SailJuice Blog

Everyone’s been talking about the Victory Challenge chase boat drop yesterday, or as Tom Ehman suggests in his BMW Oracle blog, the ‘Hugo Drop’ (‘no strings attached and has to be picked up afterwards’)…

The Hugo was a beautiful move (click here to see Pierre Orphanidis’s photo sequence), albeit done in panic by the Swedish foredeck crew who just plain ran out of time as the leeward mark approached at 12 knots. The mastman took a knife to the halyard and the whole thing fluttered gently to the surface, a spontaneous advert for the Corum watch brand emblazoned on the spinnaker.

Santiago Lange, the Argentinean Tornado Olympic medallist who does traveller for Victory Challenge, admitted: “Our arrival at the leeward gate didn’t go well. One minute from the layline there were two gybes to go. We… Read the rest