Volvo Ocean Race - Camper Torn Sail & Lost Miles

You have to feel sorry for these guys, nothing is going their way in this VOR.

All GOR Class40s are safely in the Atlantic

[source: Oliver Dewar - Global Ocean Race]

Conrad Colman celebrates rounding Cape Horn - Photo Cessna Citation

Having rounded Cape Horn early evening GMT on Monday, Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire have takenPhesheya-Racing through Le Maire Strait between Tierra del Fuego and Isla de los Estados joining Cessna Citation andFinancial Crisis in the South Atlantic after 30 days in the Pacific Ocean’s high latitudes.

However, the final 1,300 miles from Cape Horn to the Global Ocean Race (GOR) Leg 3 finish line in Punta del Este, Uruguay, are proving to be as challenging as the 5,000 miles in the Pacific for the trio of Class40s that continued racing from Wellington, New Zealand. At the head of the fleet, Conrad Colman and Adrian Kuttel have experienced stop-start sailing with Cessna Citation as they close in on the coast of Argentina for the final 180 miles to the finish line on the northern shore of Rio de la Plata, while further south in second place, Marco Nannini and Hugo Ramon on Financial Crisis have been hammered by headwinds north-west of the Falkland Islands but, finally the breeze has gone right.

On the South African Class40, Phesheya-Racing, rounding Cape Horn on Monday evening was a momentous occasion for Phillippa Hutton-Squire. While Nick Leggatt has now logged six passages around the cape, it was a debut rounding for Hutton-Squire: “We never thought we would make it when we were becalmed the last few days, but we pushed hard in the last 24 hours between the hail storms, snow and icy winds,” says the first South African female sailor to skipper a racing yacht around Cape Horn. 

Leggatt and Hutton-Squire sighted Horn Island’s western peak from 27 miles to the south: “From here the excitement and happiness set in on board!” reports Hutton-Squire. As the sun began to set at 56S, Phesheya-Racing arrived three miles off the cape. “It’s a very jagged coastline with sheer cliffs and no trees,” she notes. “The birds had increased in numbers and the dolphins had come out to ride our bow.” However, the magic moment was interrupted as the satellite phone began to ring, the VHF suddenly crackled into life and the AIS warning light started to flash busily after a month with barely any shipping activity.

For the complete update, click here.

Volvo Ocean Race - Day 9 Leg 4

Team Telefonica's Joca Signorini celebrates a new arrival to his family, a baby girl!

Extreme Sailing Series - Danish Team Complete Act 1 Line-Up Starting Tomorrow

[source: Extreme Sailing Series]

Fighting talk on the dockside, find out what the sailors expectations are ahead of the first day of racing for 2012

A new team in the form of Team Trifork from Denmark can finally be unveiled today as the 8th team in the starting blocks for the first Act of the Extreme Sailing Series™ 2012 in Muscat, Oman. The team will be co-skippered by Jes Gram-Hansen on helm and Rasmus Kostner, tactician, who both come from a World Match Racing Tour and America’s Cup background, alongside the youngest member of the team, 26-year-old Jonas Hviid-Nielsen on bow combined with the Extreme 40 race experience of Pete Cummings (skipper of the winning Extreme 40 team in 2009) and Simon Hiscocks from the UK. It has been a long journey for the Danish team that began a year ago as Jes Gram-Hansen explained:“Rasmus and myself went into different sailing programmes like RC44 and Farr 40 after the 32nd America’s Cup in Valencia but all the time our dream was to create our own team. We analysed what kind of circuit would be the one to go with, and with the changes to the America’s Cup and the Extreme Sailing Series being more and more the series to be in, we decided to try and build a team for the Extreme Sailing Series. So we invested all our money into buying a boat a year ago and then we spent most of the year in Denmark taking out business people from companies to show them what we love and what we think would be a good way to be involved in the project. We have long-support from Trifork (a software company) which we have in been a good relationship over the years along with our clothing partner, Simon Spurr, to help get us here to the start line in Muscat.”

