Andy Rice The new Cape 31 has taken the Solent race scene by storm and is underpinned by a super friendly ethos. Has the perfect formula for performance racing finally been found?
T
he great thing about one-design racing is you know exactly where you stand. The bad thing about one-design racing is you know exactly where you stand. Unlike the vagaries of handicap racing where there is always somewhere to hide, if you fare badly in a onedesign race there is nowhere for the ego to seek refuge. It’s on you. Of course, if you were fortunate enough to find a boat that has a strong one-design fleet but also performs very well on handicap, that would be a wonderful but very rare combination. Well, one boat that seems to be having its cake and eating it is the Cape 31. Originally conceived by keen Maxi yacht racer Sir Irvine Laidlaw as a no-hold-barred highperformance 31-footer, Irish naval architect Mark Mills drew the racy lines of the Cape 31 back in 2017. It was an immediate hit in South Africa, and in the past 18 months the Cape 31 has taken the Solent by storm. Expertly marketed by South African Dave Bartholomew and New Zealander Dave Swete out of Port Hamble, sales in England and Ireland have reached 25 boats in not much more than a year. Owner of a Corby-designed cruiser-racer, Lance Adams was so intrigued by the idea of the Cape 31 he bought one without ever having gone for a trial sail. “I had always wanted to give one-design racing a go, but I didn’t want to race dinghies and wanted something a bit more exciting than a J/70. Dave Swete told me about the Cape 31 and it sounded like the boat that the Solent has been needing for a while now. I wanted a boat that would get up on the plane and go hell for leather. Sort of like a one-design version of what they were doing with the Fast40s but without the ludicrous sort of budget that you need to do well in that fleet.” The cut and thrust of one-design competition has been everything Adams hoped it would be. “Last year we experienced some incredibly close races. It was just nonstop on the racetrack, which makes it far more exciting. It gives you the opportunity to use some tactics and use some ideas to change the position. For the first five or six days of Cowes Week I think we had different winners every day.” Adam’s boat, Katabatic, was second boat to arrive in the UK. “I’m not normally a risk taker but as soon as Dave told me what the boat and class was all about, I could see immediately how it would appeal to other people, and it has done.” I suggested to Adams that launching an exciting new class is
perhaps easier than sustaining that enthusiasm a few years down the line. Back to the nowhere-to-hide bruising of the ego when you find yourself struggling at the back of the fleet. For Adams, the appeal of one-design is being able to measure your progress, not necessarily the result itself. “I like taking younger people out on the boat, building the team, developing people’s opportunity to go sailing on boats like this. That’s what appeals to me really. It’s not about winning. It’s about doing the best you can with people you’ve got and then working on how you improve the performance of the team.” With upwind speed of around 7.5 knots, the Cape 31 holds its own with a lot of 40-footers, and downwind it hits speeds over 20 knots in the right conditions. Adams says you can really feel the boat through your body. “When you get the boat going well and you get it in that sweet spot, the whole crew can feel it. It’s just completely different from other boats, there is a kind of connectedness that you feel with the boat that I haven’t really experienced before.” Aside from the fact that the Cape 31 is a really nice boat to sail, perhaps the class ethos is even more important. The two Daves, Bartholomew and Swete, have been careful to listen to what their owners want, and also to protect the boat from customisation and bending of the rules. Swete has recognised the fact that the front of the fleet will always look after itself, it’s the back of the fleet that needs the lion’s share of the care and attention. It’s a strict owner-driver class and while it’s possible to race with three pro sailors on board, Swete tries to discourage teams from racing with more than one paid professional. Adams agrees. “I don’t really want to see America’s Cup and Olympic sailors showing up and taking it all too seriously,” he says. “Right now there’s a good camaraderie in the fleet, and it’s not like anyone’s playing their cards close to their chest. There’s a sense of sharing knowledge, and Dave Bart and Dave Swete are very committed to helping everyone in the fleet do as well as they can.” Another feather in the cap of the Cape 31 is that, even though Mills didn’t design it for handicap racing, the boat turns out to be a great performer under IRC. But the real key to whether or not the class will survive in the longer term is how well it looks after the back of the fleet. If you can find a way of making sure your owners are still grinning even when they’re not winning, you’ve cracked the code of class longevity.
PHOTO RICK TOMLINSON/CAPE 31 CLASS
“The front of the fleet will always look after itself, it’s the back of the fleet that needs the lion’s share of the care and attention”
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MAY 2022 Sailing Today with Yachts & Yachting
ABOVE The Cape 31 offers exciting one-design racing under an owner-driver rule
ANDY RICE As a sailing journalist and TV commentator Andy has unparalleled knowledge of the performance racing scene, from grassroots to elite level
