Cup Regatta #19- It’s Simple- Be there!
The 19th Edition of Melbourne’s now famous Cup Regatta run by the Classic Yacht Association of Australia is just a week away. With hundreds of sailing races going on around the world each week, I thought it might be worth taking a moment to see why this particular event is so special.
RYCV in all its glory!
Racing any one design craft makes plenty of sense to me. It’s a test of sailing skill, athleticism, decision making and temperament. That’s why the Olympics have been the pinnacle of our sport for 125 years. [A caveat… early Olympic sailing used tonnage or metre rules classes and so the boats were not identical.] And then if you step away from one design into the strictly measurement handicap classes, racing still has a track record of rewarding individual sailing skills, but its amazing how often the team with the most money wins. Take for example the recent Admiral’s Cup where the top three teams came from Monaco, Costa Smeralda, and Hong Kong!
And then down the bottom of this strange hierarchy is Classic Boat Racing. Craft of wildly disparate shapes and sizes, built for different purposes on both princely or miserly budgets, assemble on the startline, go hard for two or three hours, squeezing every 1/10th knot out of there often unsuitable hull forms, in order to cross the line ahead of a boat that looks nothing like the one they are on. AND ITS WONDERFUL!
So despite the best efforts of the handicapper this type of competition not conducted on level playing field and I’m not talking about the Port Phillip chop.. And yet we still try hard, scrub the hulls, buy an occasional new sail, and try an find crew that at least know the difference between a gybe and a tack.
So what’s the attraction?
I suggest to you two overlapping theories…
Firstly, the racing is a just mechanism for gathering likeminded people together in one place, and at one time to share their eccentric passion, and realise that they are not alone in their quest for authenticity and their love of functional beauty. Hence the gathering on Friday 31st October in Ferdi Darley’s Boat Yard, where while standing amongst some of the most graceful hull forms of the last 100 years, you can enjoy a glass of wine, and listen to people who are in some way on the same journey as you, through the challenging but incredibly rewarding world of Classic Boats.
The second reason we take these old craft out to compete, is that by doing so we are acknowledging and respecting the designers, boat builders and sailors who went before us, often in more difficult circumstances than our current-day cosseted world. This is why the partnership that the CYAA has developed with The Joe White bequest is so significant. The Joe White Bequest trophies acknowledge yacht, boat and now modern classic restoration and maintenance and encourages others to continue the struggle to ensure that the history is embodied in tangible objects not just words in books.
Of course neither of these reasons if sufficient. There’s a whole lot of other motivations for being out on the Bay on a cold Sunday morning, from avoiding mowing the lawn, to curing a hangover. But the most important thing is… to just be out there!
Hurry up and Register you Entry HERE (and don’t forget you can enter the modern Classic Division and not every yacht at the Regatta is there for the racing … for some it’s just about sharing their love of their passion for yachts)
And last chance for Social Tickets to Ferdi’s Shed Part HERE
