Search for missing sailors continue, Olympic campaigns, America's Cup

by Rob Kothe & the Sail-World Team on 9 Oct 2015 470 Men's World Champions, our own Mat Belcher and Will Ryan were impressive in winning the pre-Worlds in Haifa, Israel this week. The 2015 Worlds will start on Monday and once again with their coach Victor Kovalenko are aiming for World Domination. Spoke to Mat a few minutes ago from Israel and he believes the main threat to another Australian World Championship will come from the Americans, British, Croatians and French.

ISAF have opened entries for the 2015 Sailing World Cup in Melbourne, this is going to be a major test for the revised World Cup program, as the event will be only six weeks after the 2014-2015 World Cup final in Abu Dhabi, and hardly more than six months ahead of the Rio 2016 with many Olympic contenders likely to choose precious training time in Rio ahead of Port Phillip. So its entirely possible that that the Australian Sailing Team and their Australian training partners will be in Rio not Melbourne come early December with the limelight likely to fall on the Development squad. While the AST has already entered for the SWC, the final decision may not come for another month.

Better news it seems that interest in the inaugural Optimist Nations Cup to be held as part of of the Melbourne event have exceeded the expectations of organisers with responses coming from all corners of the world. They report countries such as the United States, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan and Brazil are all interested in creating a team and competing for their Nation.

News yesterday from Croatia, that the high profile Oman Sail MOD 70 lost a man overboard, 26 year old Omani sailor Mohammed al Alawi, yesterday pre-dawn morning during a delivery sail from Marseille to Trieste.

Wind speed at the time of the MOB was 15-17 knots and its believed the trimaran would have been travelling at about the same speed or event faster.

A trimaran travelling at that speed would have been most likely been close to a mile from the sailor in water, by the time they turned back, had they known of his fall from the boat when it happened, in the dark hours of the morning.

There are unsubstantiated reports that the sailor was not wearing a life jacket at the time. The Italian and Croatian coastguards resumed their search and rescue operation for the sailor, this morning. The MOD70 was in the Adriatic Sea on its way from Marseille France to the Barcolana Regatta in Trieste, Italy where it had been entered to race this weekend, before competing in the 2015 Rolex Malta Sea race.

Four British sailors were drowned mid Atlantic in 2014 when the Cheeki Rafiki lost its keel during a return delivery from the Caribbean. This week came the aweful news that the Hong Kong registered Beneateau 60 Europa with five sailors, two of whom are British including the owner skipper Robyn Wyatt along with a Filipino, a Canadian and and a US sailor, is missing on a passage to the Phillipines. Early media reports coming out the Philipines, that have been run world-wide that a body has been sighted have definitely not, repeat not been substantiated.The main ray of hope is that the EPIRB on the boat kept pinging for more than two days, indicating that it was still on the surface when it ran out of battery power.

Switching to the America Cup, Oracle Team USA is looking increasingly like Team Australia, with London 2012 Olympic Laser Gold Medallist Tom Slingsby being the notional US sailor in the America's Cup World Series. While American generally find the Aussie twang interesting, Jarryd Hayne confirming that this week, it does not deliver mainstream US bonding with the Oracle camps campaign and with a far away destination for the Cup defenders fans, the 2017 America's Cup looks like it could be a total non event in the USA.

In contrast Sir Ben Ainslie's very very British Landrover BAR team continues to gain industry, media and national support at all levels and over time this will no doubt translate into a significant competitive edge. Land Rover BAR, has launched its latest testing boat – T2 – at their home in Portsmouth. This boat will increase the momentum already developed with the initial launch of 'T1' last October.

Clipper Round the World Race departs Rio minus two boats - The second race in the Clipper 2015-16 Round the World Yacht Race series, The Stormhoek Race to the Cape of Storms, started off the Brazilian coast for its 3,417 nautical mile voyage to Cape Town, South Africa. LMAX Exchange and Qingdao are anticipated to start racing on Sunday 11 October after repairs are completed following LMAX Exchange running aground while being delivered to another marina and Qingdao getting into difficulties while offering assistance.

Bermuda's Argo Group Gold Cup, the penultimate event of the World Match Racing Tour, commenced with wind conditions that kept crews on their toes and kept the repair crews up late last night.

This week the Extreme Sailing Series fleet provided a thrilling spectacle for the thousands of spectators gathered on the Istanbul shoreline with extremely sharp, close-quarter manoeuvres. Sail-World brought to you live coverage of the event but if you missed it you can watch the reruns on our website. All eyes are now set on the final Act of the Extreme Sailing Series 2015 which takes place in Sydney, Australia from 10-13 December.