Mark
Turner of Offshore Challenges chats about the changes, prospects and
future of the race
The two principal fleets the ORMA trimarans and MOCRA and monohulls
have experienced quite considerable growth since the last race and
the fact that we've got over 30, 50-60ft raceboats is pretty impressive,
we've never had that before.
Although there has, in the past, been a larger number of overall entries,
the fleet was a hotchpotch of boats of all shapes and sizes. There
were only six 60ft trimarans last time, this time there are twice
as many. For the trimarans it is the main race of the year and for
the monohulls, who have the Vendee Globe at the end of the year, this
is a very important race for them. It's the prologue to the Vendee
and some of them have to do the Transat to qualify.
Because of its history, this is a race that people just want to do
and have on their CV. That's one of the reasons we've taken the risk
and the investment to take it on rather than setting up new race because
it does have real credibility. This race is already established and
is the one race which has more history than any other. Everybody agrees
and appreciates that. The race will not lose its identity from the
UK to the USA and we're putting a lot of effort in to making it work
this time.
The future? Our objective has to be very much from a commercial point
of view because we [Offshore Challenges] have put in a huge amount
of money to this race. We also want to ensure we come out of 2004
with know one questioning in anyway the 2008 race especially if we
have the agreement of the two principal classes this year that 2008
is confirmed in their calendars so we have three and a half years
to prepare rather than three and a half months as we've done with
this one. That's our objective. Equally by doing this event, albeit
in pretty difficult circumstances, time and money wise, that if we
do have other opportunities to run other events we will be able to
go into them already with the support of key people.
Sponsors? To be honest we had a window in which to look for a title
sponsor but we got to a point where we had to decide to leave it and
focus on and put our energy into the job in hand.
Cost to run an event like this? One and a half million Euros about
a million pounds. It's impossible to organise it for any less particularly
with costs including the marina space in Plymouth.
Mark
Turner of Offshore Challenges chats about the changes, prospects and
future of the race
