Monaco pulls out of Cowes-Monte Carlo race

jfm

jfm

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I just noticed (sorry if it's been discussed and I'm slow) the mby report saying that Monaco has refused to host the finish of the June 2013 Cowes-to-Monte-Carlo powerboat race. Blimey, that must be a serious blow, especially coming this late. Even the event and its website have been called Cowes-to-Monte-Carlo. They seem to have done a quick re-name to Venture Cup. Anyway, I have no idea of the backstory. Does anyone? But I do wish them well in doing all the necessary reorganising.

If they want to finish on the riviera then Antibes must make sense. The town likes events, and the port can probably handle the boat traffic without too much trouble, especially if (as last resort) they use the shipyard quay, but I hope they can make space in the main port as they do for the yacht show and the Voiles d'Antibes events. They need a French speaker to ask the Port CEO and the Mairie.

Anyway, good luck to them. If anyone knows more, please post, as I'd be interested to hear
 
The "Venture Cup" concept was in place long before this bit of "unfortunate" news about the race finish.

The Venture Cup was developed to give some longevity to the series rather than a one off race. Something for people to really get stuck into.

There has been a HUGE amount of work put in thus far and knowing Mike Lloyd, its not done yet! watch this space for what should be the most spectacular event in powerboat racing. almost enough to convince me to get another boat....
 
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z1ppy said:
The "Venture Cup" concept was in place long before this bit of "unfortunate" news about the race finish.

The Venture Cup was developed to give some longevity to the series rather than a one off race. Something for people to really get stuck into.

There has been a HUGE amount of work put in thus far and knowing Mike Lloyd, its not done yet! watch this space for what should be the most spectular event in powerboat racing. almost enough to convince me to get another boat....
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Thanks Zippy. Ah I hadn't realised the "venture" branding has been around for a while. I and I guess other sofF forumites are hoping to be afloat around the finish line for what should be a memorable spectacle.
 
jfm said:
Thanks Zippy. Ah I hadn't realised the "venture" branding has been around for a while. I and I guess other sofF forumites are hoping to be afloat around the finish line for what should be a memorable spectacle.
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no problem. stay in touch and will keep you posted! i might even come down to sample the SoF lifestyle!
 
z1ppy said:
no problem. stay in touch and will keep you posted! i might even come down to sample the SoF lifestyle!
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Sure. You'll be welcome aboard Henryf's boat, KCrane's oGaryo's or any of the existing sofF-mob boats :D

If you hear where the new finish line will be please post
 
jfm said:
I just noticed (sorry if it's been discussed and I'm slow) the mby report saying that Monaco has refused to host the finish of the June 2013 Cowes-to-Monte-Carlo powerboat race. Blimey, that must be a serious blow, especially coming this late. Even the event and its website have been called Cowes-to-Monte-Carlo. They seem to have done a quick re-name to Venture Cup. Anyway, I have no idea of the backstory. Does anyone? But I do wish them well in doing all the necessary reorganising.

If they want to finish on the riviera then Antibes must make sense. The town likes events, and the port can probably handle the boat traffic without too much trouble, especially if (as last resort) they use the shipyard quay, but I hope they can make space in the main port as they do for the yacht show and the Voiles d'Antibes events. They need a French speaker to ask the Port CEO and the Mairie.

Anyway, good luck to them. If anyone knows more, please post, as I'd be interested to hear
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John, are you now the Mayor of Antibes? Or President of the SofF Tourist Board? Or have you bought up all the berths in the SofF to rent/lease/sell to Forumites:D
 
jfm - as said above, the 'Venture Cup' idea has been around for a while. There's also some Irish involvement this year from a logistics POV and they know what they're at.

I had planned to participate in the race with the Irish team, but then that ****ing Cranchi landed on my pontoon one morning :D Also I don't think my spine would have liked it
 
If they want to finish on the riviera then Antibes must make sense. The town likes events, and the port can probably handle the boat traffic without too much trouble, especially if (as last resort) they use the shipyard quay, but I hope they can make space in the main port as they do for the yacht show and the Voiles d'Antibes events. They need a French speaker to ask the Port CEO and the Mairie.

