The other big gig
Wednesday April 18th 2007, Author: James Boyd, Location: none selected
| Kicking off its third season, the Breitling MedCup for the TP 52s had an impressive launch on Friday in Alicante, venue for their first regatta in their year's circuit.
Unlike so many classes, the MedCup's organisers have been smart in scheduling this year's circuit so that it doesn't conflict with the America's Cup (in fact the event in Alicante is shoehorned between the Louis Vuitton and America's Cups) since many of their number will have significant commitments in Valencia up until this time. As we reported a few weeks ago, the MedCup this year looks set to be campaigned by around 23 boats, around two more than showed up in 2006, and the organisers are keeping their fingers crossed that there might be more. "There are a few boats from last season that are still for sale or rent," says Ignacio Triay, Director of the MedCup and who also runs Jose Cusi's Bribon which the King of Spain steers. "We still hope that at the last moment some new owners from around Europe will show up that will be able to get those boats." Of these 23 King Harald of Norway and his TP 52 Fram is unlikely to be able to make all of the events since this year is his 70th birthday and all manner of social engagements are planned back home for him. Among the 23 entries this year, there will be around six new teams and nine new boats. Such is the closeness and increased competitiveness within the class that we can expect to see perhaps ten teams this year winning consistently. After last year's case of too many cooks sailing with Paul Cayard and Gavin Brady on George Andreadis/Jaime Yllera's Atlanti II, so this year Russell Coutts returns for his third season on the Breitling MedCup, running the new Artemis for Stockholm-based businessman and Swan 601 owner, Torbjorn Tornqvist. Coutts is believed to have had more of a hand in this program than his previous two campaigns, so perhaps it will be a case of third lucky for the America's Cup legend. Following the success of Mean Machine last year, the new Artemis is a Judel-Vrolijk design, Coutts working with his old Alinghi designers. Learning from previous years, Artemis was one of the first new generation TP 52s to launch this year and has already been sailing in New Zealand. Seattle-based property developer John Buchan first dipped his toe in the TP 52 class last year when he acquired the Nelson-Marek designed Transpac 52 Yassou, much tweaked and renamed Glory. This boat has since been sold to Australian Graeme Wood, owner of the successful travel website www.wotif.com who raced her in last Christmas' Sydney Hobart race as Wot Yot. Buchan has since ordered the third Judel-Vrolijk boat to come from the moulds at Hakes Marine which produced last year's Breitling MedCup winner Mean Machine and the less successful Anonimo. The new boat will also be called Glory (below). 
John Coumantaros is returning once again with his Bambakou and he and Buchan are being joined by a third US owner, Doug DeVos, youngest son of Amway founder Richard DeVos. Doug DeVos at the end of last season acquired Fred and Steve Howe's Botin & Carkeek-designed Warpath. The DeVoses have a lengthy history in yacht racing - they currently own a maxZ86 as well - and Doug DeVos was involved with the Breitling MedCup in its first season as owner of Russell Coutts' Lexus Quantum boat (he is the majority shareholder in Quantum Sails). Another new Judel-Vrolijk design, the new Stay Calm, is currently in build at Green Marine for British owner Stuart Robinson. Once again Adrian Stead is deeply involved with the project and says the boat has some significant differences to Mean Machine. After two seasons with a Farr design, so the King of Spain will be campaigning a new Bribon this year that is a Judel-Vrolijk design. Appropriately this is being built by King Marine in Valencia, where the Spanish AC boats were constructed. Another new campaign this year is that of Argentinian Alberto Roemmers who's new Matador is a sistership to Bribonand is also under construction at King Marine. Roemmers is well known in the Med for campaigning his IMS maxi Alexia and is also the owner of a Wally of the same name. Concerning how the new boats will look, Ignacio Triay confirms what Peter de Ridder told us last week: "I think what the designers are doing is a little bit of averaging of the last two years. I think the two boats of Botin & Carkeek last year, Warpath and Lexus were good boats in coastal racing, reaching, close reaching but they were lacking upwind, so I think Botin has moved back to a more all-purpose boat and I think Vrolijk did a little bit the same in the opposite way. They are closer to one another now." A similar arrangement is taking place at builder Longitude 0 up the road from Valencia in Castellon where two of the most potent TP 52s for this year's circuit are taking shape side by side. After winning the first Breitling MedCup circuit, so Mascalzone Latino-Capitalia Team skipper Vasco Vascotto has reformed his team with a new Botin & Carkeek design sponsored by Mutua Madrilena.  According Vasco's TP 52 and America's Cup navigator Nacho Postigo the boat is due for launch on 10 May. Meanwhile building alongside her is the new
Caixa Galicia for Vicente Tirado. The two boats again are sisterships, sharing hull moulds and mast design, but they have a different deck layout:
Caixa has wheels,
Mutua a tiller, a preference of Vascotto's. This is a trend set by Peter de Ridder on
Mean Machine last season and this year the new
Artemis and the
Matador are among boats featuring tillers.
