British sailors missing,Team USA- Aussie mafia
by Rob Kothe & the Sail-World Team on 8 Oct 2015
The Cheeki Rafiki MailOnline
Four British sailors were drowned mid Atlantic in 2014 when the Cheeki Rafiki lost its keel during a return delivery from the Caribbean. Now another delivery passage has gone wrong this week came the awful news that the Hong Kong registered Beneteau 6 Europa with five sailors, two of whom are British,the owner skipper Robyn Wyatt and crew Brian Turner, is missing on a passage to the Philippines.
Early reports, now being repeated media wide, coming out the Phillipines that a body has been sighted have not been substantiated at all. 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.
News yesterday that the 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 Marseilles 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.
Switching to the America Cup, Jimmy Spithill and his Oracle Team USA is looking increasingly like Team Australia, its stacked with convicts, with London 2012 Olympic Laser Gold Medallist Tom Slingsby being the notional US sailor, courtesy of his Seattle born mother in the America's Cup World Series. While American generally find the Aussie twang interesting it does not deliver mainstream US bonding with the Oracle camps campaign and the 2017 America's Cup looks like it could be a total non event in the USA.
In San Francisco, Yankee supporters could wander down the docks, now they have to fly to Bermuda.
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.
It's the next stage in the relentless British pursuit of technological excellence that will culminate in the design and build of the final race boat to challenge for the America's Cup in 2017.
Clipper Round the World Race departed Rio minus two boats - The second race in the Clipper 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.
This week the Extreme Sailing Series fleet provided a thrilling spectacle for the thousands of spectators gathered on the 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.
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. The conditions were a handful, even for the experienced crews.
Experienced skippers such as Dean Barker (JPN) SoftBank Team Japan and Blythe Walker (BER) Team RenRe wiped out in spectacular fashion and the boats took a beating. The official breakdown list included four torn spinnakers, one broken gooseneck (the boom-to-mast attachment point), one broken mast crane (where the backstay attaches to the mast, affecting mainsail trim and headstay tension), one lost anchor chalk and a few collisions, including one with a concrete pier.
The final act of the Audi tron Sailing Series and the Melges 24 European Sailing Series, event will be taking place in Luino this weekend where the Melges 24 fleet will be competing the Coppa Lino Favini, which is considered also Melges 24 Swiss Open Championship 2015. Around 20 teams coming from nine nations will be lined up on the Lake Maggiore waters.
Sadly the recent rumours that the Swedish sponsor of the all women's Volvo Ocean Race Team SCA have decided not to continue their race involvement have been confirmed. SCA will not participate in the next Volvo Ocean Race and the all-female squad is now looking to put together a sailing program to continue to develop the skill set and continue the momentum that SCA and Team SCA has created with the ultimate goal of finding a new sponsor.
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