Most generous man in yachting

Thedailysail gets a progress report from sponsor-extraordinaire Andrew Pindar

Andrew Pindar, Chairman of the Scarborough-based 'print to internet' company that bears his family name and is the long term sponsor of Emma Richards, is without question one of the most generous supporters of our sport, certainly within the UK, perhaps globally.

While sponsoring Emma Richards' entry in Around Alone, his goodwill in that race reached new heights when the late Simone Bianchetti dismasted during the second leg and Pindar scrambled his company's trawler, the Hatherleigh, to deliver a replacement spar from France to Portugal. Pindar's reputation subsequently went off the dial when later in Around Alone he helped Open 40 sailor Derek Hatfield get back in the race after he was rolled and dismasted rounding Cape Horn.

It is hard to pin down whether Pindar's generosity stems from pure philanthrophy, as someone emotionally wrapped up in our sport, and especially in the individuals involved with it, or whether he is simply a canny businessman. Fortunately these two standpoints are not mutually exclusive and knowing him slightly we suspect Pindar to be both philanthropist and shrewd businessman.

Over the last year, Pindar's involvement with sailing has increased dramatically. From supporting Richards in her occasional ocean racing pursuits such as the Transat AG2R and the Transat Jacques Vabre, they chartered an Open 60 for her to race in Around Alone and have since pulled out the big money to buy a state of the art Open 60, the present Pindar. After an embarrassingly short Transat Jacques Vabre in 2003, Emma Richards' boyfriend Mike Sanderson sailed the Open 60 to an impressive second place in this year's Transat, Richards having publicly retired from solo sailing after Around Alone.

Since Around Alone Emma Richards and boyfriend Mike Sanderson have been busy trying to secure sponsorship for a Volvo Ocean Race campaign, the necessary funds required being substantially beyond the means of Pindar alone. However these plans came to an abrupt halt recently when Sanderson was named skipper of the ABN AMRO Volvo Ocean Race campaign.

"We were looking for combinations of Mike and Emma getting themselves involved in a Volvo program, because both of them had the determined ambition to do that," says Pindar. Richards had sailed part of the last Volvo Ocean Race as a helm on board Amer Sports Too. "With Mike going to AMN, which is a very natural place for him to be, it doesn't really give much chance for Emma to be involved in that program in a hands-on way. And there is potential for a conflict if she’s involved in another program."

Instead Richards is returning to her Open 60 campaign, competing in fully crewed events on the IMOCA circuit, with the core of the AMN AMBRO crew including Sanderson, a program that will culminate in the 2005 two handed Transat Jacques Vabre, with a crew that has yet to be announced (Sanderson, the obvious choice, will be mid-Volvo Ocean Race at the time). "So Emma is fluttering her eyelids at muscular talented sailors at the moment," quips Pindar.

The boat will not be competing in the Vendee Globe - plans were afoot for Bernard Stamm to take her, but these were scuppered after Owen/Clarke, the boat's designers, deemed it necessary to replace her keel.

"Mike has been thrilled and excited by learning about the IMOCA circuit, and my prediction is that there will be a new wave of southern hemisphere sailors coming into that class as it continues to grow and prosper and develop," continues Pindar. "And the conceptual similarities, at least on first appearance, between an Open 60 and a Volvo 70 mean that as you look at developments of both sets of boats over the foreseeable future there is a lot of cross learning potential for them both. The work that Mike and Emma have been doing on our 60, has been in no small part with a eye to what one could do to optimise the performance of a swing keel 70."

Pindar for example has no roller furling headsails and has a boom and vang more typical of a Volvo 70 than an Open 60 (see Mike Sanderson' explanation of it here).

Meanwhile this year Emma Richards has been busy writing her account of Around Alone, a book that will be available for the first time at Southampton Boat Show this Friday. Her sailing this year has been limited and Pindar thinks she finds this frustrating. "I think her enthusiasm is more channelled. I think she is determined to win team races or doublehanded. We all know her lack of desire to do singlehanded. She is frustrated by the fact that she has been writing books and then doing corporate stuff when in fact what she’d like to be doing is racing. In spite of the fact that it was a singlehanded race, she found it very difficult to see her boat and boyfriend going off from Plymouth [in The Transat]."

