Mark Lloyd / Extreme Sailing Series

Beginner's luck?

Oman Air skipper Morgan Larson tells of how he has been so quick out of the blocks in the Extreme Sailing Series Muscat

Thursday March 1st 2012, Author: James Boyd, Location: Oman

The consistently surprising result over the first two days of racing at the Extreme Sailing Series in Muscat is that of the new crew on Oman Air. While this Oman Sail boat had three skippers last year - starting with Sidney Gavignet, before moving on to Ben Ainslie and ending up with Chris Draper, so this year Oman Air is back on the 40ft catamaran circuit with a new line-up comprising Americans Morgan Larson and Charlie Ogletree, British multihull sailor Will Howden, Omani bowman Nasser Al Mashari with Max Bulger in the ‘5th man’ position (new for the Extreme Sailing Series this year is that all the boat must carry someone in this position – either a female, an amateur in the eyes of ISAF, or aged under 23).

Despite this being the first ever Extreme Sailing Series event for Larsen and Ogletree, after day one they were tied on points for first place with the veteran French team on Groupe Edmond de Rothschild and put in another consistent day yesterday to end up one point off first after 14 races.

Larson comes with an almighty and diverse CV from being strategist/tactician with three America’s Cup campaigns - AmericaOne, OneWorld and Victory Challenge - to Olympic campaigns in the 49er and 470 (although never making it to the Games), a World Championship and Audi MedCup win on the Quantum Racing TP52 in 2008 and a Rolex Farr 40 Worlds victory with Mascalzone Latino the same year and a 505 World Championship win in 2004.

Larson says that last year he had been attempting to get his own campaign together for the Extreme Sailing Series and had been chasing sponsorship in Europe. He had also been talking to Leigh McMillan about sailing on The Wave, Muscat this season. However it wasn’t until the end of January that the call came through that Oman Air was going to continue to sponsor their Extreme 40 and was looking for a new skipper. The timing was fortuitous because at the time Larsen was competing at Quantum Key West Race Week as was Charlie Ogletree. When he is not sailing professionally, Ogletree is at present not easy to contact as he is off cruising with his wife.

“Charlie was living in Texas, but his wife sold her business after the Games,” explains Larsen. “So they are living on a cat anchored in a cove in the San Blas islands [off Panama]. He had to get her to take him ashore in a dinghy, then he had to hike to the road, taxi for two hours through the jungle to Panama City and then get a flight here. That’s how they are going to do it this year.”

Taking on this commitment, Ogletree was forced to resign his role as skipper of China Team on the America’s Cup World Series. “The title skipper is a little silly – Charlie probably has more weight and responsibility with Oman Air as tactician than he did with China Team as a skipper,” says Larson.

Originally Ogletree and Larsen were part of the Mascalzone Latino America’s Cup challenge for the 34th America’s Cup, but this came to an abrupt end when Team Principal Vincenzo Onorato was forced to pull the plug on the campaign. “There were unfortunate circumstances for Vincenzo, because he is so passionate about it and I know he’ll be back,” says Larson. “I made some efforts with a few other teams and nothing really came together. So this was a great opportunity.”

Until the America’s Cup went two hulled, multihull sailing hadn’t featured in Larson’s lengthy career – despite his clearly enjoying fast boats, including a spell in foiling Moths, competing when the class held its World Championship close to his home at Hood River, Oregon.

Larson’s cat sailing has been helped greatly by Ogletree, the Athens Tornado silver medallist who encouraged Larsen and another former Mascazlone Latino afterguard member, Francesco Bruni, to campaign A-class catamarans, something which Larson says he is keen to continue, only that most of the regattas for this class in Europe this year conflict with Extreme Sailing Series events. Aside from the A-cats and a week standing in for Russell Coutts when Oracle Racing was training aboard their new AC45s in New Zealand last year, this is the extent of Larson’s experience on two hulls.

