Full Circle

This past weekend I returned to a place I had not visited in more than 30 years; Simonstown Naval Base on the Cape Peninsula of South Africa. Back then I was nearing the end of my compulsory two year stint in the army and had been selected to represent the army to race in the Defense Force yachting champs. I made the long and dusty trip from Pretoria riding second class on the train. When I arrived in Simonstown I was shown the barracks where I would live for a week and realized that the navy was a tad more cushy than the army. I mean there was a real bed and edible food. We ate in the mess and then readied a fleet of old bosun dinghy’s for the regatta which took place in False Bay, a windswept patch of water on the back side of the Table Mountain Range that extends from Cape Town to Cape Point. I was lucky enough to have a good crew and we won the regatta against the navy’s star sailor, Chief Petty Officer Bertie Reed. Reed later left the navy and went on to become South Africa’s top solo offshore sailor racing not only the Around Alone but the Vendée Globe as well. In any event by pure luck more than anything else I managed to show Bertie my transom enough times and took the large floating trophy back to Pretoria. Actually the trophy went in a jet; I rode the train, second class. The win earned me an early discharge from the army as thanks for nailing the navy, a long standing sports rivalry. So it was a long walk down memory lane this past Saturday when I returned to Simonstown. Things could not have been different. Apartheid was becoming a distant (bad) memory. The South African navy was a shade of it’s former self without much budget for warship, and thanks to the kindness and generosity of the current Admiral in charge of the Naval Base, Admiral Koos Louw, there is a thriving sailing school within the bounds of the base whose mission is aimed at teaching life-skills through the medium of sailing to underprivileged youth. The non-profit foundation, Izivunguvungu, was founded by Olympic gold medalist Ian Ainsley and it’s clearly working. The young sailors are dedicated and excellent sailors. The skippers of the Portimão Global Ocean Race were invited to join the Izivunguvungu sailors in a friendly regatta in False Bay. I was the official photographer and took some lovely images of the massive smiles on both the faces of the race skippers as well as the children. I looked back at the base from the water, looked at the same bosun dinghies slicing through clear water, the dramatic backdrop of the mountains and it all felt a little like coming home. I am one of those people who like things orderly. The symbolism for me to return 30+ years later as co-founder of a great around-the-world yacht race, to sail with the kids, to see their obvious delight and to know that despite what politicians do at the top, their are good and kind people all over the world making a difference to those at the bottom. It was truly an inspirational day made better when Admiral Louw cooked a slap-up meal for everyone afterwards. How often do you get an Admiral donning an apron and throwing steaks on hot coals? If could have have looked into the future when I first visited Simonstown I would not have believe my eyes.

Views on the Vendée Globe

If you have never been to a Vendée Globe start, you have missed out on one of life’s great experiences, especially, but not only, if you are a sailor. It’s a truly amazing experience and if you are someone who loves the sport and struggles to understand why the masses don’t, go to France. Your heart will be warmed. The scene on the docks the weeks leading up to the start was nothing short of amazing. Ten of thousands of ‘ordinary’ people standing in long lines (in the pouring rain) for an opportunity to get close to the boats and to come face to face with a skipper. The skippers have rock-star status, and in my humble opinion, it’s well deserved. The top sailors are amazing athletes sailing space-age craft around the globe, alone. You try it. You try hoisting the massive mainsail, or worse yet, deal with the sail after a crash gybe. You try sleeping when the boat is hurtling along at 35 knots. It’s impossible to imagine how they do it.

So that’s the scene, or rather, a thumbnail sketch of the scene in France. The start, however, was a different story. What were that race organisers thinking when they sent the fleet off into the teeth of an early winter Bay of Biscay gale? The morning of the start tens of thousands of people flocked into Les Sable d’ Olonne causing back-up’s and traffic jams that would have done New York rush hour proud. Such is the interest in the race. The long, narrow canal leading from the marina to the start area was 20 deep with ecstatic race fans, and for the sailors it much have been euphoric. Until the first cresting wave crashed over the deck at the harbor entrance.

