Gathering of the clans

The World Yacht Racing Forum gets thedailysail thumbs up

After two rainy days in Monaco, the inaugural World Yacht Racing Forum has just concluded and it is safe to say it was a resounding success.

With Peter Montgomery master of ceremonies, considerable ground was covered with excellent keynote speeches from Sir Keith Mills on the first day and Peter Gilmour to a slightly thinned out audience on day two. Those interested in the business of sponsorship and in particular its analysis were feverishly writing notes during today’s presentations by Annemarie Meyer, co-head of sponsorship at UBS and Ulrich Lacher, who’s company IFM Sports, advise on and analyse sponsorship strategies to the likes of Deutsche Telekom.

Equally fascinating were the presentations from the panel including Oman Sail’s Albert Whitley, Patrick Lim (founder of the Monsoon Cup, Tim Coventry (advised on the establishment of Korea’s boat show and Chairman of the World Match Racing Tour, Scott Macleod on ‘the rise of yacht racing events in the Middle East and Asia’. It seems that if you have a country with a coastline in this region, then it is considered rife for the development of tourism, and yacht racing in some guise as a perfect marketing tool for this. Former Laser boss, Tim Coventry recounted how the event he had been dealing with was uniquely located - on a stretch of virgin coastline between North and South Korea where within the last two years, for the first time 50 years the razorwire has been taken down.

For us personally the highlights were the America’s Cup discussion and the presentation by Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad on Wednesday. In the former we finally got to see Alinghi and BMW Oracle in the same space discussing the current problems besetting the America’s Cup, while with the round the world race in full swing and his having been in the post for some months now, Frostad was firing on all cylinders and is clearly making some smart decisions about the future of his race (read more about this next week).

However like any good party, the event was only as good as the people attending and they were of very high calibre with a delegate/presenter list including well known sailors such as Ben Ainslie, Paul Cayard, Brad Butterworth, Peter Gilmour, Alex Thomson, Lionel Pean, Herbert Dercksen and Sofia Bekatorou, designers Marc Lombard and Juan Kouyoumdjian to heavy hitters such as Sir Keith Mills and RYA CEO Rod Carr, Knut Frostad, Marcus Hutchinson, Mark Turner, K-Challenge’s Stephane Kandler, Andrew Pindar, Cowes Week CEO Stuart Quarrie, Henri Lloyd’s Paul Strzelecki, the Triay/Postigo/Inigo trio behind the Audi MedCup and ISAF President Goran Petersson, who frankly came across as a dinosaur (or perhaps it was the organisation he represents) within the forum’s environment, so hotly focussed on the commercial side of our sport.

Overall by the time the event kicked off it had gained more than enough critical mass, in terms of those attending, to be a success. We were concerned that it would just be a collection of familiar faces covering familiar ground, but I doubt anyone left the two days without having learned profoundly. Some of the topics for discussion were slightly ill-worded and often those on stage seemed keener to talk (and frequently were more interesting) about issues other than the one they were supposed to be debating. One, the final debate about the commercial value and future of offshore short handed racing for some reason seemed to lack direction - was it supposed to be informing the forum about the basics of this ever growing side of the sport or was it supposed to be diving into detail, such as issues with the rules, its more rarified politics?

Generally there was good representation internationally, however one criticism we heard was that the event lacked people, both on stage and off, from in particular France, Spain and Italy. We would add Scandinavia, the US and Australia/New Zealand too.

As a networking event it was hugely successful. I now have both of Brad Butterworth’s mobile phone numbers and in 48 hours had met numerous people I have previously written about, but never come across in person, as well as some unexpected ones such as Charles Sciandra, the new owner of Senso, the former Mari Cha IV.

The event was supposed to be an opportunity to meet people from the motorsport world, who were at a similar conference being held at the same time. This would have been interesting, but despite a combined party between the two camps on Wednesday night, there seemed not to be the time. It would have been better to have had an entire day put aside for this integration so that we, the yachting community could go and see the motor sport show, while the motor sport world could come and see the admittedly rather limited displays within the WYRF (although this included an Extreme 40, a Bladerider and Thomas Jundt’s skeletal foiling 18ft skiff). It would have been fascinating to have had an opportunity to share ideas between the two worlds in a more formalised way from marketing to race organisation, to the structure of the sport itself to the technology.

Perhaps it was the calibre of the people attending, but it felt like we should have come away from the forum having made some momentous decisions about our sport to be acted upon. However on reflection this is probably well beyond its remit and it should perhaps stick to being the absolute top opportunity for anyone in our sport to meet one another, to get up to date with present thinking and learn. Those attending could then return to their organisations all the wiser.

The World Yacht Racing Forum is certain to take place next year when we suspect it will be standing room only.

Thedailysail is providing a full transcript from the Forum and this is available for purchase here .

More photos on the following pages...