Morning Glory today's top gun

by KPMS on 7 Sep 2007
Picture this. The start line of the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup just before the Racing Division sets off. Beautiful. Except you are sat on a cruising boat about two hundred feet directly in front of the line.

From a small boat just beside the pin it is impressive enough as the 30-metre/25 tonne Alfa Romeo (NZL) thunders past, covering the photographers in spray as she hits the line on the gun with Morning Glory (GER) and Rambler (USA) on her hip. Just what is like from straight in front, goodness only knows. But what a sight it must have been being straddled by two of the biggest, fastest racing maxis on the water. Unsurprisingly the cruiser concerned did not hang around for the second start.

Today's race saw all four divisions undertake pretty much yesterday's route in reverse. Results-wise, Morning Glory was top gun in Racing, beating Alfa Romeo on handicap by 15 seconds. In the Cruising Division, Ranger (CAY) finished 15-minutes behind Ghost (USA), but came out ahead on handicap. For the Mini Maxis, Massimo Violati's OPS 5 (ITA) corrected out 16 seconds in front of Carlo Puri Negri's Atalanta II (ITA) and in the Wally Division, Lindsay Owen-Jones' Magic Carpet Squared (GBR) stole the show on the water beating Claus Peter Offen's Y3K (GER) by twenty-five seconds, but it was Indio in pole on corrected time.

The 39 nautical mile race started opposite Porto Cervo into a 15 knot WNW. The fleet raced upwind to a turning mark before heading into the main channel at the gap between the southern end of Caprera & Isola delle Bisce. The yachts then beat up the length of the main passage between mainland Sardinia and the Maddalena Archipelago to Lavezzi. Here the yachts turned east and spinnaker reached back along the outside of the islands, past Monaci, to the final turning mark in the Golfo Peverro, just before the finish at Porto Cervo.

After the excitement of the first start, the Wallys set off second in more relaxed style. Come the third start - the so-called Cruising Division - and it was game on, with the professional tacticians throwing their steeds into the starting box as if it were a dinghy race, rather than one involving yachts of 100 plus feet and up to 200-tonnes displacement. At the pin, heavily favoured once again, the two J Class and Ghost fought for position, trading tacks just before the start to gain that small advantage. Once across the line, Arne Glimcher's Luca Brenta designed 122-foot metallic silver wraith edged ahead of the two elder states ladies - older in style terms alone in the case of Ranger, which was only launched in 2003.

Thomas Burnham, part of the Luna Rossa team in the last two America's Cups, is calling tactics on Ghost. Although disappointed with the final result (Ghost corrected to 4th), he felt the crew had sailed well and found it hard to imagine where they could have done better; commenting on the race Burnham said, 'the upwind leg through the channel was not as straight-forward as Monday. Normally you know where the favourable shifts are going to be, depending where you are. Today, the wind was moving between 20 and 30 degrees, but not necessarily where and when it was expected and we had to work hard to keep on top of the shifts. Coming back was easier. The reach to the bottom was not as tight as we had expected. In fact the wind kept turning right from about 270 through to 310 as we reached back towards the finish.'

Geordie Shaver, a former Cup sailor, who is commanding the bow on Ranger, echoed the hard work in the channel. Even coming downwind was tough. Keeping up post-race with his recitation of the sail changes carried out today was exhausting enough; imagining the physical pressure on the crew during racing is quite another matter. Shaver hardly drew breath during his description of a J Class bow team's workout, 'it's a awesome going around all these islands. Today we had an A2 up to start with, then back to a running A2, to a shy A2, to an A5, to a Jib and on these things that's a handful. The breeze was up to about 18 at the top. It was not as bad as yesterday when we had a seaway, where until we got around the weather mark we really couldn't get the kites forward to get them set because the seaway was washing everything off the deck. Ranger weighs about 210 tonnes and you spend a lot of time under water up-front.'

In all that activity, keeping everyone's mind on the job in hand is an art form, as Shaver described, 'the biggest thing on these things when the breeze gets up is communication between the front and the back. It's pretty hectic sometimes, and you cannot do anything with one or two guts, so we have Erle Williams in the back calling what he wants, we have Godfrey (Cray) in the middle, and he relays it up to the pit guys - Jerro (Scantlebury) and Graham Fleury - in the middle and we're included in on that. So it's a four-way chain. We tried the radios for a couple of days, but we've gone back to good old hand signals and the old fashioned methods, which seem to work a little better!'

Out in front, the racing was no less strenuous. Alfa Romeo ripped up the channel in 1 hour 45 minutes (she did the whole course in 3 hours 22 minutes), reaching Lavezzi with Morning Glory hanging onto her coat tails, a touch over five minutes behind. Morgan Larson, tactician on the German maxZ86, was understandably pleased with the overall result, despite identifying some points in the race that did not go as well as they would have liked, 'overall we did a really good job. Not the best start, but we really did a good job on the first half of the race. Then, on the downwind, Alfa Romeo stretched the lead and Rambler was catching us so we didn't do a very good job there.' For Larson, the defining moment came right at the end, 'at the last leeward mark coming through to the finish the crew did a exceptional job making a difficult manoeuvre possible. If they didn't make that happen we could have lost there, but instead we ended up winning by 15 seconds. That really was the pivotal moment of the race and we have to hand it to the crew for today's win.'

In the Mini Maxi division, some of the best racing today was between Gunther Herz' All Smoke (GBR) and Atalanta II. Ken Read, skipper of the Puma programme for the next Volvo, described the action between two very different yachts, 'because the boats are so close in speed, we had really great racing against them. I think they are a little bit quicker than we are upwind, and that we are a little bit quicker than they are downwind and because of that this is making for some close racing. We actually passed them downwind once and then they got a very nice shift and got well ahead of us upwind and then downwind we got a couple of nice shifts and we got ahead of them again, .so this is a fun racing. The amazing thing is they are completely different boats. They (Atalanta II) are very much a racing boat, and All Smoke is very much a cruising boat. And, it's fascinating how we both seem so different in concept but that we can actually go same speed. We enjoy racing against them and we have developed a little bit of a rivalry.'

Tonight the crews get the chance to unwind at the Rolex Crew Party, where they will be entertained by the Ziguidum band, playing classic Brazilian music followed by the Ipanema Show - a Brazilian dance group, along with getting plenty to eat and drink, will also get to see a music montage of video footage featuring their hardwork on the water to date.

The wind for tomorrow is expected to be similar to today: WNW (between 280 & 305 degrees) at around 15 knots, increasing to 16-18 knots in the later afternoon.

The Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup runs from September 2nd to September 8th. Racing continues tomorrow, Friday, with the first start scheduled for 1140 CET. From the most luxurious, through the most traditional, to simply the fastest monohulls afloat today, the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup is nothing if not an astonish