John, would the Antibes finish give you a good vantage point then? I do know that there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to try to get back to Monaco, and they have a couple of good French speaking guys working on it now. There is a teams only race briefing on 24th November so they hope to reveal all then.
Obviously pretty tough times to attract sponsorship and so whilst there are nearly 40 entries shown on the website and a few more in the wings working quietly on their projects my inkling is 35 or more will actually cross the start line.
Should be a great race, our new boat is coming along, slightly behind schedule but hoping to be in the water very early April.
SIMON.
 
Pennpromo said:
If they want to finish on the riviera then Antibes must make sense. The town likes events, and the port can probably handle the boat traffic without too much trouble, especially if (as last resort) they use the shipyard quay, but I hope they can make space in the main port as they do for the yacht show and the Voiles d'Antibes events. They need a French speaker to ask the Port CEO and the Mairie.

John, would the Antibes finish give you a good vantage point then? I do know that there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to try to get back to Monaco, and they have a couple of good French speaking guys working on it now. There is a teams only race briefing on 24th November so they hope to reveal all then.
Obviously pretty tough times to attract sponsorship and so whilst there are nearly 40 entries shown on the website and a few more in the wings working quietly on their projects my inkling is 35 or more will actually cross the start line.
Should be a great race, our new boat is coming along, slightly behind schedule but hoping to be in the water very early April.
SIMON.
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Hi Simon
I shouldn't be distracting you from making me some beautiful fuel tanks by talking on this forum but here goes :D

If you mean vantage point for spectators ashore then I'm afraid nothing there beats monaco. The Riviera has a wobbly coast line with ins and outs, and the two beautiful peninsulas- Cap Ferrat and Cap d'Antibes. The problem however is leisure traffic. Monaco is ruled a bit more, erm, centrally, so I bet they would have no problem creating an exclusion zone corridor for race boats to do the main riviera W-E safely offshore then swoop in along an exclusion zone corridor for a beautful finish close to the shore in Monaco, in the eastern Monte Carlo region. Perfect.

The french coast however has zillions of pleasure boats and less "rod of iron" rule, so avoiding smash ups and creating a safe exlcusion zone corridor for the race boats to come close to shore at 100mph is a MAJOR problem. Doing that in a couple of months is going to take a lot of willingness on the part of the public authorities. Totally different from Monaco, where the prince is the boss

As a matter of geography Antibes would allow very limited shoreside spectatorship if you only had the involvement of the port. If you got the mairie and therefore the whole town involved you could get a huge strip of spectator space along the so-called ramparts (where vieux mur restaurant is) and along the wall over the town beach and the superyacht quai bit where the lovely huge white "nomad man" sculpture is now located. yellow oval on the second image below. This would require a finish line off Salis, the inlet just south of port vauban, yellow blob on pics below. Alternatively the finish could be parallel to Bord du Mer road, which has a 5 mile long shingle beach and lots of car parking, which allows loads of spectators. Purple oval for spectators and purple blob for actual finish line.

Navigation wise you are
(a) taking race boats, yellow line, where there is an incredible amount of leisure traffic entering/exiting Port vauban, and anchored overnight. Yellow blob indicates salis bay finish line and purple blob indicates bord du mer finish line; and
(b) Orange + red lines indicate most leisure traffic. You are crossing the orange line leisure traffic (25% of traffic, I'd guess) so they would have to diverted north, close to beach, and you are close to but not crossing the the red line leisure traffic (75% of traffic, at a guess).

All do-able. But very tricky stuff to plan, de-risk, convince the officials. If you had lots of French teams entering it would be easier :) Persuading MC to change their minds might be easier

Good luck and I hope the Venture organiser team is successful I'd love to be a water-borne spectator as would many of the SofF forumites on here I bet

mapbig.jpg


mapsmall.jpg
 
Race Finish

John,
Thank you for your very informative post, I will pass it on the the Race Director Mike Lloyd.
As the next poster points out they say that they will announce the finish at a race briefing on 24th November in Portsmouth.
As soon as we know we will tell on to the forum.
It appears that there is a Boat International Superyacht event in the port at the same time and I do know that discussions are ongoing.
By the way JFM we are no longer making Fairline tanks- unfortunately !
 
