Admiral's Cup

DJE

DJE

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Joined
21 Jun 2004
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Fareham
www.casl.uk.com
I'm a bit surprised not to see any chat on here about it. What caused its demise and what is behind its revival? What sort of boats are taking part? There have been quite a few impressive-looking big race boats in The Solent over the past few weeks. I assume they are here for cup racing. Not a racer myself just curious.
 
We were out there yesterday, bobbing around as spectators.
For the French team, unfortunately it was 1805 all over again.

IMG_5058.JPGIMG_5056.JPGIMG_4985.JPGIMG_4971.JPGIMG_4955.JPGIMG_4913.JPG
 
Maybe less of an observation of the AC overall than a personal view on the Channel race here.

The course at first looked odd - turned out to be a pretty good shape. We were expecting to be sent E to Owers and then W down the back of the island. However, given the unstable forecast they came up with a pretty good shape. Not sure about the laid mark in near the IoW (although it did give another shorter tactical beat).

Given that this was a double points race for the AC, the unstable forecast and light patches concentrated minds, I reckon.

The wind hole at the forts was interesting. We were in class 4 (shameless plug, 2 handed on J-109 Just So), and caught a lot of the big boats up; there were boats on every point of sail, on the same heading, within a 1/2 mile radius at one point. Shortly after the forts we were 1st in all 'groups' on YB Tracker (that changed of course...).

For us, 13+ sail changes (several in the dark and rain approaching the mark off France) made it quite a brutal race, but a good warm up for the Fastnet (gulp).

The course and weather ended up favouring the bigger boats - they could stretch away as the wind built later - but in retrospect worked out pretty well. However, the length meant that smaller boats were finishing quite late. We finished at 1630 (approx). I believe RORC have the ability to set shorter courses for smaller classes and cater for this in their result calculation, but have yet to do this...

I'll have to find someone with a Facebook account to view Django's video - would be interested to see.
 
So zero posts on this thread throughout the week of the inshore races. The Admirals Cup clearly hasn’t caught the interest of the forumites.

Has the UK now been officially relegated to the Champions League in yacht racing? The French have dominated in short handed racing for decades - and also won most of our offshore races.
Now our two RORC team seem to be struggling in mid fleet, consistently in 7th / 8th place, with no signs of competiveness.

Our skills seem to lie in the small stuff - Olympic kite boards, ILCA and foiling cats these days.
 
Chiara’s slave said:
Perhaps those small class sailing champs are either not excited by those big boat classes, or are not posh enough to be invited to sail with the big boys
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I expect that most of our top dinghy sailors can’t afford the cash to fund a top flight campaign. Hence why the leaderboard seems to smack of money - Hong Kong YC, Monaco, Costa Smeralda etc.
However, suspect many are on board many of the boats in key roles - as highly paid professionals.
 
dunedin said:
So zero posts on this thread throughout the week of the inshore races. The Admirals Cup clearly hasn’t caught the interest of the forumites.

Has the UK now been officially relegated to the Champions League in yacht racing? The French have dominated in short handed racing for decades - and also won most of our offshore races.
Now our two RORC team seem to be struggling in mid fleet, consistently in 7th / 8th place, with no signs of competiveness.

Our skills seem to lie in the small stuff - Olympic kite boards, ILCA and foiling cats these days.
Click to expand...
Difficult to think of a sport where we arent Champions league. The puzzle is why and how the French have become so dominant in yacht racing particularly long distance. Seems to be a virtuous circle in that even local councils in France sponsor yacht racers because there is so much public interest in the races, but then there is that public interest because the French are nationalistic and because they win.

The UK problem likely is that Yacht Racing here is still viewed by the general public as "posh" and for the upper classes only. Like say Polo.
 
dunedin said:
I expect that most of our top dinghy sailors can’t afford the cash to fund a top flight campaign. Hence why the leaderboard seems to smack of money - Hong Kong YC, Monaco, Costa Smeralda etc.
However, suspect many are on board many of the boats in key roles - as highly paid professionals.
Click to expand...
Congratulations to Peter Harrison (ex UK) and the rest of the winning Monaco team. With the other wealthy sounding Hong King and Costa Smeralda clubs filling the podium.

The French boats “won” the Fastnet race for Admirals Cup boats, again showing their offshore dominance, but not enough to help them overall.
The Uk / RORC teams finished 8th and 10th out of 15.
 
The AC is still a much more interesting watch IMO than Sail GP, a bit like the local club racing at say Castle Combe is more interesting than the gladiatorial F1. It relates to your won sailing experience.
 
Again the Fastnet Race has been won by a double handed crew.
So are most of the 10 or 12 crew often taken mostly just dead weight, slowing the boat down.

And personally I don’t think the Admirals Cup is much of a spectator interest - not least as most of it miles offshore. But each to their own
Birdseye said:
The AC is still a much more interesting watch IMO than Sail GP, a bit like the local club racing at say Castle Combe is more interesting than the gladiatorial F1. It relates to your won sailing experience.
Click to expand...
 
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