Bangkok--20 Aug--Sail-World Asia
A giant giant week ahead on the world sailing scene. A record fleet for 46th Rolex Fastnet Race, the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week and the 2016 Rio Olympics test event.
Today was the Fastnet Race, first run 90 years ago, with a record 365 boats started from the Royal Yacht Squadron, Cowes on the Isle of Wight with the first fleet away at 12 noon BST.
Plenty of British sunshine for the start, but there were as forecast only light winds. The biennial race is sailed over a course of 608 nautical miles from Cowes to the iconic Fastnet lighthouse off south west Ireland, and then back to Plymouth.
While there have been bigger fleets in major Bluewater races, the 1993 Kodak Sydney to Hobart, the 50th had 371 starters, nowadays fleets of 100 monohulls are more likely.
Audi Hamilton Island Race Week 2012 - Hamilton Island ..
Last week was Cowes Week and at the opposite ends of the earth, well approximately it was Airlie Beach Race Week, this week a fleet of more than 200 yachts have assembled for Audi Hamilton Island Race week, where a spectator fleet of some 1500 Humpback whales have ventured north from Antarctic waters for the boat watching season.
And now less than 360 days from the Rio Olympic sailing regatta, the test event the Aquece Rio International Sailing Regatta 2015 has finished its second day.
To say that there's a lot is riding on this test regatta is an understatement, given the rash of negative news about Rio's water quality issues, the on again off again viral testing and the duty-of-care issues that they present, but for the athletes this regatta also represents an important opportunity to sail in small, Olympic-sized fleets on next year's Olympic racecourse, against many of the world's top sailors.
Performances of individual countries over time are fascinating, at the end of Athens 2004 the Australian Olympic Sailing squad's performance prompted the shortest ever news story title on Sail-World, when veteran reporter Bob Ross penned the ever so economical title 'Sob!' as a reaction to the medal free result from the Aussie squad, yet two Olympiads later, Australia with a restructured program scored three Gold's and a Silver at London 2012.
A similar zero sum game at the London 2012 Olympics for the U.S.-flagged team but such woeful results have generated some important changes that will hopefully start to generate some positive results over the next few quadrenniums.
While changes in structure of the US. program will no doubt yield significant improvement, the American team is up against the might of the Brits, the French, the Australians, Netherlands, Danes, Chinese and those very talented New Zealanders and others, with the leading country programs enjoying the benefit of longstanding talent pipelines and varying degrees of government funding.
But sadly you can be sure that Rio's water-quality issues will dominate the mainstream news coverage of Olympic sailing, as it has this week on the BBC, the major world newspapers and more.
Stay tuned to Sail-World this week for the latest action, from Guanabara Bay, the Irish Sea and the Great Barrier Reef as the action hots up.