The new Mutua Madrilena has reverted to having a central mainsheet winch, as Postigo explains: "Our mainsail trimmer loves it and then we can have the genniker guys on the backstay winches and it is very comfortable for gybing. Also our mainsail trimmer likes to have the backstay to hand when he does the mainsail. He doesn’t trust the tactician or the navigator to grind it, so he has the mainsheet in one hand and the backstay in the other hand. In these boats sailing in these Mediterranean conditions in 8-10 knots you play a lot with the backstay." Another variation is whether or not the starboard pit winch is connected to the pedestals. On the new Mutua Madrilena it will. "We had that in 2005 with Pisco Sour," says Postigo. "Last year I was following the races from the chase boat I saw a big difference with the guys pumping the genniker up. There was at least 4-5 seconds difference between the Pinta crew pulling the genniker up with the coffee grinder and other boats doing it by hand." This is just one of several ideas being brought in from the America's Cup. Another on the new Mutua Madrilena is reducing windage aloft. The new Hall Spar rig only has two spreaders. "Hall gave us the option to go for three spreaders but we went for two," says Postigo. "We had some debate. Botin wanted three spreaders at the beginning but we wanted the windage benefits of the two spreaders and the simplicity. For sure if this was not the MedCup but the Hawaiian Cup we’d probably have gone for three spreader because we need more control, but in 8-12 knots, you don’t have the risk. We think we can live with two spreaders." Postigo adds that the new B&C boats have a rounder stern than the new Judel-Vrolijks which have a slight chine. While all the Spanish IMS 500 teams have followed the King of Spain into the TP 52 class, so this year one of the last to follow in Fernando Leon, after a successful IMS career most recently campaigning the all-black Farr IMS 500, Cam, featuring - uniquely among contempory race boats - topsides with tumblehome. The new Cam is Botin & Carkeek design being built at Goetz in Rhode Island. Last but not least is the new Patches for Irish TP 52 owner Eamon Conneely. Like the previous Patches, this is a Reichel Pugh design - the only TP from the San Diego-based designers - and this time it has been built at McConaghy's new facility in China. On Friday Conneely told us that he and skipper Ian Walker had been out to see the boat in construction in early January. At present Patches is on a ship bound for Valencia and is due here in early May. "Ian and I are meeting her in Valencia and we’ll do her commissioning there in Valencia. The McConaghy guys are meeting us there and we’ll be doing four or five days sea trials with them." The boat is expected to be sailing by 14 May. Conneely says that the big change this year for their campaign is that they will have a steady crew. "Last year although we had a core of 10 and we always seemed to change three or four every regatta. This year we are hoping to have all the same 14 guys for all the regattas." Tim Powell will now be steering with Ian Walker back on tactics and Ian Moore navigating. Eamon points out that the first Patches, the 2006 Rolex TP 52 Global Championship winner (one careful owner) is still for sale and that he hasn't yet acquired a sponsor for the MedCup circuit for this year... Last year they were backed by Siemens. Aside from the MedCup circuit this year followed by the Rolex-sponsored Global Championship in Porto Cervo, Conneely says there is some possibility of them competing in the Rolex Trofeo SM La Reina in Valencia this season. For some reason the secondhand market appears to be a bit slow for the TP 52s. At present a number of good secondhand boats are available (remember this is a box rule and boats can be chopped around to be brought up to date) and one wonders if any more Cup teams will move into the class come July, as a way of keeping the blood circulating in their sailing teams. However one boat has moved: the latest news is that the MedCup may be joined this year by a second Russian team. Serguei Kotsiouba, who campaigned his IMX 45 Follow Me as part of 'Team Europe' in the 2004 Commodores' Cup, has recently acquired the 2005 Farr-designed Caixa Galicia. The Breitling MedCup 2007 To recap a little: the TP 52 first came into existence as the Transpac 52 and was originally a downwind sled with the sole purpose in life of heading to Hawaii as quickly as possible. Since then it has been adopted by the MedCup fleet, gone supernova in the Mediterranean and understandably the shape of the boat has changed dramatically as a result. However the Class Association