SAILING:IT'S AUGUST and peak sailing season, so as usual one of France's most popular sporting events is in Irish waters after arriving in Dun Laoghaire for the second time. Few fans of the sport need an introduction to La Solitaire du Figaro as it's been coming to this country almost every year since 1974.
The contest has massive appeal at home: a lone sailor, battling the elements, competing in a fleet of 50 matched one-design boats and surviving 450-mile stages in a 2,000-mile event.
Past-winners are household names in France and further afield, Jean Le Cam, Michel Desjoyeaux, Alain Gautier, Philippe Poupon, Roland Jourdain would all be familiar to offshore racing enthusiasts.
The Figaro is accepted as the breeding ground for successful ocean sailors. Nor is the event exclusively Gallic and Kerryman Damian Foxall cut his teeth on the Figaro circuit, even winning a leg as well as the coveted “Best Rookie” title and was the first non-French sailor to do so.
More recently, Paul O’Riain competed in 2007 while Capt Mick Liddy attempted a campaign for this year but lack of sponsorship curtailed those plans.
For a full week, Ireland is headline news in French media and the economic value of this appears not to have been recognised in this country, at least not at national level.
A precise reason is not possible but it seems fair to speculate that official Ireland’s antipathy towards the marine sector is to blame.
For a start, single-handed sailing is effectively illegal in this country and, uniquely in world terms, the strictest interpretations of international maritime rules have been used to make Ireland a back-water for solo or short-handed sailing.
Liddy established a new record time for sailing solo around Ireland in 2005 but this was bettered just months later by Belgian Michel Kleinjans.
A complaint was subsequently made by a harbour official that staying awake for the duration of the 705-mile course meant the sole crew-member could not comply with the obligation to that “a proper lookout is maintained by sight and hearing at all times”.
Following the representations, the World Speed Sailing Record Council adopted a unique rule stating no records for solo sailing on the round Ireland course would be recognised and Kleinjans’s time on Roaring 40 of four days, one hour, 53 minutes and 29 seconds was the last time ratified.
Since then, in true officalese, races such as the Figaro are apparently permitted on the assumption that the sole crew member takes rest periods outside Irish waters (where the same international regulation applies), thereby enabling full compliance with Irish law inside territorial limits.
Single-handed sailors typically employ a range of measures to stay free of incident. These include napping for periods as short as 15 minutes, using electronic aids such as radar-guards, though more recently, AIS (Automatic identification system) is in widespread use and avoiding taking rests close to fishing fleets, shipping lanes or close to coasts.
In the case of the Figaro that begins its third leg from Dun Laoghaire on Sunday at midday, the French naval vessel Commoran will continue its regular role as guardship throughout the event, patrolling the fleet from first to last and offering assistance if and when required.
The ‘can-do’ attitude of both French sailors and government is a long way from Ireland and the contrast is an explanation in itself.
