The voyage of old men and young girls

We preview this year's Faraday Mill OSTAR

The field:

Monohull	Nat	Age	Boat	LOA	Type	Comment
Steve White	GBR	32	OLYMPIAN CHALLENGER	50	Martin Open 50	Young Vendee potential on classic ex Mike Plant/Josh Hall boat
Philip Rubright	USA	65	ECHO ZULU	45	One-off	Stalwart 66 year old OSTAR competitor
Yves Lepine	CAN	62	ATLANTIX EXPRESS	45	Open 45	Long term Quebec-St Malo competitor
Michel Jaheny	FRA		CHIVAS III	43	One-off	96 and 2000 competitor. Built Pen Duick III, IV, V and VI
Tony Waldeck	GBR	64	ADRIENNE MAY	43	Malo 42	Cruising sailor with 40,000 miles under his belt
Mervyn E.H Wheatley	GBR	61	TAMARIND	42	Formosa 42	Ex-Clipper skipper, Round Britain and 2000 OSTAR competitor
Michel Kleinjans	BEL	40	ROARING FORTY	40	Open 40	Ex Mini and Figaro sailor and ex holder of Round Britain record
Pieter Adriaans	NLD	49	ROBOSAIL	40	Open 40	Filled with adaptive learning system gadgetry
Pierre Yves Chatelin	FRA	50	DESTINATION CALAIS	40	Jumbo Open 40	New breed of Open 40
Jacques George Dewez	FRA	78	BLUE SHADOW	40	CJNP 12	Former owner of Gordano Goose tri, long term OSTAR entrant
Michael Howell Harry	GBR	55	KRISTINE II	40	Freedom 40	Former professional sailor
Patrice Carpentier	FRA	55	VM MATERIAUX	40	Open 40	Vendee and Whitbread veteran who will show the way to Newport
Bertus Buys	NLD		SEA BERYL	40	One-off	Fifth time for this Dutch OSTAR addict
Huib Swets	NLD	46	VIJAYA	40	Jac de Ridder 40	Singlehanded sailor and ex-delivery skipper
Hannah White	GBR	21	SPIRIT OF CANADA	40	Open 40	Nipper on Derek Hatfield's former Around Alone steed
Nico Budel	NLD	65	HAYAI	40	Open 40	Round Britain racer on Viktor Yazykov's Around Alone boat
Ronny Nollet	BEL		LA PROMESSE	40	Open 40	Another OSTAR stalwart, this time with serious hardware
Bram Van De Loosdrecht	NLD	54	OCTAVUS	39	Arcona 400	Singlehanded cruising sailor
Cees Groot	NLD	56	REALITY	38	Catalina 380	Economics teacher from Hoorn, amateur solo sailor
Peter Crowther	GBR	62	SUOMI KUDU	38	Swan 38	Has raced every OSTAR since '72, Now with scarily normal boat
Peter Keig	GBR	50	ZEAL	38	Roberts 38	Round the world sailor and first solo round britain record holder
Paul Heiney	GBR	55	AYESHA OF ST MAWES	35	Biscay 36	Yes, that Paul Heiney (TV presenter for non-UK readers)
Gerry Hughes	GBR	47	QUEST II	34	OOD 34	Deaf sailor and highly experienced yachtsman
Stephen John Gratton	GBR	49	AMELIE OF DART	32	New Contessa 32	Dinghy and cruising sailor
Richard Hatton	GBR	43	CHIMP	31	Berret 31	Has sailed round Britain plus two transats
Lionel Regnier	FRA	46	TROIS MILLE SABORDS	30	Pogo 850 ( modified )	Former Mini sailor
Bart Boosman	NLD	33	DE FRANSCHMAN	30	One-off	Designed and built by skipper for the OSTAR
Multihulls
Roger Langevin	FRA	55	BRANEC IV	50	Nigel Irens	ex Great American III
Anne Caseneuve	FRA	40	ACANTHE INGENIERIE	50	Mitchell / Howdet	Powerful van Peteghem/Prevost design
Ross Hobson	GBR	46	MOLLYMAWK	43	Nic Bailey 40	Class winner in 1988 C-Star
Pierre Antoine	FRA	43	SPIRIT	43	Owen- Clarke	1980s mini-Apricot, much modified
Etienne Giroire	USA	51	UP MY SLEEVE	40	Greene 40	Beat all the 50 footers in 1992
Franco Manzoli	ITA	48	COTONELLA	40	Franco Manzoli	Has Italian underwear sponsor
Leon Bart	NLD	56	HOUD VAN HOUT	37	Marples 37
Aurelia Ditton	GBR	24	SHOCKWAVE	34	Shuttleworth	Beware...Crazy art student on fast boat

The 2005 Faraday Mill OSTAR gets underway at noon this Sunday, 29 May 2005. In theory this will be the eleventh running of the singlehanded east to west transatlantic race since it was conceived by Blondie Hasler back in the late 1950s and the first race won by Francis Chichester aboard Gipsy Moth III in 1960.

