Global sailing's focus of attention this week is on Bermuda, where the 70th Annual Bermuda Gold Cup and 2020 Open Match Racing World Championship is underway with GBR's Ian Williams the defending title-holder against fifteen other top drivers, Williams having won the 2019 final from Sweden's Johnie Berntsson.
Those who followed the 2019 Gold Cup may not recall it as having quite the same razzmatazz as the current event. But that's because, thanks to the international pandemic shutdown, Bermuda's position of natural isolation as a sunny little mid-ocean archipelago has enabled it to achieve an acceptable level of quarantine. Thus as the other national events in the World Match Racing Series were forced to cancel, the canny Bermudans worked carefully to having everything in place to make their end-of-October event the only show in town.
Thus they've taken aboard generous sponsorship from the Bermudan Tourism authorities, which would otherwise be having a very thin year, and for good measure they've beefed out the title to make it the 2020 Open Match Racing World Championship while they're at it, for who's to argue?
The National YC's flagship in San Diego. Johnny Smullen's classically-restored International One Design Altair slipping effortlessly along in Californian waters
Yet although for such an event you might expected very special boats – maybe even the pace-setting Mark Mills-designed ILC Melges 37 – they're sticking with the tried and trusted GRP versions of the 33ft 1936-designed International One Design, which was originally commissioned by American sailing legend Cornelius Shields from Norwegian designer and builder Bjarne Aas of Fredrikstad south of Oslo.
Johnny Smullen
Between them, they created a classic which caught on in many places including Bermuda, and it was very much the premier One Design keelboat fleet there when the Gold Cup for match-racing was inaugurated in 1950. Over the years, they may have introduced a GRP version, but basically, the top match-racing stars are still sailing a boat which manoeuvres slowly but certainly, and is well-behaved in every way while providing a miniature version of America's Cup racing when it was sailed in 12 Metres, which many would reckon were the golden years of that particular stellar-fest.
As we write, the Gold Cup 2020 is going full blast on Hamilton Harbour, Bermuda, with the numbers gradually being whittled down towards the weekend's final. But meanwhile, it's timely to recall a real if extended link to the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, ancestral club of Johnny Smullen, master shipwright and the man-to-go-to around boats in San Diego in California.
When America's Cup legend Dennis Conner was at the most active stage of his classic boat passion, Johnny Smullen was his personal shipwright and boat-restorer. But Johnny meanwhile had his own enthusiasms, and one of them was for the classic wooden-built International One Design. He secured one of them, Altair, and restored her to better-than-new condition, such that she is now one of the ornaments of San Diego Harbour, sailed and raced with a reverence and respect which is a whole world away from the rough and tumble of the Gold Cup in Bermuda.
A boat which looks good from any angle – a very contented Johnny Smullen at the helm of his IOD Altair
Cork Harbour linkage
And if you would seek a Cork Harbour link to the current Bermuda contest, cast your mind back to the International 8 Metre If, brought originally to Cork Harbour by Aylmer Hall, and then owned for many years - after Hall had bought the 12 Metre Flica – by Tom Crosbie. If was not only a classic Bjarn Aas design and build in the IOD style, but her role as Altair's big sister was further reinforced by her topsides being painted the same discerning shade of blue.
Let's hear it for Cork Harbour. Tom Crosbie's International 8 Metre If, making smooth progress off the Cobh waterfront in the early 1960s, is very much Altair's big sister. Photo: Pascal Roce
