Sail-World.com : New Round the World race for solo 40-50fters
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New Round the World race for solo 40-50fters |
Over the next three years the Open 60 class have the Velux 5 Oceans, the Barcelona World Race and the Vendee Globe, three round the world races, two singlehanded one doublehanded. Yet tomorrow will see the launch of yet another shorthanded round the world race, the Global Ocean Challenge. Does the sailing world need yet another round the world race?
Organisers Brian Hancock and Josh Hall think so and so do the sailors wishing to compete in their race says Hall, for they are a slightly different breed to the full-on pros of the Barcelona World Race or the Vendee Globe or even the mixture of entries in the Velux 5 Oceans. In fact it could be argued that the new race has really come about as a result of Clipper Ventures' decision for the Velux 5 Oceans not to allow 40 footers and to go for fewer stops and longer legs.
Thus the Global Ocean Challenge 2007-8 is for 40 and 50ft monohulls, not Open 60s, the former including not only Open 40s as allowed previously in the Velux 5 Oceans' predecessors, Around Alone and the BOC Challenge, but also the new and rapidly growing breed of 'Class 40s'. These boats are going through a phenomenal growth period at the moment. To give an example of the 38 boats so far registered to compete in this autumn's Route du Rhum, 21 are Class 40s. They as typified by Groupe Finot's Pogo 40 or the offerings from Owen Clarke and are effectively dumbed down Open 40s, aimed at keeping costs to a minimum by for example being production boats, banning canting keels and exotic materials.
Hall says that while he and Whitbread veteran Brian Hancock had been mulling over the idea of event organisation for several years, it came to a head at the end of last November's Transat Jacques Vabre. ‘The real stimulus was us being approached by a couple of the skippers who did the TJV including Joe Harris who felt the current 5 Oceans course wasn’t suited to their dream of going around the world. They wanted a race where they could have the stopovers, do the classic route, enjoy the countries that they visited and for it to be not just user friendly in terms of being able to fix the boat, but also be family-friendly - they are all middle-aged people with families and the selling point to the families for them to go and do it was ‘let’s take the kids to Cape Town or Australia for a month’. So Joe and the other skippers, said ‘you guys should be good at doing this sort of thing why don’t you look into it’.’
In just two months Hall says they have got pretty much all the ports sorted out. Running over 2007-8 it will start and finish in Europe, stop in Cape Town, Tauranga (New Zealand), South America, a port on the east coast of the USA before returning to Europe. All save two of these ports have been finalised and will be announced over the course of the next month.
The starts will be staggered by one week between the 40s and 50s, the larger boats obviously getting underway a week later. The dates proposed are as follows:
Europe
September 22, 2007 (40-foot class)
September 29, 2007 (50-foot class)
Cape Town
November 10, 2007 (40-foot class)
November 17, 2007 (50-foot class)
Tauranga
January 5, 2008 (40-foot class)
January 12, 2008 (50-foot class)
South America
March 1, 2008 (40-foot class)
March 8, 2008 (50-foot class)
United States
April 20, 2008 (40-foot class)
April 26, 2008 (50-foot class)
The race will be scored on points (as opposed to elapsed time) and in addition to receiving points for leg finishes there will also be scoring gates. The following have been proposed:
Leg 1 - Fernando de Noronha (Brazil)
Leg 2 - Eclipse Island (Australia)
Leg 3 - Cape Horn (South America)
Leg 4 - Fernando de Noronha (Brazil)
Leg 5 - Pico (Azores islands)
In terms of boats Hall says he and Hancock are confident they will end up with five or six Open 50s and twelve or possibly as many as twenty 40 footers. ‘We didn’t want to make any big moves until we felt we would have a good entry list, because entry lists seem to be what every race is suffering from at the moment unless it is the Vendee Globe, the Route du Rhum or the Transat Jacques Vabre.’
The Class 40 in particular is interesting as a concept because it is appealing to a new group of people. On the one hand it represents a stepping stone from the Minis and Figaros up to the Open 60s, but a significantly bigger market is the amateur short-handed sailing scene. This is going through a resurgence as witnessed by the new Petit Bateau events organised from the UK or the present Transquadra race in which 22 singlehanded boats are racing across the Atlantic and 59 doublehanded including British former Mini sailors Paul Peggs and Simon Curwen (currently 38th on the water). Likewise, the Global Ocean Challenge will also have single and doublehanded divisions.
‘And when you look at the price of these boats they are in the realms of very achievable sponsorships but also you are in the realms of privately funded entries which is something which hasn’t been available in a round the world race for many years now,’ continues Hall who reckons the price of a Class 40 is around 200,000 Euros while the campaign costs for his event will be 200-300,000 Euros. ‘The two handed division came about through discussing with various people we thought would be interested into something we think may end up being the strongest class. It is well within the reach of a couple of mates who have always wanted to sail around the world and are reasonably successful in business or whatever.’
But while Class 40s have been designed to sail across oceans, are they really suitable for sailing around the world? Hall says they have spoken to two of the principle Class 40 designers - Finot and Merf Owen - who believe it would be perfectly possible to make a Class 40 conform to Category 0 by adding bulkheads and more safety features.
In addition to this, Hall reckons it will be highly likely they will add more gates to the Southern Ocean stages of the race (as Volvo have) in order to keep the boats north and out of harm's way.
Coming from a background of being competitors in events such as this Hall says that their approach to the stopover ports has been slightly different. For example apart from offices, they are not demanding cash. ‘We would rather choose the ports that are the correct ports to go to rather than the biggest bidder,’ he says. What they will be asking for is services and good in kind such as cars, accommodation, host families, etc. ‘All the stuff we know competitors need and is difficult to afford.’
In addition to this they plan to set up their own shore team to help the skippers look after their boats and perform specialist tasks while in port. ‘We are expecting the bulk of the people who do this race won’t have done it before as opposed to the Vendee Globe and Velux 5 Oceans where you get repeat victims,’ says Hall. ‘We are expecting this to be mostly for people doing their first circumnavigation. Between us we have a lot of expertise in terms of how to get these boats ready and help keep them in the race, which benefits us and we want to offer that as a free service to them.’ He hopes to also offer free container services for example.
Qualification for the event will include a 2,000 mile passage that must be carried out at least 30 days before the race start. The entry fee is 10,000 Euros but depending upon the level of sponsorship achieved for the race this will be returned to competitor on a performance basis (ie 2,000 Euros at the end of each leg). Hancock and Hall still have to secure a title sponsor for their race, but once this is done they hope to then start concentrating on helping skippers and teams secure sponsorship.
‘To be honest we are amazed. In two months that Brian and I have been on it full time, we thought it was going to take the rest of the year to get to this point. We have got close to 20 of the people who we have contacted who have said, ‘bloody hell’ I am up for that.'‘ says Hall.
While it is relatively easy to phone up and say 'Hi, I'm organising a yacht race', we feel that the Global Ocean Challenge is suitably different to all the other round the world races to have legs. And if the growth in interest with this size of boat is anything to go by Hall and Hancock could be on to a winner.
by Event Media
10:02 PM Tue 14 Feb 2006 GMT
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