Held on the traditional route from Plymouth to Newport, the passage, for those unfamiliar with it, is a serious headbanger. The boats must first contend with heavy shipping as they leave the British Isles behind them. This year there is additional traffic coming in the opposite direction in the form of 19 yachts competing in the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge followed by Francis Joyon going hell for leather on his 90ft trimaran IDEC to break the west to east solo record.

Then there is the direction of the course: east to west across the North Atlantic, against the prevailing winds. Looking at today's forecast in the North Atlantic for example - a 'typical situation' with the Azores high located more or less over the Azores and a substantial depression centred 1,000 miles to the north of it - there are westerly winds solidly between 39° and 52°N with areas of no wind to the north and south of this area. So the traditional technique for competitors on boats fast enough is to reach in from the southeast towards the centre of the depression in the southwesterly winds and as the wind veers due west to tack and reach out of the depression in northwesterlies. However getting the timing of this is hard as the depressions track in the opposing direction to the boats so the weather 'happens' at an accelerated rate and this technique really only has application for fast multihulls or Open class monohulls.

But this is only half the challenge. Approaching Newfoundland, there is the prospect of encountering icebergs as they ride down on the cold Labrador Current having calved in Baffin Bay between Baffin Island and Greenland. Fortunately this year the ice reports indicate no bergs to be seen on the Faraday Mill OSTAR route.

Beyond this there is still 850-900 miles of effectively coastal sailing between Cape Race, Newfoundland's southeasternmost tip, to the finish line off Newport, Rhode Island. Past Cape Race the boats must cross the Grand Banks known for its dense fog and large fishing fleet - a place to be avoided as well in bad weather - and even then the boats can't take the direct course to Nantucket Island because all manner of shoals (and more dense fog) lie to their right off Nova Scotia.

While the course remains the same, as does the singlehanded element of the race, almost everything else has changed. The 2000 Europe 1 New Man STAR, it could be argued, was the last 'real' OSTAR in which Corinthian amateur sailors were able to rub shoulders with rock stars on their gleaming fully sponsored Open 60s and 60ft trimarans. Since then the race has been divided in two, OC Group acquiring the Grand Prix side of the event for the 50 and 60 footers, held last year as The Transat, while the Royal Western Yacht Club, the event's original host club, have held on to the event for 30-50 footers, reverting back to its old name, the OSTAR, now standing for the 'Original (rather than the Observer) Singlehanded Transatlantic Race' sponsored by Faraday Mill.

So why split up the world's most ancient of singlehanded offshore races? Following the loss in the 1986 TwoSTAR of the Italian 60ft monohull Berlucchi and her two crew Beppe Panada and Roberto Kramar, so Kramar's father brought a successful legal action against the Royal Western Yacht Club. Since then the club understandably has been most wary over their liability in running such events. An upshot of this has been crippling insurance premiums for subsequent races.

"We have had a hell of a problem getting this race insured," admits OSTAR Race Director, Chris Arscott. "In fact it was the insurance that nearly stopped us running the race. Originally when we started talking to insurers they were talking about us taking race organiser liability insurance to the value of £50 million with a premium of £50,000! That is when the whole thing nearly dropped off its wheels. Now we have got it down."

Aside from their legal loss Arscott maintains that the race finishing the USA has also bumped up the premium. "Europe no problem - but if you go to America obviously the perceived risk is much higher. I think it has all changed since 9/11. It is crazy. The entry fees aren’t astronomic. £1,000 per boat. We are fortunate to get a sponsor as that is pretty difficult these days. And once you have paid that and the berthing in Newport it is not cheap to run a race like this. But this is the oldest and still considered to be the toughest and we ain’t giving it up that easy. We did a lot of soul searching about the Transat, but that was a given. That is why we took the opportunity to focus it back to its roots. And talking to the fleet and seeing the people, that is what is about. That is why guys come from Italy and all over the place to do it."

Another aspect of the care the Royal Western YC are taking about their liability is over scrutineering. "We have always scrutineered for this race and the Round Britain and Ireland," says Arscott. "The advice is from our insurers and our legal people is that we mustn’t scrutineer ourselves. So it is self-certification. It is on the basis that once you start to do that sort of thing you accept legal responsibility for it. It is just the world we have moved into. I think they do it for the Fastnet now. We are obviously checking Iridium numbers and care out a lengthy paper check, but they have to do a declaration that they comply with Cat1."

The race

Traditionally the OSTAR, along with all the Royal Western Yacht Club's shorthanded events have been run without handicap, the fleet simply divided up into classes by length - 60, 50, 45, 50, 35, 30ft. However for the first time the Faraday Mill OSTAR is being run under handicap: IRC for the monohulls, MOCRA rule for the multihulls.

Arscott explains their reasoning: "The difference in performance between a 30ft and a 35ft boat is quite phenomenal and there are still boats around that were specifically designed for these type of events such as water ballasted boats. And you know that if they turn up, and provided they don’t have any accidents or bad luck, it is pre-destined they would win the event. We didn’t think this was right in this day and age. We thought that any guy with the balls to do it, who has a reasonable cruiser racer-type boat should have a right to turn up on the start line and stand a chance of doing well."

