Ireland the favourite?

Rolex Commodores' Cup sets sail tomorrow

International entries from as far afield as Hong Kong and South Africa have descended on Cowes ready for Sunday’s start of the biennial Rolex Commodores’ Cup.

As usual the event is for teams comprising three boats in different IRC rating bands, the boats ranging from 35-45ft in size. Teams are national with at least 50% of the crew coming from the country they are representing. The Rolex Commodores’ Cup is also strongly Corinthian: only two professional sailors are allowed on the Class 1 boats and just one aboard Class 2 and 3 entries.

This year, the tenth edition of the competition, 10 teams are competing, the largest contingent coming from France, who are fielding four teams; GBR has three teams and Hong Kong, Ireland and, for the first time, South Africa each with one. Whilst the team numbers are down from two years ago, “the top four or five teams are as good as they were last time,” says Eddie Warden Owen, CEO of the Royal Ocean Racing Club.

In terms of the form, Warden Owen thinks the Irish will be ones to watch, as they have certainly been in the past, although they have never won; “they are very competitive, they seem highly focused and they have some very good amateur sailors on board as well as professionals.” The Irish team is led by experienced Rolex Commodores’ Cup skipper Anthony O’Leary and his Ker 39 Antix.

South Africa and Hong Kong also have strong entries, the latter having learned from competing here two years ago, again with the driving force of Jamie McWilliam behind them.

Warden Owen reckons that the dark horses at this event are the British and French teams. “The unknowns for me are the French teams because there are some good individual boats, but how they play out overall, I don’t know.”

Defending champions from 2008 are GBR Red, where the only return entry is former RORC Commodore Peter Rutter, this year skippering Quokka 8, the mid-sized yacht. Rutter’s new vessel is a Grand Soleil 43, a sistership to the most successful yacht at the 2008 event.

Rutter was instrumental in picking his GBR Red team mates in Michael Williamson’s Summit 40 White Heat, as the Class 1 boat and Jim Macgregor’s Elan 410 Premier Flair in Class 3. “We are very much a tight team – we learned that from GBR Red last time. It is going to be an interesting regatta because it looks like there are going to be some very light days and some very heavy days.”

The equivalent to GBR Red among the large French entry is France Yellow, which includes repeat entrants to this event, Philippe Delaporte and his J/122 Pen Azen and Marc Alperovitch and Jerome Huillard’s A-35 Prime Time. They are joined by Bernard Gouy’s Inis Mor - a British designed Ker 39 with an Irish name, points out skipper and owner’s son, Laurent Gouy. While this is Inis Mor’s first Rolex Commodores’ Cup, the Gouys have for the last years been alternating Cowes Week and the Rolex Fastnet Race with Cork Week and the Round Ireland – this year moving on to this event.

Like GBR Red, France Yellow also organised themselves as a team and presented themselves to the RORC’s French equivalent, the Union Course Au Large (UNCL), before Christmas. Inis Mor is one of the most successful IRC boats on the French circuit and usually podiums at the event in which she competes. As to how he thinks they will get on this week Laurent Gouy will not be drawn: “I would not dare to say! It is very complex.”

The other French team that stands out is France Blue featuring Nicolas Loday and Jean Claude Nicoleau’s familiar Codiam, a Grand Soleil 43, but also Marc de Saint Denis and Géry Trentesaux’s First 40 Coup de Coeur, although the wily Trentesaux, a Rolex Commodores’ Cup veteran, who led France Blue to victory in 2006, will not be in Cowes until Friday. The weak link in France Blue could be Samuel Prietz’ X-40 Goa, but only because the boat is still new, having been launched in May.

Making one of the greatest efforts to compete in this year’s event is Philipp Gutsche and his Mark Mills-designed Landmark 43, Windpower, which was shipped up from the southern hemisphere to be the South African team big boat.

“It’s on my bucket list! Why not at my age?!” says Gutsche of why he is here. “We have done very well this year in South Africa in IRC and we won the South African Championship, in May. We have a good crew and a good boat - why not test our mettle against everyone else for the fun of it?”

“As a team I hope we will do very well. We’ll be starting off as the weakest of the three boats. Cowes and the Solent are not easy, especially for foreigners.” Gutsche had never sailed here before he competed at this year’s Cowes Week. “It has been great fun. We are looking forward to it.”

The racing format over the next week remains the same as it was in 2008, with a mixture of inshore races in the Solent plus a 24-36 hour long offshore race starting on Tuesday and a race around the Isle of Wight on Friday. The event culminates in a double points scoring inshore race on Saturday.

Conditions this week are expected to be particularly difficult, with light winds on some days, combined with some of the most powerful tides of the year. For example, today (Saturday) the famous Brambles Bank cricket match took place; the one-day each year the tide is so low as to expose the sand bank in the middle of the Solent. As Simon Shaw, skipper of the GBR Red big boat White Heat points out: “I have never seen so much tide – we’ve seen 4 knots!” Conditions for the first few days of the regatta look set to have the wind from north, typically an awkward wind direction in the Solent, and around 7-14 knots. “There is discrepancy about how windy. Some people think on Tuesday there is going to be a load more breeze. I’m not so sure. Expect it to be from the north, fickle and swingy,” predicts Shaw.

The line-up

In their preparations for this year's Rolex Commodores' Cup, RORC has to rejig the three rating bands (lowering the big boat minimum rating) due to the proliferation of competitive 40 footers.

Designer Mark Mills' boats are in the majority including the limited production boats the King/Summit 40 and the Dubai-built Landmark 43. J Boats, Beneteaus and Archambaults ae popular in the French teams. The only design we haven't come across before is Gaia, a JND35, supposed to be a racing version of the A-35. 

As mentioned above a limited number of professional sailors are allowed to sail on board each boat and dotted around the fleet are America's Cup sailors such as Team Shosholoza's Mark Sadler and Andy Beadsworth, Volvo Ocean Race/AC/Barcelona World Race legend Andrew Cape is on Windpower, while Peter O'Leary (son of owner Anthony) is on Antics having hightailed it down from Weymouth having (against expectations) won the Star class at Skandia Sail for Gold. Also down from Weymouth is British 470 sailor Ben Saxton racing on Jim Macgregor's Premier Flair.