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ISAF ROLEX WORLD SAILOR OF THE YEAR
The Awards are recognized as one of the highest honours a sailor can receive in recognition of his/her outstanding achievements and this year's official award ceremony took place last night, November 6th in Estoril, Portugal at the Penha Longa monastery. Out of all of this year's fantastic nominees only two could walk away with the ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year titles, and the exceptional winners for 2007 are Claire Leroy (FRA) and Ed Baird (USA), making this night a true tribute to match racing.

Claire Leroy has been the # 1 skipper on the ISAF Women's World Match Race Rankings since May 2005. Like many professionals, sailing has been a consistent part of Leroy's life since her childhood.

Leroy, skipper of "Team Ideactor", has taken her love of the elements and dominated the match racing circuit both this year and last, winning the 2006 ISAF Nations Cup, the IX International Women's Match Race Criterium, the 2007 ISAF Women's Match Racing World Championships in her hometown of St Quay Portrieux, France, and the 2007 Women's Match Race European Championship.

2007 marks the second time that Leroy has been a candidate for the ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year Awards, as she was also previously nominated in 2005.

American Ed Baird took home the male 2007 ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year Award for his incredible achievements as helmsman aboard Alinghi, winner of the 32nd America's Cup.

Baird has a long history of triumphs in the world of international match racing both in and outside of the America's Cup. Baird is the only American to have ever won the ISAF Match RacingWorld Championship - in 1995, 2003 and 2004. He is the only American ever to have ranked number one on the ISAF World Match Race Rankings list and in 1995 was honoured by his countrymen as the USA's Rolex Yachtsman of the Year.

All but one nominee was present last night for the Award Ceremony at the Penha Longa and no one knew ahead of time who the winners would be, making for justified anticipation from all corners. The well-rounded list of nominees for the ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year award also included:

Female Sailor/Crew

Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb & Pippa Wilson (GBR)
Marcelien De Koning & Lobke Berkhout (NED)
Evi Van Acker (BEL)

Male Sailor/Crew

Franck Cammas (FRA)
Vincenzo Onorato (ITA)
Robert Scheidt & Bruno Prada (BRA)
Rohan Veal (AUS)

www.sailing.org/worldsailor

HOW TO HOOK THE TRADE WINDS FIRST...
Passing Cape Finisterre in 35/40 knots of wind was as stressful as enjoyable for the sailors in the Transat Jacques Vabre. If breakage on the boats is always on their minds, the skippers nevertheless appreciated the bumpy rides and reach of the waves that pushed the boats up to 30 knots. The wind charts the crews are receiving onboard are showing two possible options: sail along the African coast or to put to the west along the route to catch the winds generated by a low-pressure system in the Azores that seems to be moving towards the Canary Islands. That is the question all the skippers approaching Madere Island have had to deal with in their descent.

At 4 p.m. the chart was still showing the fleet of Imoca heading south, with some putting a bit more to the east in their route. They should enter a transition zone overnight with unsteady winds to deal with along the African coast. No point saying they kept silent about what choices they would make regarding their passage through the Canaries.

In the 40-footer fleet, apart from Telecom Italia, which has been dominant since the start, the ranking has been moving fast in the last 24 hours. After being soundly dominated by the foreign entries, it seems the Frenchies are getting back some strength after making some good weather decisions.

The speeds are starting to drop at the rear of the fleet with some of the boats ghosting around in 5 knots of wind.

Multihulls - ORMA And Class 50

Brossard took the lead of the ORMA fleet between yesterday (ranked at 4th at 12:00) and this morning. Putting more to the west in her descent toward Spain seeking for more winds (as did Gitana 11) finally paid off after 3 days of racing. However, the rough conditions encountered passing Cap Finisterre took their toll. Banque Populaire has a leak (not too serious) in one of the floaters but the crew is not considering stopping. Gitana 11, which announced they had lost a foil in the first night of sailing, is heading toward the coast for the quickest possible repair.

Sopra, the oldest trimaran entry in the race, is now 109.9 miles behind Brossard, whereas the 4 leaders are within 18.3 miles of each other.

Avocet 50 (Class 50) announced she was retiring from the race due to a problem in her daggerboard and is routing to the Corogne. It was no surprise when Crepes Whaou ! broke away from her competitors and is even showing off with 9 IMOCA at her rear.