The effect Arscott feels is that it has attracted a new type of skipper, in addition to the stalwart OSTAR corinthians. The corinthians, we are pleased to report, do not appear to have been shyed away by the new format of the race and so we see the return of Devonshire pub landlord Peter Crowther who has competed in every OSTAR since 1972. Traditionally Crowther always raced his 'interesting' junk rigged Galway Blazer, but now into his 60s he is competing this year on board a very un-OSTAR Swan 38.

Aside from Crowther other OSTAR regulars include Bertus Buys on Sea Beryl, Ronny Nollet on La Promesse, Michel Jahuny on Chivas III and American Philip Rubright on Echo Zulu. Then raising the tone of the event is 78 year old French gentleman Jacques Dewez, one time the owner of Nigel Irens' first trimaran Gordano Goose which he campaigned hard under the name Sperone.

This brings us neatly on to another observation about the 2005 Faraday Mill OSTAR - it has the wierdest skipper demographic of any yacht race we have come across. While Dewez is the race's oldest competitor nearly half of the skippers taking part are over 50. Why should this be? Maybe this was always the case with the corinthian skippers, the numbers previously skewed by French professional 30 somethings on their 60ft trimarans and Open 60s. Maybe 50+ is the time of one's life when as a serious amateur sailor one wants to race an event like the OSTAR for male menopausal reasons. Maybe those in their 50s and 60s are the generation which remember the heyday of the OSTAR; the 1976 race when Eric Tabarly won the event for the second time, singlehandedly racing his Whitbread maxi and Alain Colas, the 236ft four master Club Mediterranee, undoubtedly a great and unrepeatable period of yachting history.

To see Christian Fevrier and the BlueGreen photoagency's exceptional gallery of images from the history of the OSTAR and singlehanded ocean racing - click here



Aside from the male bus pass carriers there are just two 30 year olds in the whole event and two 20 years olds - both girls. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to realise that both Hannah White and eccentric art student Lia Ditton (above on board Shockwave), aged 21 and 24 are jumping on the Ellen bandwagon and all credit to them for doing so. As Hannah White readily admits it is unlikely she would have found a sponsor to buy her Open 40 were it not for the fresh taste of the Ellen phenomenon. Equally obvious is that it is they who are getting the lion's share of media attention currently in Plymouth. Knarly 60 year old sea dog to interview or ambitious, easy on the eye 20 year old English girl? There is no decision over where the cameras will point.

The hardware

In OSTARs of past years, there have been a much higher contingent of 30 footers. Racing the wrong way across the Atlantic is hard, to put it mildly, in a Whitbread maxi, but it is hard for different reasons if you are in a 26ft catamaran, as Pete Goss managed in the 1988 race. Sadly another victim of our present litigious era is that aside from the inherent challenge of the course and singlehanding all the extremes have been removed from the OSTAR. It is unlikely for example that we will see giant or tiny boats ever again racing in this event.

One a more positive note while the Faraday Mill OSTAR may have gone IRC, it has still attracted the most rapidly growing singlehanded offshore monohull class at the moment - the Open 40, of which seven are racing, including an example of the new Pogo 40 (below) and the new Pierre Roland-designed Jumbo. The Open 40, as well as the 50 and 60 were originally born of the OSTAR class structure and with 40 footers now outlawed from the next Five Oceans singlehanded round the world race, they may have found a home in the OSTAR. More on the Open 40s next week.



Sadly there has been little similar development in the multihull world to date. A majority of the trimarans competing are at least 10 years old, some closer to 20. The exception is Anne Caseneuve's three year old Acanthe Ingeniere, which must be the clear favourite for line honours - if line honours still matters (it does to us). The boat strongly ressembles a sawn-off ORMA 60 trimaran and Caseneuve must have had enough experience of racing this boat now to blast her across to Newport without breaking it. Otherwise our money for line honours is on the world's top spinnaker sleeve manufacturer Etienne Giroire, a highly experienced former Whitbread and maxi-multihull sailor, racing his 40ft Walter Greene design in which he demolished the 50ft opposition in the 1992 race. Otherwise, Frenchman Pierre Antoine is racing the much loved 43 footer Spirit, once upon a time owned by Mike Golding.

Another potential race favourite in the multihulls, American Rex Conn's newish 50ft Dick Newick design Alacrity has been unable to make the start due to rigging problems. However the recent launch of Franck-Yves Escofier's new van Peteghem/Prevost designed Crepes Whaou, perhaps will encourage some new growth in the mid-sized multihull classes again over the next few years.

A monohull line honours favourite? Our money has to be on the old fox himself, serial Vendee Globe competitor and absentee Course Au Large editor, Patrice Carpentier, who is racing a new Pogo 40 backed by his Vendee sponsor VM Materiaux. Otherwise our money is on the highly experienced Belgium former mini and Figaro sailor Michel Kleinjans on the quick Roaring Forty.