PANERAÏ TRANSAT CLASSIQUE: THOSE HARDY OLD LADIES OF THE SEA
PANERAÏ TRANSAT CLASSIQUE: Those hardy old ladies of the sea
Race across the Atlantic on classic yachts, including one nearly a hundred years old? Pure folly! And yet most of the vessels taking part in the Panerai Transat Classique 2012 were actually designed for such an exploit. Let’s take a closer look at the doyens of deep-water yachting.
Later this year, on 2 December, after two hard-fought preliminary legs from Douarnenez and Saint-Tropez, a fleet of thirty sailing yachts will set out from Cascais in Portugal and race to Barbados in the West Indies. When the starting gun fires, the crews will man their positions with determination. Determination to get the best out of their charges, some of whom are fifty, seventy even eighty years old. One of these is Moonbeam IV and she will be celebrating her centenary in 2014. “Folly!” say sceptics. “How could anyone envisage sending these ‘old ladies’, this ‘Chippendale furniture’, across an ocean? And to make them race, too!”
Well let’s not forget that most of these vessels were actually commissioned, designed and built to sail fast and in difficult conditions. Today the sea is no more or less dangerous than it was when these classic yachts were launched. In the 2008 Transat Classique, roughly twenty doyens of the yachting fraternity took to the Atlantic and, despite the nature of the challenge, suffered very little damage. In fact the crews thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Taking just twenty days to complete her crossing, Stiren, a 1959 Olin Stephens design and eventual winner of the race, can hold her head high whenever she finds herself in the company of the yachting pantheon.
In France, transatlantic racing came to the fore in 1964 when a young naval officer dominated a very English race. In a little over twenty-seven days at sea, Eric Tabarly sailed Pen Duick II to victory in the OSTAR, the legendary single-handed transatlantic race sponsored by the Observer newspaper, earning himself a place in yachting history and the hearts of the French nation.
Although the first OSTAR took place almost fifty years ago, it wasn’t the first of its kind. That race took place in 1866. Like many sporting endeavours, it was conceived in a smoke-filled room at the end of an alcohol-fuelled evening. Three yachtsmen, members of the select New York Yacht Club, set themselves the challenge of seeing who had the fastest vessel and on 11 December 1866 Henrietta, Vesta and Fleetwing crossed the New York starting line marked by Sandy Hook lightship. Their destination was the Needles lighthouse on the south-west corner of the Isle of Wight, England. Henrietta claimed victory within thirteen days and twenty-one hours for her owner James G. Bennett, heir to the proprietor of the New York Herald Tribune. Bennett pocketed the $90,000 prize which in today’s money would amount to just over a million dollars. Astonishingly, there was less than nine hours’ difference between first and last place.
Other races followed, run from east to west and west to east, and often the result of bets between rich owners. In 1905 German emperor William II challenged all-comers with his yacht Hamburg. Eleven vessels took up the gauntlet and the race was run from New York to Lizard Point in Cornwall. The three-masted schooner Atlantic, owned by Wilson Marshall and skippered by yachting legend Charlie Barr, set a new record of just over twelve days. This time stood for another seventy-five years until Eric Tabarly (yes, him again) beat it with his foil-stabilized trimaran Paul Ricard. In 1931 a young architect called Olin Stephens made a name for himself when he won the Transatlantic Race (from west to east) in seventeen days, smashing the forecast time of three to four weeks. The ketch Eilean, designed by William Fife III and his nephew Robert Balderton Fife in 1936, has just completed a round trip to the West Indies after a three year rebuild by her current owner Officine Panerai. All these classic yachts have one thing in common: they were drawn by talented architects who learned their trade in the most respected shipyards. They were made for this kind of adventure.
Yachtsman Loïc Blanken was inspired to set up the Transat Classique when, during an Atlantic crossing on a modern boat, he saw a gaff-rig on the horizon. He said to himself that if that gaffer could do it, then there must be others ready to take up a similar challenge. The Transat Classique was born.
Well-prepared both in terms of equipment and mental and physical fitness, the crews taking part in the Panerai Transat Classique 2012 are more than ready for an exciting battle on the water. But they do have a very specific handicap: they must know when to take their foot of the gas if they are to bring their charges, those venerable works of the shipwright’s art, to port safe and sound. A successful crossing is one in which crews meet up on the distant shore to exchange stories and impressions of the thousands of miles of open ocean they have just run not only as competitors, that goes without saying, but also as enthusiasts of classic yachting and deep-water sailing.
Key dates of the Panerai Transat Classique 2012:
22 July: Atlantic fleet leaves the French port of Douarnenez for Cascais in Portugal.
25 October: Mediterranean fleet leaves the French port of Saint-Tropez for Cascais in Portugal.
2 December: Both fleets leave Cascais for the Caribbean island of Barbados.
