Old School Racing...Around Ireland Race
 

Congrats to the Cinzano Bianco crew for taking their (old) 38 foot CUV metal hull and racing around Ireland for a first place overall.

One of the legs was so rough only two boats finished that day.

Hope to have the same spirit of competition for the September 2010......Don Aronow Memorial Around Long Island Race.

wow, how many started?

Total boat count was just six.

It was the first year of the race and many held back due to this being a big year for Cowes....the 50th anniversary.

Also not many wanted to really race on the open ocean like that. On some legs they only averaged 17 MPH.

Another issue was the cost of attending the race - there were 3 boats entered from the US, but the cost of shipping was far to high as well as problems getting at least one of the boats ready in time. Even the cost of shipping from England over to Ireland was high - the organisers came up with a deal, but it was too late for some and an excuse for others.

Yes......we were one of the boats. In retrospect, it would have been a good race for the boat we planned to bring.

We had Bob the Builders Nor Tech. It is a 50 foot deep Vee with triple Yan Mar diesel engines with Arneson drives.

Bob the Builder, Bobby Saccenti on throttles and me. Real open ocean racing and good company all the way.....maybe next time in 2014.

How many miles is this race?

Now thats a team Id love to crew for :drink: Really cool Guys. Hope you get to make it happen next time :cool:

It was over 800 miles and ran over five days with a rest day in there too. Each town that they stopped in tried to outdo the town from the night before. I heard that all the competitors were treated like royalty and had a great time.

The city of Galway, which was one of the stops on the Volvo Around the World sailing race, knew the value of these kind of one off races and stepped in to help with the sponsorhsip.

Unfortunately for our team, it came a little too late and we missed the shipping date. Best pricing we could get for the shipping back and forth out of New York was between $25 and $28,000. Not counting airfare, hotels, support vans, meals and maybe just one visit to the pubs..LOL.

At that time it was too much for the organizers to come up with, so we sat on the beach waiting for the next opportunity.

We also hoped to leave the boat over there and race in the 50th running of Cowes.

Of course as we all know, once the boat was in European waters, Bob the Builder might have taken a run over the Med to the Black Sea or through the Suez Canal. One of these days, things will work out and I might be able to join him on one of his adventures.

Thanks RG. Bobby and I were wondering how these old bodies would hold up to that old school water like we used to run in.

We really liked the idea of a 50 foot boat under us as compared to what we ran in back in the dark ages.......speeds were slower, but the waves were bigger and we walked to school in the snow uphill both ways.

The oder we get, the faster we were!!! LOL

Why wait - there are Round Britain races in 2011 and 2012 - the 2011 event is running up much of the West coast in one go and the 2012 race will go around the North of Scotland instead of through the Caledonian Canal for the first time in the running of the race - it is also combined with Air and Land races and will be a huge "Event". www.rb12.com

I am helping out with the 2012 event by writing some stories for them.