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The end of Leg 1 of the VOR is near

2008-10-31T16:33:00Z

With less than 600 miles to go, Ericsson 4 will likely be first at the finishing line in Cape Town, South-Africa. We’ll have a more detailed review of the first leg next week, when all ships are in.

In the meantime, we’ve selected this picture to be our “52Sails picture of the week”. Freddie Shanks has to do some tough grinding onboard of Green Dragon. Image (c) Guo Chuan/Green Dragon Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.

Virgin Money has to abandon record attempt

2008-10-26T08:34:00Z

Virgin Money had to abandon her attempt to break the Atlantic sailing record. The ex-speedboat maxi faced huge waved, sailed trough storms but had to declare defeat when a huge monster wave shred the Spinnaker, washed a ten man life boat overboard and ripped a huge gash in the mainsail.

However, the team is very confident they’ll be back. “Virgin Money will soon be fighting fit and ready to take on the Atlantic again in the very near future”, sir Richard Branson declared. “You learn to respect the awesome power of this ocean and to admit when she has you beat. But I truly believe that next time Virgin Money will set a new world record that will secure its place in the record books for many years to come.”

His two children (Holly and Sam) have announced they want to be there on the next attempt as well!

Richard Branson on track to beat the trans-Atlantic record

2008-10-23T10:32:00Z

Billionaire and adventurist Richard Branson left New York yesterday for a sailing trip with his two children. Not an ordinary sailing trip, no. The man best known for building the Virgin empire, has been breaking records sinds the 1980s. The record he wants to break this time is the “Trans Atlantic” record, to sail from New York to Lizard Point off the coast of England.

The crew of his “Virgin Money” 99ft maxi yacht (which started its life as “Speedboat”) consists mainly of members of the TEAMORIGIN America’s Cup team, including a few Olympic medalists. But the most remarkable crew members are Richard’s daughter Holly (26) and son Sam (23). Holly will serve as a medic and said she was fully prepared to face the icebergs and cold waters. Son Sam is very confident and isn’t worried about the risk of navigating the Atlantic in the foul weather: “I think it’s more going to be just very unpleasant,” he said. “The chance of anything going real wrong is not real high. We’re in a great boat with a world class team.”

The current record holder is the spectacular Mari Cha IV, who made the trip in 6 days 17 hours 39 minutes 52 seconds in 2003. She was skippered by Mike Sanderson, who is a also a co-skipper on this attempt. Will he be able to break his own record? “52Sails.org”:http://52sails.org will keep you posted!

UPDATE: They are well on track to beat the record, but face some rough seas. Check out this on board footage:

Olin Stephens sailed his last trip

2008-09-15T15:39:00Z

The great Olin Stephens passed away over the weekend at the age of 100. As a yacht designer he was without equal, drawing the lines for the winners of eight of nine America’s Cup matches between 1937 and 1980.

Olin J. Stephens II is considered to be one of the most prominent naval architects of the 20th century. He master the unique art of creating very fast yachts that just looked stunning. From the 1931 Dorade over the J-Class Ranger to several 12-Meters and the best of the Swan designs, they all passed Olin’s drawing table.

His design firm, Sparkman & Stephens also designed the first two winners of the Whitbread Round the World Race: the Swan 65 Sayula II won the inaugural edition, while the ketch Flyer won the 1977/8 Whitbread with Conny van Rietschoten at the helm.

In his autobiography, ‘All This and Sailing, Too’ Stephens wrote, “I was lucky: I had a goal. As far back as I can remember I wanted to design fast boats.”

And that he did, contributing to the design of over 2,000 yachts before retiring from the firm in the early 1980s. We wish him all the best on this final trip.

VOR ships will be part of Ecological Research

2008-08-08T07:47:00Z

The Volvo Ocean Race is taking part in a pioneering project aimed at finding out how the oceans have been affected by ships’ exchanging of billions of tonnes of ballast water.

Each boat in the race will be involved in the programme which was initiated by the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), the logistics partner of the 2008-2009 Volvo Ocean Race. The dedicated “media crew” member on board will be responsible for taking regular water samples using a sophisticated testing process based on bioluminescence using a measuring instrument called a luminometer.

The race route provides scientists with a rare opportunity to analyse the biomass of the water in open seas not on the regular shipping lanes. It will advance scientific research as to how foreign invaders found in ballast water are upsetting the eco-systems in the world’s great oceans.

