Orphan child no more?
The default opinion is that the creation of what we know now as the Code 0 was prompted by Chris Dickson’s clever upwind-spinnaker developed for and immediately banned by the 1993/94 Whitbread Round the World Race. But Brian Hancock conjectures that the sail’s roots may go back rather further…
So here is a question for you. Are bloopers and Code 0s related? OK, I admit that’s a funny question especially if you are not of a certain age when it comes to the estimable blooper. You may be thinking literally about a blooper which is a word the Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘an embarrassing error’. Those sailors old enough will remember fondly (or maybe not) that funky sail that was set to leeward of the spinnaker when sailing deep downwind angles. Yeah, that Blooper, an embarrassing error. Before we head over to the My Heritage
website to check out if the two sails were indeed related, let me give you a little history about both, starting with the blooper; just because I like saying that name. This sail, which many thought was just a sailmaker’s way of selling more sails and was invented by a sailmaker, was indeed a boon to the sailmaking world but
38 SEAHORSE
a massive pain in the arse to the rest of us. Let me explain. My former boss, Chris
Bouzaid, many years ago when he was a cocky Kiwi winning races all over the world, came up with the idea. I am guess- ing that rum was involved but that might just be me projecting. Chris and his crew were getting ready for the Southern Cross Cup, an event that was competed for every two years in the Tasman Sea outside Sydney. The competition was brutal and included the former Prime Minister of England, Sir Edward Heath, aboard his yacht Morning Cloud. Bouzaid and his bunch were in Auckland
training with some fellow Kiwis when the wind went light and they thought to set their super-light ‘drifter’ headsail, which was not attached to the headstay but instead was set free-flying. Then the wind suddenly came aft and there was a call to set the light spinnaker; Bouzaid noticed that the spinnaker sheet was led around the headstay, but inside the drifter and called for the drifter to come down because it was in the way of the spinnaker sheet. The boys on the foredeck eased the tack of the sail to clear the spinnaker sheet and then to their amazement the drifter set outside the spin- naker. The sail was just sitting there and, despite being a little unstable, there was a marked increase in boat speed – every sailor’s dream. When they came ashore Chris immedi-
ately contacted the rules gurus and after a day’s deliberation they could not find
anything in the rules that prohibited this sail from being legal. By now his sailmak- ing brain was running amuck and he of course designed a much larger sail that would do a better job. The following weekend before they
departed for Sydney they went out and tested the new sail which by now they’d named the Shooter. It was clearly faster, so they decided that it would be their little secret for Sydney and Bouzaid set about making new ones for the other two Kiwi yachts. Remember the blooper was mea- sured as a headsail and not as a spinnaker and was therefore legal under the rules. On to Sydney and the Southern Cross
Cup, a series of races leading up to the Sydney Hobart race. The Kiwis were trailing the Aussies and Brits in overall points but they were still keeping the ‘little secret’ to themselves. They didn’t want to show their hand too soon and allow other competitors to build similar sails. Two days before the big race while on a
long downwind leg the Kiwi boats pulled out their Shooters and set them. In doing so they set a cat among the pigeons with all the other teams crying foul, so to speak. Of course they were protested but Bouzaid remained steadfast that the sail was a headsail and was therefore legal. What might have been a relatively short
protest hearing dragged on for two days. The problem was that they couldn’t figure out which rule they broke but Sir Edward Heath and his team, and most likely with
ALASTAIR BLACK/PPL
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