| The Torch and other Canadian Racing news! |
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The biggest news item in international racing circles these days involves a 40-year-old boat and its Canadian Designer. Bruce Kirby launched the Laser in 1970 and although over 210,000 boats have been built around the world since, issues of build quality and royalty payments from various builders has soured the relationship between the designer and partners over the past few years. Kirby finally elected to withdraw Laser brand building rights, thus impacting the one-design class name; as a result, the Kirby Torch is born with a strong Canadian focus under the leadership of Olympic medalists John Kerr and Hans Fogh. Torch Performance Sailcraft North America was announced as the new authorized builder for the Torch, Thomas Fogh will join as managing director. Negotiations are underway with the Laser class to determine whether it should become the Torch class as the boats are comparable and could race together. Definitely a story to follow!
The Canadian Sailing Team is getting ready for the Delta Lloyd Regatta in the Netherlands in late May; meanwhile, let’s note Isabella Bertold’s fifth place finish in Laser Radial at the recent Trofeo Princesa Sofia Mapfre ISAF World Cup event in Palma. Congratulations Isabella! Other recent news from the CST is the selection of CST alumni Eric Holden from Vancouver as a Clipper Round the World skipper. Eric, who worked as weather forecaster for the CST in London this past summer, will lead one of the twelve amateur crews racing around the world on the new Clipper 70 yachts starting in August. For armchair adrenaline junkies, the Extreme Sailing Series has taken over Singapore by storm this week-end; you can check out the Act 2 action live on the official website or catch up with photo and video reports on Sail-World. The Marina Bay cityscape scenery is absolutely fabulous and provided an amazing backdrop to the close-quarter Extreme 40 racing. In America’s Cup news, Emirates Team New Zealand has completed their final practice sail in Auckland and are now moving their base camp to San Francisco where Artemis Racing was seen successfully foiling on their modified AC45 development platform. Time is running short for them to transfer the technology to the AC72 yacht that will be on the start line of the Luis Vuitton Cup in July.
Offshore racing enthusiast will be interested with the upcoming 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race announcements; the complete route is revealed and the first five members of the SCA all-female team are selected. Finally, Sail-World's transition to Cloud technology has presented some challenges over the past weeks but is now almost complete with the return of our regular newsletters. All the best! Guy Perrin Sail-World Canada Managing Editor grperrin@sail-world.com
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