In This Issue
• Transpac first finishers on final approach
• Long Inshore At British Classic Week
• When the best begat the best - Rondal
• Showdown Set at J/22 World Championship
• Melges World League - Garda Lake Rally
• GC32 Racing Tour
• 80 Boats for RORC Channel Race
• Sailing World on Water July 23.21
• Tokyo Olympics: Early typhoon threat to Games
• HYS Return to 40th Hamble Winter Series
• Letters to the Editor
• Featured Brokerage:
• • ClubSwan 42-057
• • ClubSwan 50-004 Mathilde M
• • ClubSwan 50-026-Django
• The Last Word: Iron Man 3
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
Transpac first finishers on final approach
Honolulu, Hawaii: All eyes are on the YB trackers now to anticipate the arrival of the first finishers in the 2021 Transpac. The favorable weather in this year's race of 2225 miles from LA to Honolulu has resulted in shorter distances and higher speeds for the fleet than in many other editions of this classic biennial ocean race, with boats starting to arrive in the pre-dawn hours tonight through the morning and into the afternoon.
First in line is Roy Disney's turbo Volvo 70 Pyewacket, whose high speed approach from the north east is burning the remaining miles quickly. At Noon local time they were "only" 279 miles from the finish line at Diamond Head, a distance most boats do in a day of hard racing but at their speeds of 20+ knots will put them within the finish area after midnight in the wee hours. In fact, they should be triggering the 200-mile live tracker radius at about 4:00 PM local time, allowing race fans to watch them progress in real time with updates every 15 minutes.
Next in line is Cecil and Lynn Rossi's Farr 57 Ho'okolohe, who at Noon were only 237 miles out, and at their speeds of 11-12 knots they will be the first daylight finisher sometime around 8 AM – if all continues to go well. Transpac finishes at dawn at Diamond Head are spectacular, so it will be a beautiful arrival for this mixed team of Claifornia and Hawaii-based sailors.
These two will start a wave of other finishers coming into either the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor in Waikiki or for the deep draft boats into Honolulu harbor. Pyewacket, for example, is planning to berth at the Aloha Tower near downtown, which will be fairly quiet in the pre-dawn hours except for those greeting Disney and his team.
Long Inshore At British Classic Week
Photo by Ingrid Abery, www.ingridabery.com. Click on image for photo gallery.
With an established breeze from the east, racing set off on time on day five of British Classic Week.
The Long Inshore Race sponsored by Classic Boat magazine set off in 12knots of wind on the outer Royal Yacht Squadron (RYS) line against a strong ebbing tide. After a fleet start, yachts set off upwind to the east towards West Ryde Middle.
Rounding West Ryde Middle to port, it was a tight reach north to Hamble Yacht Services in glorious sunshine. From Hamble Yacht Services, the fleet crossed the Solent upwind (allowing for the west flowing tide) to Peel Bank.
At Peel Bank, the wind angle was just enough of a tight reach to allow for code zero sails on the leg up to Fastnet Insurance. Rounding Fastnet Insurance to starboard, the fleet went upwind once again to Qarr.
Taking Qarr to port, some yachts were able to hold spinnakers across to Royal Yacht Squadron, off Lee Point on the mainland shore. The final upwind leg from Royal Yacht Squadron took the fleet to Mother Bank in a by-now slackening tide.
A starboard rounding of Mother Bank and a big bear away saw spinnakers hoisted for the final, downwind leg home to the RYS line.
Spirit 52 Happy Forever continued her successful week to place first in Class 1, and Louise Morton's Lak II won Class 2. Clyde Linear 30 Mikado triumphed once again in Class 3 and West Solent One Design Suvretta won Class 4.
Having crossed the line, crews were treated to Hattiers Rum dark and stormies and Dartmouth Gin gin and tonics delivered directly to their yachts.
When the best begat the best - Rondal
Forty-five years ago Royal Huisman went looking for a new spar building partner, ideally one also able to supply the latest superyacht sail handling and hydraulic systems... In the end they did not have to travel very far
How do you source the rig and sailhandling systems optimised for that paricular superyacht? It boils down to a binary choice between two very different approaches. You can commission it piecemeal from a dozen suppliers or more and then knit it all together as a full custom rigging project. Or, if you want the convenience, performance and reliability of a high-end sophisticated, fully integrated, sail-handling package with the interface to the yacht, you can give the whole job to Rondal.
Until quite recently, most of the top sailing superyacht shipyards made their own masts and built their own winches. Over the last 15 years or so, the speed of innovation has led to leading experts in spar making, rigging, deck hardware, hydraulics and various other specialisms migrating from major shipyards, where they used to work in house, to specialist suppliers that serve the whole industry.
