From press release to reality

We talk to the various parties involved with Tracy Edwards' Oryx Cup non-stop round the world race

It is the easiest thing to tell the world that you will be running a major international yacht race but turning your press release into reality is vastly more difficult. Since 14 October last year when Tracy Edwards shocked the sailing community with the announcement of her £38 million deal with the Gulf state of Qatar, there was a period of uneasy silence until 5 April this year when at the Qatar Sports International conference in Doha there was an official signing of a contract with HE Sheikh Jassim Bin Thamer Al Thani, Vice President of the Qatar National Olympic Committee in front of the assembled Qatari and Middle Eastern press corps.

While no news usually means bad news in the case of ambitious brand new yacht races, Edwards says that in the intervening months she was busy working behind the scenes putting together the infrastructure to her two round the world races, contracting former RORC Race Director Alan Green to be Race Director of her events and recruiting other personnel. They now have an office and a press office in Qatar and an office in London is set to follow shortly.

Meanwhile other members of her team have been working hard to secure a sponsorship deal for the boat as funding of the former Maiden II maxi-catamaran no longer seems to be lumped in with her round the world races.

However the intervening months have also seen her Qatari backers hesitate. Edwards' announcement in October was a terminal blow to the remaining prospects of Bruno Peyron rerunning The Race. Less than a week before Peyron had announced that The Race v2 scheduled to run in 2005 was to be postponed due to the poor economy.

Back in June 2003 Olivier de Kersauson told us that he would be making an attempt on the Jules Verne Trophy the following winter, having failed to break it the previous year. Steve Fossett also announced he would be self-funding an attempt on the Jules Verne Trophy as he had been unable to find a commercial partner to back him for The Race. Following Kingfisher II's dismasting on their Jules Verne attempt in February 2003, Offshore Challenges had been unable to find sponsorship to enter their maxi-catamaran in anything. Over in the States the port bow remained broken on Cam Lewis and Larry Rosenfeld's Team Adventure as their case against their Polish insurers wound its way interminably through the Polish courts.

Over the course of the winter Peyron and his lawyer Tom Scichili have been trying to defend their corner. Peyron has been hugely upset having spent 15 years of his life promoting maxi multihulls, enticing many of the top names from the monohull world to try catamaran sailing, co-founding the Jules Verne Trophy, the first person to win it, the only person to have won it twice, creating The Race and conceiving the new G-class, building three of them and bringing, he maintains, around 70 million Euros into the world of multihull sailing over the past eight years. He too was planning races around the world non-stop and with stops in the world's biggest ocean racing multihulls and monohulls in The Race and The Race Tour. While this will all contribute to providing Peyron with a deserved place in the history books as a man who revolutionised our sport it remains to be seen whether it means anything from a legal standpoint.

On 2 April this year Peyron announced he had begun legal proceedings against the companies involved with the organising of Edwards' round the world races. "The Race Event is seeking damages for passing off and use of The Race Event know how in respect of her round the world projects for 2005 and 2006," his statement read. The first hearing took place on 19 February 2004, but the case has been adjourned until September.

More significant for Edwards has been this dispute's repercussions in Qatar where for a time progress stalled with her backers. This now appears to have passed and since the official signing at the beginning of April with Sheikh Jassim the Qataris are fully back on board once again.

With backing for her events secure, Edwards and her team now face a new set of challenges. The big issue is time. The Oryx Cup non-stop around the world race has been postponed by two months and will now set sail on 27 February 2005. This is still just 10 months away - very little time for competitors to arrange funding, prepare their boats and get them to the start line.

When originally announced the Oryx Cup was to have started and finished in Southampton, incorporating the Jules Verne Trophy course from the Ushant-Lizard line. It has since been changed and will start and finish in Qatar. "Listening to people here in Qatar they couldn’t understand why the start and finish was in the UK," Edwards told us on the phone from Doha. "If we are going to do something new and completely different then we have to do it."

She adds that this is better weather-wise, but significantly it offers a whole range of new funding opportunities for the teams. "We know there are deals to be done in the Middle East, Far East and Asia and to open those doors we felt it would be a good idea to have the start and finish here."