* From Nick Bubb and Tanguy de Lamotte, in the Class 40 fleet:

Last night was wild, this morning is not! We got up to 8th on the 0400 position update then decided to put some west in to avoid this huge area of light winds off the Portuguese coast but to back track……. the wind built throughout yesterday afternoon as we approached Cape Finisterre, we changed down sails as required pushing each sail combination to the limit. We went into the night with our small masthead spinnaker reefed to make it factional (a clever french invention where you zip up the foot…..more on that later) and had two reefs in the main, as the wind built to a steady 30 knots we were really flying down the ever increasing sea state.

In the pitch black we survived one or two near broaches and it was all hands on deck i.e. both of us, all the time. We were not only making great ground towards the cape but we were also working our way out west which was the part of the plan when looking at the bigger picture. To cut a long story short, the wind kept increasing and our fun came to an abrupt halt when the reefed spinnaker decided it wanted to unreef itself….perfect, we were hardly in control as it was! Anyway, we just about got her down in one piece and reverted to the solent and two reefs in the main for the remainder of the night, no bad thing as we had a steady 38 knots for a while and a huge sea. Top speed was 23.6 knots with this sail combination.

In the early morning, the breeze started to ease and we prepared the small spinnaker once more only to notice a halyard issue with the solent which, in brief, complicated things….. and the end result was me up the rig in 20 knots pitch black and a big sea, actually it wasn't too bad and we got it sorted quickly before going up through the sail combinations to full main and big spinnaker as the wind slowly dropped.We are desperately trying to avoid the light winds coming our way, looks like those who got west last night will make a gain. We are petty much near the middle if anything slightly east so we better get back to it! -- www.nickbubb.com

Event site (bypassing the intro page...):
www.jacques-vabre.com/fr/s01_home/s01p01_home.php

A VANG BUILT FOR SPEED
Navtec's new Carbon Fiber Vang, designed specifically for Superyachts, is just 1/3 the weight of Aluminum and 1/10 the weight of their Stainless Steel Vang. To achieve this low weight, Navtec incorporates a carbon fiber outer tube, selected for superior tensile and compressive strength, with an aluminum working tube for a smaller overall diameter. The result is a package that's lightweight, attractive and highly functional. To find out more, visit Booth #01.361 at METS.

A FORM GUIDE TO THE BARCELONA WORLD RACE
James Boyd is the founding editor of www.thedailysail.com , among the most respected sailing websites to be found online. He has followed developments in the Open 60 class for years, as both a fan and a journalist, and here he gives his form guide to the Barcelona World Race.

A state of the art IMOCA Open 60 yacht that is well designed and well built; enough sea time and race miles to ensure the boat will make it all the way around the course; a competitive, experienced crew with enough knowledge to keep the wheels on - these are just a few of the key components teams will have to have if they are to stand any chance of winning the gruelling Barcelona World Race. But the likelihood is that victory in this unique double-handed round the world race will come down to one word: reliability.

There is an old adage in offshore racing - "to finish first, first you have to finish" - and in no other Open 60 race is this likely to prove truer. Of course, longevity of this kind is needed in the single-handed Vendee Globe, the four yearly premier event in the IMOCA calendar as well. But that is a single-handed, non-stop, around-the-world, marathon.

Sailing double-handed, as in the Barcelona World Race, the crews will be able to push that much harder. There will be no reducing sail to allow the solo skipper to sleep for example. As a result the boats will have to take considerably more punishment and will be more prone to breakages that at worst will force them to pull out of the race, or at the very least, slow down to effect to repairs, taking up their crew's valuable time when they should be concentrating on keeping the boat going to the maximum...

Pre-start the only certainties are that the Barcelona World Race has a favourite to win in PRB and a mostly likely boat to come last in the relatively aged Educacion sin Fronteras with her relatively inexperienced crew. As to the finish order of the seven in between it will be something of a lottery but our best guess given the criteria we've outlined above, including the likelihood of finishing, is:

1. PRB
2. Temenos II
3. Veolia Environnement
4. Hugo Boss
5. Paprec-Virbac 2
6. Delta Dore
7. Estrella Damm
8. Mutua Madrilena
9. Educacion sin Fronteras

To read the dozen paragraphs not excerpted above, see www.barcelonaworldrace.com/default.asp?section=10&sid=10217 for this must-read.

