Admirals' Cup: Old rivalries take centre stage again in revived Admirals' Cup

Max Klink's Botin 52 Caro - representing the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron (RNZYS) © Paul Wyeth / pwpictures.com

On the eve of the start of the revived Admirals’ Cup, Sail-World spoke with Mike Sanderson, one of the crew aboard Caro which will represent the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron.

A 30 boat fleet of essentially 40 and 50fters, spilt into two divisions by side lined up for the start of the Channel Race, on Saturday morning.

“The last Admiral's Cup I did was in '99,” he recalls. “They did one in 2003 but it was already on the decline, but the 1999 event was massive.

“It’s unbelievable that we are on the Solent at the same time as the SailGP at the other. It’s supercool!” Sanderson says the revived Admirals Cup which has been in abeyance for almost 25 years is having a big impact in Cowes, the home of the event.

“It's good. It's kicked off. And there's a lot of activity. A lot of enthusiasm, you know, it's made it super exciting to be honest. You know, it's impressive to see the calibre of the teams, which have been created in a reasonably short space of time. There's boats there, fully cocked and ready to go, in a full frenzy. It's awesome. It's very exciting.”

Sanderson says that the standard of the fleet has lifted to a new level, in the revived Admirals Cup. Mostly the crews are comprised of professional sailors, or those working in the sailing industry. While that has always been the case a key part of the Cup, with more Corinthian sailors competing.

“Certainly the calibre of the professionalism, here in Cowes, has gone to the next level, you know. “There’s Super Series level campaigns, coming into the Admirals Cup, and obviously there's no owner driver rule. So, you know, you it's, it's pretty exciting to see. Theres many pro-teams again, with super excited owners being part of it.

“I think that's really cool, with new boats, new rigs, new sails.

“So again, it just shows that the market was really ready for something like this. There are still owners that do want to go offshore, and there are owners that still want to travel with their boats, and do cool events, especially events with some history as well.

‘Again it’s super exciting to see SailGP at one end of the Solent and the Admirals’ Cup at the other. That's almost the two bookends of the sport, both on the same stretch of water – so it is great.”

While there are only a few Owner/Skippers helming the boats, most of the owners are sailing aboard their yachts, which in the revived event represent a club team not a national team as in the original concept.

Even so there 15 club teams representing 12 nations, which is a very good turn-out for the revived event, which under the excellent management and foresight of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, can only grow further.

Sanderson says that despite not having an owner/driver rule, “lots of them are on board. Our owner is a North American champion in the J70s – so he’s definitely going to do lot of steering. Offshore between him, Dean [Barker] and him, he’ll definitely be steering.

“Most of the owners are really involved. I think we will see it just go from strength to strength. We're seeing a lot of enthusiasm for the Cup and this type of racing, which is great.”

“The revived Sardinia Cup has just been announced, which is a famous event. My hope is that they bring the Kenwood Cup back as well, because I'd love to go back to Hawaii.”

The level of interest in the revived Admirals Cup has taken many by surprise, but maybe not so in the current stand-off with the America’s Cup, and its venue machinations.

The appeal of the Admirals Cup is that everyone knows when it will be on, where it will be, and that they can either build a boat of a certain type, or use an existing boat from another race fleet.

“The level of interest was really fast and really quick,” the former Volvo Ocean Race skipper says.

“I think when there's so much history behind these things, you get a lot of, you get a lot of people who, have a lot of nostalgia and want to be involved in something which they've read about.

“As kids, we followed the Admirals Cup as we grew up followed the big events through in bits and pieces, in magazines.

“I think we are now back into the start of that same era, where we have SailGP, America’s Cups, Admirals’ Cups, the Ocean Races that all serious sailors can aspire to sail, or follow as fans. “I think it's, it's amazing for the sport.”

The Channel Race gets under way this weekend. The long standing RORC event is the double scoring points race for the Admirals’ Cup, and the first opportunity the sailing world will have to see the 30 entries starting as a single fleet. “It's going to be tricky,” Sanderson says of the race which will have the fleet rounding various marks in the English Channel in an overnight race.

“The thing about the Channel Race is they set the course depending on the forecast.

“You guys have been monitoring the weather for the race, and as you know there's different weather coming through, and so we're going to have a bit of everything. We could have up to 30 knots, and we could have, we could have some areas we’re becalmed. So it’s going to be all over the place.”

“We've done a lot of work with the tide and and we've got, a lot of local knowledge on board, which is always important in this part of the world.

“If you love sailing and you love Offshore Sailing, you know there has to be lots of attention to detail and the intricacies of current and sand banks, as well as tidal gates and overfalls, and various headlands – which influence wind and tide.”

“The Admirals’ Cup, it's such an amazing event, it's got plenty of curveballs to throw at you, so it's super fun from that standpoint.”

This event will see two of the superpowers of the sailmaking world come up against each other under their new common ownership by the North Technology Group. Sanderson is not sure of the percentage of the fleet carrying Doyle Sails, compared to their long standing rival, North Sails. Sanderson who has worked for both, but was one of the co-founders of the revived Doyle Sails, which has gone from strength to strength, since his involvement.

“It’s very close to, but not quite 50% - with Norths still dominant.”

“We're super proud of how many sails Doyles have in the fleet.

“And we've got lots of the front runners, which is, which is also exciting.

“We've got lots of our Doyle Sails team here, which, as you know, is our philosophy. We love to be entrenched with the teams.”

"There always good rivalry between the two lofts."

“The one thing for sure is the North/Doyle rivalry hasn't calmed down. Many think we've actually thrown some fuel on the fire.

“There's plenty of rivalry in the cell making brands, that's for sure.”