However clearly a background in 49ers helps; the performance and behaviour of the lightweight Olympic men’s skiff being reasonably similar to multihulls. Larson points to many successful 49er sailors who now hold key roles with AC teams. This includes Luna Rossa’s Paul Campbell-James and Chris Draper – both ex-49er sailors who have also won the Extreme Sailing Series – to Francesco Bruni (also with Luna Rossa) to Nathan Outteridge who recently signed with Team Korea as skipper or Simon Hiscocks with GreenComm. And there is a rumour that Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez, Spanish 49er gold medallists from Athens and silver medallists from Beijing, will also be joining up with Luna Rossa who are shortly to begin two boat training in the Italian team’s two AC45s in Naples in the build-up to the AC World Series event to be staged there next month.

So how come they have got up to speed so quickly in the Extreme 40s? “Probably some of these guys have vendettas from last year and they are attacking each other a little bit and we are the new guys they are letting slip through," says Larson. "It is also a good team, a good boat, well managed. The whole operation is pretty slick from Oman Sail’s side. And it is obviously helpful that we were able to do some practice with the other teams.”

Oman Air got in 10 days of training with the other teams prior to the event here Muscat, although their time on the water was cut short after a collision with Alinghi during training that cost them two days. “But that is life and there’s going to be more of that - I have a lot to learn,” continues Larson. “And I believe when you are new to a boat, it is fresh and exciting and you get a little edge here and there from that. You see that in the Star class a lot – the new Finn or Laser sailors come in and do really well for their first couple of events. Then you start thinking about it and probably do worse! So our goal is to keep it loose and not get too focussed on the tuning and the dynamics of catamaran sailing and just try to race well.”

While he has spent considerable time on big monohulls, be they ACC boats or TP52s, Farr 40s or Melges 32s, as tactician, Larson isn’t known as a big boat driver, although he has spent much time on maxis and has competed in the Transpac on numerous occasions when inevitably helming duties do get handed around. “I am pretty comfortable,” he says of this role.

Going from one to two hulls there are many new lessons to learn and Larson says that during training his more experienced multihull sailing team mates let him make the mistakes. “I know I have made a mistake, but I didn’t know what to do differently. So they’d just talk me through it. We’ve run it that way and it’s been nice, because you need to see the mistakes."

As to specifics he says: “It is tricky when you get into crossover conditions upwind - from it being light enough so that you can unfurl the gennaker while you are going upwind into the bear away and then when it gets windier at some stage you have to get the bear away in first, otherwise you’ll be laid over. On these boats the rudders aren’t the greatest, so there is a time when you are in stall mode.”

Then there is the issue over whether you head up or bear away if you get into difficulty or get hit by a gust – which on multihulls is usually the opposite of monohulls. “For me when you are in trouble and you think you should bear away, you actually head up for more power and get the flow going again [ie upwind] – so there are a few instinctive things that don’t come naturally for me.”

And with the shorthanded crew it is necessary to plan manoeuvres and helm so that it unloads the sails enough for the crew to carry out hoists/drops, etc.

It being reasonably light for the first two days has also probably helped ease the team into the regatta.

The Oman Air team has also done a good job positioning their Extreme 40 on the water, be it on the start line (yesterday at least they seemed to favour pin end starting) and subsequently choosing lanes. These decisions are a combination of Larsen, Ogletree and Will Howden. Larsen says that he has sailed with Ogletree a reasonable amount in the past, particularly on Steve Howe’s Melges 32 Warpath. However they have known each other all the way back to when they were competitors for the 470 spot in the US Olympic team going into the 1992 games. “I’m sure a few of these combinations of helm and tacticians are new to it – Mark Ivey with Ian Williams for example they are both great sailors, but they haven’t done a ton together.”

The Oman Air boat is clearly on the pace as well. Over the winter the boat had a refit and Will Howden and Charlie Morgan spent time getting the sails set up well for any given condition. The general feeling is that there isn’t much to choose in terms of speed between any of the top boats.

So once the America's Cup sailors are dominant - but can they keep it up for the rest of the season?

 

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