The Velux 5 Oceans race is descending into, well not farce exactly, because it's not funny, but a sort of tragic-comedy.
There were only eight entrants in the first place, and one of them failed to make the start line, because his boat did not meet the rules. Another started a week late. Of the six that started on time, four had to put into port for emergency repairs, following a battering in Biscay.
Now Hugo Boss has been abandoned in the Southern Ocean, and six hours after his heroic rescue of Alex Thomson from the sinking yacht, Mike Golding saw his own race end when the top part of Ecover's mast fell down. Fortunately, with Alex there to help, creating a jury rig to get the boat to Southampton was much easier than it would have been if Mike had had to do it on his own, amid the snow showers in those freezing latitudes.
So where does that leave the race? Golding and Thomson were providing the competitive edge that made it exciting. Despite his 48 hour stop in Coruna, Golding was threatening the lead of Bernard Stamm in Cheminees Poujoulat before turning back to rescue Thomson. And without the two of them, the race is considerably devalued.
This morning Stamm is 2,370 miles from the finish of the first leg in Fremantle. All credit to him and Kojiro Shiraishi, in Spirit of Yukoh, now back in second place. They are the only two who have managed to keep their boats going since the start. But sadly Koji is hampered by an aging boat, and an inadequately funded campaign, and is not truly competitive. He is 1,000 miles astern of Stamm, and very unlikely to change that significantly.
Sir Robin Knox Johnston, meanwhile, has moved into third place, but he is almost 3,000 miles behind Koji.
The British sailing legend congratulated Mike Golding on his rescue of Alex Thomson, “a nice and tidy, professional operation.” Sadly, the same can hardly be said of Sir Robin's own Velux campaign in Saga Insurance.
"Still making our way south and trying to get to the 40's where the strong and generally westerly winds are found which will push us to Australia,” he reported. “I am losing ground a little to the others. I am afraid this is inevitable. I really don't dare set a spinnaker or even a gennaker with an unreliable auto pilot, it's just asking for a wipe out, a damaged or lost sail, and possibly worse, rigging damage.
“So the turbo charger is not available and not likely to be until this pilot problem is resolved which I am hoping we can do in Fremantle. Bernard Stamm is now closer to Fremantle than to me! He's running very close to his prediction for the time he thought he would take, but then he is Swiss! For me a wild guess would be 25 days, so ETA Fremantle December 20th which is based on an assumption of 10 knots average from here."
Sir Robin's only consolation is England's unimpressive start to the Ashes series: “Receiving the cricket information from Australia, maybe I should not worry about missing the Perth test. There is only one slight hope to fasten on to, that the Aussies have peaked too early! And then the rugby versus the South Africans. Its all very depressing."
It is indeed. What had promised to be a really exciting single-handed round the world race, with a battle between three British sailing stars with contrasting styles and personalities, has now degenerated into a boring, predictable procession - providing none of the five boats still hanging in there suffers the sort of catastrophic gear failure that has befallen Hugo Boss and Ecover.
But questions have to be asked about the future of this sort of racing. The Volvo race was a bit of a demolition derby, thanks to the vulnerability of the canting keels - the same problem that doomed Hugo Boss.
It's hard to get excited about an event where numbers are small to start with, owing to the almost prohibitive cost of participation, and then the field is decimated by gear failure.
It's not going to catch the public imagination, and it's not going to attract sponsorship either. Companies are hardly going to invest heavily in events which sooner or later appear bound to attract the worst kind of tragic publicity.
Phil Dobson has put a thoughtful post on our forum: “As a teenager in the 1960s my heroes were the single handed sailors of OSTAR and various around the world sailors. They sailed using their personal sailing and navigational skills in boats not too dissimilar to production boats of the time.
“These days such boats are technically glorified windsurfers with hydraulic swing keels and the like and packed full of onboard navigation and communication systems. They rely on emergency back up should anything go wrong with their technically advanced systems. What next: asymmetric boats capable of only sailing in one direction relative to the wind? Excuse me but what is the point?”
Well, there is no doubt that boat design and gear in general benefits from the technological advances made at the cutting edge of the racing scene. But I agree with Phil that “glorified windsurfers with hydraulic swing keels and the like” do not catch the public imagination in the way that the original single handers, in their proper cruising boats did.
I don't know what the answer is. But with several boats lost in the Route du Rhum, one (so far) in the Velux, and one in the last Volvo, there are surely some serious questions to be faced about the future of ocean racing.
A very seasoned sailor once advised me: “There are three things you should never put to sea without: a keel-stepped mast, a skeg-hung rudder, and an encapsulated keel.” Advances in technology have changed ideas. Most modern production cruising boats have none of these. But speaking for myself, I wouldn't want to go into the Southern Ocean with anything less than a traditional fixed keel, very firmly bolted on, and a mast made of something of far greater proven durability than carbon fibre.
Yes, let's make the most of all the latest innovations, but let's not lose sight of the fundamentals of good seamanship. Especially when setting off to race across hostile oceans.
For more information visit www.velux5oceans.com