The  number or tightly jammed ferries full of well wishers was only surpassed by the number of choppers filling the sky. As the countdown to gun was called over the VHF it was clear that a number of boats were over the line early but only Mike Golding, probably because he does not speak a word of french, was the only one called back. Dee Caffari, the gutsy British sailor paid for her sponsorship in the first 10 minutes of the race roaring across the start line a few seconds astern of defending champion Vincent Riou, and holding pace with him upwind for the first hour of the race. It was a great sight which I witnessed from a large ferry boat strategically place a hundred yards to leeward of Aviva. The sounds of cheers from onboard the ferry was only matched by the sound of puking souls as the boat heaved and wallowed in a heavy seaway.

The first three days of the race have been mayhem; three dismastings (Aquarelle, Groupe Bel and DCNS, two boats broken (Hugo Boss and Maisonneuve) and multitude of other problems. You have to ask yourself why they started the race. Granted, I know it’s a big deal for the people of France to watch the start and weekends are a good time to watch the start. But these are multi-million dollars projects and the Vendee is the culmination of years of work only to have it all end less than two days into the race.  It’s just not right for the sailors and their sponsors. Eight years ago they postponed the start because of weather and it worked out much better for everyone involved.

Still, others may argue that the cream always rises and the top sailors are out front giving it hell. Jean-Pierre Dick on Paprec-Virbac is slaying dragons at the front of the pack with a chasing pack of Sebastien Josse, Loick Peyron and Roland Jourdaine hot on his heels. Amusingly the British girls, Caffari and Sam Davies are not far off the pace and Mike Golding is slowly picking off boats as he fights his way to the lead. Only 23,000 miles to go.

Some advice for Barack Obama

It’s perhaps a little presumptive of me to offer Barack Obama some advice, but I think it’s advice her can use, so here goes. The challenges that face him as soon as he takes office next January are daunting.  I was thinking of running for president myself but thought better of it when I noticed what a mess the world was in. I have two perspectives on this. First, the world is a small place. Very small.  When you can sail around it, all alone, in a small boat, in just a few months you soon realise what a tiny, fragile place it is we call home. By the time the sailors participating in the Portimão Global Ocean Race get back to Portugal next summer they will have circled just about every country, culture and religion on earth. They will have their own unique view of this big blue marble.

My second point. When you start an around-the-world race it can be daunting. You look at the course that stretches out ahead of you and it seems endless.  I am thinking of the Vendée Globe skippers who take off from France this Sunday. The voyage ahead of them is massive and there is only one way for them to deal with it. The same way Barack Obama needs to deal with the global problems that face all of us. Bite-size pieces. You cannot do it all at once. It’s overwhelming. Break it down into smaller pieces, just like a circumnavigator does. 

A person sailing around the world does not think of the entire 30,000 mile course. No, they think of the race as five legs. Each leg is made up of various stages. Portugal to the Equator, for example. Even smaller than that. Portimão to the Canary Islands the the Canary Islands to the doldrums. My friend Skip Novak wrote a great book a few years ago about his time as skipper of Drum in the Whitbread Round the World Race. The book was entitled One Watch at a Time. That precisely is how you get around the world. One stage at a time, one day at a time, one watch at a time, one hour at a time. Before you know it you have done it. That same principal can be applied to just about anything in life, even the world’s biggest problems. Break them down into bite-size chunks and get started on the first one.

Record smashing run in the VOR

The Volvo Ocean Race may be getting some heat over their race viewer and cumbersome website, but you have to admit; the racing is bloody marvelous. The lead boats expect to arrive in South Africa this weekend after thrashing the length of the North Atlantic in just three weeks. In the old day (by that I mean my days when I was racing professionally) it would take five weeks to cover the same distance and that was on much bigger boats. Add to that Ericsson 4, skippered by the Brazilian sailing star Torben Grael has smashed the 600 mile-per-day barrier for the first time ever by a monohull. Today (Oct 30, ‘08) Ericsson 4 logged a stunning 602.66 nautical miles in 24 hours. That is an average speed of more than 25 knots – AVERAGE. You have to know the boat was sailing 35-plus on occasion. This is insane sailing and they have not even hit the big stuff yet. One wonders what the Southern Ocean will bring.

