News Around the World
Lest we forget. On 5 December it was 20 years since Peter Blake was murdered by pirates during an environmental expedition up the Amazon on his expedition yacht Seamaster. The Whitbread Round the World Race and two-time America’s Cup winner was still only 53 years old. The youthful Blake seen here busy brushing his teeth is delivering the 70-footer Ocean Spirit to Cape Town for the 1971 Cape-Rio Race. Even more youthful was his young deckhand for the voyage (above), James Pugh of Lymington, who will later emigrate to San Diego where he will co-found a yacht design practice with a local naval architect going by the name of John Reichel
office in Vannes was then overlooked by the VG ‘professionals’. ‘Nevertheless,’ says David de Prémorel, appointed new president
of Finot-Conq in 2020 by Pascal Conq, ‘we’ve constantly developed our CFD tools.’ Their steady advancements last year once again attracted the interest of some of the new Imoca teams, particularly that of Thomas Ruyant (LinkedOut), through Antoine Koch, who, among other things, participated in the design of LinkedOut’s second and third-generation foils in collaboration with Guillaume Verdier. Antoine has previously collaborated with other teams, in particular
on multihulls. For the design of the new LinkedOut he has teamed up with Finot-Conq and the structural design firm G Sea. Recently Yoann Richomme, supported by Arkéa Paprec, followed in the foot- steps of Thomas and Antoine for his own new Imoca. ‘As a nice story,’ says de Prémorel, ‘Thomas Ruyant won the
Mini Transat in 2009 on one of our designs. Antoine Koch was an apprentice at the Finot Group and later sailed the old Fila, originally designed for Giovanni Soldini. Yoann Richomme, meanwhile, is very close to Erwan Gourdon who has worked with us for many years. In short, we all know each other very well.’ The two new Finot-Koch Imocas have the same hull but are
different in terms of deck layout. The moulds of the two boats are already delivered, Thomas’s made in France and Yoann’s in Spain. Thomas’s boat is under construction at CDK and the other one is just starting at Multiplast. They are the designs no19 and no20 of the Vendée Globe family designed by Finot Conq. A record! Before even discovering the potential of these two new weapons we already know that they are driven by two excellent skippers. Patrice Carpentier
NEW ZEALAND It was a study in contrasts. Up on its first-floor eyrie at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, the America’s Cup was a silent sentinel, serene in its bulletproof glass vault. Down below, the Ball- room, so-called because the building once housed a cabaret, seethed with tension.
24 SEAHORSE This trophy, the oldest in international sport, was demonstrating
once again its power to arouse high passion. Sometimes these passions unify disparate forces to achieve rare success. At other times, like this occasion on a December evening, they take a darker turn and inspire division, even enmity. How many times, one wondered, over its 170-year history had this fabled trophy born witness to similar outbreaks of deeply personal in-fighting? The strange and sad truth as the two sides in this argument took
up ever more entrenched positions against each other was that both professed to want the same thing. Egos, strong personalities, deep mutual mistrust, if not loathing, however, ensured they would surely never work together towards that shared goal. In one corner Grant Dalton, a veteran campaigner with a reputation
for persuading boardrooms to back his causes as a round-the-world race champion and two-time America’s Cup winner. In the other corner entrepreneur Mark Dunphy, self-proclaimed patriot, Fay Richwhite acolyte and would-be America’s Cup player with a $NZ40 million war chest. Both say their preference is to stage the 2024 America’s Cup
defence in Auckland, but that is about the only thing they agree on. Much of the argument is about arithmetic. Dalton says the money on tap in Auckland falls well short of the $200 million he claims is required to fund the team and the event. Dunphy says with his $40 million it can be done. Backed by projected slides of charts and diagrams, Dalton, who
has been in this game for 20 years and has wrangled $500 million for five America’s Cup campaigns, not counting multiple round-the- world races, demonstrates a $50 million shortfall. Dunphy, a senior executive at Fay Richwhite when the investment bank launched New Zealand into the America’s Cup in 1987 and backed two more campaigns in 1988 and 1992, says finding the money is no problem. Dalton reckons at the best of times $50 million is a big problem. And that Covid has made everything much more difficult. Arithmetic, however, is the least of the problems dividing these parties. From the time Dunphy’s courtship of the America’s Cup
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