Forty Tempest teams in the running for the World Championship in Cannes

Tempest World Championship in Cannes © French Association of Tempest

Tempest World Championship in Cannes © French Association of Tempest

Two weeks after the 48th Royal Regatta, and a few days after the 600-mile Cannes-Malta Race which has just ended in Valletta, the Cannes Yacht Club, chaired by Jean-François Cutugno, is organising a series of non-stop competition from 11 to 17 October with the Tempest World Championship. Eighty sailors are expected in the bay of Cannes, including the reigning world champions, the brothers Lars and Leif Bärh, at the head of a German delegation of 18 crews.

Relatively unknown in France, the Tempest is a 6.68-metre sports keelboat with two crew members, one of whom is on the trapeze. Designed 61 years ago by the Briton Ian Proctor, also famous for having designed the Topper - one of the most widely used dinghies in the world - in addition to its aluminium masts that revolutionised racing and yachting, the Tempest (World Sailing international series) was Olympic in Munich (Germany) in 1972 and Montreal (Canada) in 1976. During these two Olympiads, the Ukrainian Valentin Mankin, double medallist (gold and silver) and the American Dennis Conner (bronze medallist) but also four-time winner of the America's Cup, shone in Kiel and Kingston on this powerful 480-kilogram yacht, carrying nearly 25 square metres of sail upwind, and twice as much downwind.

Even today, the series remains very active, especially in Germany and the United Kingdom, and many former dinghy champions come or return to the Tempest, renowned for its finesse of the helm and its many adjustment possibilities. Bruno Ricciardi, vice-president of the Yacht Club de Cannes, former French 420 champion, discovered the Tempest a few years ago, and is competing in this world championship in its waters with Emmanuel Desfond: "It's a great boat, robust, not really expensive second-hand, very seaworthy in the breeze and which glides easily downwind. You can find the sensations of youth on the trapeze, the Tempest being less brutal and physical, because it is equipped with a keel, and therefore does not capsize. Nevertheless, the level remains very high, because many former great dinghy sailing champions race on this boat..."

In Cannes this week, it will be a hard battle between the tenors of the series, including the Bähr brothers, reigning world champions, the Germans Tobias Spranger and Alexander Morgensten, who are still placed in the Europa Cups, and the Frenchman Philippe Boite, the helmsman with 37 consecutive national titles in the 505 class, world champion in Tempest twenty years ago in Martinique, and who is racing with Marin Carnot, his crew member in the 505. On the French side, it is difficult not to mention the couple Patrice and Agnès Rouanet who come from Saint-Raphaël as neighbours, without the slightest doubt the most assiduous and references of the series, whose titles of French champion and others have been in the top seven in the world for decades.

South-easterly winds of between 10 and 15 knots, and Indian summer weather are forecast for this week of racing. This world championship promises to be as tactical as it is exciting.

For more information visit tempest.fr