Interesting times Photo credit: Baltic Yachts.
As this is written, the RORC Morgan Cup offshore race has just been won overall by a two-handed crew, and the growth and enthusiasm for shorthanded racing reflect one of the real success stories of a rating rule encouraging a desirable outcome for the sport as a whole.
Most success stories are due to a combination of
circumstances and this one has been no exception – difficulty in finding regular crew due to conflicting time demands has been a major factor, too many crew expecting to be paid is another. But on the positive side there are now boats available off the shelf that are well suited to the demands of shorthanded sailing, along with a rating system that is specifically tuned to this market under IRC.
In the UK clubs such as the Royal Southampton
were early adopters and the RORC and others have followed their lead in promoting the burgeoning fleets. The announcement too that the 2020 Sydney Hobart will be open to two-handed crews is more welcome recognition of today’s fastest-developing offshore rac- ing discipline. The Fastnet led the way with the breakthrough moment coming when the 2013 race was won overall by the two-handed French (sic...) team of Pascal and Alexis Loison on their JPK 1010 Night and Day. The hard-driving father and son team showed that, far from being a handicap, with enough practice and a boat and rig carefully tailored to suit, the benefits of carting fewer crew and less equipment around the racetrack should not be underestimated. The Class40s have gone from strength to strength
with their predominantly two-handed series of events, allied with a well-controlled box rule that still allows for real development of a breed that is totally driven by the requirements of offshore racing. Hard work it can be, resource management is para- mount but the rewards are great – both crew have to multi-task extensively and plan much further ahead for manoeuvres and navigation… and no more mind- less hanging out on the rail awaiting the call to arms from the back end brigade. Already we can see the opti- misation of boats with all this in mind and I predict a healthy longterm growth over the coming seasons, both for offshore and inshore racing. One of the key complaints that I hear from owners all the time is the difficulty of finding and keeping enough crew for regular racing over a season or more, and so if more production boats can be effectively raced with smaller crews then this will greatly improve participation at all levels, inshore and offshore. (To digress only slightly, I jumped straight into a One
Ton Cup campaign three days after arriving back from the first Whitbread Race which we had completed two- handed on a 47-footer as an unofficial entry – the organisers generously timed us 12th out of 17 entries in that first race. Stepping back onto a fully crewed 40-footer it took a while to get used to having others around cluttering up the boat and I’ve been fan of dou- blehanded racing ever since.) On a different tack – foils and foiling of all sorts and
flavours are hot topics on almost everything that floats these days, from Moths and assorted multihulls, all
With apologies to Crocodile Dundee fans everywhere, now that’s a foil. The DSS foil developed for the 142- footer Canova (issue 470) by the inventor of the DSS system Hugh Welbourn working in partnership with Baltic Yachts and Farr Yacht Design took its French builder Isotop little over 12- months to complete. With a finished weight of 1,125kg the structural shell of the foil consists of some 200 layers of carbon pre-preg with a maximum completed thickness of 81mm. The largest DSS foil to date is designed to a peak dynamic lift of 60-tonnes with the outboard bearings engineered to 200-tonnes.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110
