News Around the World


personality driven, plus where we can we’ll be using drones instead of helicopters which are a lot less money and easier on the sailors. Then more tracking plus sound off the boats and onboard cameras – these are all hard to do well. It’s easy if you have a lot of money like the America’s Cup. Less easy when you are on a 470 or a Finn.’ The 49er and 49erFX high-performance skiffs clearly understand


the need for better media and, with the Nacra 17 sharing the same class management, they are very much heading in the same direction. But class manager for these three, Ben Remocker, cautions that there is still very basic work to be done. ‘To improve TV coverage there are some obvious things that


should happen right away. The country flags and large sail numbers as the 49ers have done; there is no hope of a fan caring about your race if they can’t follow the person they are cheering. Most racing classes have not fixed that, Laser being the worst with a nine-digit sail number! And, to make it worse, putting one number on each side of a see-though sail makes it impossible to read anyway.’ And then there’s the gnarly subject of racing format (page 12).


Rob Kothe


USA Rise and fall There are few serious sailors in north America (and beyond) who have not been at least once to Key West Race Week. For three decades this midwinter event amused and entertained scores of boats and hundreds of sailors seeking solace from the cold north for a week of racing on the clear azure waters of the Florida Keys. The weather was not always perfect, but it was nearly always better than where you just came from… It was also in the right place on the calendar: the third week of


January has a holiday that is observed by nearly everyone in the US and, with racing set for five days from Monday to Friday, in theory it had only a four-day impact on the US amateur sailor’s precious holiday time. So it all seemed simple: fly down on Saturday, jump on the boat for a practice day, race and party for five days, head home the following Saturday with a tan and a hangover. A few decades back and Key West itself was rather less refined


than it is now… its historical reputation as a free haven for ne’er-do-wells, ruffians and refugees who gravitated to the very end of the road as the ‘southernmost point in the US’ made it attractive to sailors who liked to mix doses of rum with their splashes of salt water. And the town welcomed an influx of free-spending sailors to give the local economy a good kick. In these days Yachting magazine was title sponsor, and it was


20 SEAHORSE


a modest collection of boats that were not in the serious crowd that was bashing itself around Florida in the SORC. It was only after the demise of that four-week (really was, folks) ocean-racing fest that attention turned towards Key West as a racing venue and not just an alluring glow of lights on the northern horizon as you bashed your way through the Gulf Stream on the St Pete-Ft Lauderdale Race. It was in the early 1990s under the command of Peter Craig and


his Premiere Racing crew, along with the advent of serious one- design activity, that this event got going strong. With no indigenous yacht club to organise things, Premiere came down from Marblehead and brought with them professional race and event management skills supplemented by an army of volunteers who would gladly work free for a week in exchange for a bed under the palm trees. Part of their genius was promoting the event heavily so the racing


industry could convince their clients this was a must-attend event, giving them a target to debut new custom designs as well as the new waves of one-designs that were pouring out of boatbuilding factories up north in Rhode Island. New one-designs like the Mumm 36, then Mumm 30, then Farr 40, 1D35 and so on would be built at Carroll Marine in Bristol, loaded on the truck, and head south. Tillotson Pearson (TPI) would likewise pour out various models


of J/Boats that were also catching on to this wave, as was Melges. Salesmen at the autumn boat shows – where the days get noticeably short and cold with the approach of winter – had their lines pitch perfect: ‘Hey, act now and you can get a boat in time for Key West. Whaddya say: doesn’t sun and palm trees in January sound great?’ The relationship with the industry was so strong that when


Premiere were unable to continue to sell title sponsorship to big name companies like GMC Yukon, they reached out to the industry itself for support, initiating the Industry Partner programme. Many, including this magazine, saw the value and kicked in to help. In these days (mid-2000s) the event was huge: entries were


surpassing 200, with four separate racing circles packed with boats. The race village was soon adding more tents for sponsors and partners to entertain their customers. But by now serious racers were showing up not just at the


weekend prior to racing, but an entire week in advance to train, inflating campaign budgets to new highs and giving a nice additional bump to the salaries of pro sailors and support teams. Then things started to slide in the participation numbers, and the


one-design classes became less ready to commit to the event every year. Other events in south Florida (including a renovated SORC in Miami) were also struggling to draw the numbers they once had. The ‘Crisis’ could partly be blamed for this but another factor was


MATIAS CAPIZZANO


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