The Ocean Globe Race was all about bringing back the spirit of the early Whitbreads. Elaine Bunting finds out how the crews fared.Tommi Uksila\/Team Spirit of Helsinki\/OGR2023When Don McIntyre devised the Ocean Globe Race, he imagined a revival of sailing\u2019s greatest era of adventure. The early Whitbread Round the World Races made headlines beyond the sport of offshore racing: they created legends. Half a century on, this new race could never fully recapture the same race fever and romance, but it did write some fabulous new endings.
\nIn April, after 145 days of racing, the 73ft ketch Pen Duick VI crossed the finish line at Cowes to win line honours. Marie Tabarly was skippering the boat her father, \u00c9ric, built to win the Whitbread. The greatest race eluded him twice, and in 1998, when Marie was 13, he was lost overboard in the Irish Sea. With this win, Marie, now 39, has completed the Pen Duick story in her own name.
\nMid-ocean drone view of the 1970 S&S Swan 55 Galiana WithSecure \u2013 skipper Tapio Lehtinen also completed the 1981\/82 Whitbread. Photo: TeamGaliana WithSecure\/OGR2023
\nEight days later, Maiden took the overall race win on handicap. In the 1989\/90 Whitbread, Maiden skipper Tracy Edwards demonstrated that women could race on equal terms (not a given at the time \u2013 a rival horridly dismissed her all-female crew as \u2018performing seals\u2019). Now in the hands of skipper Heather Thomas and a crew of 12 young women, the Maiden team claimed the title of the first all-female crew to win a round the world race.
\nA more relaxed time on Translated 9. Photo: Team Translated 9\/OGR2023
\nWith its throwback rules shunning modern electronics and technology, the Ocean Globe Race has curiously ended up reflecting back deep social changes. Yet the challenge itself is much as it was back then: the feat of pushing big, labour-intensive yachts and large crews for up to 40 days at a stretch. Marie Tabarly called Pen Duick \u201ca colossus to manoeuvre, a beast\u201d, which sums up the lion-taming required of these old ocean racers.
\nArticle continues below\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDon McIntyre the adventurer who launched retro-round the world racing<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDon McIntyre is on relaxed form when he calls from Les Sables d\u2019Olonne. His current flock of round the world\u2026<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Tracy Edwards profile \u2013 why sailing\u2019s trailblazer is back with Maiden<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSportspeople \u2013 and sailors are no exception here \u2013 can be a little\u2026 one-dimensional. That single focus which makes competitive\u2026<\/p>\n
Physical racing in the Ocean Globe Race
\nPen Duick was the fleet\u2019s heavy weather specialist. \u201cIn that kind of weather, we can maintain our speed when the others are decelerating. We were sometimes surfing at 22-23 knots under spinnaker and we can average 12-13 knots without too many problems and cover 260 to 280 miles a day, or more. For an aluminium boat weighing 34 tonnes, she is fast,\u201d says Tabarly.
\nHard winch work aboard South African entry Sterna. Photo: Team Sterna\/OGR2023
\nTo skipper or run a watch on these boats you need eyes everywhere; things can happen fast. \u201cA gybe on this boat is a hard manoeuvre. At the bow, it is rock \u2019n\u2019 roll with the two spinnaker poles, each weighing 70kg,\u201d she says.
\nMaiden, too, is a very physical boat to race, requiring a lot of crew and teamwork for sail changes. The Dacron sails and inventory are \u201cvery similar to how it was in the Whitbread\u201d, says Heather Thomas. There are no furling headsails, they are hoisted on a Tuff Luff headstay and have to be dragged up on deck to be hoisted.
\n\u201cYou have to be quite smart in the way you approach changing sails. If you\u2019re overpowered, you can\u2019t steer the boat properly, and it\u2019s not going to be very efficient. It\u2019s also where mistakes are made. I think that a lot of boats spent too much time with way too much sail up and it led to more gear damage in the fleet,\u201d she says.