JON SANDERS HONOURED BY ANTARCTICA CUP OCEAN RACE
Australian Jon Sanders, the first man to circumnavigate Antarctica back in 1981/2, - has been honoured with a Gate named after him within the Antarctica Cup Racetrack.

The Gate, marking one of 18 gates to sectors within the circular race track bounded by the Roaring Forty and Screaming Sixty latitudes, is positioned mid-way round the Indian Ocean zone, close to where Sanders suffered an 180 degree knockdown nearly 3 decades ago.

The remarkable double circumnavigation by Sanders aboard his S&S 34 monohull Perie Banou, saw him pass south of the three great capes - Horn, Good Hope and Leeuwin - before continuing on around Cape Horn a second time and turning north to Plymouth, UK and returning south around Good Hope and returning to Fremantle.

His voyage was recognised in the Guinness Book of Records as:

- The first single-handed sailor to remain continuously at sea twice around the world
- First single-handed sailor to round the 5 southern most Capes twice on one voyage.
- First single-handed sailor to round the 5 southern most Capes twice
- Longest distance continuously sailed by any yacht 48,510 miles.
- Longest period alone at sea during a continuous voyage: 419 days: 22 hours: 10 minutes

In 1986 Sanders set out again from Fremantle, and this time completed 3 solo non-stop circumnavigations aboard his yacht Parry Endeavour, rounding St Peter & St Paul Rocks just north of the Equator each time to ensure that his course covered both hemispheres.

First to test himself around the Antarctica Cup Racetrack will be Russian adventurer Fedor Konyukhov and his 86ft monohull Trading Network Alye Parusa. Fedor crossed the 10N latitude into the Doldrums on Monday bound for Albany, West Australia and the start of his solo non-stop attempt around the ACRacetrack. The 56 year old Russian adventurer reported that all was well and expects to reach the famous Australian port in December.

www.antarcticacup.com

NEW HOLMATRO POWER PACK AT METS
At METS 2007 Dutch manufacturer Holmatro Marine Equipment will introduce an extremely compact 12 - 24 V power pack for push button sailing. This low weight electric pump is quick and easy to install, and compatible with existing manually operated high-pressure hydraulic rigging systems. It enables you to upgrade to a push button controlled system with minimum effort, for maximum ease of sailing. Connected to a push button control panel with manual release the unit powers backstays, outhauls and vangs of yachts up to 50 feet almost silently. Holmatro stand at METS: 01.547.

www.holmatro-marine.com

THE OLYMPIC BOAT DEBATE AT THE ISAF
The events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition are the main focus of the day at the ISAF Annual Conference as the Event Committee meet in Estoril, Portugal.

The ISAF Events Committee is tasked with recommending to the ISAF Council the events to be used for the Olympic Sailing Competition. The events are selected five years ahead of the Olympic Games, so at this Annual Conference the decision is for the ten events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition. The ISAF Council will make the final decision on the ten events in their meeting from 8-10 November - the Events Committee are affectively ‘the experts’ and their recommendation will help inform the Council’s decision.

The ISAF Council, at the 2007 ISAF Mid-Year Meetings, had decided on a split of six male/open events and four female events, and drawn up a list from which the ten events could be selected Like the Women’s Sailing Committee yesterday, the Events Committee broke the decision on the ten events down into several stages. First up was the decision on the discipline of the women’s keelboat event (if selected): match or fleet racing. The Events Committee mirrored the decision of the Women’s Sailing Committee and decided on match racing.

The voting process went through several rounds. First of all the multihull option was rejected from the women’s slate. Next up the keelboat (match racing) missed out. In the men’s events, the voting process ended with a choice between the two person dinghy and the keelboat to fill the sixth event slot. The two person dinghy won the day, making the Events Committee recommendation to Council for the following events:

Windsurfer - men
One person dinghy - men
One person dinghy heavy - men
Two person dinghy high performance - men
Two person dinghy - men
Multihull - open
Windsurfer - women
One person dinghy - women
Two person dinghy - women
Two person dinghy high performance - women

The Events Committee will now pass their recommendation on to the ISAF Council, who will decide the events for the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition in their meeting from 8-10 November.

sailing.org

* Andy Rice has an intruiging analysis: sailjuiceblog.com/2007/11/07/olympic-keelboats-starting-to-sink/

SKANDIA TEAM GBR SEEK OLYMPIC ADMINISTRATOR
The Royal Yachting Association, based in Hamble, is the national governing body for the sports of sailing, windsurfing, motor boating and powerboat racing.

