London Boat Show 2014: the boats

You can't have a boat show without boats - I'm pretty sure about that. And even though the London Boat Show seems to be shrinking year by year there are still plenty of good boats to check out.

For starts, out on what once were the London Docks was a couple of classic boats. Above is the fire boat the Massey Shaw all powered up and there was no takers in its water fight challenge. The Massey Shaw was build in 1935 and saw service in WW2 at both Dunkirk and also the blitz in London, most likely around these very docks.

Further down the quay was the motor tug Kent:

There was also a Challenge 72 and the Thames barge Melissa (I so want to sail a Thames barge);

Inside was one of those cross-oceans rowing boats, here the Coxless Crew:

Sounds much too much like hard work for me but good luck to all four rowers

If I had a magic wish to go on any boat at the show then my choice would be this Extreme 40:

To quote Jeremy Clarkson "MORE POWER!!"

And it appears I'm not the only one as none other than Sir Ben Ainslie is including sailing Extreme 40s in his busy schedule.

Feedback from an imaginary America's Cup Sponsor

After watching the racing in San Francisco Bay I've been wondering how one could go about asking sponsors to support a campaign for the "world's oldest sporting trophy". How might that conversation go?

JP

As you can see from Race 8 of the current series, it's exciting stuff, with Team NZ almost capsizing!

SPONSOR

Wow, yes, this is interesting stuff! But if they had capsized how would they have got the boat the right way up?

JP

You can't. In past capsizes the boat has been a total right off, smashed to smitherenes. In fact maybe you could give us a bit more money so we'd have a spare?

SPONSOR

You want more? Already?

JP

Actually we'd need three boats. Team NZ only have two and the second isn't fully read to go. Oracle had three: one was a complete write-off during training but their budget allows for the second to be on hot standby.

SPONSOR

And these AC72s are not cheap. What happens if we're up against a sponsor with deeper pockets than us?

JP

They could take risks we couldn't, so it would be tough.

SPONSOR

Is it dangerous? Is there the potential for an accident with negative publicity?

JP

Err... well, yes. It was such a shame as Bart was a great sailor and the nicest bloke ever.....

SPONSOR

And are the other sponsors happy with their investment? What about Louis Vuitton? They spent millions didn't they?

JP

Er... I hear they want a $3 million refund because so few teams entered. 

SPONSOR

Maybe because these boats costs tens of millions of dollars each and a single mistake can lead to a capsize, crew deaths and the end of a campaign?

JP

...er... maybe.

SPONSOR (putting away the big fat cheque book)

The door's behind you. On you way out could you tell those guys from Extreme 40 Sailing that they can come up now?

Extreme Sailing racing past stumbling AC?

Noodle recently posted a link to an article on Bloomberg about "how Larry Ellison is destroying the America's Cup".

The word "destroying" does sound like journo over-kill, but he certainly doesn't seem to achieved his objective, which was to be the Formula 1 of sailing.

However while the AC is stumbling, the Extreme Sailing series seems to be going from strength to strength: check out this excellent 84 page guide to the 2013 season.

Of course the summer's events could turn things all around: either way both will be interesting to watch.

Racing for spectators

After yesterday's post on Extreme 40 sailing in Cardiff Baydog brought up that favourite hot potato of whether it was better in the days of ACC monohulls.

Well over the last few weeks at the Olympics and Cardiff I've watched Lasers, 49ers, Eliot class match racing and Extreme 40s fleet race so here's some ideas from on my experiences.

1) Doing is better than watching, but.....

You knew that anyhow, didn't you. It is better to be out there on the water than on land watching.

But that doesn't help, really. We complain that there isn't high enough exposure of sailing on (say) TV and that means people should watch it - and that means people should enjoy watching it.

Then top rank sailing is expensive and not everyone is a billionaire so that means sponsors and that means audiences.

Plus with an audience you've got more of a chance of some kid going "hey, that looks cool, I'd like to try that" which means sailing has a future. Going fast is cool, remember that.

