Andi Robertson Sustainability in the yachting world is a real buzzword at the moment but frequently bold pledges are not backed up by meaningful action
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hough I have to be careful where I go with this, am I alone in reaching saturation point in terms of sustainability messages and propositions arriving in my inbox from big teams and big, big events? I have to be careful because, like many others in the sailing media, the sustainability Dollar – or Euro – is an important part of the modern, forward thinking, responsible media programme. And so I am a direct recipient of such marketing budgets. But these programmes are all about the power of sport to effect positive changes and more often than not it seems to me that it is the sport aspect that is left behind, somewhere after the message that we need to do better to look after our oceans and our planet. I am fed up at the lack of cohesive, joined up thinking – some might say hypocrisy – where, for example, plastic bottles are banned from the media centre and areas of the regatta village, but that sustainability policy does not extend to recycling waste on the race dock or in the regatta village, or any kind of transport and logistics policy. Meantime a little bright spot on my horizon remains Yachting Gives Back in Palma, a wonderful organisation run by Nick Entwhistle and with really strong support from the Superyacht community there. With the 52 Super Series in 2019 when we were last in Puerto Portals we started a little initiative whereby they picked up the teams’ and organisation’s uneaten food and redistributed it to those individuals in the city who are in need through the Associaco Tardor, a local NGO. That will be happening again this time and our intention is to try and encourage the other Palma events to follow the same initiative. Most people won’t give it a second thought but Palma has many, many more homeless people now as a direct effect of the pandemic – the tourism industry employs thousands of individuals and that industry was devastated last year – and the level of need has multiplied significantly. And while the level of support from the industry there has been fantastic, that agency has three hostels now and a food bank, and the industry is very supportive. What was great with the 52 Super Series was the awareness that it created
and that is a practical ‘sustainable’ initiative which every regatta and event could be looking to for the future. It was great to see the young, almost all amateur crew on Sunrise win the Rolex Fastnet Race outright. It was their time. They had already been third of 112 starters in the Myth of Malham and have done the hard miles in preparation as well as smartly optimising the boat in terms of sails so that they would be at the very top end of Class 2 so they could push hard to be up to their rating and beat tidal gates – or in this case a weather gate. But to have a crew triumph who are all in their 20s save owner Tom Kneen who is only 36 and pro Dave Swete is nothing short of inspirational for a whole young generation of offshore racers. And two of the crew are female in Suzy Peters and Tor Tomlinson. And through the RORC’s Griffin committee, of which Tor Tomlinson is the chair and on which Kneen sits, they are intent on improving RORC’s youth training offering. And while Suzy Peters aided and abetted the supremely talented Tom Cheney in the nav role on Sunrise, meantime in Palma at Copa del Rey I was stoked to see a young German female navigator succeed in the white hot ClubSwan 50 class. Lena Weisskichel is just 30 years old and was race navigating for her first time ever in the hot seat as a navigator with Kiel owner of NiRaMo, Sonke MeierSawatzki. He gave the pportunity to the former Laser Radial who wants to also get back in the 49erFX for an Olympic programme. Weisskichel is a bundle of energy clearly doing a decent job with NiRaMo finishing fourth overall. She told me “This is my very first event as navigator on any kind of short course inshore regatta. I had the pleasure of working with the old navigator Marcel Korte who was navigating last season during the training days, that was awesome because I could learn so much on this steep learning curve. “The whole team are so patient when I am doing small mistakes which happens when you are still learning. “It is great to be around these guys who have so much knowledge.” She did the mixed offshore keelboat last year when the discipline was going to be in the Olympics on the L30 and Dehler 30: “I liked the role doing the work on the chart and the looking at the numbers. That was the first time I did that and enjoyed it.”
PHOTO: NAUTOR’S SWAN
‘I WAS STOKED TO SEE A YOUNG FEMALE NAVIGATOR SUCCEED IN THE WHITE HOT CLUBSWAN 50 CLASS’
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OCTOBER 2021 Sailing Today with Yachts & Yachting
ANDI ROBERTSON An offshore sailing expert, few people can match Andi’s insight into the big boat world, both in the UK and globally
