This year the America’s Cup Hall of Fame will also introduce a
new award, to recognise those people who have upheld the spirit of friendly competition… In September 1885 Sir Richard Sutton, Fifth Baronet of Norwood
Park, raced Genesta, his 84-ton racing cutter, against the New York Yacht Club’s defender, Puritan, in a best-of-three match in New York. During the match, on 8 September, as the iconic Lawson History of the America’s Cup records, ‘There occurred an incident rare in the history of the Cup races and, in view of the events that followed in a few years, worthy of being commemorated in bronze.’ When manoeuvring for the start Puritan failed to clear Genesta,
resulting in a collision. Within minutes of the collision the race committee disqualified Puritan, which was on port tack at the time of the accident. However, Sir Richard refused to accept a win by default. Instead he informed the race committee: ‘We are very much obliged to you, but we don’t want it in that way. We want a race; we don’t want a walkover.’ This famous act of sportsmanship is indeed now commemorated
in bronze and is immortalised by having Sir Richard’s name for ever attached to a medal to be awarded to those who have upheld the same spirit of friendly competition. Likewise, it is fitting that this award is being dedicated at the Royal Yacht Squadron, the yacht club that Sir Richard represented in his challenge. As this AC Hall of Fame ceremony takes us back to the place
where the America’s Cup began, let’s remember how the exploits of past Cup personalities have brought us to where we are in the lead-up to the 2021 Match. Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa are taking us back to the future, with a small number of challengers, powerful tycoons, incredibly talented sailors and amazingly original design concepts.
QUITE THE TOYS – Terry Hutchinson Ripping along at 35,000ft UA 989 to Frankfurt. After a hiatus from last month’s journal, which was no more complicated than me dropping the ball, a lot to update on with the first TP52 events happening. The new-generation TP52 is quite a piece of equipment with nine
models built (seven Botín and two Judel-Vrolijk). All the Botín boats are identical under the water while each team has its own touches on deck. The advantage that this current-generation Botín boat has is the in-between development of Gladiator. Tony Langley’s boat from last year was an absolute beast upwind compared to the previous generation, and this development gave Marcelo Botín’s team a good steer going forward. The Vrolijk boats have been developed on from TP52 world
champion Platoon. While not involved I would suspect their design brief would have been a need to hold lanes and better performance in light air upwind. Time will tell us who got it right. Palma Vela. For Quantum Racing this was a mad scramble. In
the early part of 2018 we had a change of build venue back to Ximo López’s Longitude Cero Yard in Burriana, Spain. This left us a bit behind the curve as the build started at about the same time Sled and Azzurra went sailing for the first time! Needless to say we felt we had a lot to do in a pretty short period. In three days of preparation we had to sea trial, sail check and
start the process of development that happens with every new boat. The sea trials threw up no issues, then we were straight into the first phases of rig tune and building reliability into our yacht. As a reminder, last season saw our first (touch wood) breakdown over a decade of racing. But that one mistake cost us an event and potentially a championship. Without question reliability is paramount – every aspect of these boats gets pushed but breakdowns cannot happen; in this incredibly well-prepared fleet a DNF is a killer. The event was typical Palma Bay for the time of year, a bit cool,
rainy and a lot of transition between typical sea breeze and breezes generated by springtime weather patterns. On the racecourse Azzurra, with new tactician Santi Lange, picked up where they left off last year. Showing how much time they’d spent in the boat, they were quickly on form in both set-up and performance. Sledwas another team that showed early pace. With the addition of Ray Davies to the afterguard, bowman Jeremy Lomas and speed
MYSTERY SOLVED – Philippe Monnet Thank you for this sad picture (top) of ex-Uunet, my poor round-the-world sailing yacht. I sold her last year to some young Russian guys; a friend sent me a picture of the boat in Tahiti in November. Bernardini BMW, which you can read on the hull, was the last sponsor I had to sail the Around Corsica Race two years ago. The boat is cut in half just in front of the mast and the front
and keel are lost; to be cut like this, for sure, only a cargo ship can do this work. She was a really famous sailing boat with seven circumnavigation, five Vendée Globes, my sail around the world against the wind and later an ecology expedition around world… plus at least 45 transats. I’m very sad about the picture, I loved this boat. I hope
everybody was safe. Any other details welcome. The Briand-designed Open 60 Uunet was launched as Fleury Michon X for Philippe Poupon and was famously (above) the ketch (later sloop) rescued by Loïck Peyron in the first Vendée Globe. She was also later known as Roxy and Gonna Gitcha
team of Don Cowie, Robbie Naismith and Christian Kamp, they showed a lot of speed. And us… we had exactly the type of event one would expect given
our time component, with some great races followed by some not so great races. The inconsistency was about the simple things: systems that were in a teething process, new team members learning their roles and really just trying to get our heads around a new boat. But a mixed bag of results found us finishing up with silver mainly thanks to a bit of a random last run. Azzurra set the base line for the season with consistency and won the event. From Palma the next stop was Šibenik, Croatia – a great spot
and a new venue for the fleet with what would prove to be an incredibly tricky racecourse. Top mark location under a headland in which the breeze was left early and right late… The subtlety of the breeze put a premium on starting close enough to the early left shift yet being able to pick the time for the first tack to port. From there it was a long speed contest to the starboard layline. Onboard Quantumwe were mostly working hard on consistency.
Knowing/feeling that we were and are still catching up to the ear- lier-launched boats, we placed a premium on doing the simple things well. The philosophy seemed to work and we went 4,1,8,1,4,3,7. This scoreline allowed for a 5pt win over current world champion and tuning partner Platoon. Our two outliers on the scoreline, 8 and 7, were self-induced mistakes. The 8 was an OCS on a coastal race, and the 7 was brain fade on my part. Standouts: the fleet this year feels as competitive if not more
so than ever! There is zero room for mistakes and, as we learned in the races that we were 8,7, when you make mistakes expect the suffer meter to be pegged. The design evolution has occurred and
SEAHORSE 11 w
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98