“Invasive species are one of the four major threats to the world’s oceans, the other three being global climate change, marine pollution and overfishing,” said WWL’s Global Head of Environment, Melanie Moore, during a recent briefing to a Media Crew Member workshop in Race HQ in Whiteley, Hampshire.

“What we want to look at is the mass of species along the race route. That’s the benefit of what the crew can do for us. It’s about conducting research that will go towards creating some better ballast water treatment systems for the future,” she added.

The research at sea by the Media Crew Member involves taking a regular water sample, recording the mass of species in the sample, reporting the results electronically and then having them published on the Volvo Ocean Race website. A scientific report of the findings will be published post-race.

To put this research in perspective, the IMO has issued a dire warning about the threat of invasive marine species carried across the world in ballast water.

“Unlike other marine pollution, from which the environment will eventually recover, the impacts of invasive marine species are most often irreversible.”

CNEV (Club Nautico Español de Vela) declared rightful Challenger of Record

2008-07-30T07:13:00Z

The organisation of the 33th America’s Cup has been a legal battle for about a year now. Immediately after Team Alinghi (backed by the Société Nautique de Genève) won the 32th Cup, they announced that they made an agreement with Spanish Team Desafio Español to organise the next Cup. As the “Challenger of Record”, the Spanish Team has some special privileges with the other contestants don’t have. They decide on the format of the race, even the class of boats that are to be used in the Cup.

The days after the announcement, a few “irregularities” came to light. As declared in the “Deed of Gift” of 1852 (the document that stipulates the rules of the America’s Cup races), the Challenger of Record must be backed by a Nautical Club that holds (among other things) annual regattas at sea. The Spanish government and the Spanish team wanted to create a true “Spanish” team, not backed by any regional Spanish yacht club. The obvious choice would be to use the Royal Spanish Sailing Federation (RFEV) as the challenging club. However, the RFEV doesn’t comply with the Deed of Gift, as it is a federation of clubs and not a club in itself, so they decided to create the CNEV (Club Nautico Español de Vela) specially for the occasion. However, the CNEV doesn’t hold and “real” regatta’s!

The legal battle that followed was very hard as the Golden Gate Yacht Club felt that they and not CNEV were the rightful challengers, but may have come to an end now. In a 3-2 ruling that surprised a lot of observes, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court today ruled in favour of SNG declaring the CNEV the rightful Challenger of Record of the 33rd America’s Cup.

Ernesto Bertarelli, Alinghi president, is of course very happy with the decision: “We are delighted with this result; we can now continue with our vision of a multi-challenger event. The court’s decision validates our actions and enables us to put the America’s Cup back on the water.”

The legal interpretation of the Deed of Gift notwithstanding, I think it was time for a final decision. We’ve been battling in stead of sailing for over a year now, it’s time to get wet and get racing!

Telefonica Black moves from Auckland to Alicante

2008-06-07T06:54:00Z

How does one transport a 60ft yacht (a VOR Open60 to be precise) from Auckland, New Zealand to Alicante, Spain? You take a plane, open the nose, shove it in, fly it to Alicante (with refueling stops in Indonesia and Azerbaijan), open the nose again and unload it. Sounds easy, no?

I am always amazed when I see those big Antonov’s in action. They seem to be the only remaining part of the old USSR aviation technology. (Image: Maria Muina/Equipo Telefonica)

Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 Route Map

2008-06-03T18:50:00Z

The 2008-09 Volvo Ocean Race will be the 10th running of this ocean marathon. Starting from Alicante in Spain on 4 October 2008, it will for the first time, take in ports in Asia. Spanning some 39,000 nautical miles, stopping at around 11 ports and taking nine months to complete, the Volvo Ocean Race is the world’s premier yacht race for professional racing crews.

