In This Issue
• Cowes Week Day 5 round up report
• Antigua brings sunshine to Cowes Week
• SSAB ORC European Championship
• Airborne - Christian Scherrer
• Big Wednesday
• Team Racing Programme Launched By Irish Sailing
• Youth Match Racing World Championship
• ORR Rulebook version 1.1 released
• 2024 Olympics: Int Laser class declares divorce-vote outcome
• Featured Brokerage:
• • Volvo Open 70 - OCEAN BREEZE
• • INTUITION for sale
• • Blue Pearl
• The Last Word: Brian Cox
Brought to you by Seahorse magazine and YachtScoring.com EuroSail News is a digest of sailing news and opinions, regatta results, new boat and gear information and letters from sailors -- with a European emphasis. Contributions welcome, send to
Cowes Week Day 5 round up report
Very shifty southerly winds provided testing conditions for navigators and tacticians at Cowes Week today as a number of weather fronts passed over the race area. With very strong gusts recorded to the west of the Solent during the morning, relatively short courses were set with the aim of getting fleets home before winds increased further over the race areas in the afternoon.
One of the largest yachts at the regatta, Richard Loftus' Swan 65 Desperado, took victory in Cruiser Division A today, taking line honours by a margin of almost 10 minutes. This was enough to secure a win on corrected time ahead of Charles Esse's X4^3 Baby X and Lord Michael Grade's Shipman 50 Zephyr.
In Cruiser Division B Pete Newlands' First 40.7 Anticipation took a fourth successive win, 40 seconds ahead of Michael Carrington's Sweden Yachts 45 Susimi ll. Andrew and Muriel Norton's J/100 Tide Race completed the podium.
A Red Funnel car ferry came though the middle of the start line, clearing it only two minutes before the start of the Victory class, forcing a postponement to allow the fleet to reposition for their start. By the time they restarted rain had returned to the central Solent, with the mainland shore barely visible from the RYS starting platform.
At the gun Mike Scott's Isabel was half a length ahead of the line and sailed back further than necessary to clear the line, loosing valuable time before restarting. This left Hugh Pringle's Pelican and Duncan Evans' Peregrine looking best placed, with Geoff and Sarah Dixon's Zelia also doing well a little further offshore.
A tight finish saw the entire fleet finish with less than six minutes. Zelia claimed victory nine seconds ahead of Russell Mead's Shearwater ll, with Gareth Penn's Christina taking third place 28 seconds later. -- Rupert Holmes
Antigua brings sunshine to Cowes Week
Youth Day at Cowes Week is always popular but the fact that there are two significant trophies up for grabs (Under 25 Trophy presented by Antigua Sailing Week, and the Musto Young Skipper's Trophy) for the overall winners at the end of the week, means competition is exceptionally intense.
As well as it support of the Under 25 Trophy this year, the Tourist Board of Antigua has been here in Cowes Week in force this week promoting the beautiful sailing waters of the West Indies.
The pop-up stand on Cowes Parade appears to have been a huge success and the perfect way to promote Antigua's Youth to Keel Boat Programme (Y2K), an incentive to help bridge the gap for dinghy sailors making the leap into keelboat sailing.
Antigua Sailing Week's promotional visit to Cowes two years ago resulted in the Greig City Academy youth team being invited to take part in the Y2K regatta at Antigua Sailing Week. This year, the winning helmsman of the Under 25 Trophy will be the honoured guests in Antigua.
SSAB ORC European Championship
Photo by Felix Diemer. Click on image for photo gallery.
The 1+ hour commute from the harbor to the course area had teams leaving the marina early this morning to meet the first start time at 10:00. Maybe the coffee had not kicked in yet, because both Classes A and B as well as Class C started without general recalls and any need for the Black flag to control the fleet.
This does not mean, however, there was no aggression on the water in both of today's two-lap 6.2-mile races: in fact, in the first race the reigning Class C World Champion team on OU Leitvaagen's Italia 9.98 Sugar helmed by Sandro Montefusco, tangled with another mixed Estonian-Italian team, Aivar Tuulberg's Arcona 340 Katariina II, the reigning ORC European Class C champion.
Class B's 25 entries raced two two-lap 6.5-mile courses today, sharing with the eight entries in Class A. Axel Seehafer's X-41 Sportsfreund from Germany had a good day, winning both races in the class. The first was won by only 13 seconds after an hour of sailing to Michael Berghorn's X-41 Halbtrocken 4.0 and Jens Kuphal's modified Landmark 43 Intermezzo also from Germany - the two were tied to within a second in corrected time.
Erik Berth's Swan 45 Tarok VII from Denmark and One Sailing Finland's TP 52 Zer0emission traded victories today in Class A, with Tarok prevailing in Race 1 by a mere 3 seconds after 1.5 hours raced on the 3-lap 9.6-mile course.
