need immediate help, who are heading to Europe for their summer sports now and require data for that, for when they compete and for when they return for the final Australian summer prior to Tokyo. So that needs to be done tonight… Blue Robinson
USA And over here…
It may be only every two years, but Manuka Sports Event Manage- ment’s running of the Atlantic Cup has been doing a great job of keeping shorthanded offshore racing alive and well in the US. It’s not nearly at the same level as in the UK and France, but the turnout of 11 teams from five nations in Class40s of various vintages this year was not bad at all – with the wide variation in format of offshore and inshore racing there were opportunities for nearly everyone. This event featured a total course length of just over 1,000nm and a format similar to years past: two long offshore legs followed by a full inshore series. Each of the offshore legs carried double- points, so with five inshore races this made an almost even scoring balance for each course type. In theory this would therefore reward those who had both inshore and offshore racing prowess. The first leg was a 648-mile jaunt from the start in Charleston, northeast out to the Gulf Stream, around Cape Hatteras, and then up the mid-Atlantic coast to the finish in New York City. Conditions varied from a nice fast downwind start out of Charleston, hurtling towards Hatteras while doing rhumbline sailing in a 15-20kt south- westerly, to starting to get light off Virginia, to nearly stopping off Maryland, then slowly working through patches of breeze off the New Jersey coast towards the finish line off the Statue of Liberty. The French team of Catherine Pourre and Pietro Luciani on
Eärendil (Class40 no145) won this leg, but they had to fight for it. Their Sam Manuard design built in 2015 by JPS is actually one of the newer boats in the US fleet, and their win in the double-handed division of the Caribbean 600 and runner-up finish in the last Atlantic Cup of 2016 proved they know their boat well. The next offshore leg was shorter – 360 miles from New York to Portland, Maine – with a Point Alpha set for the teams heading east
to avoid Nantucket Shoals before they turn north. But after a light downwind start a low-pressure system in the area turned this leg into a nasty beat upwind into rough seas. As expected, the tough and the well-prepared came out ahead on this leg, first led by Dragon (Class40 no54) sailed by Mike Hennessey and the boat’s designer Merf Owen, who would cede this to Eärendil. Now with two offshore race wins, the series leaders had pulled well away overall. ‘We slammed a lot, two or three times in a really bad way,’ said Pietro Luciani. ‘We had strong wind and current against us and the sea state was pretty confused! Dragon did an amazing job upwind – they led to the top mark but we knew that if we could stay close then downwind our boat would be faster.’
Inshore racing in Casco Bay in Portland brought more crew on each boat – maximum six – while a wider mix of race winners started to compress the results. But in the end the points totals from their strong wins in the first two offshore legs were too much to be over- come and Eärendil was declared winner of the 2018 Atlantic Cup. While co-skipper Pourre was lauded as first woman to win the Atlantic Cup, she did not seem to note its significance, saying only ‘We could have been better on the inshore series, but we have been racing people we love and it has been great sailing. And of course we are happy to be the winners.’
Will the Atlantic Cup carry on into 2020? No reason to think otherwise. The event has a strong sponsor in 11th Hour Racing whose support for sustainability practices in sailing is getting good exposure at the event – which is claimed to be the most environ- mentally responsible sailing race in the US and the first sports event of any type in the US to be ISO 20121 compliant. The Class40 continues to accumulate new skippers and boats in the US, albeit slowly. A steady stream of European boats of varying vintage make it west across the Atlantic, some being sold following a winter campaign in the Caribbean. Other sailors observing this year’s Atlantic Cup fleet were clearly impressed with the Class40 for its performance and versatility but, with the focus on the US east coast still dominated by inshore racing, we’ve got a way to go before becoming a major concern to the French fleet… Dobbs Davis
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