With lots of teams already far in the preparations, including a Russian Team, this edition of the VOR promises to be a very competitive and exciting one! We’ll regularly post important news or nice photo’s about the boats as soon as we receive them. (Image: (c) Volvo Ocean Race)

No multihull at the London Olympics

2008-05-20T14:40:00Z

In a vote that surprised the entire yachting world and shocked at least half of the sport-sailers among us, the ISAF voted not to include any kind of multihull racing for the 2012 Olympics. They did choose the following categories:

One person dinghy – men
One person dinghy heavy – men
Two person dinghy – men
Two person dinghy high performance – men
Windsurfer – men
Keelboat – men
One person dinghy – women
Two person dinghy – women
Keelboat, match racing – women
Windsurfer – women

So no Tornado, Hobie Cat or F40 in the first Olympics in a long time that almost certainly will be windy. The best of the multihull men have about 4 years to retrain them on for instance a 49er. But imagine you are a top-20 female Tornado sailer at the moment. What are the options for them? Go back to 470 or Yngling? I don’t think a lot of the ladies would like that…

In a world where the Olympics are about spectacular sports that are known to attract a lot of TV viewers, I think it’s a strange move to ditch the multihull and keep “old” classes like the Finn and the 470.

Puma's move at night

2008-04-23T15:14:00Z

PUMA Ocean Racing’s new boat for the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-2009 prepares to move out of the Goetz Custom Boats facility Tuesday morning in Bristol, Rhode Island on its way toward Newport Shipyard. What normally takes 25 minutes for passenger cars took more than 2 hours as the wide load and 70-foot boat had to navigate over a closed 2-lane bridge, around streets signs, through narrow turns and over curbs. A dense layer of fog on the historic Mt. Hope Bridge, made for an especially tricky but photo-worthy drive. At 6:25 with the sun slowly rising, PUMA’s new boat arrived at the Newport Shipyard.

Photo by Sally Collison/PUMA Ocean Racing.

Chinese boat Longtze star of the GP Ecole Navale

2008-04-23T09:19:00Z

The “Grand Prix Ecole Navale” which will be held in Brest (France) from the 8th till the 11th of May. This three-round race will be the biggest gathering of sportboats in Europe. About 140 of the newest generation sailing boats are expected. Among them a flock of Open 750’s, Melges and Mumm 30s. But the star of the event will be the first Chinese-build sportboat ever: the Longtze Premier.

This boat measures 6m80 ong and almost 3m wide and needs a crew of 4 or 5 to handle it. Luc Gellusseau, Operations Manager of Team China in the last America’s Cup explains: “When we raced the Cup under the colours of China, the idea was to become involved in the development of sailing in China, by enabling the Chinese to sail at the top level as well including them in the construction of the yachts. As a result, we decided to manufacture a Sportsboat: the Longtze Premier. It was built entirely in China in a yard more familiar with the construction of dinghies.”

No less than 5 Longtze’s will be present at the Grand Prix for the first appearance of this promising new Chinese export product. At about 26000 euro for a complete package including racing sails, the boat is quite well priced as well. The Longtze also fits in a standard container, so shipping is quite easy. Find out more about them on their website.

We look forward to the results and reactions of the crews that get to sail them in Brest.

Groupama 3 capasizes

2008-02-18T19:31:00Z

Last night at 2343 UTC, Franck Cammas, skipper of the trimaran Groupama 3 engaged in the Jules Verne Trophy, alerted the shore crew to the capsize of the maxi trimaran.

All crew members have been rescued by helicopters and repatriated to Dunedin, on New Zealand’s South Island.

Groupama 3 was on a winning spree and were a day ahead of Bruno Peyron’s old record time.

Areva (ACC FRA-93) out sailing

2008-01-18T13:32:00Z

Who said they don’t make beautiful yachts anymore?

I agree, the old J-class yachts like Endeavour had superb lines, but look at this picture of FRA-93 (Areva Challange) training for the 32th America’s Cup.

SkySails launched: CO2 reduction for vessels

2007-12-17T13:49:00Z

Last Sunday, the MV “Beluga SkySails” was launched in Hamburg. It’s the first commercial merchant ship pulled by a giant kite aiding its engines to slash fuel consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions. The 132-meter long Beluga will make its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to Venezuela in early January.

This photo is of a smaller “demo” vessel, the MS Beaufort. Tests have show that the Beaufort was able to reduce fuel consumption by 20%.

Wild Oats dismasts after 4 minutes of race

2007-09-06T18:36:00Z

On of the best Maxi’s in the water today is Wild Oats. It finishes top positions in every big race, and has won the last two editions of the Sydney-Hobart race. Their mast exploded and broke into three pieces this week during the Maxi Yacht World championships in Porto Cervo, Italy. The team will work very hard to have Wild Oats ready for this years edition of Sydney-Hobart.