On the positive side thanks to her association with Sanderson and the Kiwi shore team she now surrounds herself with, Richards has by her own admission spent a year learning more than she has ever learned before about her sport. "There are different ways of doing things," says Pindar. "Equally you speak to Mike he will tell you how much he has learned from Emma and from other shorthanded sailors, techniques and ways of doing things that are energy saving or that are just downright sensible."

Pindar's association with Hannah Mills came about initially through the HSBC Education Program, which Emma Richards had become involved with following Graham Dalton's retirement from Around Alone. Mills went sailing on the Open 60 and within minutes it became apparent how much of a nature sailor she was. "She just treated the Open 60 like a big dinghy and it was just a delight to watch," says Pindar. "So that was an easy call to make. We were thrilled to be able to get our name associated with Hannah and her amazing raw talent."

Pindar's involvement with Mills has been extensive. They bought her a new 420 so that she could concentrate more on training rather than towing boats between regattas. In addition she receives an annual five figure sum that can be spent on her training according to how Mills and her parents see fit.

The deal with Mills is a special one, probably the best available for anyone of her age, from one of the most understanding of sponsors. "What we didn't want to do was put something in that made her feel compelled to something that she might then feel like she’s been bullied into," says Pindar. "I think we tried to do this with a very light touch. We didn’t want to get one of those tennis freaks, grabbed when they are three years old and a zombie by the time they’re 21 who then get put off their sport."

Aside from the HSBC link, the connection to Mills also came through Liz Rushell who advises Pindar on sponsorship matters as well as her husband Mark, who's coaching time also forms part of Pindar's amazing sponsorship deal of Mills.

Pindar observes that compared to the Open 60 budget they could afford the sponsorship Mills receives many times over - an interesting conundrum from any potential sponsors getting into the sport. "At what stage do you say you need to be in big boats that are fantastic billboards that get big press versus the excitement of seeing a wider audience of people prospering? It is the perennial issue that people face, when they move beyond just seeing it as a money proposition to getting it a bit under the skin."

The Pindar Sailing Scholarship came about as an idea conceived by Andrew Pindar. "We thought - let's see what we can do to get our own development program going. We were looking at the ages of people, at what stage do people want to do something different with their life? For example - Emma is fully into being a professional sailor today, but whether she will want to do that in three years time? My suspicion is that no matter what happens with her in terms of families and so on, her stated intent is that she wants to be a professional sailor forever. If she were to have children, that wouldn’t stop her wanting to be a professional sailor.

"So we were looking at what we are doing and we have got Emma who at the time was into her 30th year and we had Hannah when she was 15 and we thought 'hang on, there is a gap here - shouldn’t we be looking to put someone in the middle?' We don't know if Hannah will want to do big boat stuff or hang around with sailing and if Emma wanted to take time out for whatever reason wouldn’t it be good to have had a development program going on where we could start to bring people through."

The Pindar Sailing Scholarship was announced at London Boat Show this year and from their initial applications 24 were chosen to do the first tests. These were narrowed down to 12 and to a final three from which Sophie Luther became the 'chosen one'.

Pindar says there was nothing pre-defined that the winner would have to be female or indeed even someone with the desire to sail singlehanded. Personally he says he believed a male would win it - he was not part of the final choice - although he says he is pleased Sophie won it. "There is a dream I have about getting a team of women so well trained that they beat the cocky guys, but that would involve a determined program with the belief that they were going to put in the hard yards. People like Ellen have earned the right. I think women need to be there earning it for themselves, head to head with the guys."

The Scholarship lasts for three years during which time Luther receives a salary and Pindar pay for her to become as trained and qualified as she can possibly be over that period. "She is doing more sailing at the moment than anyone in this country," says Pindar. "She is on the water day after day after day with fantastic people on different boats. A lot of people have been very supportive. Andy Hindley was very supportive of getting her involved with the Volvo Baltic Race, she did Cork Week, Liz Rushell introduced her to a boat for that. Then she did Rolex Commodores’ Cup and she was on Team Tonic at Cowes. She's just on the water all the time and all the reports are that she’s doing really well."