Full article in the August issue of Seahorse
Showdown Set at J/22 World Championship
Corpus Christi, TX, USA: On the penultimate day of the J/22 World Championship, the discard race came into play but didn't knock Jeff Progelhof's Schitzen Giggles from the top of the leaderboard. With crew Paul Foerster and Rod Favela, Progelhof added finishes of 2,4,9 on Thursday, but able to toss the 9, maintained first place at 15 points over seven races (two more planned for the Championship). Travis Odenbach's Honeybadger is keeping well within reach at 18 points in the runner-up position, and Mike Marshall's Pressure Drop held onto third with 24 points.
Favorable breeze at 10-12 knots allowed an on-time start for day three in Corpus Christi, TX. Glenn Darden's Baby Doll logged their first bullet of the day in the opening contest, with Progelhof and Tom Meeh's Meehem in the hunt. Chris Doyle's The Jug 4 1 earned the next victory, chased by Odenbach and Bill Draheim in winds at 12-13 knots. Following Darden to shore in slightly increased breeze were Marshall and Brant Koepke's Skank.
Racing concludes Friday for 42 teams representing 14 states.
www.regattanetwork.com/event/21100
Melges World League - Garda Lake Rally
Click on image to enlarge.
In Malcesine, Tavatuy and La Pericolosa fight neck to neck
Malcesine, Italy: Three regattas with well-spread Ora wind started the third event of the Melges World League, hosted over the weekend at Fraglia Vela Malcesine thanks to the joint organization with Melges Europe.
On the inaugural day, the first to start racing were the Melges 32, who found important additions in the fleet including the former World Champions of La Pericolosa and the Corinthian World Champions on Homanit, while tomorrow the Melges 20,represented in Malcesine by over twenty crews, will start racing and the Melges 14 will sail the Melges Race.
The races valid for the Melges 32 event will resume tomorrow at 12.50 pm, followed 10 minutes later by the Melges 20 preparatory signal. Warm up regatta also for the Melges 14, who will be involved in the Melges Race, and then start with the third seasonal act of their Melges World League on Saturday.
GC32 Racing Tour
The second event of the 2021 GC32 Racing Tour kicks off next week, once again in Lagos on Portugal's Algarve. The first two events of the new season for the World Sailing-approved high performance foiling catamarans are being held in the same venue to limit travel and simplify logistics complicated by the pandemic.
Coming in race fit to the GC32 Lagos Cup 2 will be several skippers and crew who competed last weekend at the British stopover of SailGP in Plymouth.
Alinghi's co-helmsman Arnaud Psarofaghis was standing in for Peter Burling on the helm of the New Zealand boat. Ernesto Bertarelli's team remains the sure-fire favourite in Lagos: Their line-up is unchanged from when they dominated the GC32 Lagos Cup 1 – out of 16 races they sailed they only finished off the podium once. They also won the 2019 GC32 World Championship on these waters.
Time spent in the faster, wingmasted F50 won't have hurt Psarofaghis. With a wing and extensive hydraulics (compared to the GC32's conventional rotating wingmast and softsails, and rope controls), Psarofaghis acknowledges that the F50 is different to the GC32, but "it is not too difficult to make the change."
Also racing in Plymouth was Team Rockwool Racing. Finishing on the podium and winning two races at GC32 Lagos Cup 1 was an acceptable result for the Danish team's first ever GC32 competition. The greatest steps forward are likely to come from them.
The other GC32 rookies in Lagos were the Swiss Foiling Academy. The team led by Julien Monnier and Loic Forestier will be looking to raise their game for their second ever GC32 event. So too will the French Zoulou team led by Erik Maris, the GC32's longest standing competitor and currently the sole owner-driver (others will return later in the season as travel restrictions ease).
80 Boats for RORC Channel Race
The Royal Ocean Racing Club Season's Points Championship continues with the Channel Race, which will start on Saturday July 24th from the RYS Line, Cowes. 80 boats have entered the non-stop overnight race with the majority of the fleet expected to finish the race in about 24 hours. The Channel Race is the ninth race of the RORC Season's Points Championship with an international fleet racing under IRC and Class40 Rules. The Channel Race is the final RORC race before the main event of the season, the 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race.
Favourites for Line Honours and the Hugh Astor Trophy will be racing in IRC Zero. David Collins' Botin IRC 52 Tala took line honours and IRC Zero for the Channel Race in 2019. Eric de Turckheim's NMYD54 Teasing Machine, second in 2019, will be Tala's main opposition. Lance Shepherd's Volvo Open 70 Telefonica Black and Ross Hobson's Open 50 Pegasus Of Northumberland, will hope for strong reaching conditions to be first to cross the finish line. Jean Pierre Dreau's Mylius 60 Lady First 3 will be racing with his team from Marseille, France.