A round the world race starting and finishing in Qatar will provide a fresh challenge for those who have raced around the world before. Located on the southwestern side of the Persian Gulf, Qatar is a north-south orientated peninsula to the east of Saudi Arabia, located at 25degN. Boats will have to sail east to get through the Strait of Hormuz, southeast down the Gulf of Oman out into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. The direct route from the Strait of Hormuz takes the boats north of the Maldives, close to the southern tip of India before leaving Cape Leeuwin on the southwestern corner of Australia to port, sailing a lap of the Southern Ocean and hanging a left at the Cape of Good Hope before heading back to Qatar and the finish.

"I don’t know that it is any better or worse," says David Scully who is hoping to find the money to enter Cheyenne in the Oryx Cup. "Instead of dealing with the Atlantic high pressure systems we’ll be dealing with the monsoons. It cuts out a large chunk of Indian Ocean which is a nasty spot and it throws in a chunk of ocean that none of us are terribly experienced with in the South Atlantic."

Both Edwards round the world events will also be ISAF sanctioned and will have an international jury. The length of the race now it starts and finishes in Doha isn't enough to constitute a round the world record course in the eyes of the World Sailing Speed Record Council.

The Shiekh's endorsement has also been important and should encourage local companies to support the event by backing individual boats. "After the signing at the big event [in April] we went to and pictures of the Shiekh were in the papers in Qatar and around the vicinity, all sorts of doors started opening up to her, that had been shut for three or four months while no one knew which way the political winds were blowing," Team Adventure's Larry Rosenfeld says. He and skipper Cam Lewis were the only team representatives to attend the official signing in April. "We built a number of contacts when we were there. We are following up on those as quickly as we can. We’d like to see some major sponsorship come in in the next month because we’d like to get the boat into the repair shop and still have enough time to practise. Going around the world with six weeks practice like we did last time [in The Race] is pretty dodgey. We’re pretty confident that there are good sponsorship opportunities there. There is a lot of money there right now. This is a chance for that region to gain some real exposure in a sporting event they can call their own. That is what Tracy is offering them."

A local firm called Tribe Management, who provided Edwards with the original introduction to the Qataris, is now the conduit through which potential competitors can be introduced to local potential sponsors.

The grand signing in April was followed by a competitors meeting in Qatar last week. Dave Scully believes that this meeting was to demonstrate that the events are definitely full steam ahead. "I think that was the purpose of the meeting and I think it accomplished its objective. Tracy introduced her team. I think the competitors were convinced that she had all the requirements in place to have a good race and that on the organisation side the funding and the support was going to be there."

Sir Robin Knox-Johnson says he attended the meeting out of interest, to see what Tracy is up to and to show some moral support. A long term maxi-cat sailor who with the late Peter Blake co-skippered ENZA New Zealand to a new Jules Verne Trophy record in 1994, Knox-Johnson believes that anything which gets these big machines out there racing is a good thing. He says he has no plans to compete: the only thing he is concentrating on going around soon is the Isle of Wight aboard Suhaili. "I think she [Tracy Edwards] has done an incredible job frankly. It will be very interesting to see what develops from here. I think it will definitely happen, the mere fact that we were all out there indicates that. She has got the organisation for it. Now she just needs to encourage the contestants."

Scully agrees: "You had to be impressed that she has got this far. I don’t know Tracy that well. But she has put together the organisation that she is going to need in Qatar and if she is able to do the same thing with the competitors then she could have a really significant event. She’s still got to pull some rabbits out of hats as far as the competitors’ side goes and time is short, but I think the competitors, myself included, are now firmly behind the event and we will do what we can to support it."

One of the aspects of the race Scully says he finds interesting is the prize money. "It will be the first sailing event where we have see a decent purse. $1 million is $1 million and someone’s going to win it."

Aside from teams being introduced to local sponsors there is also the prospect of them being paid attendance fees, although details of this have yet to be finalised. Time being of the essence Edwards is also talking to shipping companies about the possibility of boats being shipped to Qatar. "It gives the competitors longer to get ready and find the money and cuts out the logistical nightmare of them trying to get to the start," she says.

