Putting a wealth of experience to the test

HOME AND AWAY BILL O'HARA:EXOTIC DESTINATIONS, glamorous waterside venues and the pick of the world's top regattas – this paints an exciting life-style picture of International race officer Bill O'Hara's work, and the reality appears little different, writes DAVID O'BRIEN

While most of us would like the chance to get away and hob nob with the rich and famous that hang around yachting, even for a time, O’Hara is usually itching to get home to Belfast.

As Principal Race Officer (PRO) of the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR), he is visiting 11 ports in nine months, a white-knuckle 33,000 mile voyage for the sailors but easy for him by aeroplane.

Recognised as a sailing rules expert, the former Olympian has managed to turn his childhood passion for a sport, germinated on Belfast Lough 50 years, ago into a career that commands the top jobs in world sailing.

But for all that he has done – including five Olympic regattas as competitor, manager and umpire – he’d be happy to be home now only for the fact his biggest ambition on water continues to elude him.

Speaking from the deck of the VOR race committee vessel in Rio de Janeiro where final preparations are being made for the start of the sixth leg, O’Hara burns with enthusiasm as he talks about how things have taken a turn for the better for him over the last three years.

“In 2006, I spent 215 days working abroad but only 115 of them were paid, the rest was as a volunteer”

His 10-month VOR contract changed that and he is consumed by the new role in spite of the logistical hurdles in each port. In Singapore, for example, 300 ships had to be moved from a crowded bay in order to set the VOR Course for China.

The 10th running of this ocean marathon was started by O’Hara from Alicante in Spain last October. It will, for the first time, take in India, Singapore, China and Galway before he fires the finishing gun in June in St Petersburg, Russia, for the first time in the history of the race.

He now has jobs lined up a year in advance, such as the 49er dinghy world championships in the Bahamas next January, chairman of the 2009 Youth world Championships in Brazil, and the 2010 TP 52 World Championships in the Mediterranean.

It’s a jet-setting lifestyle alright, but even at this level he knows that financial existence in the flimsy world of semi-professionals means you are only ever one job away from unemployment.

He supplements his VOR income with coaching and rules clinics and has worked with the British, Swedish and Irish Olympic teams.

Having competed at the highest level for his country gives him considerable credibility as a judge with today’s new breed of international sailors.

“Being Irish is also a help,” he says, “as we are accepted around the world and as we regrettably are rarely in winning positions, Ireland is not seen as a major threat,” he says.

Out of these clinics he won a contract from the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) to become its advisor on Rule 42. It is a controversial rule to combat illegal propulsion.

O’Hara proved himself to be the world’s leading adjudicator on the subject at the light air Qingdao Olympic Regatta where the banned practices of “pumping” and “rocking” were under scrutiny.

They have been lucrative contracts in a sailing context but, clearly, it’s not all about the money. If it was, he says, he’d be working full-time in his Coleraine hotel, the Brown Trout Inn, a northern Ireland business he sees one week in four, now run by his sister Jane.

“That place is God’s country. I live close enough to the club to walk down there in my wetsuit and go for sail in my Laser. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else”.

But in fact, because of sailing, he has been living like this for 34 years. The sailing bag in the hallway: emblematic of a life between airports.

Quite often he has suitcases packed for one or two trips ahead if he has a tight turnaround between fixtures. Even so he aims to get home every two weeks to see his three grown-up children who live in Bangor, Co Down.

Nearly three decades ago he was Ireland’s sole competitor in the Finn class in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and at Seoul four years later he quickly came to the conclusion that in order to continue at such a level, he would have to go full time, an option no sailor could afford in Ireland just over over 20 years ago.

Bill wanted to stay in touch and involved though in the sport he loved. He never liked the technical side of sailing but he enjoyed the complex racing rules and in that niche, he has been working out a role for himself ever since.

He became a coach and a team manager for the Irish squad in Atlanta in 1996 and again for Sydney while simultaneously honing his skills as an International Sailing Federation (ISAF) judge.

He became an International umpire in 2004. In the politics of world sailing, he had a friend in court, Dun Laoghaire’s Ken Ryan, an ISAF Vice president, flying on his wingtips as he progressed through the organisation.

He had been an international judge since 2001 but he is now also an international umpire on the world match tour.

His collective roles are edging him closer to his overall dream job of umpiring the America’s Cup. It is an ambition he fears may never be fulfilled if legal stalemate surrounding one of the world’s oldest sporting trophies continues.

It looks inevitable that it will be judges outside the sport of sailing who will decide if O’Hara’s ambition is to reach its ultimate climax.