Rights and wrongs of routing

Ed Gorman examines the issue of illegal weather routing following Josh Hall's protest

The row over outside assistance between the skipper of Gartmore, Josh Hall, and Ellen MacArthur and her crew on Kingfisher over what information boats received on the Gulf Stream and when they received it during the third leg of the EDS Atlantic Challenge, highlights the continuing unease in world sailing over the policing of information reaching boats offshore.

There is no doubt that the way this case has been handled and Hall's decision to go public on it despite his assurances to MacArthur and her manager Mark Turner that he would not, has done the sport of sailing and MacArthur's reputation real damage. Even though it appears unlikely that she broke any rules, Hall has forced her and her crew to respond to allegations which amounted to an accusation of cheating.

If there is a plus side, however, it is that Hall, who clearly believes he is right and there is still a case to answer, has raised in the most dramatic way possible a serious problem for the sport which has the potential to undermine the reputations of individuals and events in the same way that drug scandals have affected the credibiliy of world athletics.

In his statement published here and on the American e-mail newsletter Scuttlebutt, Hall insinuated that both MacArthur and Mike Golding had illegally downloaded files from Jennifer Clark, the expert on the Gulf Stream and that cheating in professional offshore events is widespread and out of control.

"Illegal routing is rife in our area of sailing," Hall contended. "It can be easily hidden and offers a huge advantage to those who are prepared to manipulate and indeed break the rules. With the modern communications equipment carried on board the yachts and the ability to remotely check any e-mail adresses ashore, or be networked to a team computer ashore in an attempt to circumvent the rules about actually being sent information, policing it is nearly impossible."

Indeed in the Open 60 field there is continuous muttering - usually from beaten skippers - about others who have allegedly been routed. After MacArthur's second-placed finish in the Vendee Globe, the French newspaper Figaro published an ambiguously worded article, implying there were some voices in Les Sables d'Olonne who believed she had been assisted on routing.

Since the finish of that race Yves Parlier, who himself has faced accusations along the same lines, has alleged in a best-selling book that both Vendee winner Michel Desjoyeaux and third-placed Roland Jourdain, received modified - and thus illegal - weather files during the Vendee.

Few people in British sailing know more about this issue than Turner who is intimately familiar with the French Open 60 scene as well as what is going on in Britain. Despite this anecdotal evidence, Turner believes Hall has exaggerated the extent of the problem and while he accepts that cheating does go on, he does not believe it is endemic in the sport. "It's a massive exaggeration," he said. "To imply that the sport is suddenly in meltdown is simply not true," he told madforsailing.

But like Hall, Turner also accepts that the huge explosion in information available to skippers these days through the Internet, plus the introduction of ever more powerful means of accessing it and disguising that access, makes effective policing almost impossible. This goes not just for events like the EDS or the Vendee but also the Whitbread/Volvo type races where restrictions are in force but can be circumvented by determined navigators and their shore teams.

It seems that if the organisers of professional racing events wish to maintain the rule of "no outside assistance" on routing and other matters beyond what is "publicly available", then trust and honesty among competitors will always have to play a part. Some argue that this is asking too much and that, like the rule on stacking, which has been dropped in some events, it should be abandoned.

But this would be to give in to what are arguably a few rotten apples in a generally honest sport and remove one of the elemental challenges of racing offshore, namely analysing weather and routing information and making your own decisions on which way to go. In any case, abandoning restrictions on outside assistance would ramp up the costs of competitive campaigns so that anyone who entertained serious winning ambitions in events like the Vendee would need round-the-clock advice telling them which way to go at every turn.

The Route du Rhum, the Transat Jacques Vabre and the recent Challenge Mondial Assistance are three examples of exciting races where routing is allowed, underlining that even without that element of the challenge, ocean racing is still a valid and compelling sport. (These races also demonstrate that outside routing doesn't remove the role of the skipper completely - he is still getting only advice, in most cases, on the basis of which he has to make up his mind).

But few can dispute that those races which still ban routing are the tougher ones to win. There will always be cheats in every sport, there will always be unintentional technical infringements of the rules as well, but there will also always be plenty of honest competitors prepared to play by the book.