Cork Reports

From the winning 1720 Babbelaas Bach; Farr 40s; designer Mark Mills on Thunder's win; the Laser SB3s

Ford Cork Week - excellent hospitality, a fine venue, but this year there were a few gripes which emerged. The fleet as usual was divided between marinas, but in the interests presumably of saving money the organisers had failed to lay on a water taxi between the two and only half the fleet ended up enjoying the famous Cork post-race pontification at the beer tents.

Another comment madfor sailing received was that the turnaround between some of the races took too long. "I thought they could have turned the races around a bit quicker for us, seeing as we are the high performance racing class. There seemed to be a lot of delay - we seemed to be sailing more between races than during the races which was the only bad thing I think. But I really enjoyed it. Everything else was really organised, it was all safe, no violence," one crewman told us.

However there was considerable joy on one 1720 - John Riccards' Babbelaas Bach.She was not only IRM/Sportboat Boat of the Week but also won the generous prize offered by Peter Harrison's GBR Challenge of sending two of their amateur crewmen to New Zealand to watch one of the first two Round Robins of the Louis Vuitton Cup. Taking up the prize will be the owner's son, the team's 13 year old bowman, Owen Rickards, and trimmer, Andrew Price.

Babbelaas Bach was first in the 1720 class by a comfortable margin - with 28 points ahead of Michel Riley's Le Bouchon on 56. There were accusations that this was the North Sails works team, trying to make an impression on the class, but Nigel Young, Manager of North's One Design division in the UK and who was doing mainsheet on board denies this. "It's funny. We just sail with our customers. In our Melges, sometimes, we might have three people from the loft on board, but normally the maximum we'll ever sail with is two and in my mind that doesn’t qualify as a 'works team'. I mean we had the owner's son on board, a plasterer and an insurance salesman. That hardly qualifies as a pro team!"

Babbelaas Bach was steered by ex-Hyde man Rob Larke, who joined North in December, and is now responsible for the 1720, J24 and a couple of dinghy classes. Aside from Larke and Young the crew comprised Andy Price doing the jib, Neal Baker on halyards and Owen Riccards, on the bow.

"We didn't have brand new sails or anything like that," commented Young. "We had our standard sails which have done about three regattas. But we just sailed a very steady series - it was light, there was just no wind. I think we had two races only where the whole crew sat on the side of the boat, and the rest of the time we had people to leeward and it was very very shifty. I'm bound to say this, but we had great boat speed which made it easy for us, but Rob Larke is an inland sailor and that's where he learned his sailing and he is very comfortable in light and shifty conditions. He's sailed all sorts, he started in Cadets, and then he went right through and he's only just made the move to keelboats in the last couple of years. He's done two or three regattas on the helm of a 1720, and he's obviously got a bit of talent.

On their tactics Young continued: "We weren't really worried whether we won races or not. We just wanted to be as conservative as we could and just keep slotting the results in. It was such a light series that race wins weren't really going to help you. You just had to be top 7 top 8 and then everything was going to be okay. Our worst result was a 7th on the second to last day when we were deliberately being cautious because we were so far in front at that point that we didn't want to risk anything and so we sailed up the middle of the track and that obviously you doesn't get you a decent result. We got a third and a seventh on the second to last day, so 10 points wasn't so bad!

"The boat was well prepared. The underneath was really nice. It was absolutely smooth as you like. But one of the main reasons was that Rob was really happy in light conditions. The crew had no really expectations, so we just sailed how we would normally sail and there was no great pressure on us, we just wanted to get a good result and made the sails look good, but we did a bit more than that."

And boat speed they definitely had. "We had one race, I think on the second day, where we were over the line at the start and were dead last at the top mark and finished second," continued Young. "It was shifty, but nothing went wrong for us. it was one of those regattas where even when that happened to us we managed to wriggle out of it. But you can't do that unless boat's is going quick. Every time we came across someone going upwind - I don't think we ever got passed by anyone going in a straight."

So - a talented helm, presumably more than reasonable sails and a shiny bottom. Nothing new there.

See other accounts on the following pages...