Rasmus Kostner, Team Trifork co-skipper and tactician

The team’s expectations are as you would expect for the ‘newbies’ to the tour: “We have a lot of respect for the guys who have been on the tour and some of them have sailed multihulls for a long time,” continued Jens. “We’re here to learn and I’m sure we will make some mistakes but we’ve got two great English guys with us, Simon Hiscocks and Pete Cummings, so, hopefully, they will keep us out of trouble! Hopefully, we’ll improve over the season with a longer term goal of overall victory in a couple of years time.”

After various stints of team training up the Omani coast at Massanah, the racing starts for real tomorrow, Tuesday, 28th February, in Muscat. The live race coverage will start at 1130 GMT on Wednesday (29th Feb), streaming on Thursday (1st March) and Friday (2nd March).

Read quotes from the sailing teams here.

Extreme Sailing Series - Act 1, Muscat Promo

A nice little promo video for the first act of the Extreme Sailing Series 2012 due to start on February 28.

Volvo Ocean Race Game - Leg 4 Start

Sunday, February 19th, leg 4 of the largest online sailing game will start. This leg takes us from Sanya to Auckland. The briefing is now available on the website - http://www.volvooceanracegame.org/


There are 3 mandatory legs in this game (5, 7 and 9) and your points from 3 other legs will contribute to your final score. Now is the time to jump in and get enough mileage to be eligible to win a brand new IWC watch or Volvo XC60!


Become our friend or add us to your watchlist, just search for thesailingscoop within the game.

Sanya In-Port Race Preparation

A countdown to the Sanya Haitang Bay In-Port Race scheduled for Saturday February 18, 2012.

Aqua take the first event of the RC44 season

[source: RC44 Class Association]

© MartinezStudio.es

A three hour wait for the breeze to fill in delayed proceedings on the final day of the RC44 Puerto Calero Cup, AEZ took their second race win in Lanzarote, but Team Aqua were not far behind giving them their first event win of the 2012 season.

Puerto Calero has shown to be a real test for the 14 teams competing in the first leg of the RC44 Championship Tour. After their winter break it was the reigning champions who showed they could change gear in the wide range of conditions in Lanzarote.

Chris Bake and the crew of Team Aqua (GBR) started the week slowly with a 10th and 13th, but quickly got in the groove slotting in four wins, a second, third and fourth to give them victory by 11 points over second placed Aleph Sailing Team (FRA).

The team will retain their golden wheels for another event but are wary of the competition for the rest of the season. “Every boat out there is a concern, they all have the capacity and they all have their days,” said Bake, however the team were chuffed with their first win of the season. “For the team obviously every win is a great win, especially in this class where the teams really give you a run for your money, as you saw the first few days. It’s easy to make a mistake and once you do that its game over, so all in all its really appreciated by all the team that we were able to pull out another great event.”

For the young French team missing an eighth place in the final race secured them second overall, exceeding their own targets for the event as the team’s tactician, Mathieu explained. “It’s a fantastic result for us second place, we couldn’t expect such a good result so it’s great. The team is improving at every event. We had a good first year and I think this year the team is pretty strong.”

Artemis made up the podium, just two points adrift of the French, Torbjorn Tornqvist teaming up with Artemis Racing’s CEO, Paul Cayard for Lanzarote.

AEZ seemed to excel in the lighter shifty conditions, the team from Austria clinching the final race of the series, adding to their win from the previous day and taking them up to fifth overall.

Rene Mangold’s team have been a regular on the Tour since 2009, over the winter they bought in new tactician, Markus Weiser (GER) who has high expectations for the season. “The last two days have been very good for us, they worked out really well, we had a shocker in the second day, we were second to last after four races and we were really disappointed, we had a few boat handling problems but recovered quite nicely. We have a few new sails for the next event which will make us a little more competitive.”

Volvo Ocean Race - NDT - Behind the scenes

A short interview with Stefano Beltrando, who is a NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) expert for a number of teams in the Volvo Ocean Race. This is a great opportunity to hear about the work that goes on behind the scenes at each of the stop overs.

