Shattered shades

With the Rolex Middle Sea Race done and dusted, today's new task was to get up to speed with the Velux 5 Oceans round-the-world race and write some stories for the website. Spoke to Mike Golding on the satellite phone this morning, who was sporting some devil's horns that his son Soren had put on board for Hallowe'en. Didn't make contact with Alex Thomson but was amused to read his update from the boat. Alex managed to jam in two crafty product placement plugs in the space of a couple of sentences:

“I managed to fall on my favourite BOSS sunglasses last night so will have to commit them to the bin and break out a new pair. They were useful yesterday as a windscreen in the pouring rain but this morning the sun will come up and the eyes need their shades. The weather ahead looks light for a time and after that we will see some much awaited trade winds, downwind champagne sailing, Mumm of course...”

Keep your eyes peeled for more Hollywood-style below-the-line promotional tactics between now and Fremantle. To read more stories from the race, go to www.velux5oceans.com

Malta rocks!
Just got back from Malta, covering the Rolex Middle Sea Race. What a fantastic place. Not much wind for the race - at least not until the big boats had finished, and then it started blowing a beautiful Force 4. Still, entries were at a record 68 and people seem to want to come back for more. I flew in the helicopter with legend photographer Carlo Borlenghi and legend-in-his-own-lunchtime cameraman Matt Conner and watched Alfa Romeo tearing through the fleet at a phenomenal rate (the smaller boats started first). The ability to make your wind - eg 5 knots boatspeed in 2 knots true wind - is pretty useful when the breeze is in short supply, but it wasn't enough to break Zephyrus IV's course record set in 2000. It's incredible the record has stood so long in the face of such massive advances in technology, but even SuperMaxis need a good breeze to get them really motoring. As it turned out, the 30 to 40-footers got the best of the breeze long after the Maxi crews had jetted home. Let's hope the big boats come back next year, and that they are rewarded with better breeze. Commodore Georges Bonello duPuis and his crew at Royal Malta Yacht Club do a great job and the event deserves to get even bigger. If you want to read my press releases from the event, go to www.regattanews.com

"It's sailing Jim, but not as we know it..."

Yesterday I spoke to Chris Draper, who has just won the 49er Gold medal at the Olympic Test Regatta in Qingdao. Chris was still out in China having done a bit of coaching for the British 470 team at the World Championships 50 miles up the road from Qingdao. Apparently the wind was great! The Olympics should have been there maybe, but no use crying over spilt milk. The Games is in Qingdao and a big part of who wins medals in 2008 is who accepts it for what it is. When tidal strength often exceeds wind strength, we can't exactly look forward to the most thrilling of TV spectacles, but the results from the recent Test Regatta at least show that even in these wacky conditions the cream still rises to the top. I was interviewing Chris for an article I've just written for the forthcoming issue of Seahorse Magazine. The one thing I didn't mention from our conversation was Chris's view of China after spending a month living there, with his nostrils full of burnt-coal grime and pollution. Chris's analysis of the place: "It's minging!"

Mascalzone Latino breezes to a long cherished victory

Vincenzo Onorato has finally won the Rolex Farr 40 World Championships, a title that has consistently eluded him since he first took part in 1999. The first three days of the regatta were light wind affairs, but with the sea breeze blowing up to 18 knots today, Onorato’s Mascalzone Latino team turned in a masterful performance.

In the first race, Eivind Astrup sailed Norwegian Steam to his second win of the week, although the greater threat to Onorato’s overnight lead was Opus One, with German owner Wolfgang Stolz snatching a 3^rd compared with Mascalzone’s 6^th. In the next race it was Evolution’s turn to take the lead, with Richard Perini finally showing some of the form that earned him the world title in Sydney last year. However, another regatta underperformer - in the form of Steve Howe’s Warpath - stole the lead to win the race from Evolution, although of greater interest to the front runners was Mascalzone Latino incurring a 720-degree penalty turn at the first windward mark.

