EuroSail News #5307

In This Issue
• RORC Easter Challenge wraps up in Cowes
• Whiskey Jack takes IRC Overall in Rolex China Sea Race
• What's in the Latest Edition Of Seahorse Magazine
• Zoom Forum - The Future of Dinghy Racing in the UK
• Sailing World on Water
• Howth 17s' Epic Centenary Sail Home
• Neil Cox at the frontline of The Ocean Race
• Dolan wins Figaro class at Spi Ouest Regatta
• 75th Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race
• Featured Charter: Grand Soleil 46 - Belladonna
• Featured Brokerage:
• • Kinetic Catamarans - KC62
• • Elizabethan 30 - Moonshot
• • Elan GT6
• The Last Word: Stephen Spender

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

RORC Easter Challenge wraps up in Cowes
The RORC Easter Challenge, supported by North Sails featured seven races over three days, with the IRC Class winners announced at the Cowes RORC Clubhouse on Easter Sunday: Ian Atkins' GP42 Dark 'N' Stormy, Simon Perry's Cape 31 Jiraffe, Lance Adams' Corby 36 Oui, Nick Martin's Sun Fast 3600 Diablo, and John Smart's J/109 Jukebox.

Thirty nine teams racing 24 different designs under the IRC Rating Rule entered the RORC Easter Challenge. As well as world class race management, all of the competitors were offered complimentary on-the-water coaching and after racing video debriefs. Honing the techniques and skills to kick start their 2023 season is the ultimate aim of the RORC training regatta that has been run for nearly 30 years. The RORC Coaching Team led by Mason King was out in force, backed up by drone video from the North Sails Rib.

Ian Atkins' Dark 'N' Stormy was up against the De Graaf family's Ker 43 Baraka for the regatta, but the duel was had on the same race course as the other classes, bringing many more aspects into play.

"This is the first regatta of the season for Dark 'N' Stormy, so it's been really nice to get the team back together at a well-organised regatta," commented Ian Atkins. "The Dutch team on Baraka pushed us in every race which kept the level of racing up, so Easter has been very good as an opener for the season ahead. The big regattas for us this season will be defending our win in the Round the Island Race and the RORC IRC National Championship."

Simon Perry's Cape 31 Jiraffe won the class in the final race after IRC time correction by just four seconds. David Bartholomew's Tokoloshe 4 was second for the series on countback from Michael Wilson's Shotgunn.

Full results

rorc.org

Whiskey Jack takes IRC Overall in Rolex China Sea Race
Whiskey Jack team. Photo by DanielForster.com. Click on image to enlarge.

With 16 boats finished in 2023 Rolex China Sea Race, provisional results show Nick Southward's Whiskey Jack lifting the China Sea Trophy for corrected time on IRC handicap, with Philippe and Cosmas Grelon's Simpson Marine posting a second overall and Andew Pidden's Juice in third.

As many of the boats started to make their final approach to Subic Bay, they enjoyed up to 30kts of breeze but as they converged on the finish the Subic Bay hole appeared and they were trapped briefly before they could cross the finish line. Many, including the more experienced offshore sailors described 2023 edition as the most tactical race they've seen.

Throughout the Race there was a very interesting tussel between Whiskey Jack and Juice on the IRC leaderboard with Whiskey Jack not going higher than second and third place for a long time. it was only on Sunday when Whiskey Jack hit the dock in Subic Bay that they found themselves as IRC Overall winner, after just over four days of racing at 15h 02m 11s HK time.

The father and son double-handed team of Philippe and Cosmas Grelon on board Figaro 3 Simpson Marine finished sailing in 94h 47m 10s, taking double-handed 1st place and IRC Overall 2nd place.

In IRC 0, after Standard Insurance Centennial 5 taking Line Honours, all eyes were on the intensely close racing that went on between three TP52s. Finally on Friday night Rampage 88 managed to pull but on Saturday things got even more interesting. Happy Go took a course south of the rhumb line whilst Rampage 88 sailed along it until lunchtime when she headed east towards the Philippines coast. In the end it was Happy Go that slipped in to the finish 1h 37m 43s ahead of Rampage 88 taking IRC 0 3rd place and Centennial team another boat, Standard Insurance Centennial 3 taking IRC 0 2nd Place.

rolexchinasearace.com

Seahorse April 2023
What's in the Latest Edition Of Seahorse Magazine

World News
A softer approach from Carnac, a new craftsman's Mini, Manuard goes Swiss, France re-joins the Cup family, Phil Sharp goes greener than green while Clarisse Cremer finds 'Baby Steps' were not the answer that they were looking for. Plus washed away in New Zealand and levelling the playing field (weather permitting, that is) Patrice Carpentier, Halvard Mabire, Dobbs Davis, Stephan Kandler, Bruno Dubois, Stan Honey, Ivor Wilkins

The Holy Grail
Dry and light! In two short years North Sails Performance clothing has firmly established itself among the most elite technical clothing suppliers... with the benefit of some pretty high quality assistance!

Rod Davis - Inheriting the baton
Take a moment to reflect on how you got here and on those who gently steered you on the way

IRC - Nice shape
Of hulls and hull factors... Jason Smithwick

RORC - Pass the duct tape
... and

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Zoom Forum - The Future of Dinghy Racing in the UK
Where is dinghy racing in the UK headed? Dinghy sailing in the UK is still the most vibrant and diverse small-boat racing circuit anywhere in the world, but can it do better?

