New owner and crew put Hanuman through her paces in Palma
by J Class Association 8 Aug 07:51 PDT
The new crew of Hanuman recently spent a week training in Palma along with the beautiful J Class yacht's new owner, Italian Giovanni Lombardi Stronati.
The majority of the team are drawn from the extended crew of his different Django racing yachts and so, according to some of the team, the testing and training was quite efficient because so many of the team have sailed with each other before.
Tactician will be the charismatic Italian Vasco Vascotto, one of the Django stalwarts who despite more than 25 world titles on his CV had not sailed a J Class yacht to date.
Vascotto beams, "It was my first time ever on such a boat and I was really surprised. I always watched them from outside and marveled at them. Obviously they are so beautiful that you almost don't want to touch it. But the reality is that it was good fun. When we were training it reminded me all the time about sailing the America's Cup in Valencia because crew work is so important and you need to be really well prepared in order to do some manoeuvres. If you're not organised and well trained, you are not going around marks well. But the nice thing about the boat is that it obviously is something very special. It is also so big, so heavy. So it's very different, very, very different. And in saying that I was surprised how much fun it was."
Chris Hosking is a lynchpin of the Django team and the new Hanuman crew bringing his extensive J Class experience on board.
Hosking explains, "I sailed on Rainbow with the original owner Chris Gongriep around 2013, then I was heavily involved with Svea from launching the boat all the way through to Antigua 2020. I sailed on Ranger for the Maxi Worlds (2022) and sailed Hanuman (in 2022) when we did The Bucket and Antigua. I think we are the only two on the boat that have raced it in the past, myself and Dirk (Cheese) de Ridder, apart from some of the permanent crew guys. Mike Cate, the captain, has raced on Hanuman in the past and was also with us on Svea before that. But there's a lot of people on the boat with J-class experience."
He continues, "When he bought the boat, the brief from Giovanni was I want to use as many Django people as possible, that's to say crew from the between the Django 40, the 50 and the 70. And if we're going to bring in new people, it's imperative that they have J-class experience. We all know the boats are big and heavy with lots of load and get into trouble pretty quick with inexperienced people."
Hosking expands, "Among the others with J Class experience is Ivan Peute, the bowman off the TP52 sled who is our bowman, he sailed on Topaz previously. Rossco Halcrow, is the jib trimmer and sailed with us on Svea, Ranger and Rainbow. Michele Ivaldi sailed on Ranger."
A certain amount of time was spent evaluating and checking sails and hardware. "Obviously, it's like any boat. You put them into hibernation and it takes a bit of time to get them back into racing trim again. The boat hasn't really raced in four years. So we have got the boat back into racing trim again. All of the winches have been thoroughly checked and tested. The rig's been checked. All electronics have been checked and the guys are familiarising themselves with a new navigator (Bruno Zirilli) coming onto the boat, making sure all the systems are working, all the pressure sensors and alarms are correct."
Hosking underlines, "And so we have been working through checking sails. Sails deteriorate even just sitting around in a container with the temperature differences and the humidity going up and down in the container. So we are in the process of evaluating all of Hanuman's sails, basically putting every one up, checking them, and sadly a few of them failed." He specifies, "We had booked slots for new sails. We had a new mainsail delivered for the training session. We have got a couple of new jibs coming and a couple of new spinnakers coming for Saint Tropez."
Hanuman trained a total of eight days.
"Obviously, sail evaluation is a huge part of the process, but getting a huge team of people together for the first time is always hard and so we were developing communication skills, putting everybody in their best spot on the boat where they can be used most efficiently."
Hanuman's crew boss is Dean Phipps who has eight America's Cups under his belt.
"Phippsie is an America's Cup legend with Team New Zealand and Alinghi. He's the crew boss. You need somebody with knowledge and skill and experience to be able to 'herd the cats', you know. A big part of the week was just developing a routine with the sailing team. Getting everybody to know one another and what needs to happen when and coordinating it." Hosking highlights, "So Phippsie is the conductor of the orchestra between him and Vasco. Vasco obviously makes the decisions. And Phippsie's the one that coordinates it with the larger group and makes it all happen."
And he concludes, "We got on very well. I think we've started at a high level early. And I think that comes with the group of people that we've assembled. There's a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge and a lot of talent amongst the sailing group. That allowed us to start at a pretty high level pretty quickly, so we were doing things like gybe sets on the second day kind of thing."
"I've got no doubt that as a team we'll be competitive in Saint-Tropez." He asserts.
Hanuman will join Rainbow and Svea to line up at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez 26 September - 4 October.