Cayard Sailing Goes Global

Cayard Sailing to manage Disney’s entry to the 2005 Volvo Ocean Race

Cayard Sailing Inc. has been appointed to manage Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean entry to the famous Volvo Ocean Race. Paul Cayard, winning skipper of the 1998 Race, will skipper the entry from Hollywood. The ‘Pirates’ boat will be fully branded on the hull and sails with ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film artwork, and will be named ‘The Black Pearl’.

Cayard Sailing will focus it efforts for the next year on this premier Ocean Race. Content will be added to this site on a regular basis, probably daily once racing starts. Some of you may have followed EF Language in the 1998 Whitbread Round the World Race though various websites. We will try to bring you as much insight as we did in 1998 if not more. Apart from www.CayardSailing.com, you can find information about the race and Pirates of the Caribbean at VolvoOceanRace.org and www.PiratesRacing.org.

Projects:

The Volvo Ocean Race is the world’s premier ocean going yacht race, and has taken place every four years since it’s birth in 1973 as the Whitbread Round the World Race. It is one of the world’s leading sporting events – an unrivalled high-seas adventure that transcends sport and gains enormous media coverage around the world over an 8-month period.

The Start of the 2005 race will be November 5th in Sanxenxo, Spain and finish in Goteborg, Sweden on June 20, 2006.

Walt Disney Pictures ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ – a global film property

‘Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl’, was released at cinemas in 2003 and became a worldwide phenomenon grossing a global box office of $653 million. The film gained 5 Academy award nominations including Best Actor. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley will be reuniting with producer Jerry Bruckheimer for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ II, which will be filmed in the early part of 2005 with the cinema release in July 2006.

The next Volvo Ocean Race starts in November 2005 and finishes in June 2006, reaching its peak to coincide with the global release of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean II’.

Buena Vista International (BVI) and the Volvo Ocean Race have concluded a film marketing deal resulting in the creation of a unique and unparalleled partnership between the worlds of entertainment and sport. This partnership has produced a fully competitive ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ entry in the Volvo Ocean Race

This groundbreaking initiative will inspire a global audience and deliver massive media coverage for the race, the film and the boats marketing partners.

The Team

James “Kimo” Worthington will manage the Pirates entry for Cayard Sailing. Worthington brings a large amount of management experience to Pirates through his six America’s Cups and one previous Round the world Race. Worthington is joined shoreside by Curt Oetking, who like Worthing, possesses a strong resume in both the America’s Cup and Round the World competitions. Oetking is the technical director of the team, running the “pit crew”, whose primary responsibility it is to make the Black Pearl race ready. The “shore team” will number about 20 and more information and CV’s will be posted soon.

The Boat

For the 2005 Volvo Ocean Race, a new class of yacht has been designated. The Open 70 is more of a weapon than a boat. It is 70 feet overall and has a 2 meter bowsprit. It weighs just 114 tonnes and carries a maximum of 6700 square feet of sail area. The boats have canting keels gving them a similar righting moment to the current America’s Cup designs but at close to half the wight, these machines will fly.

Telefonica, the Spanish entry who has been sailing since March, has already set a new monohull 24 hour record notching up 530 miles in 24 hours. They hit 35 knots regularly and it is estimated that 40 knots of boat speed will be achieved.

The Crew

The crew onboard the Black Pearl will consist of just 10 for the offshore legs and 11 for the import races. This relatively small number of crew means that there will be a huge physical requirement for the 10 who are onboard. Remember we sailed the 60’s with 12 and they had roughly

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Disney’s cast for ‘Pearl’ getting star in Cayard

The pirate boat of the Volvo Ocean Race now has a skipper with a swashbuckling image to match.

Paul Cayard, one of America’s most decorated sailors, has agreed to lead The Black Pearl, the Walt Disney Co.-backed syndicate, in the 32,700-mile race around the globe that will begin in November.

The announcement is scheduled for today.

With his thick mustache and deep tan, Cayard is the very model of a modern buccaneer.

The 46-year-old San Francisco native has sailed in five America’s Cup campaigns and is a seven-time sailing world champion. He was named Rolex Yachtsman of the Year in 1998 and was elected to the Sailing World Hall of Fame three years ago.

In 1998, Cayard was the first American skipper to win the global race, then known as the Whitbread, on EF Language.

“I think Cayard is a good choice,” said Gary Jobson, author and sailing commentator for NBC and ESPN. “He won in 1997-98 and that’s invaluable. He’s a strong organizer. I hope this means we’re going to have a majority-U.S. crew.”

Cayard is competing this week in the Copa del Rey regatta in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. He is expected to be on hand when The Black Pearl is launched from the Green Marine shipyard outside London later this month.

Although he considers his 1988 world championship in the Star class to be his greatest achievement, there is no doubt that, in Cayard’s mind, the Volvo race is in its own class.

