intrusion into the harbour is significantly reduced. Provision is made for six challenger bases, with a breakwater to protect them from harbour surge. Provision is also made to expand existing berthage for visiting superyachts. Each challenger will be allocated a bare site and will have the responsibility to construct their own facilities. The agreement sees the government putting up $114million and the city $98million to cover infrastructure and associated costs. Out of the $212million investment, $40million is a hosting fee to ETNZ. Like all compromises, there is a bit of pain for each party but enough gain for each to claim victory and move forward. Welcoming the settlement, Simon Wilson, who writes about Auckland affairs in the NZ Herald, said the new outcome was better than what any of the parties had previously proposed. ‘It’s signif- icantly cheaper. Very little of the harbour will be extended into… The Cup Village will be vibrant, spectator-friendly, syndicate-friendly and even superyacht-friendly.
‘But to make this happen everyone had to pull on their big sailing pants and make a decision for the greater good. They all did that and we can be grateful. Auckland will be the winner.’ Of course, plenty of water still needs to flow under the proverbial bridge. Painful experience tells us that construction projects always come with surprises, few of them pleasant. But an important step forward has been made and we can now be certain that the action will indeed take place in the home waters of the Defender. For a Cup cycle dedicated to restoring lost tradition and greater respect for the Deed of Gift, it would really have been unthinkable for it to have gone anywhere else. Ivor Wilkins
AUSTRALIA Terror
John Fisher of the Sun Hung Kai Scallywag Volvo Ocean Race team was lost overboard in the Southern Ocean 1,400 miles west of Cape Horn on 26 March, and his body was never recovered. Sitting here writing about Fish, who was English (he had the Union Jack on the back of his foul-weather gear) but moved to Adelaide, where he lived with his wife and two children, is tough because John was one of the quiet ones. But, man, was he a good bloke, and if there was a problem onboard he was the go-to person who would always have a solution.
Fish was also an educator, who loved to share his knowledge and experience with the younger men and women he sailed with. I raced with the team last year and John was a super-friendly and massively respected guy who talked little and worked hard, and when he did chat he had a huge smile on his face. Waking up to the news that John had gone into the water and that his mates were searching for him was utterly stomach churning. I jumped off Scallywag after covering the start of Leg 4 out of Melbourne, and by the time I surfaced I could see the boat rapidly sliding into the distance, knowing that within minutes my head would just be a dot to the crew, as the team RIB closed in to drag me out of the water.
Along with all of the Volvo crews in the Southern Ocean, John would have been wearing his heavy-duty ocean dry suit, with layers of thermals underneath and a lifejacket/harness on top. The fleet were getting down to the colder part of Leg 7, so John was wearing a neoprene balaclava and gloves, and since the leg start all the crew had been wearing boots, so moving around the cockpit was slow but steady in these tough conditions – more of a shuffle than a clean step. He would have been clipped on, but moving around means unclipping then refastening yourself.
Ever since the Whitbread Race ushered in the Whitbread 60s in the 1993/94 edition the much more dynamic 60s, Volvo 70s and now VO65s racing hard in the Southern Ocean nosedive, or punch into the back of waves, or broach, or get slammed by a wave that suddenly doubles in size, as two swells generated from systems thousands of miles apart combine exactly where you are sailing, then break as if on a beach to flick your boat on its side like a capsized dinghy leaving the helmsman hanging suspended from a spoke in the steering wheel.
It was Tom Braidwood, a crewmember onboard Scallywag on this leg, who told me years ago that surfing down waves in the
SEAHORSE 23
Jules Verne Trophy, Vendée Globe, Mini Transat...
Profurl raises the performance!
profurl.com
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