Maiden II has recently been delivered to Qatar and has since been repainted in her new maroon and white colours of Qatar 2006. Finally the Club Med mermaid has gone...

The presence of a maxi-catamaran in Qatar will help promote the events and Edwards expects the boat to complete some inaugural records in the Indian Ocean. "It is also to have a presence here and to show people what these boats look like," she says. "It will be the first time one has been to the Middle East because you don’t know what these boats look like until you see them." There is also talk that Olivier de Kersauson will take Geronimo to Qatar to carry out some cat v tri exhibition sailing. While de Kersauson didn't attend the recent competitor's meeting, he was represented by Regis Rassouli who told uthedailysail that they will be making an announcement about their involvement in the Qatar events in due course.

Neighbouring Bahrain has a Formula 1 Grand Prix, Dubai have their World Cup horse racing and now Qatar is putting itself on the map as a yacht racing venue, but Edwards says this goes beyond just staging events. "One of our remits from Qatar Sports International is to work with grass roots sailing in Qatar and to work with Regatta and the Qatar Sailing and Rowing Federation, that look after sailing here, to work with them to put together a sailing academy. So with the Qatar Sailing and Rowing Federation, we're planning to run a competition to find two young Qatari sailors who would then sail on Qatar 2006." In addition they hope to get more marinas and marine-related businesses going in Qatar.

The next few months will see Edwards and the competitors working furiously to leap the next hurdle of getting boats to the start line, but if all that has been talked about comes to pass, then she appears to be offering more incentives than any major yacht race we have ever come across, competing teams receiving attendance fees as opposed to having to pay entry fees, being just one example.

"It is going to be an extraordinary production," says Scully. "We have five months to pull together an entire sponsorship package. My boat needs a refit. Cam’s boat doesn’t have a bow on it. But the way it looks at the moment is that she will probably have four boats which is enough to have a race."

While four boats might seem meagre, the prospects for Edward's second event seem to be much better. Formerly known as the Qatar Sports Global Challenge, The Quest, as it is now known, is a race round the world with stops in 2006. The event will again start and finish in Qatar and although stopovers for the event haven't been finalised, Edwards says there is likely to be six or seven of them and they will take in the Far East.

Aside from there being more time to enter and more commercial opportunities in markets like the Far East with The Quest, there is also the prospect of new boats being built for it. Gilles Ollier and his team from Multiplast were in Qatar for the competitors meet touting a design for a new 130ft catamaran - 130ft has been set as the maximum length limit for the multihulls.

Scully believes that for a three year program including racing Cheyenne in the Oryx Cup, having a new Ollier 130 footer build and racing it in the Quest as well as making record attempts in between, the budget would be around $20 million. "Then all the existing boats will be obsolete but available for The Quest and you might even end up with two classes - the new and the old boats," he says. "Everyone is more interested in the stopping event. I wish we had the stopping event before the non-stop event. I think the stopping event could be huge - exotic destinations, faster boats and potentially some new boats. And I don’t think the cost is out of sight."

Meanwhile Bruno Peyron at the conclusion of Geronimo's recent Jules Verne Trophy attempt challenged the owners of all the G-class boats to race him in his new Orange II maxi-catamaran this summer: "One of the lessons that has been learnt from Geronimo's difficult trip is certainly the deep frustration caused by attempting a record attempt in very different weather conditions from her virtual competitors, which clearly does not allow for a fair fight. The only way to eliminate this element of chance is to agree to a direct confrontation and therefore to accept a truly competitive race. I'm thus taking advantage of the finish of the circumnavigation by the latest Giant to throw down the gauntlet to all the G-Class boats, on the date of their choice and on the route they decide on, between 1 June and 15 August in Northern Europe or between 1-30 September in the Mediterranean. I hope that the first to accept this challenge will be one of the two fastest Giants in the world, so that this duel will live up to the high ambitions of these exceptional craft."

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