In future, we from the YACHT editorial team want to categorise and comment on what we consider to be the most important, most interesting and most controversial event of the week every Saturday. It is deliberately intended to be a subjective review, sometimes written in a humorous way, sometimes argued in depth. Because not everything that concerns us automatically becomes a report. Many a tweet goes unheard, many a sideways glance goes unwritten because it doesn't fulfil the classic news criteria or because we simply don't get round to it due to the pressure of being up-to-date. With the review of YACHT Week, we want to give all this space and involve you even more in our work, our points of view and also our internal discussions and dilemmas.
This week it was the postponement of the start of the Route du Rhum, originally planned for Sunday, that particularly concerned me. Because even if I think the decision was the right one and the 138 solo skippers were unanimous in their approval, it has taken away a certain magic, an aura, a piece of the epic significance of the regatta, the mother of all transats.
It starts with the start time. Instead of the planned 13:02 on Sunday, as at the Vendée, the race committee sent the field onto the course to Guadeloupe at 14:15 on Wednesday. The more prosaic time was not due to the weather or the tide, but to the stricter requirements of the TV stations during the week. In order not to have to interrupt the usual programme, the original date was sacrificed without further ado, which was so endearingly crookedly chosen so as not to conjure up the bad omen of 13, which has always been frowned upon in seafaring circles.
Call me a hopelessly lost traditionalist, but such quirks mean something to me. They are as much a part of the solo sailing scene as they are of Brittany. Those who sacrifice such things on the altar of commerce or convenience for the sake of mere pragmatism deprive the "Rhum" of a - admittedly: - small part of its speciality.
Consequently, you can and must ask bigger, more uncomfortable questions. Whether single-handed regattas of this size are not nonsense anyway, especially in the stormy autumn, particularly from a starting port like Saint-Malo, which is known to be on the English Channel and forces the skippers to slalom between fishermen, container ships and competitors - mostly in the dark.
Another thought, a more fundamental one, has raised doubts in my mind as to whether it was so clever to postpone the start for the first time ever on the Route du Rhum: What criteria are actually used for cancellations?
The weather forecasts for the start were (and are) certainly extremely demanding, bordering on unreasonable for people and equipment. There were three heavy weather fronts a week ago. Following the postponement, the skippers still have to contend with two lows, the first of which is, strictly speaking, hardly weaker than the one last weekend. What is the substantial difference? Are 40 to 50 knots in gusts and cross seas of 5 to 6 metres average height still okay, but 50 to 60 knots unacceptable?
Perhaps I should emphasise once again at this point that I can understand the race committee's decision. It came about under great pressure from the skippers, especially the Class 40, but also from the insurers and from the sea rescue service, which had pointed out that it could only provide very limited deployment capacities in such difficult conditions and that the sheer number of participants was a problem in itself, especially with winds from the west and cross courses in the channel.
But why do we allow record fields? Why keep the start in November, which increases the risk of storms enormously? Why don't we define from the outset when and under what conditions the event will be postponed?
Of course, it's cheap to raise such questions from the writing room. There are no easy answers, as is so often the case when a plan meets reality and three storm fronts meet an armada of single-handed sailors. Rest assured: None of us want to report on a race that turns into a crash test derby. We want the best skippers to win, not the wildest daredevils.
And yet something was lost on me - just as it was in the summer when the Vendée Arctique was shortened due to the weather. It takes away the aura of ultimate adventure from ocean sports.
Instead of letting the sailors decide whether and when to cross the line, third parties decide for them in a well-meaning way. With all due understanding, this makes me think. It's the loss of challenge, purity and clarity that crept up on me last weekend. I'll get over it, but what does that do to the Route du Rhum, to ocean sailing itself? Will we soon experience something similar in The Ocean Race, in the Vendée?
Jochen Rieker,Editor-in-Chief YACHT
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