2002 - Quarter four wrap

If you blinked during October, November and December you would have missed alot of action

Wednesday January 1st 2003, Author: Andy Nicholson, Location: United Kingdom

The final quarter of 2002 brought us two long awaited Grand Prix events. After millions of dollars, hundreds of days testing, and many hours of gym work the Louis Vuitton Cup got under way on the 1st October. Just twelve weeks later only two, out of the original nine challengers, remain. To echo the words of Team New Zealand’s Dean Barker, ‘It’s going to be a ghost town around here by Christmas.’

The second major event of the autumn was the solo trans-Atlantic race the Route Du Rhum. Never before had such a gathering of solo-sailing superstars and their state of the art machines been so eagerly awaited. The Biscay weather was to leave the fleet decimated and established without any doubt the extraordinary talent that is Ellen MacArthur.

From a British perspective, there were two must read interviews on The Daily Sail. The RYA’s Rod Carr gave us an unprecedented view into the workings of the most successful Olympic sailing team and what challenges his organisation face in the future and how that will affect every British sailor.

In the GBR Challenge camp, Andy Beadsworth gave a fascinating and frank interview to James Boyd following the quick switch of starting helms in Round Robin One. If anything came out of Auckland it was the way that Peter Harrison’s fresh-faced team acquitted themselves with professionalism and respect from their Americas Cup peers.

So to the Louis Vuitton Cup and the multi-million pound soap opera that was to quickly unfold. First casualty was Prada’s Design Director Doug Peterson. After all he had only been on the design team of two of the last three America’s Cup winners.

Andy Green was to hit, albeit at less than walking pace, Seattle’s OneWorld and only after a few races as starting helmsman was moved aside in favour of Andy Beadsworth. Our man in Auckland, Ed Gorman, gave us his views on the switch, and James Boyd caught up with GBR man mountain mastman George Skoudas.

The site of the massive high tech machines thrashing it out on the water was spectacular and spawned the first of many photo galleries, from the best names in yachting photography. With the implementation of an upper wind range limit of racing, breakages were limited and it was Victory and Le Defi to suffer the worst in Round Robin One. This wind speed limit was to quickly put the schedule of racing back and it spark much debate on it’s necessity. OneWorld’s navigator Mark Chisnell submitted one of his diary reports covering the ‘too windy’ situation.

The first round was to firmly establish the top four of OneWorld, Oracle, Alinghi and Prada. Le Defi and Mascalzone were propping up the bottom of the table and GBR, Victory and Stars and Stripes were set to battle it out for the middle ground.

Meanwhile, back in the real world… RORC announced their awards for the year, with the Yacht of the Year award going to the French IMX 40 Courier Nord. The majority of the main events of the UK dinghy season had concluded and Gerald New gave us a round up across the dinghy classes. The International 14 class made some important development decisions, and The Red Bull Tide Ride proved itself as a real end of season winner with the skiff classes.

Freddie Loof was to walk off with the Star European championship and Dawn Riley and her French backed Americas Cup team in waiting won the One Ton Cup, there was also some great news about the re-birth of the Half Ton Cup. Pedro Campos walked off with the first ever IMS 600 World Championship in Spain.

With Auckland sucking up a lot of the big name match racing talent it was Jesper Radditch who won the Bermuda Gold Cup. Fellow Dane and No2 ranked match racer Jes Gram Hansen was interviewed by James Boyd and gave some interesting insight into the way their country approaches the match race discipline.

Following their Brixham stopover, beautifully re-created in words by the now infamous Snake, the Around Alone fleet prepared for the first of the winter’s big storms as they headed across Biscay on route to Cape Town. The Daily Sail interviewed Class Two leader Brad Van Liew. With the entire Class Two fleet heading for cover as storm force winds battered the fleet it was Tiscali which was to come out the worst by losing her rig.

All these gales where music to the ears of Chief Pot Hunter, Steve Fosset, who set off once again to get back ‘his’ round Britain record which had been snatched by Tracy Edward’s Maiden II. As the depression let the Around Alone’s Class Two out of their respective sheltering holes it was to push Playstation to a new record.

Windy weather was also creating some interesting conditions in the Solent for the Tyco Winter Series, we published a great photo gallery from one particular Sunday. The RORC announced, what appeared to be a u-turn, moving the 2003 Admirals’s Cup from Ireland back to Cowes.

Meanwhile, back in Auckland….Round Robin Two got under way, after Prada beat Mascalzone to complete the First Round before lunch. Oracle was the second syndicate to undergo major personnel upheaval. Larry Ellison pulled Chris Dickson off the bench and onto the boat as skipper, Dickson’s immediate response was to throw Ellison off. With hindsight, this was a perfect call by Ellison, displaying the talents that have made him the fifth richest man in the world.

OneWorld in response went on a bit of a slide, fielding a less than A grade B team, a crew error saw the French on Le Defi score their first win.

The crunch match between Le Defi and Mascalzone went to the French team and it was the Italians who were to be the first to go home. Alinghi installed themselves as favourites for the LV Cup at the top of the table. GBR Challenge missed out on the coveted fifth spot by an impressive Victory Challenge.

While the chainsaws echoed around Viaduct Basin, the Etchell’s Worlds were starting just up the road. The 100 strong fleet included the DC in Team Dennis Connor, who decided to take some time out of the LV and get some one design sailing in. The regatta was dominated by defending champion Stuart Childerely who went on to win by 35 points after discarding the last race, which they didn’t need to sail. The Daily Sail caught up with Simon Russell, Childerley’s middleman on just how quick they were going.

