YACHTSMAN OF THE YEAR
50 CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2018VOTE ONLINE awards.classicboat.co.uk
SIMON ALLAN
Cornish yacht skipper Simon Allan was on a belated honeymoon in Vancouver
with wife Katie and baby Florence when they spotted a lovely boat in a sorry
condition, the 1911 Harris Brothers yawl Anne Marie. Simon’s subsequent rough
fi xing up of the boat was conducted by regular trips to Vancouver from Cornwall.
With a small crew, he then set about sailing her 9,000 miles home. She suff ered
broken gear and leaked all the way back to Falmouth, Simon nursing her through
Canada’s November seas, the Panama Canal, Antigua Classics and high winds in
the Atlantic. Simon has now started a full restoration of Anne Marie in Falmouth.MAX CAMPBELL
Max Campbell’s story bears an uncanny similarity to that of our
2016 Yachtsman of the Year, Leo Goolden. Max, like Leo, is a
20-something who restored an old boat on a limited budget and
sailed it across the Atlantic. Two weeks before his 21st birthday in
the summer of 2016, Max set off “south” with university buddy Harry,
on Flying Cloud, a 22ft (6.7m) wooden Clyst Class sloop built in
1965, which Max had restored himself in a corner of stepdad Dave
Cockwell’s boatyard. In Portugal, Harry was “taken away” by a girl
in a van, leaving our hero to sail solo to Bermuda. Youth might be
wasted on the young, but not on Max. You can almost smell the
freedom.CONRAD HUMPHREYS
Former Vendée Globe sailor
Humphreys completed a remarkable
feat of navigation, as he piloted a 23ft
(7m) open boat 3,600 miles through
the Pacifi c over 76 gruelling days,
following in the footsteps of Captain
Bligh’s famous post-mutiny voyage.
The Channel 4 documentary focused
on the relations between team leader
Anthony Middleton and his assorted
crew of volunteers, but it was
Humphreys’ seamanship and accuracy
with the sextant, in testing conditions,
that deserved the praise.GIOVANNI BELGRANO
June: win the IRC Nationals against a mostly modern fl eet. July: win Panerai British Classic Week.
August: top if off by winning Lendy Cowes Week, again against a fl eet of moderns. As an ambition for
a seson’s racing on a 1939 wooden classic yacht, it’s absurd. But it’s how Giovanni Belgrano and crew
spent the summer in 2017, aboard the Laurent Giles-designed bermudan sloop Whooper, 39ft (11.9m).
It wasn’t the fi rst taste of racing success for Giovanni, who bought the boat 17 years ago – Gold Roman
Bowls in the 2004 and 2015 Round the Island Races attest to that. But this year’s extraordinary hattrick
is unparralleled in classic yacht racing.C/O SIMON ALLANGUIDO CANTINI /PANERAITIM WRIGHTGUIDO CANTINI /PANERAICHANNEL 4Awards
2018
THE
NOMINATIONSC/O MAX CAMPBELL