Next week, at 7pm on Tuesday evening 11 April, the co-organisers of the Selden Sailjuice Winter Series, Simon Lovesey and Andy Rice, are hosting a discussion forum on Zoom. It will be a wide-ranging conversation about what's working, and what's not working, in the small-boat racing scene in the UK.

"We don't want to rule anything off the table for this discussion," said Andy Rice. "We're keen to find out what people think about the state of play with dinghy racing in the UK. If there's one thing that Simon and I are focused on with this meeting, it's HOW TO INCREASE PARTICIPATION. It's hard to think of many classes or events where people are satisfied with the number of boats and people taking part. So it would be good to share ideas on how to increase participation.

"We also believe there are too many events with too few entries to be financially viable, or even to be particularly interesting for competitors to take part in. Or for clubs to host. But this is one of the topics where we'd like to hear more input from different parties in the sailing scene. From sailors, clubs, class representatives."

It's free to join the Zoom call next Tuesday evening.

Go to the page

Everyone who has registered interest in taking part in the call will receive the Zoom link and passcode in the coming days. -- Andy Rice

sailjuice.com

Sailing World on Water
Highlights of what happened globally in the sport of sailing in the last 7 days. Boris Herrmann saw what a long leg 3 was, in The Ocean Race, and he had his Imoca designed for the gruelling Southern Ocean, and he was successful, as he and his great crew, won the leg from Cape Town to Itaijai. Despite fixing their mast, and sails, along with Rosies' accident,, they screamed over the leg, giving us some fantastic footage. Congratulations to the team for an epic sail.

Speaking afterwards, Lucas Calabrese offered a brilliant insight into just how cool the American Magic team is, and talking about the capsize, he almost made it sound fun:, "Yeah, obviously it's pretty challenging, you have the bustle that is hanging down on the boat, and then you have the foil that is coming in and out of the waves, so it's hard to manage the balance between keeping the bustle out of the water, and the foil not coming out of the water. It was just one of those days, pretty tough conditions and, we stuffed the bow, and then got slow, and ended up in a pretty fun capsize."

boatson.tv

Good Friday Agreement's 25th Anniversary Coincides With Howth 17s' Epic Centenary Sail Home from Carrickfergus Through Irish Sea
Centenary Season. Twenty-five years ago in April 1998, Ian Malcolm’s Howth 17 Aura celebrates her Centenary by returning to her birthplace of Carrickfergus on Belfast Lough with its famous 12th Century Norman castle. Photo by David Jones. Click on image to enlarge.

The events in Ireland this week with President Joe Biden and others marking the 25th Anniversary of the signing of Good Friday Agreement in Belfast on 10th April 1998 are a reminder that, at exactly the same time just a few miles down Belfast Lough, a core trio of Howth 17s had arrived in their birthplace - the history-laden port of Carrickfergus - to mark the Centenary of the first five boats of the class being constructed by renowned local boatbuilder John Hilditch, who had made a speciality of series-producing One Design boats which really were one design.

These days, we've become accustomed to the historic Howth 17s of 1898-vintage - the world's oldest keelboat class still sailing as originally designed - putting in admired appearances at classic boat festivals at home and abroad. But just twenty-five years ago, with the Class's Centenary looming, they tended to be homebirds, though a couple had been transported to the famous Brest Festival in France in 1972, where they formed a special bond with Eric Tabarly and his Cork Harbour-built 1898-vintage 43ft gaff cutter Pen Duick, while some had made significant voyages, and one had even been used as a honeymoon cruise yacht.

Read the full article by WM Nixon at Afloat magazine

Neil Cox at the frontline of The Ocean Race where IMOCA teams are learning the stopover game
The Ocean Race is a new world for IMOCA teams and not just on the water. Anyone who has followed the Volvo Ocean Race and the Whitbread before it, knows that winning "the unofficial world championship of fully-crewed offshore ocean racing" requires a massive team effort both on the boats and on shore.

For IMOCA syndicates this presents completely new challenges. In the IMOCA GLOBE SERIES races, boats race from point-to-point and then return to base, or start and finish at the same port. The shore teams rarely work under acute time pressure with a race start - or re-start - just a few days away, when their boat needs to be in tip-top condition.

It is in this area that we are seeing the two worlds - the French school of solo and double-handed racing, and the more Anglo-Saxon tradition of the fully-crewed discipline with mid-race stopovers - coming together. And someone who is seeing this at close quarters is The Ocean Race's technical director Neil "Coxy" Cox - a straight-talking 54-year-old Sydneysider who has been running shore teams or race operations with the event for more than 20 years.

Cox says the five IMOCA teams are all making the leap, but some are better resourced than others when it comes to all-important shore team support. "You can see them all stepping into this, and it isn't the traditional way they normally do things," he said from the dockside at Itajaí in Brazil, where all the teams are working on their boats ahead of the start of Leg 4 on April 23rd. "Some have stepped up to it really, really well while others are, not resistant to it, but it's more a case of whether they have the resources to do it."

EuroSail News #5307 - 11 April