Vasco da Gama race gets underway on Freedom Day
A small but feisty fleet of seven yachts will be lining up for this year’s 400NM blue ocean dash down to Port Elizabeth.
DUBBED the ocean Comrades race, the 46th Vasco da Gama hosted by the Point Yacht Club, is due to get underway this coming Thursday on Freedom Day. A small but feisty fleet of seven yachts will be lining up for this year’s 400NM blue ocean dash down to Port Elizabeth. Four boats withdrew in the week leading up to the race, including defending champion Al Mount Gay Rum skippered by the hardy Rob van Rooyen.
Three Durban boats are all geared up and ready to tackle this gruelling experience. Robin Hulley, a relatively newcomer to ocean racing, was the seventh entry received. Hulley will be racing on his Bavaria 36, Mafuta. He has been a regular competitor in all offshore racing. One of only a handful of skippers to be participating in his third back-to-back Vasco, Neville
Bransby has been hard at work training in all conditions and getting in as much water time as possible. Bransby will be proudly skippering his new boat Ocean Spirit, a Shearwater 39, a very comfortable boat for this passage.
Returning this year after having completed the first Vasco da Gama Ocean race to Port Elizabeth in 2015 is Jon Marshall. However, he will not be sailing his own Farr 38 this time, but the PYC Watersport Academy boat ‘PYC Dusky’ – a Corrida 36. Marshall is an old hand at ocean racing as he competes in most events and in 2015 won the Inhaca to Richards Bay Race prior to doing the Vasco da Gama Race to Port Elizabeth in 2015 – so he brings a lot of experience to the boat.
The third competitor from Cape Town is Sean Cummings who has entered the yacht Benguela, a Fast 42. An experienced yachtie, Cummings is a principal of the 2 Oceans Maritime Academy and will be hoping to make good time to PE. The design Fast 42 has had good success in this race previously, and Cummings and his team of seven, with Miles Webb skippering is hoping to lead the fleet down the coast.
The start gun will fire at midday on Thursday 27 April, seeing a small but keen fleet setting sail in this classic and historic ocean race.