That could have been Onorato’s championship lost right there, but the determined Neapolitan grabbed back 12 places on the next downwind leg and recovered to 13^th by the end of the race. Meanwhile Opus One had sailed another solid race and Stolz’s 7^th place moved him to within three points of Mascalzone Latino.

Onorato refused to be ruffled by the 720 penalty. He said the key to winning this week was to “be cool, be concentrated”. He praised tactician Russell Coutts for keeping the crew calm and focussed: “Even if things went wrong, I was not upset. Before the last race, Russell told me, ‘This is the time to win race.’ I said, ‘Can we?’ And he said, ‘Of course!’ And we won the race.”

Indeed they did, with Mascalzone Latino launching off the middle of the start line in clear air, leading around the windward mark and dominating the final race from start to finish. Going into that race, Barking Mad was still in contention despite a lacklustre 13,9 from the earlier heats. At the windward mark Jim Richardson rounded second behind Onorato, and while the local Newport sailor knew that his chance of victory was slipping away, he was at least looking good for second overall.

Things changed dramatically down the final run to the finish. The wind softened and shifted right at the same time. The boats that gybed early profited from the sudden change in conditions, while Barking Mad was left stranded on one side. The American team dropped from 2^nd to 12^th in one leg. Meanwhile Australian boat Ichi Ban slipped down the right side of the run to finish 6^th and claim the runner-up spot in the championship. “That final leg was indicative of our whole regatta,” said Barking Mad tactician Terry Hutchinson. “Obviously there was a shift there and I missed it. We sailed into a light spot, and the fleet sailed by. We didn’t quite have it today, didn’t quite have it the whole regatta. We battled the entire week. But it just makes you appreciate how hard winning is.” Barking Mad finished third overall.

Another boat that got left stranded on the final run was Opus One, who just missed out on the podium. Wolfgang Stolz commented: “The last run was a bitter disappointment, dropping 15 places, running out of breeze. But we’re very pleased to have got a top 10 result this week.” The German crew finished fourth overall.

Ichi Ban’s owner Matt Allen was delighted to have grabbed second overall. “We’re ecstatic, it’s a great result. Vincenzo, Russell and the guys did a great job and never really opened the door for anyone. They sailed a great regatta and they deserved to win.”

Vincenzo Onorato has won many championships before, but for him this victory is the sweetest of all. “I have won four world championships as a helmsman, in IMS racing and in the Mumm 30, but this is the best. Sometimes I have won when I didn’t deserve it, but this time we deserved to win. The Farr 40 is the best offshore boat in the world, she’s beautiful, she’s like a nice blonde. This is the best time of my life.”

Mascalzone clings on to the lead

It wasn’t even as though they had a spectacular day, but Vincenzo Onorato’s team on Mascalzone Latino found themselves having increased their lead in the Rolex Farr 40 World Championship. Mainsheet trimmer Adrian Stead commented: “The first race was very good, scoring a third. The second and third races we were mid-line and going right - with the left paying - so they were recovery races. Last race we did a pretty awesome recovery on the first beat to come back from 27^th to 11^th, although we didn’t convert it, coming in 15^th. There were plenty of snakes and ladders out there, and we did OK, probably fourth best boat of the day, and we extended on Barking Mad.”

Jim Richardson’s local team clung on to second overall with scores of 7,24,6. While Mascalzone and Barking Mad retained their places on the leaderboard from the night before, behind them all sorts of place changing was going on. Biggest beneficiary from today’s three light-wind races on Rhode Island Sound was Cannonball, with Dario Ferrari posting an incredible set of scores – 5,5,3 – to leap 11 places up the rankings to fourth overall. The Italian owner was bubbling over with excitement. “I have just decided to give up sailing, because after today I will never repeat anything like that. This proved what a fantastic class the Farr 40 is. It shows that anyone can win in this fleet."

