Be careful what you wish for - it might just come to happen. This was the feeling that emerged in much of the rest of Ireland’s sailing community a year or so back, when “America’s Cup Venue Mania” was taking over in Cork. Anyone Irish who questioned the wisdom, true cost and longterm benefit of hoping to accommodate a supra-national yet somehow ephemeral event, a happening renowned for the complete and utter self-interest of its main players, was accused (mostly by a select group of Cork folk) of being unpatriotic.
For sure, “little New Zealand” made itself the focus of world sailing attention way above its weight during its years of closest direct contact with the actual AC contest on the water. But now that the circus has for the time being moved on to Barcelona, a recent gloomy account of the abandoned feeling on the Auckland waterfront had emerged.
The America’s Cup racing at Auckland in 2021. Hampered by the global pandemic, it’s reckoned that New Zealand government expenditure saw a loss of 156 million NZ dollars (€92 million)
MARITIME XANADU?
The reporter moseyed around some of the former focal scenes of the America’s Cup action, and despite it being the height of the New Zealand summer, suggested that longterm facilities viability, with profitable alternative uses emerging after the Cup has left town, has proven to be largely a pipe dream. “A maritime Xanadu” may be over-stating it, but you get the drift.
And even when it was the hub of the action, those of us who previously had cherished an image of New Zealand sailors as being a self-reliant, no-nonsense and practical people - sailors who got on with the enthusiastic sailing of their own largely self-maintained and unpretentious boats - found it difficult to reconcile that time-honoured and attractive perception with this new bling-laden image of a razmatazz-dominated display of conspicuous expenditure and kow-towing to the super-rich.
A sport of - and for - the people: the former popular image of New Zealand sailing at Auckland
NOT A PEOPLE’S SPORT
For far from manifesting a sport of and for the people, the America’s Cup 2021 was instead an overpowering projection of ludicrously high-tech sailing machines funded by luxury international brands, oil-financed airlines and global chemical conglomerates. And though they were being sailed by admittedly exceptionally gifted people, in many cases the super-star sailors’ sense of patriotism, as shown in some cases by changed national identity, was clearly to their talent first, and their home country a very long way second.
Now admittedly if an exceptional human talent emerges, it’s part of what we are to claim that it and they belong to all humanity, with suggestions of some narrow national “ownership” being seen as a frustration of the fulfillment of that talent. While Brazil may have claimed Pele, the world felt it owned him.
Charlie Barr (1864-1911), global sailing’s first supra-national sailing star. He skippered three successful America’s Cup defences for the New York Yacht Club, and set a Transatlantic Record with the schooner Atlantic
And in international sailing, 120 years ago Americans reckoned Charlie Barr was their greatest talent. Yet originally he was Scottish to his finger-tips, and it was only when he delivered a new Fife racing cutter across the Atlantic that he realised the American can-do approach offered much better scope for his talents than the rigid class-laden structure which dominated the top levels of sailing on his childhood waters of the Clyde.
INDIVIDUAL TALENT IS RUTHLESSLY GLOBAL
So real talent is arguably letting itself down if it is anything other than global in its outlook. And a supra-national pinnacle happening like the America’s Cup must move its venue from time to time if it is to re-charge its batteries. But while the venue and its focus may move on, the location where it has been concentrated for some stagings of the series is left utterly behind, a place of history, stuck with itself. The dogs may bark, the tumbleweed may blow through the streets, but the caravan has moved on.
Inevitably, some places can benefit much more than others from having been part of the America’s Cup experience. But while the Cork advocates may have been convinced that their wonderful harbour and its environs would be one of the notable longterm beneficiaries in America’s Cup history, the rest of us weren’t at all convinced, with our concerns beginning with the most basic factor of all – the weather.
COMPLETE WEATHER DEPENDENCE
Few if any sports are as reliant as sailing is on the weather. Good weather makes for happy participants and spectators, and good weather with a decent sailing breeze makes for great sailing sport. But let’s be honest with ourselves – how often do we get that happy combination in Ireland?
