10th Sept: Ocean Globe Race

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The Ocean Globe race is a fully crewed retro-race in the spirit of the 1973 Whitbread Round the World Race held to mark the 50th Anniversary of that original race.  So they will be using sextants and paper charts and not their GPS Chart Plotters. The fourteen participating yachts left Ocean Village in the morning and made their way over to Cowes for a 1pm start from the Royal Yacht Squadron line before their circumnavigation of the globe.

The entrants were:

Yacht No. Country Comment
Adventure Class (47′ to 56′)
Godspeed 01 USA  A Swan 51 sailed by “The Skeleton Crew” which has assembled an all US Veteran race team
Galiana Withsecure 06 Finland A 1970 Sparkman & Stephens designed Swan 55 yawl
Outlaw 08 Australia A Baltic 55 originally built for the 1985/86 Whitbread, competing under the name Equity and Law.
Sterna 42 S. Africa Sterna of Allspice Yachting is a modified Swan 53 commissioned in 1988
Triana 66 France Swan 53 Bermudan sloop built in 1987
Sayula Class (56.1’ to 66’)
Evrika 07 France Swan 65 ketch launched in 1982 and is hull number 36
White Shadow 17 Spain Number four hull of the 1978’s Swan 57 built to race in the Whitbread
Explorer 28 Australia Swan 57 ketch, a classic Sparkman & Stephens design evolved directly from the 1973 Whitbread Race experience of the Swan 65 Sayula II
Spirit of Helsinki 71 Finland Swan 651 sloop built in 1984 and competed in the 1986 Whitbread as “Fazer Finland” finishing 3rd
Flyer Class (yachts previously entered in early Whitbread Round the World races)
Maiden 03 UK 58′ Bruce Farr designed Bermudan sloop in which Tracy Edwards skippered the first all-female crew in the 1989 Whitbread
Translated 9 09 Italy Swan 65 Bermudan ketch previously raced as ADC Accutrac by Clare Francis, with a fifth place finish in the 1977/78 Whitbread
Pen Duick VI 14 France 73′ Bermudan ketch designed specifically for the 1973 Whitbread and sailed by  Éric Tabarly she is now skippered by Marie Tabarly
Neptune 56 France 60′ aluminium sloop designed by André Mauric and took part in the second Whitbread in 1977
L’Esprit d’Équipe 85 France 58′ Bermudan sloop designed by Philippe Briand for the 1981 Whitbread formerly known as 33 Export and Esprit de Liberté

I was doing a double shift at Lepe that day, but the weather –  misty and with a light easterly – was not good for photography!  Here are some photos taken by watchkeeper Roy Pullinger as they passed Calshot Tower before the start…

Here are my photos taken through the mist from NCI Stone Point…