My guess is that the deep south with its gale force winds and massive seas will not bring much higher speeds. These high performance boats don’t actually need more wind to set records. Sure they need a good breeze, but it’s more about a consistent, steady wind. This allows for the seas to build to a point where they are even and organized. Nothing worse that a building sea and then a sudden cross sea as the wind shifts. The conditions experienced by Ericsson 4 were just right and they smashed their own record set a day earlier, and It eclipsed the previous best 24-hour run for a racing monohull of 562.96 miles set by Sebastian Josse and the crew of ABN AMRO TWO on the second leg of the 2005-06 race from Cape Town to Melbourne.

While the VOR fleet has stretched out to just under 500 miles between the first and last boat, there is not much in it for the first two boats, Ericsson 4 and Puma skippered by Ken Read, Puma being just 76 miles off the pace. That’s 3 hours and anything can happen as the boats close on land. Table Mountain casts a long wind shadow. On two previous round-the-world races I sat in the lee of that magic mountain within spitting distance of the finish line, for more than 6 hours each time. The real interesting race will be between Telefonica Black, Team Russia and Delta Lloyd. Just 25 miles separate them and a lot of bragging rights is at stake. It’s not good for morale to be last into Cape Town.

So while many are griping over the slow-loading 3D Viewer and the fact that the website crashes some machines, I am focussing on the racing and the kind of nerve and stamina it takes to keep a massive boat sailing razor close to the edge of disaster for so long. They are going to deserve a cold Castle Lager or two when they hit the sunny shores of South Africa.

I am a fan of Richard Branson

I am a fan of Richard Branson. I picked up his new book, Business Stripped Bare, at Heathrow airport last week not because I fancy myself as a big businessman, but because I like his style, both of writing and how he has lived his life. Here in the US there is a lot of talk about being a maverick; Branson is a maverick and the people who set off to race around the world in small boats are, for the most part, mavericks.

I bring up Branson because he just made sailing news aboard the 100-foot supersled Virgin Money (real name Speedboat, renamed Virgin Money as Branson and two of his children are paying the bills, but that is an aside). Virgin Money (sounds like an oxymoron to me) is an engineering masterpiece of carbon fiber and just about every other kind of exotic material money can buy in order to to make the boat light, powerful, and by extension, fast. For those of us who find this kind of self-indulgent opulence a modern day version of high art, it warms our hearts and I, for one, love it when billionaires choose to spend their money on a fast sailboat rather than a dull painting to hang on a wall.

Branson and his two grown children joined Virgin Money in New York to ready for an attempt on the west-east transatlantic record. It’s a tough one to beat: 6 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes and 39 seconds, set by the 140-foot Mari Cha IV in 2003. In order to have any chance you need a few things to go right. You need to leave ahead of a front that you hope will carry you well out into the Atlantic and then hook into other systems that will slingshot you across an imaginary finish line off Lizard Point, the most South Westerly point of the UK. 

The team that included the best money can buy had a realistic chance of breaking the record providing they didn’t break the boat. Unfortunately they broke the boat. Well not the boat exactly, but the mainsail, a critical piece of kit. The sail was damaged to the point where continuing the record attempt would have been pointless so they took a hard right and headed for the tropical sanctuary of Bermuda. What a contrast. From the cold, gray windswept North Atlantic to the pink sands of paradise. Not a bad consolation prize.