Also not everyone sails equally well and its actually quite impressive to see the very best at any skill based endeavour showing how it should be done. Those on the Nothe watching Ben Ainslie do his thing must have had a treat (alas that wasn't one of the days I was down there).

2) It's hard to follow large fleets of small boats

Sorry Tillerman but those Laser races may have had Paul Goodison and Tom Slingsby in it but it was really hard to follow from the Nothe what was going on with so many boats at the top / bottom mark. Also each leg took its time so can't see that grabbing the attention deficit yoof of today (or so Sassi tells me).

By all means get schools into sailing and put kids on Lasers asap - great idea. But I can't see it building an audience of spectators.

3) Mono hull match racing is for purists

Not that there's anything wrong with that: of the classes I saw at the Nothe I've already said that Match racing was my favourite. With just two boats you could see clearly who was winning and it was a master class in tactics and sailing skills.

But you had to know at least something about the rules and why boats would all of a sudden dial up or down and be prepared to invest time enough for the upwind / downwind legs to play out.

4) Speed is impressive

Two quotes overheard last weekend from what sounded like a sailing novice: "wow!" and "this isn't what I expected it to be like!" - I'm assuming in a good way. Even the Volvo 70s when they raced in Portsmouth didn't get that reaction - though the 49ers were close.

Ok it wasn't ACC class (let alone Square Metre Rule classic yacht racing) but it did seem to get involved an audience outside the usual suspect (that's us I guess).

Sailing at these close quarters over short courses do need different skills to traditional racing but there are skills there; less chess player more tennis player.

In the face of the super fast catamarans of today no doubt McCoy would say "it's yacht racing JP, but not as we know it!"

But it is yacht racing, and it is getting an audience.

There is room out there on the water for all classes and the Extreme 40s deserves its chance to grab some spectators into the world of sailing.

Anyway that's enough of me - what do you think?

Extreme 40s at Cardiff - Race part 2

After the first half of the race (blogged yesterday) and having come back down towards the start the Extreme 40s fleet of 9 yachts had to do a couple of loops of the marks guestimated below on Google Earth:

It was basically round M1 to either M2 or M3, back to M1 and then either M2 or M3 again, back to M1 and a snappy dash to M5 before a handbrake turn in front of the quayside to zap back across the line.

If you look at the scale you can see that these speed machines were doing the legs in about 30 seconds, and there'd be some going up and others going down and a lot of OMG-ing and shit-ing as the skippers changed course and decided at the last second that M3 might be a safer bet than M2:

I must admit I did keep looking out for an almighty prang but the skippers kept their cool well.

The rewards of getting their first were even greater than normal as the boats could turn at speed, as shown perfectly here by Ernesto Bertarelli on Alinghi:

Later boats had to be more cautious and slow down, something that Extreme 40s don't like doing. In fact SAP stalled just above the mark and was really close to drifting back onto it:

After this it was time for a sprint to the final mark:

Then the line, points and in under 10 minutes do it all over again.

Very exciting to watch and must it be a total adrenaline rush blast to sail.

Extreme 40s at Cardiff - Race part 1

This is what starts looks like for the Extreme 40s, and we got to see 8 of them packed into three hours on Saturday afternoon.

The area to manoeuvre these rockets ships was remarkably small and with the wind gusting from 5 to 15 knots there were quite a few re-starts as boats surged across the line.

Then they'd zoom off downwind, windward hull flying high in a way that even the total non-sailor could appreciate:

Up at that end of the course there was a downwind / upwind pair of legs but as Cardiff Bay is under a nautical mile from end to end and these boats were at times doing 20 knots it wasn't long before they were screaming back down again, often hidden under clouds of spray:

Down by where the main crowd (including me) were waiting there were a pair of buoys that the fleet of 9 yachts had to choose which to go round, dodging those who had already gone round. It was all within a few metres of the shore and there really was no room spare.

Things were about to get interesting:

Extreme 40s at Cardiff

I spent the afternoon in Cardiff watching the Extreme 40s - thrilling, fast, furious stuff.

More to come as go through the photo stack.