The new Captain Haddock

Pindar extend their contract with shorthanded sailor Emma Richards.

Emma Richards is one lucky girl. Last week her sponsor Andrew Pindar, boss of the Scarborough-based print and multimedia company of his name, rocked into Tauranga and after a meeting agreed to extend Richards' sponsorship for another three years.

"We've never had a written agreement," says Richards. "Our sponsorship has always been on a handshake. It's great to have that kind of trust." The deal is very informal and is not a case of the present deal coming to an end and being renewed. "It's more looking at the three years going on from here," she says.

The arrangement between Richards and Pindar is unusual. Rather than having her own company Richards is a Pindar employee, complete with pension and company car "which is useful for the month every year I'm in the UK!" she quips.

Andrew Pindar is clearly over the moon about how well the sponsorship is going. "I think Emma is one of the most able sailors in the world. So that is a bit of a plus!" he told The Daily Sail. "Then there are other things - besides sailing well her philosophies and her attitudes are what we wish to aspire to in our business - so it is great to have an alignment of interests. We keep on stretching forward as a company and she keeps on stretching forward with her sailing career. We never quite know where we are going to go and she doesn't know where she is going to go because the further in the future you look the more blurred it becomes.

"She trains hard and she searches to learn all the time from some fantastic people around the world who know how to get boat speed or know how to design boats - whatever it might be. She has a thirst for knowledge and I think that is so important in people to want to keep on learning and developing."

Aside from their commercial printing business Pindar also sell software that is used by leading brands such as Eddie Bauer, Littlewoods, Freemans and Club Med. Closer to home it is also used in the US by the world's biggest chandlers - West Marine. "We're doing this with a motive of doing more business, so it's not some kind of philanthropy. If that were the case, I'd rather pay myself more money! I can assure you that with the cost of sponsoring sailing you can't think of the luxury of rewarding yourself in the short term."

Pindar turn over £100 million per year and employ 1,200 people around the world, but Andrew Pindar recognises they are not the biggest company in the world and their ability to sponsor Richards is far from limitless. "We want to do the best at what we do but can we afford that what she might want to do."

The raison d'etre of the sponsorship is to get the Pindar brand name about - to reinforce it to existing clients of theirs and to bring it to the attention of potential clients. "We're really keen to make sure that the world is aware of us. So we just need to keep on pumping out the name. My grandfather had a saying: "he who whispers down a well, about the goods he has to sell, will never make as many dollars, as he who stands aloft and hollas.""

Richards in conjunction with media guru Henry Chappell of Pitch PR have done well to exploit the sponsorship. "Emma was out on BBC World to 240 million people nine days ago," says Pindar. Then there was the BBC's Faking It programme turning Weymouth ferry hostess Lucy Craig into a yachtswoman as well as considerable coverage in the written press.

Pindar believes that Emma Richards is now up there with Ellen in terms of media coverage, which can only be a good thing to expand the public's perception of sailing. "It is not a limited slice of pie. You don't look at a Formula One driver and think there should only be one Formula One driver. Michael Schmacher may be the best, but people want to hear about the people who are attacking him and who are going to improve and learn and get better cars and come past him. Sports media and marketing is not about one player in the game - it would be a very lonely and hollow world if that were the case. The great thing in all sports, but especially in sailing is that each sailors knows and respects that which each has to go through to be able to achieve what they're doing."

Pindar says Richards is now becoming hot property in sports marketing terms and the phone is hot to Pitch PR with requests for product endorsements. The most serious - and equally the most amusing - is that Richards is said to be doing some work with Bird's Eye, well known for their popular student fare - fish fingers. For years the company have been using a bearded old sea dog Captain Haddock figure in their commercials - now they are considering his antithesis - Emma Richards.

"It's not surprisingly with all the media coverage she's had and bar my wife I think she is the prettiest woman I know, Emma characterises so many aspects of what people want to see in a media commerical sense," says Pindar.

