Rolex Farr 40 Worlds at the Royal Yacht Squadron Overall

by Bob Fisher 15 Sep 2001 18:04 BST

ERNESTO BERTARELLI IS THE NEW WORLD CHAMPION

Ernesto Bertarelli, with a smile a yard wide, compared his victory in the Rolex Farr 40 World Championship with that which he and his Alinghi team scored in the 12-Metre World championship last month. ‘The 40s win is better than the 12s,’ he declared, ‘because I was helming.’

He was immediately congratulated by the man whose crown he now wears, John Calvert-Jones, who said, ‘He rose to the challenge on the day, and was just too good for us.’

It was indeed a great performance by the Swiss sailor who scored 15 less place points than the Australian defending champion, the runner-up this year. Bertarelli and his Alinghi team won the first race of the final day and then consolidated their position with a sixth and a second in conditions that were tricky in the extreme.

Bertarelli unreservedly praised his crew which included his America’s Cup skipper, Russell Coutts as tactician, the Whitbread winning bowman, Curtiss Blewett, and the Cup winning trimmers, Simon Daubney and Warwick Fleury. ‘This team is really good,’ said the new champion, ‘they know how to trim. All I do is put the bow straight and Simon and Warwick steer the boat for me.’

The north-westerly airstream was unstable in strength and direction, swinging wildly both ways with a capriciousness to catch the unwary. Calvert-Jones’ Southern Star was one of those badly caught in the first race, for while Alinghi led from the second mark of the two lap windward/leeward course, Southern Star was caught on the wrong side of a wind shift on the first leg and never recovered after rounding in 19th place.

But Calvert-Jones is made of stern stuff and he was back into the recovery business as the day went on. He was just behind Alinghi, in ninth place at the first mark in the next race, and like Bertarelli, began to claw back places. Bertarelli had to be content with sixth, but Calvert-Jones went one better to finish fifth.

That race was won by Mark Heeley in GBR-25, coming from fourth place at the first mark to leading through the leeward gate. Tony de Mulder in Victric 5 repeated his second place in the morning race to move into contention for third place overall – the top two places seemed by then certain to go to Bertarelli and Calvert-Jones.

The two of them made sure of that in the final race with the Australian winning by 40 seconds from the Swiss skipper. When Heeley overtook Philip Tolhurst’s Warlord on the finishing line for third place, he didn’t change any of the overall places – Tolhurst was third, de Mulder fourth and Heeley fifth.

Mistakes were painfully punishing from the wind shifts throughout the day, and from mistakes on the boat, like that on the 1998 champion, Jim Richardson’s Barking Mad. Bowman James Ware was swept overboard by the spinnaker boom as Barking Mad was rounding the leeward mark in the first of the day’s three races. Richardson took all way off the boat and Ware swam to the stern and was hauled back on board, but Barking Mad dropped to the back of the fleet. It dumped Barking Mad to 18th in that race and to seventh overall.

Worse was in store for Mark Timbrell’s Forza and one of his crewmen, Stuart Miller. The Italian boat, Zzenzero, skippered by Renato Mazzeschi, on port tack, sliced into the side of Forza, badly crushing Miller’s foot and tipping him into the sea. Miller was taken to Southampton Hospital where surgery was carried out on the foot. Timbrell was extremely fortunate in saving his yacht which was rent from waterline to centreline on the port side.

Overall Results: after nine races