For the rest of my story, go to the official Rolex sailing website

Mascalzone Latino moves to the top

Light and shifting winds brought massive changes to the leaderboard on day two of the Rolex Farr 40 World Championships. Mascalzone Latino put together the best scores for the day, coming 4^th in the next. That was enough to put Vincenzo Onorato’s team at the top of the scoreboard, 4 points ahead of a similarly consistent Barking Mad. Flash Gordon suffered a difficult day after making bad starts off the line, although Helmut Jahn’s two victories the previous day are sufficient to keep him in third overall.

Russell Coutts, the tactician on board Mascalzone Latino, explained the thin line between success and failure in this hard-fought 38-boat fleet. “Today we had some breaks, some good starts, and if you can get off the line cleanly it puts you in the top 15, and from there it’s a battle. We didn’t make any big mistakes, whereas yesterday I didn’t manage that second race very well. I allowed myself to get pinned out to the left and we rounded fourth last. In a fleet this size you just can’t afford to get pinned out to the wrong side.”

For more on this story, click on the official Rolex website

Flash Gordon on fire at Rolex Farr 40 Worlds

Helmut Jahn has been racing Farr 40s for eight years but he has never shown the sort of form that he is displaying this week in Newport, Rhode Island. It seems that the past year and a half he's got serious about campaigning this toughest of keelboat classes, signing up up-and-coming sailor Mike Ivey as tactician and Ed Adams as coach.

Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the event:

Flash Gordon was firing on all cylinders today while other leading lights stalled out during a tricky opening day at the Rolex Farr 40 World Championship in Newport, Rhode Island. The formula for Flash Gordon’s success includes world-renowned architect Helmut Jahn (Chicago, Ill.) steering his Flash Gordon upwind, then handing over to his son Evan downwind. An unorthodox approach, but one that did them no harm in the light south-westerly breeze that blew across Rhode Island Sound.

In the first race of the day, Flash Gordon got a nice start off the pin end of the line, in good company with leading contenders such as 2004 World Champion and winner of last week’s Pre-Worlds, Jim Richardson (Newport, R.I./Boston, Mass.) on Barking Mad. However, where Barking Mad tacked off to protect the middle of the course, Flash Gordon kept on going, rounding the first mark narrowly ahead of Vincenzo Onorato’s Mascalzone Latino (Portoferrio, Italy). Barking Mad dropped to around 10th when tactician Terry Hutchinson’s conservative strategy failed to pay off.

To read more, listen to some audio interviews and see Daniel Forster's great photos, click on this link: http://www.regattanews.com/event.asp?id=138

Big Four flop in the fleet racing

Alinghi might be leading the fleet racing of the Louis Vuitton Act 11 of the America’s Cup, but generally this was a tough day for the Big Four. BMW Oracle’s approach to the start line of the first race was incredibly late. USA-87 was the last to get on to starboard tack for the final approach and so Chris Dickson never gave himself a chance of a clear air start.

+39 Challenge, on the other hand, did exactly what they needed to in a slow boat, and booked the pin end of the line where Iain Percy could accelerate and put the bow down. Rounding the first mark in third place was a sensational result for the Italian team in the oldest boat on the race course.

Another Italian team, Luna Rossa, led for the first half of the beat but ITA-86 seemed to fall out of phase with the shifts – if indeed there was a phase to the shifts. Francesco Bruni, who works the traveller on the boat, later explained that because of the sloppy waves the team decided not to send a man up the rig. The waves were out of all proportion to the six-knot breeze, and it was hard to keep boats moving. Bruni said: “To reduce the pitching of the boat we decided not to send anyone up the mast. We missed a big shift to the right and arrived at the top mark with a bunch of boats. We tried a risky tack and we thought we were alright, but the umpires judged that we tacked too close and gave us a penalty.”

So having rounded the mark in 8^th, after the penalty the Italians dropped to 10^th and they never recovered from there. BMW Oracle rounded in 4^th but could make nothing of it, dropping to 9^th by the finish. Alinghi climbed from 9^th to a not particularly inspiring 6^th at the end. Of the big teams, only the Kiwis made anything of that first race, although even they were pipped at the post for 3^rd place by +39, of all teams.

