Paul Cayar
Rob Weiland
Admiral’s Cup!!
With the RORC moving closer to releasing its 100th anniversary 2025 Admiral’s Cup Notice of Race I certainly cannot resist speculating on its content. Give or take 25 years is a long wait. No matter what format the NoR will invite us
to join there will be criticism, but I dare say to celebrate the club’s 100th anniversary a better
choice than to reinstate the Admiral’s Cup could not have been made. Why? Well, the Admiral’s Cup, in itself a classic, has an even bigger classic, the Fastnet Race, as its centrepiece and the RORC is the Fastnet Race and the Fastnet Race is the RORC. Just a small matter of the race now finishing in Cherbourg, but
possibly for once this could be closer to Cowes? Or, being my flexible Dutch self, if Cherbourg is a must, why not start the event with the Fastnet Race, then start the Channel Race from Cherbourg (after a brief recovery break!) to finish somewhere near the Solent, which makes the result not too much a tidal lottery; and that way bring the fleet home to Cowes for a three-day Grand Finale of epic Solent racing and celebrations! Of course, logistically not so straightforward to stage an event on both sides of the EU border… Why not start the Admiral’s Cup fleet for the Fastnet from the
original Royal Victoria Yacht Club startline at Ryde, the same as on 15 August 1925. And mandate that this sub-fleet must then cross the Royal Yacht Squadron line from where the rest of the Fastnet fleet will start well after the Admiral’s Cup fleet has passed through, say 30 minutes later? Time each of the Admiral’s Cup yachts when crossing the
Squadron line to enable them to also race for the Fastnet trophies and Bob’s your uncle… Yes, this could bring a few seconds’ clear air bonus for the Cup yachts, but give me a break. We are just trying to create history and attract as many as we can to the ball. For the non-RORC members that first Fastnet Race had seven
starters and was won by Jolie Brise, a 56ft pilot cutter, finishing in 6d 14h 45m. Thereafter Jolie Brisewent on to win the race again in 1929 and 1930 and is still clocking up miles today. Over a dinner at the 1925 finish, in Plymouth’s Royal Western
Yacht Club, the new Ocean Racing Club is formed and its first Commodore appointed: Jolie Brise’s owner Lt Cmdr EG Martin. The objective: ‘To provide annually one ocean race not less than
38 SEAHORSE
600 miles in length’. The club was then officially formed on 9 October with members paying an annual subscription of £1. Royal approval, by King George V, was granted in November 1931 and the club has been known as the Royal Ocean Racing Club ever since. The objective was soon stretched a little wider: ‘To encourage
long-distance yacht racing and the design, building and navigation of sailing vessels in which speed and seaworthiness are combined’. Over the years this scope broadened further into four objectives, adding to the former ones ‘to encourage and practise any form of yacht racing’; ‘the practice of navigation and seamanship’; and ‘to maintain clubhouse facilities for its members’. As so many boats racing in and from the Solent are nowadays,
Jolie Brise is of French design (Alexandre Paris) and construction (Albert Paumelle in Le Havre, 1913). After a short career as a pilot boat, with steam replacing sail, in 1917 she was turned into a fishing boat, then a racing yacht from 1923 and from 1977 a sail training vessel. Jolie Brise, then 100 years old but with the youngest crew in the
race, took part in the 2013 Fastnet Race crewed by students from her owners Dauntsey’s School, plus two more crew selected by the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust. On corrected time she finished in 277th place in a fleet of 294… But her elapsed time of 5d 4h 39m was over one day and 10 hours faster than in 1925. She had just had another full refit and looked sharper than ever. Back to the Admiral’s Cup and now come the difficult decisions:
team or single entries and boat sizes or rating bands? I hear two-boat teams, the closest one can get to single entries,
and in bands of roughly 36-44ft and 45-53ft. Again I can list a page of observations on this but in the end this is just fine; it is in line with the history of the event and of the club. It also meets the requirement to encourage enough owners to join in 2025 to have a good event and serve as a sound basis for future development. I expect it will be compulsory to have one yacht of each size band
in a team to avoid too much disparity, as in teams of two 36ft boats or of two TP52s. If not, I would consider doing so. There will for sure already have been debate on whether or not
to include Maxis but I feel not doing this is correct. Maxis do tend to have their own events and, if not, in a mix with other classes they dominate the show.
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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