Unstoppable force


First they won the Transat, followed by a slew of new solo ocean races; still people said they were not in the game when it came to the top crewed competitions. Then they won the Admiral’s Cup and the Volvo Race… twice. Brian Hancock argues that the stellar success of French ocean racing simply demonstrates what happens when an entire nation takes a sport – and its sportsmen – to their heart 40 SEAHORSE


La Transat Anglaise is no more and with its end comes the end of an era. The end of England playing a large part in the global offshore racing scene. The race, which has started from the south coast of England for almost 60 years, will now start from the French port city of Brest and that’s a sad reality. There was a time when England and


British sailors dominated the offshore sailing scene, when the likes of Sir Robin Knox-Johnston sailed ‘for Queen and Country’, and when it would have been unthinkable for a Whitbread (later Volvo) round-the-world race not to begin and end at a British port. But that mantle has been handed squarely to the French and another chapter closes on the UK yachting scene. The singlehanded Transat, or as the


French affectionally referred to it, La Transat Anglaise, came about in 1960 when a handful of British sailors made a bet to see if they could sail alone across the Atlantic to America, and also to see who could do it the fastest. It was an inauspicious idea but the


proponents were not just ordinary sailors. Among those gathered was Francis Chich- ester and Blondie Hasler but when they announced their plan it was at first ridiculed and criticised as foolhardy. Nonetheless 115 people expressed an


interest in taking part, there were 50 decla- rations of intent, but only five intrepid sailors crossed the startline off Plymouth. Chichester was the first to arrive in New York after 40 days at sea and announced, ‘Every time I tried to point Gipsy Moth at


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