So who did do well? Victory Challenge, who led around the first mark after hooking into a good right-hand shift. Perhaps it was the inspiration of multiple Olympic medallist, Lord Sebastian Coe, who was riding as 18^th man on the Swedish boat. Whatever it was, Magnus Holmberg’s team were on fire, winning by over a minute and a half from another surprise package, Mascalzone Latino.

The second race ran a little more to form but not by much. This time it was Alinghi’s turn to dominate, BMW Oracle again nowhere to be seen. It was the first time the Americans were racing with their jumperless rig, and people were wondering if that was the problem. But it really wasn’t a day for assessing speed. Today was about plain good sailing, and what today revealed is that every team has talented seat-of-the-pants sailors in their midsts. Light and fluky is not the most thrilling spectacle, but it certainly shakes up the pack nicely.

BMW strolls the last race

As expected it was a pretty one-sided affair in the re-match that was called off earlier in the week, between BMW Oracle and +39 Challenge. But as +39’s tactician, Ian Walker, commented yesterday, “We’re certainly not going to learn anything sitting in a coffee bar with hangovers.” So they went sailing with hangovers instead. But Iain Percy and his gang did as well as they could in a dog of an old boat, winning a marginal advantage at the start but unable to do anything with it. ITA-59 is just plain slow below 10 knots wind, and today’s race barely saw more than 6 knots.

I spoke to Percy afterwards, and asked if he had even seen a glimmer of hope of beating BMW ORACLE today. “No,” he said, matter of factly. “If we were racing in 15 knots, yes, but in that wind? No. I don’t want to make the mistake – which I did against Alinghi - of doing something radical. That’s not the way to learn. Where are you in a year’s time? You’ve got to take your weather calls, pick your right side, then you one-tack up and make the cross - normally. Of course you’re not going to do that when you’re 3/10s of a knot slower, but we got to sail BMW Oracle today. You still learn from that.“

Even BMW Oracle’s tactician Bertrand Pacé reckoned they got something out of the one-sided encounter. “We are learning each time we go on the water. It’s quite hard to understand what’s going on with the wind here. We try to learn with the weather team.” While the weather remains difficult to fathom, there is a quiet confidence about the team when talking about USA-87. Pacé said: “This boat is tacking quite well, and I think this boat is quicker in the light and quicker in the heavy. It’s not much, maybe two boatlengths faster in a beat, but it’s quite enough to stay there when you have a bad shift, and make a good gain when you get a good shift.”

Two boatlengths in this game is an awful lot. And when you combine that with the boat’s ability to snap through the tacks, it’s a potent combination. But how much speed has the team sacrificed for that manoeuvrability, or can you really have the best of both worlds? Pacé doesn’t think so. “Everything is a trade-off. To get this boat we have probably compromised the speed but that’s what we needed to do for this racing. It’s hard to know the answer yet.”

Alinghi still holding the aces

BMW Oracle’s victory in Louis Vuitton Act 10 proves that America’s Cup racing is not always won on pure speed. Pundits around Valencia have been marvelling at the ability of USA-87 to turn through an incredibly tight turning circle – a valuable trait not only for pre-start manoeuvring but for executing the killer move that Chris Dickson pulled on the Italians aboard Luna Rossa.

After the young (but older than his years) James Spithill won the better start and bounced Dickson off to the right just seconds after the gun fired, Luna Rossa seized control of the match in the early stages. Things were always nip and tuck between these two brand new Version 5 hulls, but Spithill still appeared to be holding the upper hand as he approached the windward mark on starboard tack. Dickson went to duck (the first and only dip of the regatta) the transom of ITA-86 and Spithill bore away accordingly, looking to make life as difficult as possible for Dickson.

But USA-87 dipped the Italian stern and almost immediately Dickson span the wheel into a tack. Now having dipped a transom and then immediately rounded up the other way into a tack, you might have thought the Italians would have enough pace on to be able to tack onto port and squeeze across the Americans to lead round the windward mark. Clearly that’s what Spithill was thinking because he held on to the very end before both boats luffed to avoid a collision. It was a clear penalty, and from there the Italians faced an uphill struggle that they never overcame. Act 10 went to Larry Ellison, who steered his own boat across the finish line.