Full on start to the RC44 season

[source: RC44 Class Association]
The 2012 RC44 Championship Tour kicked off in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote with a full day of match racing. A familiar team was at the top of the leader-board after nine flights and six matches a piece, and some new faces showed they will be real contenders this season.

Match Racing at the RC44 Puerto Calero Cup - Photo © Nico Martinez

Match racing in Lanzarote - Photo © Nico Martinez

RC44 Puerto Calero Cup – Match Race Results
(After six races)
1. Team Aqua (GBR2041) 6-0
2. Katusha (RUS007) 5-1
3. Synergy Russian Sailing Team (RUS13) 5-1
4. Aleph Sailing Team (FRA17) 4-2
5. No Way Back (NED18) 4-2
6. RC44 Team CEEREF (SLO11) 3-3
7. Peninsula Petroleum Sailing Team (GBR1) 3-3
8. AEZ RC44 Sailing Team (AUT44) 3-3
9. RUS7 Sail Racing Team (RUS7) 2-4
10. Artemis Racing (SWE44) 2-4
11. Islas Canarias Puerto Calero (ESP1) 2-4
12. Team Nika (RUS10) 3-3 (-2 penalty points) 
13. Ironbound (USA1) 0-6
14. AFX Capital Racing (ITA7) 0-6 (-1 penalty points)


Ask Team Aqua (GBR) what makes them so good and they will always answer ‘consistency’, and the key to that consistency has to be their team. Cameron Appleton (NZL) was at the helm today and had a familiar team around him, names like Matt Cassidy (USA) and Andrew Estcourt (NZL). With six wins and no defeats their season started as it ended in 2011 and credit went to the team. “The guys really need to take credit for today they did a great job, it was tricky and everybody got tested, every boat had issues and a big part of what they did all day long was what got us around the race course in such good shape.” Cameron Appleton, match race helm and tactician, Team Aqua.


Former World Match Race Champion Ed Baird (USA) is new to the class; today he took the helm of Synergy Russian Sailing Team and they nearly finished the day with a clean sheet, had it not been for a ripped spinnaker in their race against Katusha, who also finished the day with a 5-1 score-line with new helmsman in the form of four-time America’s Cup winner Brad Butterworth (NZL).

Baird was happy with his first day’s racing with the Russian Synergy team. “It was really exciting conditions today with the big shifts and big gusts which was a lot of fun. The team is fantastic these guys are very well prepared I’m impressed with how well they sail the boat, it makes my job a lot easier when I know that everything is going to go smoothly. Unfortunately we had one race where we broke the spinnaker and lost that race but otherwise it was a very good day!” Tomorrow, owner Valentin Zavadnikov will take over the helm.

Pieter Heerema was the top rated owner driver on the water with No Way Back (NED) winning four, and losing two, defeats coming from Team Aqua and the French Aleph Sailing Team steered by Mathieu Richard. A good start to the 2012 season and some new additions to the team as Heerema explained.“We thought it might get a bit too windy for a good day of match racing but it worked out really well, in fact the weather was absolutely fantastic.We have some new team members and our new tactician (Ross MacDonald) worked really well with the crew, so we’re very happy.”

With the NE wind picking up to 20 knots at times and the fleet raced to the leeward side of the Island, it really was a baptism of fire for the 14 teams. One team whose results really didn’t reflect their performance on the water was AFX Capital Racing Team (ITA), but the Italian team were in no way down beat at the end of the day. “The racing today was fantastic. I really enjoyed it even if we lost all of our match races. For me it was my first experience and for most of the team the boat is a new one so with each match we found more details that we need to improve on. I’m looking forward to the fleet racing; we can work on the boat speed and have some good races for sure, I am very optimistic about that.” Massimo Barranco, owner AFX Capital Racing Team.

With six matches completed by each of the teams in Lanzarote, the continuous round robin will carry on throughout the season at every RC44 event until the end of the season in Croatia where the 2012 RC44 Match Racing Champion will be crowned.


The fleet racing which counts for the RC44 Championship starts on Thursday 9th February at 12.00GMT. Racing continues through to Sunday 12th February; Follow the racing on the live blog at www.rc44.com.