Prepared to look stupid – Part II


Eclectic Aussie Sean Langman shares traits with the always magnifique Francis Joyon. Two great yachtsmen, both carrying a deep passion for the Orma 60 tris... and neither of whom seemingly ever really sleeps


Seahorse Magazine: 2005 was when you chartered the maxi Nicorette with a youth programme? Sean Langman: They’d all loved the origi- nal Zena Open 60 project. I’d started the Noakes youth programme and immedi- ately approached the CYC youth acad- emy; I said that I wanted to race Zena on a Saturday with 20 crew, to put less strain on the water-ballast system, but that when


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I race it offshore I will race with six. So now I am looking to give some kids a chance to come out on the Saturday, to sail this great boat… and to sail fast. I then got really attached to that youth team, but they in turn had got rather wedded to the idea of competing in the Sydney-Hobart… But I’d said at the start that I was going to do the Hobart with six crew! I then felt such pains of guilt about the


programme and I really wanted to give them an opportunity. I also knew that we had finished second so many times on that boat that she could still win line honours. This meant I was a combination of ego


driven and guilt driven in wanting to win… Above all I just wanted to win the damn thing and so I convinced my sponsor that we should charter the larger, faster Nicorette. But in reality I didn’t look at the boat closely enough to realise how lucky it


had been to win the year before in a very rough Hobart. Ultimately we went ahead and chartered her anyway, mainly because of my obligation to the youth crew! SH: And their response to all this… SL:Well, we go back to the value of listen, listen, listen. We ran out of fuel going up the Derwent so the kids had to hand crank the power winches… they just loved it as they felt they were finally sailing properly. Of course they’d told me they preferred to sail that way before the start! But it had mainly still been push-button racing and the kids had nothing to do. Noisy, nothing to do, things breaking all the time. Basi- cally that led to me getting pretty disen- chanted, plus I really felt that we were sold a pup with the whole stored power thing. SH: You are a passionate and motivated sailor – and so to push you like that away from sailing, that sounds like a big deal…


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