\nMarie Tabarly at the helm of Pen Duick VI. The boat was originally designed for the 1973 Whitbread and sailed by Marie\u2019s father, \u00c9ric Tabarly. Photo: Martin Keruzor\u00e9\/Team Pen Duick VI\/OGR2023
\nIan Herbert-Jones was first mate on Spirit of Helsinki, a Swan 651 that raced in the 1986\/87 Whitbread as Fazer Finland and took 2nd place in the Ocean Globe Race. The inventory consisted of three genoas, a jib top, a staysail on an inner forestay staysail \u2013 all hanked on \u2013 a slab reefed main and four symmetric spinnakers. The interior was a normal Swan cruising layout with varnished teak joinery, so the sails were kept stacked on deck.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a nightmare!\u201d says Herbert-Jones. \u201cMoving the No 1 genoa from the side deck to bow is a multi-person job.\u201d
\n\u201cSpinnaker peels were not too bad; we were quite well organised and they can be done by a single shift quite easily,\u201d says Simon Curwen, navigator and later co-skipper on Translated 9. \u201cBut the big headsail changes or yankees in heavy weather on deck were different. You know you\u2019ll be getting wet hoisting big sails, dropping and getting them tamed, bagged up, tied down, and shifted to windward every tack. These were a minimum three-person job.\u201d
\nCape Horn celebrations for the crew of Translated 9. Photo: Team Translated 9\/OGR2023
\nMore than half the fleet had headsail furlers, but they come with their own problems and performance penalties. \u201cAs long as furling systems don\u2019t break they can reduce sail wardrobe and save people getting hurt,\u201d says Curwen. Ian Herbert-Jones agrees: \u201cIn hindsight, with mixed physical abilities, our boat would have been better with headsail furling as we would have made headsail changes more readily.\u201d
\nSouthern Ocean highs
\nSouthern Ocean legs are traditionally thought of as sleigh rides; you picture boats hammering downwind and helmsmen wrestling with the wheel as foam-crested seas rear up astern. In the Ocean Globe Race there were fast speeds in big breezes, particularly in the Roaring Forties on the first leg to Cape Town \u2013 Maiden, for example, reported a new top speed of over 20.6 knots. But in the Southern Ocean itself, the fleet saw frequent large areas of light winds.
\nAll smiles for Pia Gr\u00f6nblom on the helm and Mauri De Meulder aboard Tapio Lehtinen\u2019s Swan 55 Galiana WithSecure. Photo: Team Galiana WithSecure\/OGR2023
\nIn the first Whitbread race 50 years ago, there were no ice limits and boats were free to follow a Great Circle route from New Zealand to Cape Horn. One entry, CS e RB, a 50ft Robert Clark design, dipped down below 62\u00b0S, where they sighted icebergs looming sinisterly out of fog.
\nCrews in the following editions also ran these risks until a more cautious attitude and more precise satellite imagery of where larger icebergs were drifting led organisers to hitch the route north. For Southern Ocean-bound races today, the most southerly point is usually Cape Horn itself at 56\u00b0S.
\nOne of the unintended consequences of shouldering the route away from ice limits is that a fleet can be forced towards and entrapped in high pressure. \u201cWe kept getting high pressures that were in the way of the ice limits, the waypoints that you had to go around. So you could dive quite deep, but you had to come back up and it was kind of a race around high pressures all round the world,\u201d Heather Thomas says. \u201cIt was very slow going at times.\u201d
\nBusy down below in Translated 9 with traditional-style navigation at the chart table and sail repairs being made in the saloon. Photo: Team Translated 9\/OGR2023
\nWeather information was restricted to what could be obtained by HF radio, but whereas there were many stations globally able to provide weather information back in the Whitbread days, today there are very few. \u201cThere are literally only three stations emitting useful info. Two, Northwood in the UK and Hamburg, are in Europe and overlapping down to the Canaries and then it stops.
\n\u201cThen Australia does good transmissions from Cape Leeuwin through to New Zealand and that\u2019s the extent of it,\u201d says Herbert-Jones. And some yachts\u2019 radio reception was poor. Spirit of Helsinki\u2019s was one of them. \u201cWe were getting some weather over HF radio and weatherfaxes which were unreliable and so blurred you couldn\u2019t read them, so we were staring at these old, fuzzy images trying to work them out. I\u2019d be happy never to see another weatherfax again,\u201d he says.
\nCompetitors were not allowed to contact ham radio stations but inevitably there were \u2018discrepancies\u2019. One boat was known to be in daily contact with a ham operator, and in receipt of everything from rugby scores to weather and positions of all the boats, which they blatantly relayed to the fleet.
\n\u201cBut,\u201d adds Simon Curwen, \u201ca huge element of co-operation and tone was set by one or two boats. Maiden especially set the standard of information and removed the majority of non-sharing.\u201d
\nIf bad weather over a sustained 35 knots or winds Force 8-9 or more were forecast, the fleet was alerted by the race office by sat phone SMS or Yellowbrick texting service. Much of the time it was back to absolute basics: recording barometer readings and making observations of the changing sky \u2013 \u201clooking out of the window, seeing what you are seeing and building a picture. People got much better at it as it went on,\u201d Simon Curwen adds.
