www.MyPE.co.za: Back in December 2007 I was asked to try and find a charter vessel willing to go and fetch the sailing vessel Delta Dore around 800 nautical miles off of the South Africa coast. Delta Dore had lost their mast and boom whilst sailing in the Barcelona World Race. See: Barcelona World Race Delta Dore Dismasted Near Port Elizabeth.
As luck (or unluck!) would have it the owners of Delta Dore eventually decided to rather charter a Cape Town based recovery boat to tow Delta Dore to Cape Town rather than Port Elizabeth. Weighing in on the decision for Cape Town was the fact that Cape Town has an advanced yacht building industry.
Port Elizabeth had to wait a whole year before getting a glimpse of another of these around the world racers when in December 2008 Vendee Globe participant, Jean Baptiste Dejeanty put into Port Elizabeth to effect repairs to his 60 foot yacht. See: Solo Racer Dejeanty Reaches Port Elizabeth.
At the time a mate of mine told me of his experiences with being an advance shore manager for two of the Volvo Ocean Race teams that had been in Cape Town. The number of people working on and following the yachts around the world was just mind blowing. For two weeks you couldn’t get a hire car in Cape Town, all the yacht builders were fully booked for repairs, entire hotels had been booked out in advance and personal chefs installed in the hotel kitchens, container after container lined the quayside, gyms were block booked, restaurants did a roaring trade and the vibe in the V&A Waterfront enticed thousands more visitors – enough activity to make our local tourism industry absolutely green with envy.
AND, guess what, Port Elizabeth was recently asked to bid to be the stopover in the next Volvo Ocean Race as we are twinned with Gothenburg in Sweden, the home of Volvo Cars. Our bid was blocked by our local dummies masquerading as Transnet who refused to see the huge potential in such a race.
The number of spectators that turn out to see only 14 yachts embark on a non stop around the world race is mind blowing.
31 December 2010 saw the start of the 2nd edition of the Barcelona World Race – a non stop race around the world on Open 60 yachts manned by two crew.
The boats will race from Barcelona to Barcelona, putting the Capes of Good Hope, Leeuwin and Horn to port, through Cook Strait and passing security gates set by the race organisers along the route.
On departure from Barcelona they will head down the Gibraltar Strait, out into the Atlantic and down to the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa).
They will then cross the Indian Ocean, rounding Cape Leeuwin (Southern Australia), through Cook Strait (between the North and South islands of New Zealand) and across the Pacific Ocean to round Cape Horn (Southern Chile) and then back up the Atlantic towards Barcelona and through the Gibraltar Strait.
The length of the course is approximately 25 000 nautical miles along the Great Circle line (the shortest route along the planet’s surface), equivalent to some 46 300 km. The regatta will last about three months, with the boats sailing a theoretical average speed of just over 11 knots.
The winners of the first edition of the race, Jean-Pierre Dick and Damian Foxall on Paprec Virbac 2, took 92 days, nine hours, 49 minutes and 49 seconds to win the race, with a theoretical average speed of 11.13 knots.
The greatest distance covered in a 24 hour run was by Alex Thomson and Andrew Cape on board Hugo Boss. The pair covered 501.3 miles (928.4 km) in 24 hours, sailing at an average speed of 20.88 knots. This is the current world record for a Monohull of up to 60 feet and is the record to beat in all of the IMOCA Open 60 class competitions.
There are 14 teams racing around the world with the majority of the sailors being Spanish followed by French.
The Barcelona waterfront area of old is much like Port Elizabeth’s sad tired waterfront now but Barcelona’s catalyst came just before the 1992 Olympic Games, when feverish renovation work changed the city’s image from that of a drab, gray burg to a new gleaming metropolis. The waterfront, once lined with large oily containers and sad-looking palm trees, was transformed into an open, sunlit area of promenades, marinas, and modern restaurants stretching several kilometers from beachside Barceloneta via the Vila Olímpica and the 2004 Forum site to Sant Adrià de Besòs.
Even American cities used Barcelona as an example, see: Case Study – Barcelona where Philadelphia benefits from the development of the Barcelona Waterfront.
The 32nd America’s Cup Regatta is the one event that was responsible for the regeneration of the Valencia Waterfront – did you even know where Valencia is before the America’s Cup?
As the Barcelona World Race yachts travel down the coast of Africa to sail past Algoa Bay we would do well to contemplate that one iconic attraction that Port Elizabeth so desperately needs in order to play outside with the big boys. Maybe becoming a Volvo Ocean Race stopover would be the catalyst.
Just imagine what an iconic waterfront like Barcelona’s and a couple of high profile sailing events stopping over in Port Elizabeth would do for our tourism industry and standing.
Alan Straton
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If only the idiots running our metro had some idea of how benefical tourism would be to our little part of the world. They cannot seem to think past feathering their own nests. So sad.!
One of the round the world yachts retired this morning (Wednesday 26 January) and is now headed for Cape Town.
See the details here: Round the World Yacht Foncia Heading for Cape Town.