When everything in sailing in Ireland falls into place in ideal sailing weather, its as good as it gets – as seen here at Calves Week with the Schull Harbour start. Photo: Ribert Bateman
The fact is that, had Cork Harbour been selected, it would have been the furthest venue from the Equator of any America’s Cup location ever. And if we remove the initial race round the Isle of Wight in 1851 from the listing, Cork Harbour becomes a total high latitude outlier when set up against other previous locations, with their much higher ambient temperatures and reliable sunshine time.
Those of us who like the Irish climate just as it is have learned to accept that we’re probably in a minority. But even in this currently mild winter, we’d be the first to admit that any squad in serious longterm training and boat development towards America’s Cup participation in a Cork-staged finale would make a serious strategic mistake in deciding to have their main preparation base in Cork Harbour.
For sure, you can get delightful off-season winter sailing in Ireland – and particularly on the south coast - on brief but blissful days between October and May. But the idea of being involved through that period in a remorseless week-after-week sailing schedule, reaching towards its peak in March and April in Ireland’s weather, is too much of a gamble on luck with the meteorology.
LACK OF SUSTAINABILITY
Consequently, far from seeing a sustainable longterm re-development of Cork Harbour in the Rushbrook area at the former Verolme dockyard, the reality was likely to have been temporary-seeming alterations of little subsequent value. As to the idea of the boats being berthed each evening in Cork city many increasingly tedious miles from the race area, if it wasn’t floated on April 1st, then it should have been.
The former Verolme Dockyard in Cork Harbour is a site of enormous potential, but its functioning still has to be sustained through the Irish winter
The early perception that Cork was simply being used as a stalking horse was proven to be right on target when the mighty resources of Barcelona, with its all-powerful system of Mayoral governance and multiple funds, suddenly came thundering centre-stage and blew every other bid out of the water.
UNIQUE NATURE OF IRISH SAILING SCENE
Yet this display of raw political power and focused economic heft in no way diminishes the uniquely attractive nature of the Irish way of sailing. We have our own way of doing things, and they do quietly develop over the years to maintain and accommodate a national sailing scene which, while not being low key, certainly has no generally-held ambitions for noisy space-consuming in-your-face displays. In a broader context, it would be absurd, for instance, to think that Ireland could provide a realistic and popularly-supported Formula 1 venue.
That said, there’ll always be those who set ludicrous targets and tell us their projects “will finally see Ireland take her rightful place up in lights”. But the recent painful experiences in our neighbouring island of having a leader whose oft-touted ambition was to have everything “world-beating” showed us that, when you’re determined to have everything up in lights, then those lights often prove to have been no more than the means of igniting a crash-and-burn outcome.
PARTICIPANTS NOT SPECTATORS
Yet there are still those who point to Ireland’s long and well-documented history of recreational sailing as being a very eloquent reason for aspiring to host events like the America’s Cup. Against that, it can be argued that the essence of Irish sailing is that it’s a participant and not a spectator sport.
Yachting spectators on the Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) pierhead in the 1880s, when the railway companies provided sailing prizes to encourage public interest and day excursion customers
Admittedly in the exciting early days of local railway travel convenience, spectators did travel to audience-friendly locations like the pierheads at Bangor and Dun Laoghaire, and the waterfront at Cobh, to see the big boats race. But that was in a time of conspicuous economic inequality with active sailing participation being for the few, a time moreover before modern stadium sports had started to seriously develop, and long before television.
The way we sail now – somewhere in there is the main street in Schull in West Cork, and most of those in the photo will have spent the day racing in Calves Week. Photo: Facebook
Yet nowadays, if you were asked to define the essence of Irish sailing, it’s as an active participant sport. Of course we have our stars, and of course there’s a national and international structure of events within which they can shine. And when they succeed they receive our attention and praise, and if they gallantly fail to make the grade, they have our sympathy. But as for actually watching others sail, your true Irish sailor will only be doing so if she or he happens to be racing against them.