While RYA boss Rod Carr helped with the initial selection, Luther's development is being managed by the RYA's Dave Atkinson, the man in charge of their keelboat program, who has worked with Luther to set up her 'learning objectives' and to be her independent mentor. "We are doing it in a professional way saying ‘what are we seeking to achieve here? What does she need to do well?’ So, for example, she doesn’t have a Yachtmaster and we are working with UKSA for her to go through their program.

"So our commitment is to give her every training and development opportunity and if that then causes her to be a Figaro sailor or an Open 60 sailor or if she wanted to do team racing only, it will be her determination as to what suits her as a chosen career path."

Pindar has yet to formalise this fully but he is keen on running the Scholarship again holding it regularly perhaps once every two or three years. He imagines it being a little like the youth training program run by Kit Hobday and the Bear of Britain team.

Now parked up in Gosport, is the latest Pindar toy - Derek Hatfield's Open 40, Spirit of Canada - which Pindar recently acquired. "The Open 60 is such a powerful beast," recounts Pindar as to why this came about. "Emma described moving from Aqua Quorum to Gartmore as being like going to a boat double its size in terms of its power. And compared to Gartmore our Open 60 and Mike Golding's boat, Bonduelle and Sill, these boats are all around 20% more powerful than the previous boats. Looking at the Transat, that pretty much described how it went. As Mike says, you are kidding [a boat] 60ft long that it is nearer 80.

"So Derek was wanting to sell the Open 40 because he is building an Open 60, so I thought 'if we can get a good price on an Open 40, that will enable us to get any development squad on to what is effectively Mini-Me: a baby Open 60, with a swing keel and so on'. Isn't that a better way to get people to see what it is like having a swing keel on a boat, than it is to go straight onto a £1.5 million Open 60? It also means we can take more staff and more guests out and we don't have to always take out the 60 if it’s not appropriate or the conditions are wrong."

If Hannah or Sophie want to use the boat in a certain race they can. The greatest opportunity for the boat is as a potential monohull winner in the Royal Western YC's transatlantic race next year. However there is also another possible future for the boat involving yet another female British sailor Lia Ditton.

"Lia has some interesting ideas," says Pindar. "She is an artist and her original idea was to sail it from Cape Town, painting hieroglyphs as she sailed to Europe and then sell the boat as a piece of art. It is a different angle. You can keep on selling the same old story of bright young spark, goes in and does the Figaro, gets an Open 60, etc. With the fact that we are in the graphics business, it fits well. But we have yet to fully map out how that is going to work and if the worst came to the worst, the Open 40 would be a nice boat for me!"

Working with Robin Grey, the Pindar team's business manager and interface between company and sailing team, Ditton was responsible for shipping the boat from the east coast of the US to Liverpool and from there taking it to Portsmouth. "We have been so busy acquiring it, that we have yet to determine if there is something there between Lia and ourselves. I hope something will pan out and I have got some pretty good ideas," says Pindar.

Aside from the prospects of the 2005 Transat or the water-borne piece of art, there is the rapidly emerging Open 40 class into which the new boat would fit.

Returning to our initial point about whether Pindar is philanthropist or businessman, he jokes about their sailing budget representing about 200% of their marketing budget. This last year including the purchase of the boat, the new rig, etc will have cost Pindar in the order of £1.4-1.5 million, although the budget for the sailing team he says is normally in the £500,000 to £1 million range depending upon what events are on. Key to the success of their sponsorships has not only been the corporate hospitality aspect, but the PR exploitation behind particularly Emma Richards' adventures which they have managed through Henry Chappell's London-based firm, Pitch PR. Pindar justifies their sponsorship spend on the basis that to get the same return through conventional means would require a spend several time that of the sailing team budget. At present this represents 0.5-1% of the Pindar Group's turnover.

Aside from the money they put in, the team also received around £300,000 from sub-sponsors this year, a figure Pindar hopes will increase, not to reduce their contributions but to put more development money into the pot.

This week Pindar has had some good news on the financial front. The £500,000 he loaned Tracy Edwards to buy Club Med (subsequently renamed Maiden II and now Qatar 2005) looks set to be on its way back to him. Originally this had been an eight week bridging loan as Edwards awaited sponsorship from mega on-line travel agency My Travel that never materialised. Only now following the threat of legal action is the money forthcoming - some two and a half years down the line.