Rolex Farr 40 Diary

Nerone a popular winner, Andy Nicholson reports on the final stages of the Worlds

The prize giving on Saturday evening outside the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda installed Nerone as the worthy winner of the event and judging by the reaction of the assembled masses, a popular winner too.

Farr 40 racing can be brutal, with such a close and competitive fleet and no discards, everyone had a bad race or two. But such was Nerone’s grip on the event that they posted their worst result in the last race, a conservative and nervous 20th to take the World title. Every boat can have it’s day in this fleet, but Nerone got the right results day after tough day.

Michael Illbruck’s Nela quickly improved and jumped through to second overall, scoring the same amount of points for the last five races as for the first one of the series. Nela’s crew did a good job of getting the German boat up to pace after looking pretty average on the first day of racing in the windy weather.

On Bambaku we had our shocking race on Friday. With the strong northerly looking to increase the committee took us round the corner and into the bay. In cramped conditions the 37 boats got to the windward mark pretty much nose to tail, although many had underestimated the current that was running through the cut and so the starboard layline was a busy place. We ended up in a four way sandwich with Katanga, Groovederci, and another we couldn’t see. We ended up with 26 points for that race and Barking Mad had moved into a strong looking second place.

On the final day we got ourselves a dreaded OCS. After going back we had caught up with the main pack by the first bottom mark and a took a few places on the beat, the final run we stormed down and got back up to finish 17th. Barking Mad was having a worse day, but Nela had slipped away and we now came under pressure from Alinghi for third overall. We kept it together and hit the left hand side and rounded in second spot and finished in 6th, Alinghi scored their worse result of 24th, so we got third overall. Owner John Coumantaros had done an excellent job steering in the difficult windy conditions and was extremely pleased with his best ever result in the class.

One thing that is becoming noticeable is just how good the owners are now getting at steering. The fleet represents a pretty intensive sailing school and with some of the world's best sailors coaching the owners around the track, the helmsmen are really showing that they can handle the pressure. What also amazes me is just how hard they concentrate, a skill most of them have as top businessman.

A few little class issues were ironed out in Sardinia. One of the strangest is to stick with original spec running rigging. Many boats had to switch out PBO halyards for the normal spec, even though most of the fleet were now carrying carbon 3DL sails.

The future of the class is in no doubt after this spectacular World Championship. With the worlds next year in San Francisco it will be interesting to see what happens to the Mediterranean fleet. The major players will probably all decamp to the US for next season, with Key West and Miami’s SORC early on in the year before shipping the boats over to the west coast.

Most of the professional sailors will continue to see the Farr 40 class as an important place to be seen and an excellent networking opportunity with several America’s Cup syndicates, or their representatives knocking about. For the amateur sailors, it’s back to the real world, happy in the knowledge that at some point during the racing they were ahead of Russell Coutts!