Mainsheet trimmer Jonathan McKee defended Spithill’s error of judgement when talking to the media after racing. “If we didn’t get across them, it was unlikely we were going to win the race. There wasn’t any other very appetising option, really.” But he did concede that USA-87 has some impressive qualities. “They do seem pretty good tacking. Whether it’s their technique, or their sails or something else - I’m not in a very good position to speculate on that.”

As for straightline boatspeed, observers thought the Kiwis’ new boat looked pretty tasty, while USA-87 and ITA-86 appeared to struggle at times. But no one really knows what subtle games are being played out there. Without actually saying it, Chris Dickson hinted in a press conference at the beginning of the week that they might not be revealing their full hand. Sandbagging is definitely on the agenda at this stage. At times, USA-87 has looked quite ordinary and at others quite extraordinary. A few people round the media centre certainly believe Dickson is holding back.

Alinghi’s fourth-place finish doesn’t sound great, but the challengers remain concerned about Swiss potential. SUI-75 is still a good boat, as McKee pointed out. “She’s not slow, and they still have two new boats to come, so they’re not in a bad position, but for sure the gap has been closed. That’s good news for all of us and probably good news for the event too.”

Terry Hutchinson was less optimistic. “You have to wonder what they have sitting in that shed over there. They were at least half a generation ahead of everyone in 2005, so if they make another generation jump, they’ll be another half-generation ahead of where the challengers are now. They’re obviously very good at what they do, so I think we all have our work cut out. We need to press on it for the next year.”

Vasco Vascotto, skipper of Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia, was most forthright of all. He belittled the design efforts of the big challengers. “Alinghi continues to be the benchmark. This means that the strongest teams have already thrown away a new boat just to get to where Alinghi was. This is good news for the smaller teams that will only build one boat.”

A chink in the armour

It took until the dying gasps of the 2005 season before Alinghi yielded a match race to another team. Then on that very last day of match racing in Sicily, the invincible Defender lost boat races, one to K-Challenge and the other to BMW Oracle. Apart from that, 31 out of 33 victories was an ominous display from the Swiss, suggesting they could hold on to the Cup beyond 2007.

It took just two days of the 2006 season before Alinghi fell to another team. Yes, the team are still using the boat from last year, SUI-75, but their moments of weakness have come from lapses of concentration at the starts. Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team last year was a team that could barely get out of its own way, let along anyone else’s. With a number of disputes between the team and some key personnel, internal political struggle looked set to overwhelm the Italian campaign. And so when the red boat ITA-77 squared up to SUI-75 in the pre-start, few expected anything other than a walkover for the Defender.

But it seems that some of the firings and hirings in Mascalzone have done the team some good. There have been some key additions to the Mascalzone afterguard, among them the young Danish match racing duo, helmsman Jes Gram-Hansen and tactician Rasmus Kostner. These two have sailed together for years on the World Match Race Tour and have been looking for a way into the Cup scene. Having been given their break with Mascalzone the Danish friends are making the most of the opportunity. Where Alinghi was a couple of heartbeats late to the line, Jes Gram-Hansen took ITA-77 across the line on the B of BANG.

In times past, you could have relied on Mascalzone tripping over their own shoe laces while Alinghi cruised serenely by. And helmsman Ed Baird did indeed find a way past the Italians before the top of the first leg. But ITA 77 was close enough and fast enough to overtake the Swiss on the first downwind run, and the match was back on. Eventually SUI-75 brought her superior upwind boatspeed to bear once more, and the Swiss held off Mascalzone by less than a boatlength. A faster boat would have given Mascalzone the win they deserved.

As a travelling sailing journalist, I get to speak to the world's greatest sailors on a regular basis, so this blog is an insight into the world of grand prix yachting. In the past year I've reported on Olympic events, America's Cup Acts and offshore classics like the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race and the Volvo Ocean Race. Keep on coming back to the Sailing Talk blog for my latest comments.