Sailing «regatta»

It is the inevitable end of anyone who has a passion for sailing: you start by enjoying the environment and then seeking control of the boat and its governance in increasingly aggressive environments. And the end of this path cannot be other than the "regatta", where you can put your nautical knowledge and acquired mastery to the test.

And we are not necessarily talking about a competitive spirit; The regatta, in itself, already allows us to interact with many other crews, or to admire spectacular boats, spectacular maneuvers, and is an essential way of learning and improving our skills on board.

Coastal regattas

They are navigations of hours, following a route marked with buoys or in small routes between nearby ports.

They are characterized by being very tactical modalities, in which the strategy takes on a capital importance; It is not enough to navigate our boat in a seafaring way, but we must still take into account the position of our rivals.

The golden rule of this type of sailor is to sail with a free wind, a wind not used before by another sail; more technically, wind in laminar flow and not turbulent, due to the mere fact that our ship, in such a case, would see its performance highly compromised, both in speed and heading.

The prototype of these regattas is the «dinghy»: boats with very short crews, identical to each other, conceived with the sole idea of ​​competing (or training for competition), nervous and sensitive in their handling, uncomfortable and physical (we will use our own weight to level the boat)…, and tremendously fun!

But it could also be "heavy sail": boats of greater length, and greater power, therefore, but with the same objective of "stealing" the wind from your rivals. They could be identical boats (one-design regattas, in which the first one wins) or, on the other hand, they could be very different from each other (we would enter here the «rating», or compensation formula, complex and that often supposes that the first one to cross the finish line ..., does not win!).

In any case, they are regattas of great interaction between the different boats and their crews, of great attraction both in the "pre-regatta" (the preparation of the ship and its crew, and the learning of the endless tricks that each one puts in game), as during navigation and, equally, after it, when, in relaxed environments, explanations come for this or that maneuver, successful or unfortunate.

Ocean regattas

As Roberto Bermúdez de Castro, «Chuny«, one of the best ocean sailors in our country, used to say to me, «This going around buoys is very good but what is really exciting is sailing in the ocean, from one port to another ! ».

Indeed, it is very exciting to navigate without seeing land in 360º, developing what you have learned with modern instruments and seeing how you finally arrive on the planned Earth, at the planned port. And it is even more exciting to do it competing with others, seeking to arrive first.

Because competition, after all, is part of life. So it was in the era of the great clippers, who sailed transporting tea (and others) from India to Europe, and competing with each other for the simple fact of selling their cargo more easily and at a better price.

In the same sense are based the traditional regattas of traineras (rowing on a fixed bank) of the Cantabrian Sea: rowing boats, fishermen in teams; the first to return to port could sell their fish much better ...

In addition, there is something extraordinary that surrounds this type of navigation, an aura of admiration for those who achieve the feat of linking distant ports with the only help of the wind in the sails and a lot of nautical knowledge learned. And the spearhead of this lifestyle is the Volvo Ocean Race, when these routes involve the circumnavigation of the globe!

The history of this regatta is fascinating. I highly recommend it, both to connoisseurs and to newcomers to this sport, as it is exciting and as a source of general culture, I would dare to say. I do not intend, in these brief notes, to delve into the subject but only to give a few small brushstrokes of its origin and how we have come to today.

• The regatta began as a challenge with very clear and simple rules: sailing regatta, with crew, in free length, departing and arriving in England after leaving the 3 great capes of the globe (Buena Esperanza, Lewin and Hornos) on the port side. .
• What seemed crazy, was a remarkable success from its very first edition, with a good number of ships and crew enrolled. It was, of course, a completely amateur adventure, looking for crew members in newspaper advertisements; in which people who had not sailed a single mile before, accepted the challenge by reading that ad they fit in.
• "Wanted a cook, with good spirits and a gift for people and teamwork." An English nursing assistant responded to this announcement, without ever having boarded a ship. At the end of the trip around the World, in the «ADC Acutrac», the skipper of the boat, Claire Francis, described her as a true prop of the crew and responsible, in a high percentage, for the final success of the project.
• From the previous adventure, the regatta has passed to the absolute current professionalization: very fast, very technical and very long-suffering boats; Very experienced, very technical and long-suffering crew members. From an adventure around the world, we have gone to a regatta "at the top" for 35,000 nautical miles (1 nm = 1.8 km), sailing in latitudes as far south as possible to save miles, even if that means risking a collision with the dangerous «growlers», or interpreting the «meteo» models looking for those areas where the winds were more and more intense.
• Technology has invaded this world of ocean sailing and we can follow the regatta with updates on the positions of the boats every 15 minutes, sharing the same weather reports that the boats receive, with real-time videos and spectacular photos, with telemedicine 24 / 7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).
• The current edition is navigated in «VOR 65` monotypes (1m = 3.33`), and one of them is the« red boat »: MAPFRE.

The regatta ended on June 22 in Gothenburg with «MAPFRE» coming in third.

This ninth and last stage, between Lorient (France) and Gothenburg (Sweden) has meant a total of 1,220 miles sailed in 4 days, 9 hours, 29 minutes and 7 seconds. Now it is the turn of fighting for the Gothenburg coastal regatta, where the final place of “MAPFRE” in the general classification will be decided.

Before going sailing it is important that you have good health insurance. MAPFRE Salud in its insurance includes:

• Nutritional assistant through the TeCuidamos Program.
• Access to specialists in Osteopathy.
• 24 Hour Medical Orientation

Pablo Diaz-Munio

Team Mapfre doctor for the VOR 2014-15