So, I like Richard Branson. I respect and admire anyone who takes life by the horns and lives it to the fullest. That doesn’t mean we all have to be billionaire adventurers. We can all, in our own way, make a statement about who we are and how we want to live the three score and ten years allotted to us on this planet. Which brings me back to my race, the Portimão Global Ocean Race. The 10 sailors who put their lives on hold to show up in Portimão and race around the world are all mavericks in their own way. Over the next few months we will come to understand their motivations, their passion for life and how they view the experience. I hope that they impart just a little of their guts and determination to the rest of us.

Heady times for armchair sailors

These are heady times for armchair sailors. On October 11 the Volvo Ocean Race got underway from Alicante, Spain. A day later the inaugural Portimão Global Ocean Race set sail from Portugal and on November 9 the big one, the Vendée Globe will leave from Les Sable d’ Olonne, France. Three different around-the-world race each with their own character, their own place in the global sailing scene, all of them bound to bring drama, excitement and pure inspiration to sailors around the world.

As co-founder of the Portimão Global Ocean Race and a veteran of three Whitbread Round the World campaigns (the Whitbread now being the Volvo Ocean Race) I feel that I have some perspective. It’s only my perspective and I know there are other infinitely more qualified voices out there, but this is my blog so you get my point of view.

Things could not be better for offshore ocean racing and by extension, the broader sailing community. Eight full blown, cutting edge, VOR 70’s are hurtling around the planet dragging corporate sponsors to exotic destination with PR machines in tow. Mainstream celebrities want to be seen with the sailors and vice-versa. Offshore sailing has arrived squarely in the mainstream as a dynamic, media driven, cash guzzling public relations bonanza and it’s about time. The teams, their sponsors and the race is a phenomenon and if you have not witnessed up close the power and excitement of a Volvo 70 at full cry, I suggest you try and make one of the inshore races. 

Things are brutal on board; there is no other way to describe it. Life revolves around squeezing the most speed from the boat, 24/7. I read that on board Team Russia they carry only a single spoon per person with three spares. It’s an effort to save weight but less than two weeks into the race they have already lost four spoons. I wonder how that dynamic will play out on board. In my day we had wine with dinner, every night, and a cabin to sleep in. Granted the equipment was not up to the task and half-inch wire guys used to snap with alarming regularity, but that was all part of the adventure. Same too with the suicide of the Russian skipper in ’89. I was his Watch Captain! I took up solo sailing shortly after that. 

I have only admiration and respect for the VOR, the sailors and the corporate circus that will accompany the race over the next nine months. By contrast the Vendée Globe might as well be a different sport. France turns out in full force for these modern day argonauts. When their race starts from Les Sable d’ Olonne next month there will traffic jams 20 miles out of the city as people pour into the tiny seaside town for the start. When the first boats arrives back next February hundreds of thousands of “ordinary” men and women (and their dogs) will be there to welcome each and every sailor back home to France. For those of us who love sailing and wonder why the rest of the world does not see things our way, go to France – your heart will be warmed.

The Vendée, like the Volvo are both at the pinnacle of their success. The Vendée will have 30 boats on the start line, half of which are serious contenders for winning. The fleet includes two past winners as well as a number of other veterans who have sailed that gruelling race more than three times. Unfortunately for the Vendée this is the swan-song for many of the competitors. Add to that the campaigns are becoming prohibitively expensive and the boats too complicated to sail and you start running out of sailors to compete. You can’t have a great event without great competitors.

It’s this reality that convinced myself and my partner, Josh Hall, to step into the breech and create a new around-the-world race, one that is affordable for sailors while still meeting their aspirations and goals. The Portimão Global Ocean Race will become a serious player on the world sailing scene precisely because it fills a need that seems to be getting bigger. We are lucky to have this race sponsored in a time when the economy is in a free fall, and we are thrilled to have the Portuguese city  of Portimão as the home for the event.  Our main objective now is to get our 10 sailors back safely to Portimão next year and use their collective experience to build upon. I hope that you will bookmark our race, keep it in perspective, and join us on this global adventure.