two-
Handed Nationals with a strong fleet of 22 boats with two round- the-cans races each day. James Harayda and Dee Caffari won overall with two wins and a second – an important win as vindication for their selection as UK representatives in the Eurosaf Mixed Offshore European Championship where they’d had a disappointing result.
Summer Series The RORC Summer Series of day races was put in place to allow racing for all and to comply with government coronavirus restrictions. This required crew to be a maximum of six or 75 per cent of
certificate number and no overnight racing except two-handed. The series started with the hugely popular Race the Wight with 133 boats racing around the Isle of Wight followed by two races up and down the English Channel. The series was won by our vice- commodore James Neville in the Fast40 Ino XXX. Runner-up was shorthanded specialist Nigel Colley in his Sun Fast 3300 Fastrak XII and third Richard Palmer’s much travelled JPK 1010 Jangada. RORC’s racing programme will continue with an Autumn Two-
Handed Series of three races with the first race won by Jeremy Waitt and two-time Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson sailing Richard Palmer’s borrowed JPK 1010.
Following a disappointing performance at the Offshore Europeans in Genoa on smaller, lighter L30s James Harayda and Dee Caffari were reunited with their familiar Sun Fast 3300 Gentoo for the UK Two-Handed Nationals taking the top spot after a four-race series. On page 38 IRC rating manager Jason Smithwick looks at possible reasons for the superiority of French designs in shorthanded IRC racing: while he concludes there is no silver bullet, other perhaps than the skill and familiarity of top French shorthanded crews, it’s hard to dispute that either the French designs do dominate, or that the French crews that dominate inevitably pick French designs… which then consequently dominate! At the 2020 IRC Nationals in the two-handed division French designs took eight of the top 12 places overall with most of the other places being filled by various models of J/boat doing their best to defend Anglo Saxon honour
introduced a three-minute countdown to reduce the time of the start sequence for the five J/boat fleets. It certainly kept you on your toes pre-start and, surprisingly, was less chaotic than I expected! With the current J/70 world champions from the UK and racing
in the fleet you would expect things to be competitive. I could not decide whether the J/70 was part dinghy or part keelboat but after the first race in 20kt+ with gusts of 30kt and a full-on Chinese gybe I realised it was a big dinghy with a bit of lead on the bottom. But then on day two with 10-14kt breeze some boats switched between sailing downwind goose-winged (‘wing on wing’ for our American readers) and conventional A-sail mode. Very confusing. Tony and Sally Mack and their McFly team won the J/111 Nationals
and Simon Perry and his Jiraffe team the J/109s. In IRC 1 Christopher Daniel won in his J/122 Juno and Nick Munday won IRC 2 in his J/97 Indulgence. In the J/70s current world champion Paul Ward dominated with four firsts and two seconds. Very impressive.
IRC Nationals and Two-Handed National Championship Once again champagne sailing greeted this competitive fleet for three days of windward-leeward racing in the Solent. Though crew
62 SEAHORSE
Transatlantic Race Seems like there is good interest in the RORC Transatlantic Race which our committee moved from November 2020 to January 2021. I have spoken to Lanzarote and Grenada and both are confident that the measures they are putting in place will manage the Covid situation and are delighted that we will be running the race whatever difficulties we might encounter with quarantine measures and the like. Twelve boats have registered interest including Pata Negra which has done the race twice and is now owned by Andrew Hall. Our rear-commodore Eric de Turckheim, who won the race in
2017, is also back with his powerful Nivelt-Muratet 54 Teasing Machine.He will have some good competition from the IRC56 Black Pearl and the canting-keel Reichel/Pugh 60 Wild Joewhich will revel in this predominantly downwind race.
Open for business (at last) Nearly six months after lockdown in March the RORC clubhouse in St James’s, London opened for the first time on 7 September. For all the staff it was a happy feeling as they could see that life was slowly returning to some level of normality. The club is manned by a skeleton staff led by longtime manager
Mark Newens. Demand is slowly increasing with the club supplying bed and breakfast and meeting rooms for those who want physical meetings after all the video conferencing. The bar is open in the evenings but there is no lunch and dinner. The restaurant will be opened once occupancy starts returning to closer to normal. Travelling to London is not what it was. Train seats are plentiful
and station carparks remain scary with few if any cars. My commuting carpark, usually full by 8.30am, was deserted when I first travelled up to London and only 10 per cent full a week later. It will be a very slow return to normal. However, on the plus side London is delightful to walk around and the weather this September has been glorious. Let’s hope it stays this way as there is a lot of racing still to be done. Eddie Warden Owen, CEO
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PAUL WYETH
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