is keen to keep the boats 'honest' by not solely racing windward-leewards. In the first two MedCup seasons a majority of races have been windward-leewards but each regatta has included 'coastal' (day long) races and an 'offshore' (overnight). However for this season the 'offshore' has been canned in favour of two coastals. Ignacio Triay explains the reasoning: "You have a big chance in the Med in summer that the offshore race becomes a disaster, so we prefer to do two coastals and finish in daylight and don’t take a chance of going overnight. We want to organise events where the winner is the winner and it is not a lottery - it was the owners who voted for that. People ask us why we are maintaining the coastal races and why we give so much importance to the scoring of coastal races and that comes from the very beginning of the philosophy of the MedCup. The reasons are two, firstly because we think these kind of boats are spectacular in coastal races with Code Zeros and A5s and 0s, staysails and they develop a very interesting speed and we don’t want to lose that spectacle and secondly because it is pushing the teams and designers to create an all-purpose boat and that helps the continuity of the boats and the designs. We don’t want to create horses for courses." This year is Breitling's last in their three year sponsorship deal but the circuit has grown in terms of its finances through the help of additional backing from Audi and Santa Ana, plus support from the venues, particularly the new ones at Hyeres and Portimao in southern Portugal. They are also attempting to improve the marketing of the events, not only by spending more money on their PR and TV production, but also by working with their port hosts on integrating the events more with the towns. This was one of the reasons for Friday's spectacle in Alicante, which did appear to be an event a lot of money had been thrown at, complete with dance troupe, laser displays, fireworks, boat out of the water, etc. Triay continues: "Part of our goal is to try to bring the game more to the general public in the towns. We feel that we want to take sailing from being something that is exclusive - sailing is not something you can put seats around to watch like soccer or basketball, so we have a disadvantage against other sports. Somehow we have to find a way to bring this sport to the general public because in the future that is going to benefit the sports and the sponsors and the owners as it will help allow more people to follow it." In the host ports where regattas are to be held the boats will be moored as close into the heart of the town as is possible. "That is an idea the local authoirities like a lot - that we should have an area that isn’t just exclusive to sailors and guests, it should be open to the general public who can watch the sailors and see the activities." Other ideas being investigated are tracking boats during races, large screens showing video of the racing and having marks in the coastal races, where possible, that are close inshore. "For instance in Portimao there is a perfect place where you can have a coastal race with a mark off a beach where there will be 3,000 people there anyway." Organisation of the circuit has proved hard this year as it has had to be squeezed in between the America's Cup and the Global Championship, which the owners - who run the class - specified should not be later than the end of September. With twenty three 52ft long boats all with deep draft, simply finding somewhere to moor them all up presents a few problems and venues must be chosen and dates fixed allowing transportation from the previous event to happen within a reasonable time period (last year the boats went off to Athens for a race). The TP 52 Class Association has also undergone some modifications with Netherlands-based Rob Whelan taking over the management of the class, based on decisions made by the owners association, itself headed by an Executive Committee of five owners. It should be noted that while the MedCup is certainly the heart of TP 52 activity other boats do now exist in the US, Australia and Hong Kong and Whelan's job is to try and co-ordinate the class as a whole. For example it would be phenomenal once the MedCup is over if the boats were shipped en masse to Australia to compete in regattas over there and then back to the Med via Key West/Miami in January. However this is just our dream. While the MedCup itself doesn't start until June in Alicante, a few boats are competing in a warm-up regatta this weekend at the Palmavela, backed by a third watch manufacturer sponsor backing the class - Hublot. |
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