Brian Hancok
I have always been a fan of offshore pursuit races since I raced in one of the earliest and longest pursuit races back in ‘79. The Parmelia Race was twofold. For the racing class it was a pursuit race; for the cruisers it was all about timing. I will clarify in a moment, but first let me tell you why I am a fan of a pursuit race.
Sailing is a hard enough sport for non-sailors to understand. It just is and it has been that way for decades, longer even. Unless you understand the vagaries of wind and water it all looks like a bit of a crapshoot to an idle bystander who has no idea of what’s going on out of the race course. Then, to complicate things further more, we add a handicap system. The boat that finished fifteenth across the finish line can actually win the race overall. That doesn’t make any sense. Well it does if you are a racing sailor but not if you are a non-sailor trying to make sense of things. With a pursuit race it may seem a little complicated at the start with different groups of boats taking off at different times, but it’s almost never about the start; it’s all about the finish and that’s what counts. Which boat gets across the finish line first. Let me assure you, people remember the finishers much more than they remember the starters.
To me that’s the simplicity and beauty of the Global Solo Challenge. Those following the race will soon forget which boat started when and concentrate on who is in the lead, and who is taking up the chase from behind. And it can be quite dramatic. If I may, can I return to the Parmelia Race? I was just 21, very wet behind the ears, racing on an Australian yacht by the name of Independent Endeavour, a bog standard Swan 65. Well we did remove the head door and replaced the teak and holly floorboards with cheap (light) plywood. That was about it.
The Parmelia Race started in Plymouth on England’s south coast and raced to Fremantle in Western Australia. It was to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Western Australia by the ship Parmelia. There was a staggered start out of England with times recorded when we crossed the finish line in Cape Town. Then there was a staggered start out of Cape Town. A Swan 65 was one of the bigger yachts in the race so we started near the back of the pack. One of the biggest boats in the fleet was Siska, a bright red, fully kitted out, brand new maxi-yacht skippered by Australian sailing legend Rolly Tasker. American Skip Novak was our skipper, I was the sailmaker and among the rest of the crew was Skip Lissiman who went on to be the starboard headsail trimmer in Australia II when they won the America’s Cup in 1983. But I digress. Siska gave us a decent head start out of Plymouth and again out of Cape Town but as soon as they left South Africa they took up the chase closing in on us each day. As we approached the Australian coast Siska took a southerly route; we stayed north. Our tactic paid off and we crossed the finish line in first place in a very dramatic finish with Siska less than three hours behind. Most of the Australian public had been cheering for Siska. Our rag-tag crew had crushed them and it made headline news. It certainly didn’t hurt that the owner of Independent Endeavour owned one of the biggest newspapers in the country.
The point of this story is that most of the general public following the race only started to follow it closely toward the end of the race. The exciting bit. That again is the beauty of the Global Solo Challenge. There will be plenty of adventure stories along the way, but it’s the finish that will be nail biting.
The cruising fleet in the Parmelia Race had a different challenge. They could pick their start time out of England. They had to spend a minimum of seven days and a maximum of eight days in Cape Town and there was decent prize money for the boat that arrived in Fremantle between 10:00 and 16:00 hours local time, on Sunday 25 November, reportedly the date and time that the ship Parmelia arrived there in 1829.
Now, sailors being sailors can always use a little extra cash and we are a wily bunch. We know that we can’t make up time, but we can blow some time off at the end if need be. Many of the 18-boat cruising fleet arrived early and decided to just wait for the perfect time to head into Fremantle to cross the line between 10:00 and 16:00 hours to claim the prize money. The French entry Anitra II was among those that arrived a day early. They decided to reach up and down ten or twelve miles off the coast to burn off time. The French, well the French being French, decided that since they were almost at the finish they would tap into the last of their wine supplies. It seemed like a good idea at first but sometime in the night they ran hard aground on Rottnest Island, so hard it was reported that the crew just stepped off the boat onto solid ground. The boat was a total loss.
Five yachts sailed into Fremantle harbor the following day to cross the line at the magical moment. They got to share the prize money and in a sporting gesture that should be noted in the history books, they shared the money six ways to include the crew on Anitra II
There are always perils in racing across oceans and more so when racing around the world. The Global Solo Challenge is a very well thought-out format that will offer the safest possible circumnavigation for the sailors, and the best possible vicarious experience for those of us left behind.
About Brian Hancok
Brian Hancock is an expert in offshore ocean racing and a regular feature writer for ‘Sailing’, ‘Blue Water Sailor’, and ‘Yachting World’ magazines. Specialising in sails and sailmaking, he is the author of “Maximum Sail Power” and the founder of Great Circle Sails.