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RORC
Normally the last race in our Season Points Championship, the Rolex Middle Sea Race, this year becomes the first race of the 2021 RORC season. The logic for the change was to stop boats having to go to Malta just to defend their overall points position rather than doing the race as part of a programme of races outside the UK. This way this 600nm classic becomes the first of a winter
programme of events which could include the RORC Transatlantic Race in January 2021 and RORC Caribbean 600 in February – as well as the array of Caribbean regattas that neatly tie in with one another. Alternatively, there is a sojourn around the Mediterranean regattas in the spring before returning to the UK for the first of the domestic offshore races, the Cervantes Trophy, in May. It is good to see the Middle Sea Race going ahead with around
50 boats from 13 nations. This is a big success story at a time when many people in Europe are still nervous about travel. It is also the last big offshore race of a much abbreviated European season. Given the usual unpredictable weather forecast and no stand-
out monohull like Rambler, monohull line honours will be harder to call this year even with two Volvo 70s and a Volvo 65 competing. Pushing these ocean powerhouses hard will be Marton Jozsa’s DSS
mode racing against Riccardo Pavoncelli’s MOD 70 Mana, skippered by Brian Thompson. All the multihulls compete under the MOCRA rating rule and the two MOD 70s will have competition from the 80ft trimaran Ultim Emotion2, the 60 Shockwave (ex-Paradox) and the Multi 50 Primonial from France. Racing is always close between the MOD 70s which drives up their overall performance. The Royal Malta Yacht Club have put in place virus controls with
the lavish prizegiving reduced to a sit-down dinner with one repre- sentative per boat. But this a small price to pay for allowing sailors to enjoy one of the most scenic races on the offshore calendar.
Double up Our Two Handed Autumn Series was born out of demand from the keen sailors who were desperate to have some serious offshore racing as allowed under Covid regulations. There is obviously a lot of interest in double-handed sailing as was evinced in RORC’s Race the Wight, where in a fleet of 130 IRC boats 47 competed double- handed. For the subsequent overnight stage a total of 20 boats took part with Richard Palmer’s JPK 1010 the overall winner, sailed not by Richard but by his regular crew Jeremy Waite partnered with double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson. Shirley has her eye on the 2024 Olympics and has teamed up
with Henry Bomby – a budding singlehanded sailor. In Race the Wight the two sailed Nigel Colley’s Sun Fast 3300… finishing second to none other than Richard Palmer and Jeremy Waitt. However, a knee operation stopped Palmer from competing in the Autumn Series so Shirley teamed up with his crew Jeremy Waitt and for someone with not a lot of offshore experience adapted to the task extremely well – as you would expect of a good sailor. As Jeremy pointed out after series results of 1,2,1, ‘Shirley is obviously very good at getting the best speed out of the boat and has excellent endurance. Last night we were beating into 27kt – it was on the nose and very lumpy but she just dug in and we got the win.’ However, we should not underestimate the power of experience
that Jeremy brings to the team having sailed thousands of miles on the JPK 1010 and winning the RORC Transatlantic race two- handed with Richard last November. Also making a play for Olympic selection is round-the-world racer
You’d be smiling too if Santa had given you a toy like Hugo Boss (number seven) to go off and play with. In the last Vendée Globe the combination of VPLP, Guillaume Verdier and Alex Thomson’s own technical team came up with the fastest boat but tripped up when one of their DSS foils (the biggest in the fleet) broke entering the Southern Ocean. This time around Thomson has gone with slightly less vulnerable C-foils – adding to the intrigue by starting the Vendée without ever completing a race against another Imoca 60. With a tough and determined skipper and the biggest budget in the fleet Thomson’s rivals will be watching the pace of the latest Hugo Boss entry very carefully in the opening stages of the race
60 Wild Joewhich is sufficiently slippery in the light and fast downhill. The overall winner under IRC is even harder to predict. Last year’s
winner, the Podesta family’s well-sailed Bénéteau First 45 Ellusive II is back and will certainly be up in the top group. Another well-sailed Maltese boat with her sights set on the overall win is Lee Satariano’s Artie, a souped-up HH42 but with a shorter rig than a comparable Fast40 for offshore racing. RORC Rear Commodore Eric de Turck- heim is back again with Teasing Machine and with a new lighter keel could well surprise with new-found speed in lighter conditions while maintaining her strength in a breeze. Nor can we discount the TP52 Freccia Rossa sailed by Vadim Yakimenko from Russia. This race continues to attract a good fleet of multihulls with Giovanni Soldini’s Maserati – without foils for this race – in MOD 70
64 SEAHORSE
Dee Caffari sailing with James Harayda. These two won the Two Handed Nationals and beat Robertson and Waitt in the only Autumn Series race they entered. It will be interesting to see how the speed sailors, if I can use that term for inshore and Olympic sailors, and endurance sailors (offshore/round the world) play out against each other over the next couple of years – if indeed we have mixed offshore racing at all in the next Olympics. Rumour has it that it could be axed in a post-Covid cost-saving exercise by the IOC. It would be a shame as the discipline is shaping up to be something very interesting for the offshore and big boat community to follow.
Offshoredoubles.org Born out of a need to have a class association to support the Olympic selection the Offshore Doubles association was created by world- renowned navigator Stan Honey who is also the chairman of World Sailing’s Offshore and Oceanic Committee. Stan feels that within the current system at World Sailing for choosing Olympic boats there is the need for an organisation to bang the drum for the double- handed discipline – not just mixed double-handed racing – and the Oceanic Committee is too broad an organisation to do that. Larry Rosenfeld is the president and driving force of the Offshore
Doubles which is also backed by Loïck Peyron, Matt Allen from Australia, Dee Caffari and Knut Frostad. Their goal is ‘to strengthen the community of sailors, events and classes who are already making double-handed offshore sailing the fastest growing segment of our sport’. Hundreds of sailors have signed up through the website and the initiative may have come at just the right time if we are to ‘keep’ offshore racing in the Olympics… Eddie Warden Owen, CEO
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GRAHAM SNOOK
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