Galway may be ocean race stopover

Sailing News: Ireland will be a stopover venue for the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) if a €20 million Irish entry in to the round-the-world event gets the green light later this month.

A trio of Galway businessmen are behind a campaign led by Northern Ireland yachtsman Jamie Boag (36) to bring a leg of the world's top ocean race to Ireland.

So far, Boag, who is based in Cowes, and the businessmen, who do not want to be named, admit that no commercial deal has been signed for what amounts to the biggest Irish sailing sponsorship. A formal campaign announcement is expected this month.

The 2008 race starts from Alicante, Spain, that October.

"We have been working very hard on this for the last six months. We're keen to make an Irish team and an Irish stop-over a reality," Boag told The Irish Times yesterday.

Race organisers have stipulated that for Galway to become a mark on the 33,000-mile course, Ireland must have an entry - the first since NCB Ireland 19 years ago.

The ninth leg of the race is due to leave the northeast coast of the US on May 16th, 2009, and after some 2,500 nautical miles will end up in western Europe at a venue still to be decided.

If Irish plans succeed, it is expected the transatlantic leg will terminate in Galway instead of Portsmouth, as it did in 2005.

The penultimate, 1,500-mile leg would then start from Galway on June 6th to a Swedish port.

The VOR CEO, Glenn Bourke, and the race's commercial team made two visits to Galway last year to inspect the city as a potential stopover.

"We have completed due diligence and come to the conclusion that Galway would be an ideal venue," Bourke said.

It's obvious why Bourke is keen to feature Ireland. The west coast is a natural landing point on a transatlantic crossing and fits well with his plans to invigorate the route after the highly successful 2005/6 race.

"As part of the successful model we have established for the race, where a port stopover is twinned with a boat from that region, sanctioning Galway as a port stopover is contingent on an Irish entry in the race," he added.

Although many of Ireland's top ocean sailors, including 2005/6 winner Justin Slattery, have raced in different outings of the race, the only previous Irish entry, NCB Ireland, was launched 20 years ago by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey and skippered by Cork's Joe English in the 1989 race.

Then known as the Whitbread Round the World race, it will be remembered for the runaway victory of New Zealand's Peter Blake. The Irish sloop fared badly, but at home the world-wide publicity it generated gave a glimpse of what could be achieved in one of the world's best-known sporting adventures.

But until now entry in to the race has always been beyond an Irish team. Next year, for the first time, the VOR will introduce significant changes to the race format, and will visit new ports along a new route that includes stopovers in the Middle East, India and Asia.

The 2005/6 race produced state-of-the-art Volvo Open 70 yachts which, in spite of the tragic death of one sailor, keel failures and wipe-outs, won fans around the world.

RACE TRACK

2008

Alicante Leg 1: October 11th, 6,500nm

South Africa Leg 2: November 16th, 5,000nm

Middle East Leg 3: December 20th, 1,600nm

2009

India Leg 4: January 3rd, 2,000nm

South East Asia Leg 5: January 24th, 2,200nm

China (Port 1) Leg 6: February 8th, 300nm

China (Port 2) Leg 7:February 22nd, 12,000nm

Brazil Leg 8: April 18th, 4,800nm

North East US Leg 9: May 16th, 2,500nm

Western Europe Leg 10: June 6th, 1,500nm

Sweden Leg 11: June 19th, 250nm

Finish Port Leg 12: June 20th

Spectator appeal

The race's reputation for offshore adventure is being matched these days by its reputation for drawing a crowd. If Galway is successful in a bid to become a stopover port, then it can look forward to anything from 250,000 to 500,000 visitors for the two weeks the boats are in dock.

The reasons the crowds are coming is not just to see them disappear over the horizon, but also to see the short series of harbour racing that proved so popular in 2005/6.

In its analysis of the last race, Deloitte reported that the start was worth 61 million to the local economy of Galicia in Spain. And the stopover leg in Annapolis, Maryland, with over 500,000 visitors, was worth $75 million locally.