Competitors for the second edition of the RORC Transatlantic Race have arrived in Marina Lanzarote. The new Calero Marina is a hive of activity as sailors from 14 different nations ready themselves and their yachts for the 3,000 nautical mile race to Port Louis Marina, Grenada which will start at noon, local time, Saturday 28th November.
Tony Lawson's MOD 70, Concise 10, skippered by Ned Collier Wakefield was one of the last arrivals in Marina Lanzarote, accomplishing a safe but brutal delivery from Hamble UK, covering 2,000 miles in just over four days. However, Concise 10 was safely moored in Marina Lanzarote just in time for the Westerhall Rums Party.
Jose Juan Calero, Managing Director for Calero Marinas was delighted to welcome the RORC fleet to the new purpose-built, Marina Lanzarote. The Calero family are keen racers and have hosted many championships and races at their marinas over the years. The opening of the new marina in October was perfect timing for the second edition of the race as it is more suited to the larger boats in the fleet with larger moorings, the biggest Travelift in Spain and all the services required by crews prior to making their Atlantic crossing.
It's going to be a really challenging crossing for the crews, but we are expecting very good winds for the start on Saturday with NE 15-20 knot tradewinds.
After three ACWS 2015 that ended in Bermuda, the teams continue their training. Team France will start next week with two GC32. One bought and the other leased to the ENV. The team will train in Quiberon with two crews after recruitment of five new sailors who joined the team a month ago.
Team will be present with its AC45 at the Nautic Show in December. This is an opportunity for the public to meet the team. On that occasion France Team will announce that the America's Cup World Series will come to France in September. Lorient, La Rochelle, Marseille and Toulon are part of the four cities in consideration.
The Yacht Racing Forum will take place in ten days in Geneva, Switzerland, on December 7-8.
The industry's key players - sailors, brands, sponsors, technical suppliers, venues, yacht clubs... - have already confirmed their participation.
It's not too late to join and we still accept late entries.
Richard Mason, four-time Volvo Ocean Race sailor and the man who led the shore crew for Team SCA women's team in the last edition, has been appointed the event's Head of Port Operations.
Mason, 41, will be responsible from the race's side for the running of all the ports for the next edition in 2017-18 and be personally overseeing half of them, with Adolfo Rodriguez taking care of the others.
Many fans from 2014-15 will remember the Sydney-born sailor as part of the popular TV commentary team.
For the ever-smiling Mason, this will also be a real labour of love. "The harsh brutality of the Volvo Ocean Race is that it's a life sentence," he said, only half-joking.
Mason competed in four races prior to 2014-15 onboard Assa Abloy (2001-02), Ericsson 1 (2005-06), Ericsson 3 (2008-09) and Team Sanya (2011-12).
"My family was closely associated with some of the crew of Ceramco (New Zealand) and Lion (New Zealand), and as a young boy at the ripe old age of about seven, I have photos of me hanging off the wheel on Ceramco in Auckland. I was hooked.
Offshore sailing crews from up to ten yacht clubs across Wales and Ireland gathered at the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire last weekend to hear details of the 2016 ISORA offshore sailing calendar that does not include June's 700-mile Round Ireland race as part of its points series.
The Cool Route Project, in which Donegal County Counci. is a partner (www.sailcoolroute.eu) includes all of the National Sailing Organisations in Ireland and the UK and has strategic partners in the Faroe Islands and in Norway.
The project, funded by the Interreg VB Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme. is researching on a transnational collaborative basis, the development and marketing of the overall cruising grounds around Europe's North Western Seaboard.
Wide ranging research is now being conducted by Cool Route on the Cruising Preferences of sailors in Ireland. the United Kingdom, the Faroe Islands and Norway. This research, which is incorporating the expert views and priorities of cruising skippers, will be an importan. input to the future development and marketing of cruising in these waters.
