America's Cup broadside...Finish of Volvo Ocean Match Race

by . on 12 Apr 2015 Welcome to Sail-World.com’s New Zealand e-magazine for April 12, 2015

The finish of leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race was marvelous.

After 19 days of racing the four leading boats finished within 56 minutes of each other.

The race for the final spot on the podium was a match race between Team Alvimedica and Team Brunel, with the youngest crew in the race, aboard Team Alvimedica squeaking home for to take third place.

There were three New Zealand sailors aboard Alvimedica - watch captain Ryan Houston, who had previously sailed in two Volvo Ocean Races but had not yet made it around Cape Horn. Dave Swete was another who had sailed previously in the Volvo Ocean Race but also had not been able to round the Horn.

For this leg, they were joined by former NZ Sailor of the Year, Stu Bannatyne - a three-time winner of the race, and who has sailed in six previous Round the World races.

For six of the crew aboard Alvimedica, this was their first rounding of Cape Horn. The other two sailing crew were veterans - with Will Oxley (AUS) on his third rounding, and Stu Bannatyne being on his seventh. Amory Ross (OBR) was on his second rounding having achieved the feat in the last Volvo Ocean Race aboard the Ken Read skippered Puma.

The crew of Team Alvimedica are the youngest in average age in the fleet, and aside from the women crew aboard Team SCA, they are the only crew sailing with a 'rookie VOR' skipper. Aspiring Kiwi sailors would do well to look closely at the rise of Team Alvimedica - how the campaign was put together by two sailors that were both young and with no previous Volvo Ocean Race experience.

They have been able to establish an entry that won the first In-Port Race and has since performed very creditably. They were the first of the leading four to round Cape Horn - another notch on their sailing belt.

The model that has driven New Zealand sailing for so long on the professional circuit needs new blood.

Up and coming Kiwi sailors need to think long and hard about how their future is going to be mapped out. Your parents aren't going to do it for you.

The options are to become crew aboard overseas flagged campaigns or take the lead from Charlie Enright and Mark Towill and put together your own Kiwi campaign.

Of course, the advantage with the second option is that you are starting a legacy and professional career for yourself, your partners and New Zealand that should last more than just one race.

New Zealand has been well served with a host of leaders that have stepped up through the Whitbread Round the World Race and latterly the Volvo Ocean Race. Peter Blake, Ross Field, Grant Dalton, Chris Dickson and others who have played key roles are listed on the Kiwi roll call.

The way now is to work with a sports management company, who may not have had any previous sailing project experience - but does know how to deliver value to their clients, and does need to partner with good sailors, and quality people who can deliver a sailing program.

The third player in the mix is Volvo Ocean Race themselves, who in contrast to that Other Event, are easily to work with, give the team backers a lot of reassurance about media exposure, and generally work to get teams into the event, rather than out.

And they over deliver - as evidenced by the effort and expense involved in capturing the top four boats in the race rounding Cape Horn. That was a historic first for sailing and indeed any sport, plus of course the sponsors have images that don't require any explanatory commentary - and images that will be delivering a message long after the current edition of the Volvo Ocean Race has finished.

Yesterday we published an Open Letter from the doyen of America's Cup Media, Bob Fisher on the current situation on the Cup and its dis-organisation.

Never one to hold back, Bob certainly gives this both barrels, as no-one else can do.

Many of the adverse comments about the 33rd, 34th and now 35th America's Cup are dismissed as coming from the so-called Flintstones Generation who want to see a return to 12 Metres , or some monohull that has out served its purpose.

Bob Fisher is not one of those. Despite having covered the America's Cup since 1967, he is a multihull nut at heart. He won the then Little America's Cup - sailed in 26ft International C-Class catamarans - which at that time were the fastest, most technologically advanced boats on the planet.

He was ecstatic when the America's Cup was to be sailed in multihulls.

What is happening now in the America's Cup is not the way the event should be run, for all its crooked history.

Under the stewardship of Golden Gate Yacht Club, the event is going backwards, not forwards. Even more disappointing is the fact that during its tenure by other Defending Clubs, the group out of San Francisco were the loudest and most vociferous about the need for change and to lift the America's Cup to a much higher and better level.

Given the opportunity, and goodwill they enjoyed after their win in 2010 - the Cup has drifted. The time to make changes to the event is before entries open, not after design teams have been working for nine months.

How easy would it have been for Golden Gate Yacht Club to announce at the final media conference for the 34th America's Cup that they would defend in San Francisco, that they would do it in wingsailed, foiling multihulls and the year would be 2017? Then there would have been some certainty, and the momentum generated by the 34th America's Cup - for all its shortcomings - would have been maintained.

It would have been an equally simple matter to follow the lead of previous Cup holders and invite all potential participants to an open meeting to discuss more detailed options for the next Cup.

Instead, there was delay instead of an immediate announcement. The Challengers themselves had to call the first combined Meeting, and then the Defenders decided to repeat the exercise a few weeks later.

The issue now is that the dysfunction within the America's Cup is spilling over into other areas of sailing - affecting non-sailing fans, and non-sailing media and sponsors.

The perception of sailing now is that you spend two or three years arguing about the rules, often in Court, and then have a yacht race.

In contrast, the Volvo Ocean Race has made some big calls, which have generally paid off - and they now have the platform for a new and revitalised event that should last for several editions and which should attract more entries and more sponsors.

For all the talk about sailor driven events, it is a fact that in any sport you can't have good sport without good administration, and that is a lesson the group from San Francisco have yet to learn.

Follow all the racing and developments in major and local events on www.sail-world.com, scroll to the bottom of the site, select New Zealand, and get all the latest news and updates from the sailing world.

Good sailing!

Richard Gladwell
NZ Editor

sailworldnzl@gmail.com

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