I know this isn't new news but for those only taking a light interest I just I wd bring this up to the top again. They announced the finish line will be off Monaco and then the race boats will U turn back to Nice Harbour (about 7 miles west) for berthing/ceremonies etc

I realise that the organisers were between a rock and a hard place so well done to them for getting a solution, but it isn't great for the SofF boating spectators. There will be little to see from the shore in Monaco if the race boats don't come in close, which is the case I understand. (It would be good to see GPS coordinates of the 2 ends of the finish line; anyone know?). Then if you spectate from a boat you see them cross the line (not sure with what frequency - over a 1-2 hour period I guess) but then you're 7 miles from the "pits" and all the spectatable activity there. And you pretty much cannot get a private boat berth into Nice harbour becuase it has very few 15-25m berths and they're always full, and you cannot even enter the harbour and hang around without permission, which you won't get. Ah well; might have to watch it on TV! Hope the race is a big success for them though
 
Ian h said:
Just read that the race has been cancelled
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The announcement I read suggests that its a postponement, a great shame, but I felt from the start that the chances of it going ahead were slim, very tough event to run.

A number of very disappointed people tonight I should think.
 
taken from another web site

Guess this was an email sent out to the teams

Mike Lloyd 6:29pm Dec 10
10th December 2012

It’s with deep regret and extreme disappointment that, after two years of intense work, several thousand hours and thousands of miles travelled, my colleagues and I have to inform the Venture Cup Fleet and my own race team that we only have 13 boats that have paid their next tranche of entry fee as per the Venture Cup rules.

Every team – some 42 in total – has known for some considerable time that the 30th November was the last day for this first payment. These payments were vitally important to the running of the race.

Therefore, because of the lack of entries, we have to postpone The Venture Cup - Cowes to Monte-Carlo Race. We cannot ethically continue to use money provided by just a few teams to continue the development of this race with the probability that no more teams would come on board and then these teams’ monies would be seriously depleted. That’s not fair or correct. Fees paid by those 13 teams will be refunded as soon as possible to the best of our ability.

I am personally deeply embarrassed by having to do this and wish to convey my sincere apologies to those who bothered to commit and who sent us their monies and in several cases asked whether they could send ALL of their entry fees. These are the true adventurers, the true offshore racers, who are obviously a rare breed and who want to take part in this type of long distance, multi leg, multi nation offshore racing. But we can’t run a race of this complexity on 13 teams unfortunately.

Dean Gibbs & RB11, Neil McGrigor & RB12 and now The Venture Cup. All of us have suffered serious financial loss, aggravation and considerable amounts of personal time in our determination to bring these famous old races back to life and eventually failing because of the lack of serious competitors. I want to thank all those fantastic volunteers of the Venture Cup team for all their hard work over the last year in trying to bring this race to fruition.

To ensure that this and other great races like it take place in the future, they will have to be run under an alternative organisation/federation so as to attract less bureaucracy and interference. However, it is our understanding that the race WILL in all probability take place on the 8th June 2013 in one form or another but certainly not under MPA Powerboat Events Limited – unfortunately.

Mike Lloyd.
 
Crickey that is very dissappointing. You can see the frustration in his voice at people withholding/reneging/failing on payment. What a sad outcome
 
Cowes Monte Carlo Race

The race is currently rather in Limbo, there are circa 20 boats who have all stated their commitment to the event and we are now trying to look at how it can still be staged. Mike Lloyd did a tremendous amount of work to try to get it to happen and we are hoping that he may help us with the benefit of some of this effort.
The logistical, environmental, bureaucratic and financial problems of actually getting it to happen can't be underestimated. Will keep you all up to date.
 
Pennpromo said:
The race is currently rather in Limbo, there are circa 20 boats who have all stated their commitment to the event and we are now trying to look at how it can still be staged. Mike Lloyd did a tremendous amount of work to try to get it to happen and we are hoping that he may help us with the benefit of some of this effort.
The logistical, environmental, bureaucratic and financial problems of actually getting it to happen can't be underestimated. Will keep you all up to date.
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Really hope this can happen. Guess those 20 teams have invested a lot of time and money in getting ready and now wish to race.

Good luck to all hope it comes off
 
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