Long commute

Currently second at the Laser SB3 Worlds, South African Roger Hudson talks about his Race Ahead campaign

Few would question that the most committed team in the Laser SB3 fleet are South African father and son David and Roger Hudson and their Race Ahead project, who effectively commute up from Cape Town to compete in Europe.

Among a largely UK-based fleet, Race Ahead adds considerable cosmopolitan flavour to what is currently the world’s most popular sportsboat class, including in its two boat squad up-and-coming South African sailors from across a wide range of backgrounds, in a similar way to what we saw to some extent during the last America’s Cup with Team Shosholoza.

Hudson senior is one of South Africa’s most experience sailors having competed in the Barcelona Olympics in the Flying Dutchman, along with numerous world championships. Race Ahead came about when Hudson senior retired from his position as Head of Marketing from the leading South African financial institution Old Mutual, which, quite by coincidence, is the company which bought Skandia in January 2006.

“He is the rock of experience of the whole project,” says Roger of his father. “He had a 35 year business career, which has taken a lot of time up. Now he is retired, he and I are able to put a lot of time and effort into creating this Race Ahead project. Until now I have been sailing with him. I guess a lot of us have the energy to push things forward, but he is the guy who for many decades has been there and done that.”

Race Ahead was formed at the being of 2008. While there are several schools in South Africa that aim to get youngsters from all backgrounds sailing, the most high profile being that of former Team Shosholoza skipper and Olympic sailor, Ian Ainslie, the Race Ahead project differs in being more of an elite academy, a place to where sailors at Ainslie’s school and elsewhere can graduate up.

“The main objectives were to try to get really good results in international events for South African teams and the other was to try to create the situation where we had South Africans of all backgrounds–experienced sailors and less experienced sailors, guys across the spectrum of socio-economic backgrounds - all racing together with talented guys learned from each other and working together,” says Roger.

To achieve this they initially were donated a pair of Melges 24s in Cape Town. They started in the UK meanwhile with one Laser SB3 last year, adding a second this season. “We always try to do a two boat model,” continues Roger. “So we use the Melges to do two boat training and work with young guys who show a lot of talent and the potential to come into this sort of racing and work with them and to see who is ready for it.” They then mix the up and coming talent with more experienced sailors.

This summer Roger has just taken over skippering the Spirit of Cape Town SB3, currently lying second at the Laser SB3 Worlds in Cascais, while his father skippers City of Cape Town. Spirit is being helded by young South African Taariq Jacobs while the crew also features the more familiar figure of Ashton Sampson who sailed with Team Shosholoza and Marlon Jones. Similarly the young star on City of Cape Town is Wandisile Xayimpi, who along with Jones was formerly at Ian Ainslie’s school.

“Basically Ian Ainslie’s school is a fantastic initiative and it has provided the possibility for young guys who are keen on the idea of going racing to learn the skills of sailing and to development,” continues Roger. “What we try to do is to provide another link in the chain to becoming a good international racer. So we try and create the platform for international racing, so that guys like Marlin and Wandi and other young sailors and a few other guys who have been involved can come into racing in these campaigns. Taariq, at 19 years old is in my opinion is one of the premier young helmsman in South Africa. He has great potential.”

So how do they recruit? “I guess to an extent we have known each other for a long time,” explains Roger. “A lot of us have raced each other since we were young or known each other through the sailing community. My father and I became very interested in developing a team like this three or four years ago and we have been watching the young sailors and talking to the guys who have been mentoring them. For example Ian Ainslie mentioned several years ago that Wandi was developing into a fantastic young bowman and he needed an opportunity to do something. And he has been fantastic with us. I like to think that he has grown and enjoyed the experience and it has been good for him. And Marlin is another one. So I sail with the guys and spend time there and watch them sailing.”

His father adds: “There are grass roots scholls all over the place. When the youngsters get keen and good there is nowhere for them to go on it, so what we are trying to do is better enable those projects to develop potential. Some of the club training programs, they are quite different. Ashton [Sampson] came through a rotary program. They all play a really important role. Young people who don’t have the resources to take it further and show their talent and their commitment - our project tries to identify those.”

One would imagine that either Skandia or ideally South African airlines would be perfect backers for the Race Ahead project. While it may sound that all the crew commute between South Africa and Europe for each regatta, in practice half of their 12-strong squad of crew are based in the UK while the rest will come up from South Africa for a month at a time.

“Basically where we are, geographically we are a long way from the racing,” says Roger. “We also have racing there [in South Africa], but there is no doubt that the quality of racing and the level is higher here. It is a challenge to ourselves and it supports the ethos of the program to take on whoever we can in world sailing.”

To date this season Race Ahead has competed in the Warsash Spring Series, the EuroCup event in Brest, which they won and then the Grand Prix events in Seaview and Yarmouth. They then went down to Torquay and sailed the Nationals in Falmouth. “In Falmouth we had a 9th and a 15th out of 70 ,which we were disappointed with – we struggled a little bit with the conditions. But there one boat was decidedly younger with three 19 years olds on board, but they managed to win a race.”

At present the campaign is being funded by the Hudsons and they have supported from Musto and some small investment from two companies based in London but the Hudsons feel that they need to prove their worth some more before they can get major backing to progress Race Ahead further. “Now we have almost finished two seasons of campaigning we have some recognition and some decent results. At some point we’d like to create some funding for the project to take it a bit further possibly in fields such as match racing and other high level sailing,” says Roger.

Plans are afoot to expand further although Roger won’t confirm what form this might take. Dad however is clearly ambition: “It is early days, we are feeling our way into it at the moment, but this is scratching the surface of something that could be really big, whether it is Volvo Ocean Race, Olympic Games or whatever. There is an enormous opportunity where you have this sort of talent, to mix them in with experienced sailors you get really rapid learning. In the Cape Town training we have used ex-AC sailors and ex-Olympic sailors. And we’ll do much more than that.”

At the Worlds, Roger’s Spirit of Cape Town is currently two points off the lead, while Hudson senior’s City of Cape Town has dropped to fourth after picking up a win but then a black flag yesterday.

“It has been quite breezy each day and at times the winds have kicked up during the race, at one point it got up to 25-30 knots. Mostly it has been about 15 knots. There are two different courses here, one is offshore which is a bit less shiftly and the other is more inshore and quite tricky and they have raced us evenly on both,­ two days on each course. It has been really good tactical racing.” On Spirit of Cape Town they are racing with the same crew as they had at Cowes Week only that Ashton Sampson has come across to them his spot on father’s boat filled by Neal Malan. ­

Following the Worlds Roger says the team will mostly return to Cape Town leaving he and his father to compete in the final Grand Prix event of the season as they make their plans for 2010. “There are a couple of things we have our eye on but we need to straight out the arrangements and the possibility of it in the next couple of months.”

Watch this space.