Administrator, Olympic Programme

We are seeking an Administrator to support our successful Olympic Racing programme, Skandia Team GBR. The post involves day to day administration of the Olympic and Olympic Development Squads, under the direction of the programme managers.

The successful applicant will be numerate, with experience of spreadsheets, have good written and verbal communication skills and be able to fit into a small and busy team. A knowledge of competitive sailing would be an advantage. The role will involve occasional attendance at events outside office hours.

Salary GBP 15,750 pa, rising to GBP 17,510 pa. Range of benefits including free parking, pension scheme, free life insurance, 23 days annual leave plus public holidays. 35 hours per week.

Closing date for applications: 20 November 2007

For an application form and job description contact 023 8060 4105 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Letters are limited to 350 words (waived for Bruce below!). No personal attacks are permitted. We do require your name but your email address will not be published without your permission.

* From Juergen Klinghardt (X-332 sport GER 5533, winner of German Offshore Championship Class II 2006):

Re Brendan Foley: There is no any "success" of IRC in Scandinavia as assumed by Mr. Foley. Rather, in all Baltic Sea countries (except for Denmark where Dansk Handicap is popular only) an empirically based system is used at the club racing level and IMS/ORC Club as a real measurement handicap system at the cruiser/racer level (as is the case in many other countries throughout the world like e.g. in the Med, South America and Japan). Nowadays in Norway the forces of LYS (which is an empirically based system and also used in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries) and IMS are joined to provide one common measurement handicap platform, cf. report in issue #1353. I strongly hope other countries will follow the Norwegian track.

Moreover, I don't believe to consider IRC a success in the US either. In view of that the US is a very big country, the number of IRC certificates issued since 2004 up to now (which I believe is about 700) does not appear high compared with more than 20,000 certificates under PHRF (which is an empirically based system) and about 800 certificates under ORR (which is a VPP based system similar to IMS and used e.g. in the Bermuda, Mackinac and Transpac races).

It does not make any sense to offer different rating rules for one and the same regatta since this will split the fleet. Hopefully, times will come back where only one common rating rule will be used throughout the whole world. The new ORC International rule just issued by the Offshore Racing Congress seems to be a good basis for such approach.

* From Rees Martin: Another Sir Peter Johnson devotee.
Anybody trying to grapple with rating matters just has to read Sir Peter Johnson's book "Yacht Rating". I came into keelboat racing quite late and just could not get my head around the many and varied attempts to rate many and varied yachts. Don Wood who has raced more boats than most - and a devotee of the International Rule, told me about Sir Peter's book. I could hardly put it down. Every time the technical sections got a bit too technical, one would be jolted by a nice little irreverence.

Racing Metre Class boats under IRC is a tribute to both formulae. Don Wood put it in motion and it got a small 6m fleet out in regular local events - and revitalised the class. The British Classic Yacht Club now uses IRC in their regatta - and encouraged more classic keelboats to race. Next year the BCYC will have a full fleet of lovely classics - racing under IRC. The Metre Classes will be out again in strength, racing in their own International Rule Regatta.

It is sad that Sir Peter died before IRC became commonplace. He knew CHS was a sound concept and would develop. Low key origins, gradual acceptance, ease of application - and the subtle twist of secrecy.

Is there anybody who might consider picking up from where he left off? The balanced technical reportage would need skill; matching Sir Peter's light touch would be the real challenge...

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THE LAST WORD
The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. -- George Will

OC Events, www.ocevents.org , organisers of two major IMOCA 60 oceanic events, the new double-handed Barcelona World Race 2007, and the original solo transocean race, The Artemis Transat 2008 (ex-OSTAR) plus the Extreme 40 Sailing Series for The iShares Cup.

www.YachtsandCruisers.com the new place to buy and sell prestige boats, the website has been designed to showcase high-end boats. People looking to buy prestige boats will be able to easily navigate their way around the site quickly. The portfolio of thousands of boats can be viewed by category, make, location and price. Alternatively the 'Advanced Search' facility will benefit those buyers who have a specific boat in mind.

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