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Board » General Discussion » WHAT GLOBAL OCEAN RACE NEXT FOR SOL

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Its never too early to start planning the next global ocean race course and SOL has to choose. The two major races start in the autumn of 2011.

Which course do you think SOL should choose as its 2011/2012 Ocean Race and why?!!

Course: Mallorca via Cape Town, Wellington, Punta del Este, Charleston, Mallorca

Being run as the two-handed Global Ocean Race, starting in September 2011.

PROs:

(i) Marco Nannini is qualifying for this and is happy for SOL to use info from his site during the race (so inside info),
(ii) SOL already has a polar for the Class 40 (which might need tweaking)

CON

The IRL race is already partnered with United Games.



Course: Alicante,Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auckland, Itajaí, Miami, Lisbon, Lorient, Galway

Being run as the fully-crewed Volvo Ocean Race, starting in October.

PROs

Its a fun race with major worldwide recognition

CONs

(i) The race is already partnered with ManyPlayers/Virtual Regatta

(ii) SOL doesn't have a polar for a V70v3

The floor is yours!!


Poll: Which Ocean Race Course Next

You need to be logged in to vote.
I believe there ought to be a third alternative, viz. e.g. "a SOL race with or without sponsor". IMO SOL should not run a race sponsored by or associated with competing virtual operations

*****
Svein - VERY good point - the attractions of the additional info provided by an IRL race has blinded SOL to its own possiblities!! Unfortunately the poll cannot be amended BUT hopefully voting and comments will come up with a sense of what SOLers would prefer :-)

--- Last Edited by RainbowChaser at 2011-05-02 19:48:57 ---
Has SOL ever considered a completely different alternative? Joshua Slocum was the first person to sail alone (sorry, no "boatsitting") around the world and he did it sailing westabout. This would make for an interesting and historically rich circumnav race.

For variety, we could use different boats for the individual legs... perhaps some of the designs they come up with for the IMSYC? Sorry... no sponsorship or boat-tracker for this trip but it would be something neither United Games or VR has come up with. I, for one, enjoy the unique and untried.

Just a thought.

SP
HMS Beagle... wrong way around (but they stopped a bit). Will have to run it through the routing to see how much shorter than 5 years it might take :-)

I've been looking at some of the logs/maps from Cooke's trips up the West coast... talk about epic talking duels!
The Volvo is one of my favorites races to watch. I also happen to know a few of the crew.
Last time it was fun to be on the race here on "SOL", it helped to understand the race.

But I am with Svein and really wouldn't mind if "our" race be a little different. Say, instead of starting in Alicante we start in Valencia or Palma, instead of Cape Town we go to Port Elizabeth, instead of Abud Dabhi we stop at Dubai and so forth...

We start at the same day and time of the real life race but slightly different cities just not to compete with the other virtuals regattas.


Antonio (zero)

--- Last Edited by zero at 2011-05-08 00:09:27 ---

--- Last Edited by zero at 2011-05-08 00:11:25 ---
I like all those ideas. I am a bit more in favor of Antonio's approach.
Maybe we could do all three...Slocum's voyage, Cook's first voyage, and the SOL World Challenge. And how about Drake's Voyage? Cook and Drake could be run in legs to places where they stopped, so not everything is run at once. Likewise Slocum's cruise.
We have to do the Volvo Race as it is the pinnacle. Maybe we just change the name to the "Ovlov Race" or something.

--- Last Edited by NZL_undercover at 2011-05-08 07:30:37 ---
A Race Around Antartica.

Sol is not limited by "ICE".

and

A Race around the North Pole for a change but there are no islands to hit, or round so it might have to be Equator to North pole to opposite Equator. Possibly a gate (2 marks) to sail between.
If it breaks, it's not strong enough!
Further to Zero's comments.

How many SoL'ers have actually raced (IRL) in one of the Round the world races.

I was in the First Whitbread RTWR in 1973/4 on Burton Cutter.
If it breaks, it's not strong enough!
Shamrock Pirate has a good idea I believe. There is much interest still today in the "Spray", as well as The Slocum Society. Which if approached, may be interested in some sort of sponsorship. This would surely bring a new group of sailors to SOL and help boost publicity if done right (if this is of interest to whomever it may be of interest to). There's enough info out there, contradictory as it may be, to make a decent polar to the Sprays performance. I'm not saying this has to be the next Ocean Race or that it should oust a race such as the VOR, but it would be an interesting one, and one that could be of interest to a very large audience of sort.

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