RORC
Club page Final furlong
You may recall at the beginning of the year I introduced readers to Ray Campion, the Commodore of the London Corinthian Sailing Club (LCSC) in Hammersmith, to explain the process the LCSC were going through to enter several teams in the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race, bearing in mind they are a river-based club. Ray then did a mid-season update for us, after LCSC completed
two of our offshore races as part of the training programme. He now reviews the year as a whole as they build towards that milestone of being on the startline in July. When Ray first approached us about LCSC’s aspirations I thought
it would be interesting for them to tell their story; I hope this will now be of interest to other clubs and show there is pathway from the muddy foreshores of the River Thames in London to the world’s biggest ocean race. So over to you, Ray… It’s just over a year since we set our club the goal of entering three
team he assembled. With other coaches like Tom Fenemore, Gareth Griffiths and Kirstie Urwin, Lucas structured sessions to develop techniques through repetition… and the hunger to win through match race training. Crews were regularly shuffled to build a shared spirit and training took place on schedule and regardless of conditions. Year two will be about progression and preparation. We have a
winter series of classroom sessions ahead of us to look at hours of video footage of this year’s training, analysing mistakes and bedding in the ‘why’ so people remember the ‘how’. These will be followed by expert lectures on meteorology, trimming and helming for speed in all sea states, and mid-race decision-making. We’ll also be benefiting from a technical look at the Fastnet course with a professional navigator a few days before the start. On the water we’ll run the same fundamentals sessions to
reinforce the manoeuvres and speed training as we did in 2022. In addition, for the Fastnet crews, we’ll have specific match training weekends for the three boats, with a coach in a RIB behind the yachts looking at rig setup, trim, manoeuvres… and speed.
Boats For all our training and racing we secured two Bénéteau First 40s and one First 40.7. The performance is close enough between the types to be able to match train, vital in understanding if the speed we were going was as fast as we could go. During the RORC races themselves, with training sessions under
our belts and confidence building, last year also brought our share of disappointments when we found ourselves towards the bottom of some of the results. Being beaten on the water by a JPK is under- standable, being beaten by boats of the same type leaves a mark. The owners of these boats have had years to optimise their
sailplans and rigging, and drill their crews, so it was probably naive of us to think we could do a couple of training sessions, jump on unloved charter boats and take home some silverware. This made us focus attention on the boats… The fact that they
are older isn’t the issue, it’s getting them to work well for speed, for the crews, and to sail to their IRC rating that matters. Olof Granander’s ‘private’ First 40.7 Embla was already 50nm ahead of our club’s borrowed 40.7 as he rounded the rock in Fastnet 2021… This was again an area we knew little about, but our coaches
If you want to win the 2023 Fastnet then this is one of the first boats you have to beat. Niklas Zennström’s Rán 8 is the second of the Carkeek-designed CF520 IRC specials to come off the line at Fibre Mechanics in Lymington. The CF520s are equipped with a good water ballast system as standard so racing a big top-end IRC racer like this with a reduced crew becomes entirely realistic
member-crewed boats in the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race. At the time it seemed to many an ambitious goal to be sniggered at; we had engaged in very little recent club-organised offshore racing – most of our established racers had their own paths to the Fastnet Rock, and our programme now had to be open to all members regardless of expe- rience. Looking back at how far we’ve come in just one year it’s amazing to see what motivated members with good guidance can achieve.
Coaching At the start RORC kindly introduced us to Olympic coach Hugh Styles who put together a two-year training plan to bring us up to a level where we can contend in the Fastnet, and not just attend. This was split into shore work and on-the-water training. Year one was about building a strong foundation from which to
develop. He started in the classroom with the fundamentals, including sail trim, sources of power and boat handling. He also worked on the softer elements of how to learn and improve as individuals. Together we built a common playbook tailored to the boats we
were using, making us perform each manoeuvre the same way. On the water Hugh pulled in Olympian Helena Lucas to lead the coaching
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knew the right industry suppliers and made the necessary introduc- tions. In Will Alloway at Doyle Sails we found someone much more interested in making our boat go faster than just selling us a sail. Andy Postle at Allspars pulled us out of a hole when a previous rigger’s mistake caused one of our masts to crack. Having Hugh Styles co-ordinate the optimisation ensured the efforts dovetailed for better performance in the areas we needed it most. The more we were willing to use our charter boats the more inter-
ested their owners became in upgrading the boats for our use, making our members engage more with the training programme and thus completing the circle. Over the winter all of our boats are coming out of the water for full underbelly work. New race sails are being made, a bowsprit with Code 0 is being trialled, and we’re reviewing all of the running rigging. All steps in the right direction.
The future We all know nothing replaces experience but if Tom Kneen’s win in the 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race teaches us anything it’s that you can ‘get good’ quickly with the right focus and support team. I couldn’t have envisaged a year ago that we would have assembled the support team we have, or have come this far as a club. Setting the goal of entering three boats in the Fastnet felt like a huge stretch last October, but we recently launched the 2023 racing calendar at the club and opened up the 27 Fastnet places for members to book. We sold out within two weeks. There is an excitement among the racers, and an eagerness to
improve. They can already taste the croissants in Cherbourg. Ray Campion, Commodore, LCSC
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KURT ARRIGO/ROLEX
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