\nThe crew of Maiden wrote themselves into the history books, becoming the first all-women team ever to win a crewed around the world race. Photo: Team Maiden\/OGR2023
\n\u201cEverybody will say the lack of weather makes it super tough and very frustrating at times, for example the lack of GRIB files and software such as Explorer that helps you take tactical and strategic decisions. Suddenly in this race I am literally going up and down the companionway and looking at the clouds. People joked: \u2018Here comes Ian staring at the sky\u2019,\u201d says Herbert-Jones.
\nCelestial navigation was enjoyed by some; hated by others. Boats had to have GPS plotters and AIS MOB locators under a sealed screen, to be used only for emergencies. But it needed to be checked every day and it was an open secret that some were using this for primary positioning information.
\n\u201cIf you\u2019re out in the middle of the ocean, you don\u2019t particularly need to know where you are with a massive amount of accuracy, just when you get a bit closer to land,\u201d says Maiden\u2019s Heather Thomas. \u201cIf there was sun, we were taking maybe four or five sights a day and doing DR at least once every three hours to keep an eye on our course and distance. It becomes kind of second nature to you and the calculations become quicker and quicker as time goes on because there are only small differences between each day of similarly timed sights.
\n\u201cI was a fan before and now I love celestial nav. We shouldn\u2019t let it die out. It gives you a very in-depth understanding of where you are and what the sun, moon, and planets are doing just as doing weather observations gives a very keen understanding of what\u2019s going on.\u201d
\nMaiden arrives in Cowes, winning the Ocean Globe Race 2023-24 on corrected time. Photo: The Maiden Factor
\nYachts were not given daily fleet position reports by the organisers, but began to share them with each other over SSB radio as well as weather forecasts received. \u201cComms became very important,\u201d says Herbert-Jones.
\n\u201cWe were committed to a fleet call once a week but we had a good radio and could communicate with all the fleet so we set up these sheds [schedules], a buddy call twice a day at 0700 and 1900. We would freely share and relay weather information with boats that had poor reception and help with repair solutions. There were one or two boats who didn\u2019t play as nicely for various reasons at different times or would go radio silent. But most played \u2013 a massive contrast with a modern race where you wouldn\u2019t do that.\u201d
\nModern races seldom have stages as long as 40 days any more. Sponsorship opportunities have added more stopovers to the classic route, and boats have become faster. Even the longest transocean cruising passage of a circumnavigation is rarely more than 30 days. The Ocean Globe Race and Clipper Race are now unusual as a series of ultra marathons with four stages of 6,500-8,000 miles.
\nLife on board
\nThe concoction of sleep deprivation, cramped quarters and the shock of going totally off grid for so long were a potent recipe for team bonding and discord. Different boats had varying levels of living standards. Spirit of Helsinki\u2019s crew, a group of shareholders in the project, were widely considered to be living in comfort. \u201cWe were an absolute luxury cruise liner compared to others,\u201d agrees Herbert-Jones. \u201cWe had twin diesel heaters, we had no issues making water and were having hot showers. One owner really liked his spa sessions.\u201d
\nOld school charts aboard Translated 9. Photo: Team Translated 9\/OGR2023
\nTranslated 9, a Swan 65 (formerly Clare Francis\u2019s ADC Accutrac from the 1977\/78 Whitbread) had a fully fitted out interior that looked misleadingly snug and homely.
\n\u201cYou think it is going to be a very comfortable trip compared to a modern ocean racer but it\u2019s not actually,\u201d Simon Curwen says. \u201cYou roll around the double berth in the master cabin and if you take the cupboard doors off in the saloon you are sleeping up against the structure. It would be much more comfortable in a bunk with a canvas base that you can rack yourself in and change the angle.
\n\u201cThere was no space below for anyone not required on deck. We didn\u2019t have a table as it would have been in the way of dropping sails and there was hot bunking for five people only. The cuddy did provide a bit of comfort but it was often occupied by people being seasick and lying out.\u201d
\nThere were very different approaches to food on board, just as there was in the pioneering first Whitbread Race. Back then, Chay Blyth\u2019s men had a stiff military regime of freeze-dried food, favouring curry, and were allowed only one spoon each to eat with. By contrast, Ramon Carlin on Sayula II insisted that the \u2018inner man\u2019 was important. He ran a cocktail hour as crew came off watch and when Sayula arrived in Cape Town reported that they\u2019d run out of wine and beer and had \u2018only 24 jars of caviar left\u2019.