When it comes to pictures of the sport, we love them. It’s worth the download time and in November we published the most amazing series of shots by expert multihull snapper Yvan Zedda. Who is the maddest out of these Frenchmen? The tri skipper, the waterskier, the helicopter pilot or the photographer hanging out of it.

Back safely on the dock, James Boyd took a tour around the brand new tri Gitana X, which wetted our appetites for the soon to start Route Du Rhum. The middle two weeks of November were unbelievably frantic, with the homepage needing to be re-written on an almost hourly basis.

The 60ft tris started a day after the monohulls and it was the first time in the race’s history that a monohull was to be the first into Guadeloupe. Even before the boats had left the English Channel we had our first dramatic incident when Groupama flipped during the first night, not only this but Jean Le Cam on Bonduelle crashed into the upturned hull. James Boyd later interviewed Groupama skipper Franck Cammas.

ISAF announced the Rolex Yachtsman and Yachtswomen of the year, with Ben Ainslie picking up the honours for his first year of Finn sailing. Greek 470 sailors Sofia Bekatorou and Emilia Tsoulf won the female prize for their domination of 470 sailing. The Daily Sail caught up with Ben’s sailing mates at the ‘Gathering of Finn Class Trophies’.

The merde was really starting to hit the fan now for the competitors in the Route Du Rhum, who were facing storm force headwinds in the Bay of Biscay. Francis Joyon was the second tri skipper to capsize and the shiny new Gitana X lost the top of her mast. Even more amazing was the news that two monohulls, La Rage and Apic A3S hit ships! The list of casualties went on.

With the quarter finals about to start down under, The Daily Sail got to talk with top dogs Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth. Ed Gorman reported on the forth-coming show down between Team Dennis Connor and GBR Challenge.

In the Bahamas the Farr 40’s were providing some very tight racing in their World Championship. Steve Phillips won the event, after the dominating Canadian yacht Defiant was nailed in a couple of protests on day three of the regatta.

Lets not forget the Around Alone, the first finishers were just reaching Cape Town. Bernard Stamm took the leg with Emma Richards finishing in third and Brad Van Liew winning Class Two. The Snake dished up his regular stop-over piece and Bernard Stamm gave us a guided tour around his Open 60.

Back in the North Atlantic, Ellen MacArthur was streaking across to the Caribbean as her rivals were slowed by gear failure. Conrad Humphries in Class Two lost his mast. Disaster hit tri race favourite, Loick Peyron, as his new Fujicolour simply broke apart around him. We caught up with Karine Fauconnier, the only female tri skipper, who also abandoned her boat.

And finally, just to keep everyone on their toes, the Louis Vuitton Quarter Finals took place. The French were out, beaten by the Swede’s, and so too were Peter Harrison’s GBR Challenge, who just couldn’t keep up with Conor’s re-claimed ship wreck, USA 77.

Prada conceded her match against Alinghi, to free up some extra days testing, and Oracle made it a clean sweep against OneWorld. Alinghi and Oracle now had to wait until the middle of December before racing each other. The other side of the draw went into the catchy titled Quarter Final Repechage.

For Ellen Macarthur, thousands of cheering fans and a 75,000 Euro cheque, greeted her first place arrival in Guadeloupe. She beat Michel Desjoyeau, in his trimaran, on the water by a day. The Daily Sail featured both winning skippers of this extraordinary race.

The LV QFR, as it became known, was over promptly following 4-0 matches where Stars and Stripes and Victory lost out to the big guns of OneWorld and Prada respectively. Things were about to take a turn for the worse for OneWorld, as the Arbitration Panel were to make their ruling on further ‘design secrets’ evidence brought by Team DC and Prada.

The penalty was stiff, a one point reduction in every round they remained in the cup.

So it was the Big Four into the semi finals, however there was a slight mishap for Alinghi, who at T Minus one day snapped their rig while out tuning. No worries though as a new, identical rig was stepped over night. Someone had obviously remembered to write the settings down as they won their opening race against Oracle, followed by another three straight wins to put them into the Final.

OneWorld squared their match against Prada on day one and went on to win the best of seven series, which included a farcical last ‘no’ race which saw the light wind spin all around the dial and Prada’s winning margin a silly 17 minutes. OneWorld were promptly dispatched in the Repechage leaving Alinghi and Oracle to have Chritsmas off before meeting in the Louis Vuitton final starting the 11th January.

Back in Europe, an animated debate came to the fore as Bruno Peyron announced his plans for the G Glass mutlihulls, which conflicted nicely, in terms of money and timing with the next Volvo Race. The Daily Sail was in the thick of it and got the viewpoints from all the key opinions, including Roger Nilson and Andy Hindley.

We headed back down south while all this was going on as skiff world champion Howie Hamlin, won the hotly contested 505 Worlds in Freemantle. We also published a great gallery from the event and class president Ali Mellor wrote a great wrap up piece for us.

The Hamble Winter series came to a windy close, and we got a detailed report in from the prolific Hunter 707 class.

The 2003 Figaro race was announced, complete with the public launch of the new Beneteau Figaro yacht. Chris Little took over as RORC Commodore. Two new 40ft catamarans came to the attention of The Daily Sail.

Back down south and all things were hotting up for the Boxing Day ritual of racing very hard all the way to Hobart. Neville Chricton’s Alfa Romeo (the boat, not his car) was race favourite and we chatted to crew boss Tim Dengate.