Next up from Qatar

Tracy Edwards brings us up to date with Quest Qatar, her race around the world with stops in 2007

At present Tony Bullimore's Daedalus is making painfully slow progress as she attempts to get up to the Straits of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf in order to reach Doha and the finish line of the Oryx Quest still some 400 miles away.

With just four entries, the Oryx Quest was thin on boats, but at least passed the competition test by having no obvious winner prior to the start. The greatest set-back the race saw was Geronimo's retirement, because many believe three hulls to be the faster configuration for this particular course, which is effectively won or lost in the prolonged light and/or upwind conditions of the Indian Ocean. Several of the Doha 2006 crew suspected that their catamaran would have been ahead coming out of the Southern Ocean, but had Geronimo had not suffered structural problems the French tri would have caught them up approaching the finish. Such a catamaran versus trimaran race would have been one worth watching.



Instead Daedalus is likely to finish in Doha around 11-12 days after Brian Thompson's team and this might seem like a big separation until one remembers The Race in 2001, the last occasion these two boats lined up, when they finished their respective non-stop round the world laps 42 days apart!

For the Doha 2006 crew once Cheyenne had dismasted the competition disappeared turning their race into a delivery. Then the Indian Ocean served up a light wind finish that the seasoned multihull sailors used to reeling off regular 500, at the very least 400, mile days found hard to tolerate. Having either good wind or good competition would have been fine. Having neither was exasperating. Tomorrow we will look at the possibility of creating more competition in the G-Class.

Media-wise in the West the perception of the Oryx Quest as a competition has been lacklustre. There was little to write about once Cheyenne had retired. However this has been far from the case in the Middle East where the race is being viewed with perhaps the same awe as the first Whitbread was to European eyes back in 1973. Al-Jeezira Sport and Qatar television for example were broadcasting weekly programs and daily updates on the Oryx Quest, which is more than can be said of domestic broadcasters for the 1973 Whitbread.

"The focus for Qatar has been east - Middle East, Far East and Asia," says Tracy Edwards. "Any press in the UK and France we’ve had to pay for ourselves which has been a bit of an uphill struggle but looking at the next event they [Qatar] really do understand that these boats come from there [the West] and the sponsors are there and we need to spend a lot more assisting the PR in Europe and America. And they have agreed to this".

Because of the local success of the Oryx Quest Tracy Edwards says that Qatar have confirmed her Quest Qatar round the world race with stops in 2007 will indeed go ahead. She adds that following a steep learning curve in the Oryx Quest the logistics surrounding the next event will be much improved and the bureaucracy within Qatar will have benefitted from their running of the giant Asian Games in the interim.

Quest Qatar is now scheduled to start mid-September 2007 and wonders if this isn't too soon to allow new boats to be built. At present Edwards says she is finalising the route. This is likely to take in Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, San Francisco, New York, Brest (France - homeport for Olivier de Kersauson) and Cape Town before returning to Doha. Within this route are three potential major passage records (Trans-Pacific, San Francisco-New York, and New York-Lizard).

The present thinking is that Quest Qatar will be divided into two classes - monohull and multihulls with a minimum length limit of 90-100ft. Whether this is smart considering that a Volvo Open 70 now holds the outright monohull 24 hour remains to be seen. Perhaps proof of being able to sail a 500 mile day would be a better way of deciding upon entries. Another decision yet to be made is over whether the boats will sail the same course just starting at different times or if the multihulls will sail a longer course.

In terms of entries Tracy Edwards says that so far she has had eight enquires for those looking to enter multihulls and another eight for those with monohulls.



While the multihull line-up includes the four boats in the Oryx Quest and one "from a well known monohull skipper/owner", there is one particularly promising development. In Qatar Edwards' line into the government is through the Qatar Marine Sports Federation, who's President is Sheik Hassan bin Jabor Al Thani (above). Sheik Hassan is known in his own right as a driver for the Lamborghini Formula 1 Offshore Powerboat team, but has since retired from this and is now looking to get a new G-Class multihull built to sail in the Quest Qatar under the name Team Qatar with Brian Thompson as skipper. There are obvious parallels between Sheik Hassan's past and future watersports activities - they both involve catamarans.

Talk is of the new Team Qatar boat being a 130ft catamaran designed and built by Gilles Ollier & Associates who to date have designed four of the seven of the new generation G-Class maxi-multihulls and have built all but one.

Tomorrow we get Gilles Ollier and designer Franck Martin's view of the future of G-Class...