So, like Ellen, Richards is reaching a stage where she can start to rub shoulders with other top figures from the sports world in being able to earn a reasonable cust from their day job - something which in The Daily Sail's opinion there is not nearly enough of yet in yachting.


At present Richards is currently half way through Around Alone, sailing Josh Hall's Open 60 formerly known as Gartmore.

Richards gives off mixed vibes about Around Alone. It was her choice to take part in the race. She likes the competition, but has discovered that she doesn't much enjoy the solitude of very long singlehanded events. Thus the Vendee Globe doesn't feature in her three year plan. What she does enjoy is two handed events - which is how she got into short-handed sailing - and one gets the impression her ideal offshore race is the Transat Jacques Vabre, bi-annual double handed race.

The Jacques Vabre and the OSTAR in 2004 are the only events she will commit to at present in her three year programme with Pindar. She says she would really like to sail in a crew again, be it as part of another Jules Verne campaign or in the Volvo Ocean Race. Campaigning a Figaro is another option.

Andrew Pindar says that they would really like to do a Volvo Ocean Race project - the problem is cost. "We're really excited by what Glenn Bourke and Andy Hindley are presenting to make it more affordable, but the cost of it is beyond our pocket. We would put a campaign together if people wanted to come in with us for the next Volvo. That would be great timing for us. Emma is heading for her pinnacle now and other people might want to put money into that. But we couldnt do it by outselves - abundantly we can't afford it. The marketing return we couldn't justify."

As part of the three year deal Pindar have agreed to go ahead and get Richards a new boat - a plan which was hatched two years ago, but went on the back burner when Richards decided that she wanted to go trimaran racing instead. "We'll be looking at either buying a second handed boat or building new," comments Richards about their plans.

Below: Emma Richards with Andrew Pindar



Remarkably Richards' ideal boat already exists in the form of Graham Dalton's Hexagon, the lines of which were originally designed for her. Dalton is considering selling Hexagon at the end of Around Alone and that choice would seem to be the most straightforward solution, although the Pindar team have also been seriously looking at building new - possibly in New Zealand, a country that Richards is clearly taken with following her month in Tauranga.

"It's been the perfect stopover," she told The Daily Sail prior to the start of leg four. With her shorecrew led by Josh Hall and Robin Grey left in charge, Richards has been able to take some time off this stopover and has spent a few days away in the Coromandel Peninsula as well as developing an obsessive passion for flying - she is now on her way to her pilot's license and is threating to return here to complete it once Around Alone is over.

The airport is spitting distance from where the boats were based at Tauranga Marina and most people involved with the race who were there for a month or so either went up in a plane or a glider, during their stay here. Star of the show obviously was Tommy Hilfiger Freedom America skipper Brad van Liew, a professional pilot by trade, whose claims to fame include having taught Tom Cruise how to fly and 'Escape From New York' star Kurt Russell how to do aerial stunts. Ironically van Liew after one particularly low fly-by of the fleet in a glider ran out of wind and had to touch down in a field.

Leg four of Around Alone takes the boats back into the Southern Ocean, a prospect that again Richards seems to have mixed feelings about, liking the challenge of racing through one of the greatest oceans of the world versus the prospects of ice and severe conditions. Fortunately she sailed this leg almost exactly a year ago as one of the helmswomen on board Amer Sports Too in the Volvo Ocean Race. She openly admits that she wouldn't have done Around Alone had she not had the experience with Lisa McDonald's team.

With the best part of a month to get the boat ready, Richards told The Daily Sail that Pindar is now readier than she has ever been. The luff to leech split below the third reef in the mainsail that destroyed her chances of a podium place on the last leg have now been repaired by North Sails up in Auckland, and the sail, new for the start of the race, should be stronger than it ever was. The rest of her sails are in good shape.

At a time when sponsorship seems to be hard than ever to come by Pindar's continued involvement with Richards is a welcome buck to the trend. "The whole thing is quite exciting and volatile at the moment," acknowledges Andrew Pindar. "The wave's coming and we're on it."

To read more about Emma Richards - see the Pindar website