iShares Cup, Amsterdam

All that wind in the past few weeks and when you need a good breeze it disappears. It's like mid-summer today in the Amsterdam canal basin where 10 Extreme-40 catamarans are competing in the final round of the iShares Cup.

The only teams with a chance of winning the series are Alinghi and Team Origin and up to half way through the programme, Alinghi look to be breezing it, which, given the light airs, is hardly the right choice of adjective.

I spent some time this morning floating around on Team Origin with a star-studded cast of sailors including three Olympic Gold medalists, Ben Ainslie, Iain Percy and Andrew "Bart" Simpson, joined on the boat by Sir Keith Mills, the team principal.

Mills has been working behind the scenes helping to broker a deal on the America's Cup between Ernesto Bertorelli and Larry Ellison.

He seems optimistic that the two businessmen who have been at the centre of protracted legal action over the future of the race, will come to an accommodation before the next court hearing in the New Year.

So will the next event be multi-hulled or single-hulled? It's too early to say but most people I have spoken with think it's inconceivable that the future of the event will not consist of a single-hulled challenge competition preceding a two-boat sail off for the cup itself. Mills still believes the challengers will be racing against each other next year, culminating in a cup race in 2011.

And what of the two big multi-hulls that have been built for BMW Oracle and Alinghi? Mills thinks they will make fine museum pieces. What a ridiculous waste of time and money.

In a class of their own

During one of the Rolex races I sailed with Charles Dunstone, chief executive and co-founder of Carphone Warehouse. From the back of his yacht, Hamilton II there was a grandstand view of two J-class yachts, Velsheda and Ranger competing head-to-head just to our rear.

It made for some stunning pictures, two of which I have featured here. I'm keen to write a feature on the J-class yachts which must still be the classiest sail boats on the water all those years after they first appeared. There are four new ones in build right now so the class is going to have an injection of some real competition. We ain't seen nothing yet.


On the water, at least, there is no love lost between Ronald de Waal, owner of Velsheda and John Williams, the owner of Ranger (the two boats collided at the Rolex even) but the rivalry may be coming to an end if Williams decides to sell Ranger as some reports have suggested.

Porto Cervo Marina, Sardinia

It’s always interesting to see how the other half lives. But in the week of the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup we're not talking about the other half but the other 0.00001 per cent. There used to be a night spot here nicknamed “the millionaires’ club.” Today they have renamed it the “billionaires club.”

The Yacht Club Costa Smeralda was built in 1967 by the Aga Khan - the Paris-based head of the Nizari Muslims, the largest branch of the Ismaili Shi'a sect - and a few of his friends. Create an exclusive yacht club within a sleepy, sunny, rocky inlet and wait. One by one the big yachts came – the really big yachts: yachts with toy cupboards in the stern holds. In the place where smaller yachts store their mops, buckets and painters, the biggest maxis have sailing dinghies, power boats and canoes.

Search across the deck, beyond the godlike physiques of the so-called rock star sailors to the scruffiest incarnation of Harold Steptoe and you may well be looking at the owner.

What do the sailors do after a hard day’s racing in the Rolex Cup? A group of them I noticed were playing with remote controlled yachts. The rest were hitting the bar.



The super yachts range from sleek Wallys (I have always thought it must be something of an indignity to describe oneself as a Wally yacht owner) to the timeless J-class boats evoking the great days of sail.

The shirts may be scruffy but there’s no mistaking the accessories. Men with chunky watches, glistening like medieval body armour, heave their burdened wrists chest high with all the effort of a weight-training exercise.

If you want to give a maxi-yacht owner a hernia, just ask him the time. The yachts look unsinkable; you also get the impression they are fully recession-proofed.

“It’s a different world,” an event organiser confessed to me. “Before I discovered the big boat circuit I had no idea it existed. They keep an incredibly low profile,” she said.

There’s no stigma in being rich in this place. Not much advantage either. No matter how big you make your boat there will always be another that's bigger or taller with vast swathes of teak. They have a name for the rain forest here. They call it decking.

Williams wins Danish Open

Ian Williams extended his lead in the current World Match Racing Tour at the weekend when he and his Pindar racing team won the Danish Open. Williams, the current world champion, pulled clear of his nearest rival, Frenchman Mathieu Richard who failed to make the semi-finals.

This was my first trip to one of the match racing events and the Danes were very welcoming hosts. All the crews have identical boats so it really is a test of team work, tactics and helming skills.

There is simply no room for error so every manoeuvre has to be like clockwork. It's more like boxing than racing with umpires following the two-boat races on an end-to-end course that must be rounded twice. This means that spectators have a clear understanding of who is in the lead as the boats converge for each buoy rounding.

In the battle for dominance, however the boats undertake many more manoeuvres than in a fleet race, tacking and back tacking when fighting for position. In the pre-race jostling they sometimes do a series of pirouettes as they try to make the best position on the line.

The tour seems to be attracting increasing interest from potential hosts, not to name some big names in sailing such Magnus Holmberg. A group from a Bahrain bank were visiting this tie, looking at the feasibility of staging an event in Bahrain.

The tour includes stages in Brazil, Germany, Korea, Switzerland and Sweden but has no UK event as yet. This seems odd since the world champion is British. Sooner or later one of the hungrier ports - Cardiff, Liverpool or Hartlepool perhaps - is going to wake up and bid for the event. It beats duck racing.