Today's racing ended with an optional and promotional Sprint Race held in the early evening for the 1000 or so spectators lining the shore of Oxelosund Harbor.
Racing resumes tomorrow at 10:00 CET with the start of the Offshore Race designed for a 12-hour tour of the Baltic along the southeastern coast of Sweden. Class A has a 79-mile race to complete, Class B a 68.2-mile course, and Class C a course of 60.6 miles. Weather is forecasted to be favorable, with a continuation of the southwest breeze at 10-20 knots.
AIS tracking of boat positions can be viewed at www.sailracetoday.com/orc2019
Airborne - Christian Scherrer
GC32 - grand prix foiling cat racing
Driven on by the last three America's Cups, development in sail boat design has taken some of its biggest steps forward over the past decade. Leading the charge have been foiling multihulls where America's Cup technology, to make these boats fly, has now filtered down to the mainstream.
Back in 2013 the GC32 cat was born with the aim of bringing state-of-the-art America's Cup-style foiling catamaran racing to regular racing sailors. The boat was conceived by Laurent Lenne and Australian catamaran specialist Andrew McPherson and designed by Martin Fischer who is currently design co-ordinator for Luna Rossa.
Full article in the September issue of Seahorse
Big Wednesday
Big Wednesday of Pyefleet Week, sponsored by AOC and Just Trays, is always a special feature of the hugely popular dinghy racing week, but this year's edition more than lived up to it's reputation for great racing and partying.
The day offers a midweek break from the pressures of series competition with a special one off trophy race for the Gold Medal Trophy, which was presented to the club in honour of two of it's most famous and successful members - the late Reg White and his crew John Osborn, who won Olympic Gold in the Tornado Class at the 1976 Kingston games. Reg was a lifelong member of Brightlingsea Sailing Club and John remains a member to this day, and their families presented the Gold Medal Trophy in their honour and personally help to run the special celebration BBQ and party which follow the race each year.
As had been forecast, the weather was anything but summery with driving rain and very strong winds. But Brightlingsea Sailing Club is renowned for producing some of the best dinghy sailors in the world, so whilst some competitors chose to enjoy a welcome lay-day, the leading teams all rigged and hit the start area.
Big Wednesday Race Officers Craig Bond and Alan Hicks set a special course to keep the fleet relatively close to shore and 32 boats came to the line, ranging from a Laser 4.7 and RS Aero 5 at one end of the spectrum up to an F18 and a foiling Moth at the other. Even before the start conditions were pretty lively and the wind built throughout the race from low to mid twenty knots at the start up to 30 knots towards the finish.
Whilst a few of the teams suffered gear failure or decided to retire as the conditions worsened, 22 boats flew round the course and made it home with ear to ear grins on their faces. Podium finishers were confirmed as Piers Lambert and Tim Bees sailing a Merlin Rocket in third place, Pete and Tom Kyne sailing a Fireball in second place and winners and recipients of the Gold Medal Trophy Rupert and Freddy White sailing an F18.
Rupert and Freddy are the grandsons of the late great Reg White, and the sons of Robert White, who is himself a double Olympian representing Britain in the Tornado in 1984 in Los Angeles and 1988 in Seoul. Rupert is currently vying to represent Britain in the Nacra 17 at the Tokyo 2020 games with crew Kirsty Irwin.
The forecast for the remaining two days of competition are for continuing strong winds and so all fingers are crossed that it will be possible to complete the remaining races. Pyefleet Week 2019 will continue until Friday 16 August with a total of five series races planned for each group. -- Fiona Brown
Team Racing Programme Launched By Irish Sailing
Irish Sailing is rolling out a Team Racing Programme which aims to reduce the attrition of sailors between the ages of 16 - 30 (especially females) at clubs and training centres throughout the country writes Treasa Cox.
Team Racing is a fun and inexpensive way for clubs to retain young dinghy sailors after they have left the structured environs of class youth racing or the Irish Sailing Training Schemes. With a focus on rules knowledge, boat handling, tactics and teambuilding, the programme will further develop transferable skills and give rise to skilled and competitive racing in a very sociable environment.
The funding has been used to appoint a Team Racing contractor, Rory Martin, and purchase boats and equipment for a travelling roadshow. Rory will meet with clubs to gauge interest and check suitability whilst delivering initial educational and awareness-raising sessions at several locations around the country. Clubs and Training Centres with suitable team racing venues, sailors and volunteers can then choose a date for the roadshow to return and deliver on water coaching and clinics.
To register your club's interest in the roadshow, please contact Rory for more information
Youth Match Racing World Championship
Click on image for photo gallery.
