| AZAB 2007 Beckons |
| Tuesday, 22 May 2007 |
On 2nd June over fifty yachts will cross the sart line in Falmouth UK for the 9th edition of the AZAB (Azores and Back), one of the classic British offshore short handed races. This event run by the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club covers just less than 2500 miles of open ocean, approximately 1220 miles on each leg. The majority of yachts usually take between 7 and 10 days to reach the Azores allowing a week or so to relax and restock before the return leg.
As with any major yacht race the hardest battle is getting the boat and crew prepared at the start line, for ‘Sage’ this was a matter of making some difficult choices on new equipment and taking the boat out of summer regatta racing mode and configuring her for more shorthanded orientated racing. The 500 nm qualifying passage carried out last summer enabled us to take a closer look at power management and evaluate our sail wardrobe along with working out which foods we wanted to eat. Out went the rather outdated sailing instruments and the fitting of a new wireless TackTick system. Simon Unwin of Dart Sails and Covers Ltd furnished us with a new spinnaker and storm jib, Simon is also a fellow competitor on one of the smallest entries with another Dartmouth based boat Robert Bishop’s ‘Wild Blossom’. Barry Hollis of Rigging Solutions has continued his support with updating Sages rig and also supplying a Monitor wind vane self steering package, so should the electric autopilot fail we do have a tried and tested manual backup. Gara Hampton previously a key preparateur for the Challenge Business’s global ocean races has brought his experience into managing our power consumption and dealing with a lot of the small engineering details that accompanied the refit of the onboard sytems.
It has always been a key element for all the staff at OCD to sail inshore and offshore sharpening the skills and keeping a sense of reality back in the office when evaluating new ideas. As well as skippering the 96/97 BT Global Challenge yacht ‘Global Teamwork’ Merfyn Owen competed in the French classic Transat Jaques Vabres in 2005 aboard ‘Artforms’ an Owen Clarke Design open 50’. This is Allens second AZAB, his first having been with Rupert Kidd on the Owen Clarke 35’ trimaran ‘Fiery Cross’ back in 1995 and will be racing two handed with Ronald Gould on ‘Sage’ Ron’s 1979 Sparkman and Stephens 38’. ‘Sage’ was built from the wooden tooling for a short lived production line of cruiser racers. It may not be quite an Open 60 or even a Class 40 but nonetheless the competitive spirit remains the same. In this largely Corinthian entry race the yachts entered range from the smallest entry of Phil Pilates veteran Half Tonner ‘General Tapioca’ to the largest the 48’ sloop ‘Nathaniel Bowditch’ in amongst these are a smattering of J boats, Open 40’s Class 40’s and racing and cruising yachts from the seventies eighties and nineties. Truly a diverse fleet we doubt anybody could predict the outcome.
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