\nThis time around on Maiden there was nowhere below for crew to eat communally and the diet was 100% freeze-dried. Skipper Heather Thomas explains: \u201cCrew prepared their own meals and ate whenever and whatever they wanted, within the realms of what we had on board.\u201d
\nPen Duick VI\u2019s first mate Tom Napper keeps busy trimming sails. Photo: Team Pen Duick VI\/OGR2023
\nOthers had fridges and freezers, and made good use of them with pre-prepared meals. On Translated 9, with an Italian owner and majority Italian crew, there was plenty of pasta and polenta. People took it in turns to cook and they ate together.
\nOn Spirit of Helsinki, food was paramount. \u201cWe\u2019d cook lunch and dinner and get together to eat. We\u2019d have roast beef and three veg pre-prepared, and on one leg we ordered meals prepared by a local restaurant. We liked to wind people up about it on the radio calls. That\u2019s where humour comes in,\u201d says Ian Herbert-Jones.
\nFriends and foes
\nThe long legs of the Ocean Globe Race produced some of the same human conflicts as the Whitbread Races of old, just possibly with less machismo. The first Whitbread Race was rife with tales of fights and mutinies, particularly after the Southern Ocean legs. It was said that one skipper in the 1974\/75 race ran amok with a gun and had to be tied up for a day. Life at sea was cold and monotonous, an animalistic existence for those early pioneers, and if the race was going badly people became restive.
\nOn the modern day Ocean Globe Race things didn\u2019t go that far, but there were still tensions. \u201cSome boats lost crew and they transferred to other boats; there was a fair amount of that going on. On Spirit of Helsinki, everyone managed to find their way through those difficulties but that is not completely true of every boat,\u201d observes Ian Herbert-Jones.
\n\u201cThere were conflicts on Translated, as on every boat in the fleet, but there was also great teamwork, particularly with the youngsters on board having the adventure of their life,\u201d says Curwen.
\nPen Duick VI\u2019s crew celebrate line honours. Photo: Tim Bishop\/PPL\/OGR2023
\nBut some boats experienced defining moments when disappointments and disharmony had to be contained. On the homeward stretch, a heavy broach in 50-knot gusts reopened previously repaired cracks in the hull of Translated 9 and the yacht began to take on water. Co-skipper Nico Malingri reported obvious signs of delamination and the crew prepared to abandon. After some debate, they diverted to Portugal, where they retired from the race.
\n\u201cThere were two people in particular who were very competitive who would have rather carried on and risked sinking the boat than retire,\u201d recalls Curwen. \u201cWe were taking on water and it was difficult to be sure about the structural issues. It was a very emotional conversation. There was sorrow and disappointment. Tears all round.\u201d
\nAround again?
\nFor Simon Curwen, who completed the solo Golden Globe Race in 2022 but was also forced to retire after diverting for repairs, this is the end of the adventure. \u201cI\u2019ve got to a certain stage I don\u2019t think I\u2019d put myself through that again,\u201d he says. \u201cBut a number are already thinking of doing it again. And I will say that it has enhanced my love of the sea and sailing.\u201d
\nDon McIntyre has published his rules for the Ocean Globe Race in 2027. Some of the same yachts will certainly be back with different crews. More yachts may also be considered eligible, so the fleet may be larger.
\nAlthough she\u2019s moving back to racing in IMOCA 60 and Ultime classes, Marie Tabarly is a believer in this kind of race. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see machines that, technologically, are pushing innovation to the top. But this creates huge carbon footprints and the world is no longer heading in that direction. Ocean racing like we do now is a form of excess. We need to start with making boats sustainable and creating new circuits.\u201d
\nWith its opportunities for older and less exorbitant yachts, the OGR is a concept of that type, and is also rich with human stories that the professionalism of elite events have tended to blot out. You don\u2019t need to understand sailing at all to be interested in the experiences of the people taking part, which is precisely why those early Whitbread Races made sporting history.<\/p>\n
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The post Tales from the Southern Ocean: Ocean Globe Race crews on the nostalgia of round the world racing appeared first on Yachting World.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ocean Globe Race was all about bringing back the spirit of the early Whitbreads. Elaine Bunting finds out how the crews fared.Tommi Uksila\/Team Spirit of Helsinki\/OGR2023When Don McIntyre devised the Ocean Globe Race, he imagined a revival of sailing\u2019s … <\/p>\n