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Mad
Cowes
Our friend Andy Green (what has he gotten himself into?) gives us this final glimpse at the 2003 Admiral's Cup of which Andy was skipper of the Synergia 40 Chernikeef 3 for his Sailability CCYC team. Tonight is the prizegiving for the 2003 Admiral's Cup. Over the years I have always marveled at the huge profile of such a confusing event. Big boats, little boats, CHS, IRM, IRC, IMS, 2 boats 3 boats etc., etc. This week has surely highlighted the need for a decent big boat rule that encourages fast, pretty new boats while allowing older ones to fairly compete. I may be a bit of a dreamer...but it seems that RORC are making every effort to find a solution and even trying to include the American's into the mix. This year's event came under the shadow of a cancelled event in 2001 and a rather clumsy move from Ireland to Cowes in 2003. With the demise of The Kenwood Cup and The Southern Cross I think it was a triumph in ever happed. By no means back to its heyday, the event turned out to be far better and more competitive than anyone could have dreamed of. Particularly pleasant was the 25-30 degree sunshine throughout. The two newest boats in the big boat fleet, Wild Oats and Bribon (Ker 55) were at the front with well optimised, well prepared and well sailed programmes, Bribon better in the short inshores and Oats stretching her legs and dramatically winning the final long offshore race because Bribon's downwind in a breeze weakness was exploited by the Farr 52's who almost beat her home. In front of the IMS 600 class the Australians made fewest mistakes after a great tussle with the RORC team with Ben Ainslie helming and Pedro Campos' Spanish Rodman 42 with a particularly well optimised rating. Colin Beashel helmed with Adrianne Cahalan navigating and Ado Stead adding another big regatta to his world class CV. The biggest issue for us was that the Synergia 40's were clearly slower. It does seem a little odd that the rule encourages ugly, slow boats with wood in the keels, surely that is going backwards. I have no idea how to solve this but while they seem to go well in the light med this seems to be the crucial area for RORC to address for the next event. As far as our sailability team went both boats finished 7th out of 8 in each fleet and were 12th and 13th ranked of 16 boats. We had 50% disabilities of varying degrees but what was most interesting was that by the end of the regatta our problems were entirely boatspeed related, we only had one new headsail the No2 which fortunately was within range for about three quarters of the event! It certainly made sail selection easy. Our goal was to compete with the best and trade a few tacks, there were plenty of races, the short inshore particularly where we not only competed but fought tooth and nail with the Spanish for 3rd place, only to be robbed in the final hour around the forts on the drift home when the breeze died, but I guess that's sailing! So where next for the AC? Well, my best guess is a big boat rule, IRC or IRM, a middle boat, I hope the Farr 40 owners decide to allow full pro's for one event. They might even enjoy switching roles with their rock stars for a week, and the expect to see the Mumm 30 as the small boat with a Tour de France style series of inshore and offshore and a 50% of the crew are under 25. The event will probably be in 3 years to ensure two cycles do not clash with the America's Cup and I think everyone wants it to stay in Cowes, lets hope they decide and announce in good time, maybe we can even persuade the Yanks to come over and have a go. I'm looking forward to a week at the Swan North Americans, Newport in summer, what could possibly go wrong?! Andy Green |