Yachts taking part in the Channel Race will start to gather off Cowes Parade from around 1000 on Saturday 24th July. The full entry list and AIS tracking link can be found at yb.tl/channel2021 and also via smartphones with the YB App. Results will be available with live updates at www.rorc.org -- Louay Habib
Sailing World on Water July 23.21
The local Lorient Kiters get the chance of a lifetime to foil behind one of the worlds' fastest Trimarans, Edmund de Rothschild. Well done Luca!
The Olympics start today in Japan and World Sailing Previews two of the most anticipated classes, the Mens' FINN and the Womens' RS:X. This sadly is the last Olympics for the Finn. We will miss them as the "heavyweights" of the sport of Sailing come from this class. They will be missed. (Ainslie, Coutts, Bertrand all came from this class)
Thomas Colville has qualified his Maxi Trimaran SODEBO for the double handed Transat Jacques Vabre.
Pip Hare (GBR) had such a good Vendee Globe that she bought the foiler Bureau Vallee and under her sponsor Medallia she is getting it read for the next "go-around." Here she puts the foils on prior to next week's launch.
Tokyo Olympics: Early typhoon threat to Games
Weather experts are monitoring a developing typhoon that is threatening to affect the Tokyo Olympics.
With the storm in its infancy, accurate trajectory predictions are difficult, but it is certainly a potential threat.
This week's building storm has surfers excited at its potential to provide decent sized waves for the sport's Olympic introduction, to be held at Tsurigasaki Beach, in Chiba, south-east of the capital on the Pacific coast.
The weather is on the radar of the powerful New Zealand sailing team, with Laser ace Sam Meech opening their campaign in Enoshima on Sunday.
"There is a lot more typhoon activity in the area than there has been," Meech, a bronze medallist from the Rio Olympics, told Stuff on Friday.
"We have been in a pretty nice south-westerly flow for the last week. There's a bit of a mix-up coming with some typhoons hitting which will be good for the surfing, but it might be a bit different for us."
Meech said some of the weather models weren't aligning at this stage, but it appeared the wind would flip in the complete opposite direction with north-easterlies forecasted which could develop to "really strong" on Monday.
Much would depend on the course the storm took, with the small island of Enoshima situated 50km south of Tokyo.
The sailors were expecting the storm to provide a lift in swell as well as the increased winds. -- Duncan Johnstone
www.stuff.co.nz/sport/olympics/
HYS Return to 40th Hamble Winter Series
With brilliant sunshine and temperatures reaching 30C on the Hamble, winter series sailing may seem a long way off. However, planning for the 40th running of the event is well underway. So, it was great news this week that Hamble Yacht Services, title sponsors for the last three years, agreed to come back and support the 40th Anniversary event.
"Despite a tough year all-round due to the covid lock down," Lee Pollock explained "We felt at Hamble Yacht Services, that we should support the series one more time, especially after the disruption of the 2020 event."
"For our part, we are delighted to have HYS back for what should be a special 40th Hamble Winter Series." said Steph Merry, HRSC Commodore.
This year's event will run from Sunday 3rd October to Sunday 28th November, with the usual half way weekend off on the 31st October. Competitors can just have a rest on this weekend or complete their Christmas shopping either online or in person in a shop.
The 2021 series will also include two weekends of the Hamble One Design Championship, The Hamble Big Boat Championship and the increasingly popular Hamble Autumn IRC Championship.
All relevant dates can be found here: www.hamblewinterseries.com/events
Letters To The Editor -
Letters are limited to 350 words. No personal attacks are permitted. We do require your name but your email address will not be published without your permission.
* From Dr. Frank Newton: re: Finn Coach at Olympics
I note the comment that it is unusual for a Finn competitor at the Olympic Games to have as his coach a current World Champion . However the precedent was set in the 1976 Olympic Games Sailing even in Kingston ( Montreal Games Canada) where David ( Syd ) Howlet was selected to represent GBR having defeated Chris Law , who had won the Gold' Cup earlier that year.
A big mistake that Chris was selected to go to Kingston to aid David's tune up of his issued Finn, with Chris taking the Gold Cup winning Finn to sail in himself ! He was able to run rings round David who was trying to tune up a very bog standard issue boat . Not very good for confidence. A repeat of a similar mistake in 1972.
Will new officials never learn from the mistakes of old ones ? It's amazing that David did as well as he did !
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The Last Word
There are people who say progress is dangerous, but none of those idiots ever had to live with a chest full of shrapnel. -- Iron Man 3
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