Bronenosec Sailing Team started the day with a two-point advantage over Torbjorn Tornqvist's Artemis Racing in second, and, alongside Igor Lah's Team CEEREF, was the top scoring boat today. She dropped just one match, in flight five, to Team Aqua. Liubomirov's team ended the day four points clear of Team Aqua, which ultimately took second in the 2015 Match Racing Championship, one point ahead of Artemis Racing.
On Team Nika, Vladimir Prosikhin had his best match racing day of 2015, claiming four wins, aided by America's Cup winning helmsman, Ed Baird, who is calling tactics for him for the first time in Virgin Gorda.
Aside from the racing there was additional drama when there was man overboard on board John Bassadone's Peninsula Petroleum Sailing Team during their race with Team Nika. Showing that even top sailors are fallible, during a rapid manoeuvre former Spanish America's Cup bowman Miguel Jauregui, slipped and tumbled overboard. He was picked up an umpire RIB and deposited back on board unhurt, but it cost the Gibraltar team the race.
Rival city Southampton has been accused of having 'sour grapes' after its leader accused the government of bribing Sir Ben Ainslie into building his America's Cup base in Portsmouth.
Councillor Simon Letts made the claim in a meeting that ministers threw cash at the Olympian and were 'running around in a blind panic' thinking up ways to show they cared about the city in the wake of the loss of shipbuilding.
He said talks had been held with Sir Ben to move to Southampton.
But opponents have criticised Cllr Letts for being 'short-sighted' and say it was a no-brainer Sir Ben chose the Camber to pursue his dreams given its proximity to the harbour and the huge opportunity to boost tourism.
The accusations, which have been shot down by Sir Ben's Land Rover BAR sailing enterprise, come in light of the government awarding the team £7.5m to help set up in Portsmouth in 2014.
But Department for Business, Innovation and Skills spokesman says Sir Ben had made up his mind to set up in Portsmouth before applying for funding.
For the fifth year running, the J/97 has proven what a weapon it is under IRC. Recently remodelled to become the J/97E, this long-time favourite is the perfect family sailboat for daysailing, performance cruising and racing.
The J/97 features a high performance, easily driven hull, and a spacious main cabin with 6ft headroom, which sleeps more people in three separate cabin areas than it takes to sail the boat. Orders taken for new boats will be delivered in May 2016, and we are currently listing two excellent pre-owned examples.
* From Roger Marshall: When I was writing my book "Rough Weather Seamanship for Sail and Power" (published in 2006) we tested flares and liferafts and towed a live person behind a boat (yes, we nearly drowned him!!!) on a tether to see what kind of speed it took to put the person in jeopardy. We towed at 1,2, 3, and 4 knots according to GPS and the boat's speedometer. We found that at four knots the person was having a hard time breathing because of almost exactly the phenomenon described in the PBO story.
I concluded that a person could NOT be towed at more than three to four knots without being in serious difficulty! It was interesting to note that our swimmer was a strong healthy man of about twenty-five and he could not pull on the tether to unclip himself at twoknots, the drag of his body in the water was so high. I concluded that an easily reached very sharp knife is the only way to ensure a person is not dragged to their death.
During the same series of tests, we found it almost impossible to swim to a liferaft and get into it while wearing a fully inflated lifejacket. If there was nobody in the liferaft trying to climb into it almost pulled the liferaft over on top of the swimmer. For my turn I debated whether to deflate the lifejacket (which rather defeats its purpose) in order to get into the liferaft.
Another problem that arose from our testing is getting back aboard any boat with reasonable freeboard. While the swimmer could reach up and grab the rail, the onboard crew had a hard time lifting a waterlogged swimmer from the water. For a couple, if the guy falls off the wife will never be able to get him back aboard unless she can hook his lifejacket harness with a halyard and winch him onto the deck.
Since that time I have designed all my cruising boats with a scoop style stern and access over the transom to enable a M-O-B to swim to the stern and simply climb the transom ladder onto the scoop and back aboard.