- It was a good racing day, - said Anna Deyanova, Course representative. - the wind started from six knots and up to seventeen knots, so we were able to complete twelve flights (3 matches each) & two matches of the thirteen flight. All teams behaved professionally, so we can say that they are really strong.
Summary of the 1st racing day:
Nick Egnot-Johnson, Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron / Team KNOTS (NZL) - 3 wins of 6 races
Matt Whitfield, Penarth YC / Dragon Racing Team (GBR) - 6 of 7
Måns Holmberg, Holmberg Racing Team (SWE) - 3 of 7
Tom Grimes, Cruising Yacht Club of Australia Team (AUS) - 5 of 5
Aurelien Pierroz, Société des Régates du Havre Team (FRA) - 4 of 6
Rocco Attili, RBYS Racing Team (ITA) - 4 of 7
Jeppe Borch, Borch Racing Team (DEN) - 4 of 6
Jack Parkin, Riverside Yacht Club, Stanford Sailing Team (USA) - 4 of 7
Mark Abdrakipov, MyWind Team (RUS) - 1 of 7
Igor Tarasiuk, HRM Racing Youth Team (POL) - 4 of 5
Kodai Mutsuda, Kobe University Team (JPN) - 0 of 6
Jakub Halouzka, Team CZE Zdenek Dybal (CZE) - 0 of 7
The Youth Match Racing World Championship is held in Gubernskiy Yacht Club KOMATEK, Ekaterinburg, Russia from 12th 17th of August 2019.
Participants are from New Zealand, Great Britain, Sweden, Australia, France, Italy, Denmark, USA, Poland, Japan, Czech Republic and Russia.
ORR Rulebook version 1.1 released
A recent change to the ORR Rulebook won't affect most sailors but if you're interested in foiling technologies, we want to make sure you are in the know.
The ORR Rulebook and the ORR VPP (velocity prediction program) are reviewed on an ongoing basis. To determine what should be included in the ORR Rulebook, the ORR Technical Committee reviews race results and new technology and features, evaluates what they learn, and makes recommendations.
This year the Committee has added a new rule at mid-year and issued 2019 Rulebook version 1.1 to include the changes. The rule, in PART II - GENERAL LIMITS AND EXCLUSIONS, is number 2.03.9 Other off-centerline appendages, describes the limits and styles of the foils that the ORR allows, and the information ORR requires for its ORR VPP that assesses a boat's features and metrics to compute a rating.
Here's the link to download Rulebook version 1.1, which also provides details about measurement, rule restrictions, ratings, owner responsibilities, and requirements to race under ORR.
For context, the goal of fair racing handicaps for all ORR certificate holders involves two jobs. First is to protect a fair, level playing field for the 97 percent of the ORR fleet of racers, cruisers and dual-purpose boats, many owners of which love the boats they have, and love to race them year after year.
The second job of the ORR Rule is to also include new technology and design in boats—the other 3 percent, who may now be considering boats with foils. From planing sleds to 100-footers, we have good examples of innovative, higher-speed designs in the existing fleet. The work of the ORR Technical Committee is ongoing. -- John Horton
2024 Olympics: Int Laser class declares divorce-vote outcome
The International Laser Class Association has declared the outcome of the vote on the contentious class rule change, as being 79% in favour with only 21% against.
The Class Rules for the International Laser class can now be modified to remove any reference to the trademark holder (of which there are five entities and three territories involved). That move, in turn, will allow the International Laser Class to licence new builders to construct boats that comply with the Laser Construction Manual.
The outcome of the vote is not clear, with the class saying the currently confirmed vote is 81% "Yes" and 19% "No". But the ILCA statement says that there are still votes to be verified dropping the expected final outcome to 79% "Yes" and 21% "No". However the graphic accompanying the official statement shows a 69% "Yes" and 31% "No".
A 66% "Yes" vote was required to make the Rule change - and under all three scenarios that threshold has been reached.
The Rule change still requires the approval of World Sailing.
It is not clear what will happen with the use of the class name and insignia. In New Zealand and Australia, the trademark rights are owned by Performance Sailcraft Australia. In Japan and Korea, the trademark rights are owned by Performance Sailcraft Japan, in the rest of the world, the trademark rights are owned by LaserPerformance. In the most extreme combination, the Laser can continue to use the marks and name in Oceania, Japan and Korea, and in the rest of the world would be required to sail and be marketed using a different name and insignia. -- Richard Gladwell, his full article in Sail-World.com:
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See listing details in Seahorse's RaceboatsOnly
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See listing details in Seahorse's RaceboatsOnly
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Thoroughbred Yacht Sales
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410 353 7862
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See listing details in Nautors Swan Brokerage
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See the RaceboatsOnly.com collection at seahorsemagazine.com/brokerage/
The Last Word
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense. -- Brian Cox
Editorial and letter submissions to
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