“The race itself gave me the richest experience I have had from sports,” he wrote in the forward to the book, Fighting Finish, about the Volvo race.

“I had won world championships before, but circumnavigating the planet we live on in the vehicle of my professional career – a sailboat – is a lifetime achievement.”

Disney is banking on the boat to help promote the sequel to its movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, due out next summer. The 70-foot racer is expected to have a black-and-red hull with a skull-and-crossbones motif on its main sail.

The syndicate has deep pockets, with Disney expected to spend about $17 million on the campaign. But Cayard faces an uphill battle to get to the starting line in November.

The other six syndicates are much further along in preparing for the race. All of the other boats have been launched and crew selections have been completed or are in their final stages.

The global regatta, which introduced Cayard to the non-sailing public in 1997-98, might give him a platform for revenge.

Last year, with teammate Phil Trinter, he finished a disappointing fifth in the Summer Olympics in the Star class. The gold medalist, Torben Grael, is the helmsman of Brazil 1, one of the other Volvo boats.

The Volvo intrigue may not be over with the Cayard move.

The winner of the last Volvo race, John Kostecki, the skipper of illbruck, has hinted that he and other top sailors are available for duty this time.

Two weeks ago, Kostecki was removed as tactician and sailing director of BMW Oracle Racing, the San Francisco-based challenge to the 2007 America’s Cup. The news release announcing his dismissal said he will remain with Oracle as a consultant.

But that leaves plenty of time for other pursuits, Kostecki said in a recent interview with California’s Marin Independent Journal.

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It’s Official Cayard EF Language Win The Whitbread

It’s official: Paul Cayard and his EF Language crew have won the months-long Whitbread Round the World Race, which began Sept. 21, 1997. Although they had clinched the victory last week after tallying an insurmountable lead, they had to complete the ninth and final leg to receive the trophy.

The victory makes Cayard the first American skipper to win the prestigious Whitbread Race. With finishes of 1 5 1 4 1 2 3 6 2, EF Language won three of the nine legs and had podium finishes (top three) in six legs.

EF Language sailed into Southampton, England, in second place, just 13 minutes behind Merit Cup, crossing the line at 1211 GMT. The 92 points raised the Swedish boat’s overall score to 836 points out of a possible 1,035. This put EF Language 138 points ahead of Merit Cup, which overtook Swedish Match in points to capture second place overall.

“Coming into the finish was unbelievable. We got hit once by a motorboat; not too badly damaged,” Cayard said. “There were so many boats jamming the Solent and Southampton Water, it was really remarkable.”

But it’s this close involvement of the spectators that makes the Whitbread unique, he added. “It’s one of the parts of the Whitbread that makes it tougher on the helmsmen and skippers, but it’s also one of the things that makes the Whitbread a great event. The people are right in there with you.”

Swedish Match, trailing EF Language in second place overall for much of the 32,000-nautical-mile ocean marathon, was fifth today, dropping to third place overall.

Final Standings

Boat / Points

1. EF Language / 836

2. Merit Cup / 698

3. Swedish Match / 689

4. Innovation Kvaerner / 633

5. Silk Cut / 630

6. Chessie Racing / 613

7. Toshiba / 528

8. BrunelSunergy / 415

9. EF Education / 275

Chessie Racing, skippered by AmericaOne tactician John Kostecki, was looking to move into the Top 3 this final leg, but finished a disappointing eighth and fell to sixth place overall.

Norway’s Innovation Kvaerner had one of its best finishes at third, moving into fourth overall, and Britain’s Silk Cut was fourth to leapfrog into fifth place overall.

Not the Way He Envisioned It

It goes without saying that Cayard is pleased with the win, although it didn’t happen in the way he expected.

“When you’re a competitor on [this] level, you always think you can win a race that you’re in. [Although] your vision of how you’re going win it can be different from time to time,” he said. “My vision of how we would win the Whitbread Round the World Race is we would have struggled a lot in the beginning, being in the middle of the pack after four or five legs, and slowly climbed our way out of it and won on the last leg.”

Will he do it again in 2001 when the race will make a new debut as the Volvo Round The World Race? “I don’t know if I’ll do it again,” Cayard said. “I must consider my family in that decision. If I don’t do it, it won’t be for lack of interest in the event.”

Focus on America’s Cup

In the meantime, he’s going to focus “110 percent” of his energy on his AmericaOne America’s Cup campaign. Sailing in the Whitbread was a risky decision on his part, he explains, but with the high visibility of not only competing in but winning the race, the round-the-world event was something of a booster rocket for the AmericaOne Challenge, improving the fund-raising picture.

After a few months’ break from sailing, Cayard says he may compete in a few match races later this year before beginning training on America’s Cup boats in Auckland in January 1999.

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