Half Ton Cup 1982

The 1982 Half Ton Cup was sailed in Mikrolimano, Greece, and was won by local yacht, Georges Andreatis' Atalanti II, a Joubert-Nivelt design skippered by champion US yachtsmen Rod Davis and Chris O'Nial.  This result gave the Michel Joubert and Bernard Nivelt design team their second success in a Ton Cup, and was a prelude to the even greater success they enjoyed with their minimum rater, Diva, at the 1983 Admiral's Cup. The Daniel Andrieu design Cifraline 2 took second place.

Atalanti II - 1982 Half Ton Cup winner

French yacht Cifraline 2 had a successful build-up to the regatta at La Rochelle and was a favourite for Cup honours when she came to Mikrolimano. She was constructed in fibreglass and Klegecell sandwich at the Technicoque. Cifraline 2 was the faster downwind. With a clean hull shape and small keel she was fast downwind. The crew including Daniel Andrieu, Philippe Follenfant, Christophe Cudennec, Jena Baptiste le Vaillant and Michel Geoffrin started badly each race, and as a result put themselves under pressure to challenge the leader yachts. In the last offshore race, she was three hours behind in the first quarter but came through the fleet to win.

Cifraline 2

Philippe Briand was the designer and helmsman of Free Lance, also from France, and she was another favourite for the Cup.  Free Lance was very quick at all points of sailing and all winds, other than  downwind in light airs, this due to Free Lance being a long boat, very light (About 2300 kg when sailing), a very clean shape, as with Cifraline 2, but a correspondingly lower sail area.  However, while Free Lance started strongly, she was disqualified from the fourth race for a startline luffing incident with Greek yacht Jonathan. This was viewed by many competitors as unduly harsh, and was met with some anger by the Free Lance crew. In protest at the perceived unfairness of the decision, the Free Lance crew elected not to start the final long offshore race, resulting in a disappointing 20th place in the final standings.

Free Lance - had a disappointing end to her regatta, but bounced back in the 1983 event

The Germans had two boats in the series, including Play and Loss, designed by Nissen. She was skipped by Berend Beilken, a well-known sailmaker and winner of the 1978 One Ton Cup (with Tilsalg). Although very close to Cifraline 2 regarding measurements, Play and Loss had a very different hull with a reverse waterline below the stern. She was oriented to light airs.

Play and Loss (above and below)

The Italian team included the Fontana-Maletto-Navone designed Pioneer (renamed Pionière to address an issue regarding sponsorship), which had won the Italian selection trials. She was nicely built in cold-moulded wood at the Morri and Para Shipyard, and was very quick in light air, finishing first and second in the first two triangle races. Pioniere was quite different to the French designs, being heavy (2,700 kg), long and wide, with a large sail plan. She finished sixth overall. 

Pioniere (above and below)

Lady F, skippered by Eric Duchemin and Jerome Langlois, was an interesting design, but appeared to be too light for the design of the hull, which affected the way she sailed through the waves and chop off Mikrolimano.  Poor tactics in the first race where she finished 31st affected crew morale, and while they bounced back in the last race to take third, this was too late for a podium finish and they finished seventh overall.

Lady F (above and below) - finished seventh overall

Atalanti II

Play and Loss rounds a gybe mark

Attenti a quei due (placing unknown)

Don Quixote IV - finished tenth overall

Atalanti II

Hazzard (ninth overall)

Pioniere

Atalanti II

The results for the 1982 Half Ton Cup (first ten yachts)

Rating measurements for some of the top boats at the 1982 Half Ton Cup, including the 1983 winner, Free Lance

Atalanti II went on to win the Half Ton Cup again in 1993, after being fitted with a new keel and taller rig and benefitting from an age allowance.

Many thanks to 'Chorus' for his assistance in translating one of the French articles from the Half Ton History site regarding the 1982 regatta.

One Ton Cup 1984

Sirius II, third overall

The One Ton Cup series experienced something of a renaissance in 1984, following the decision of the Offshore Racing Council in 1983 to increase the One Ton rating from 27.5ft IOR to 30.5ft. It also benefited from a central European venue, with 24 entries attending the regatta run by the Societe de la Trinite sur Mer on the South Brittany coast.

French yacht Passion 2, designed and skippered by Philippe Briand, was the outstanding boat of the series, and marked a general dominance of the event by the French, not just French-crewed yachts but in terms of designers, builders and riggers, and followed on from the success of Diva, the Joubert/Nivelt 40 footer that was top boat in the Admiral's Cup a year earlier.

Passion 2 had won the French selection series and dominated the One Ton Cup, although she had only a modest start in the first race in light, fluky conditions over an Olympic course in which she finished fifth. She won the next race in perfect 12 knot breezes, but only after some very close racing, mainly against the German yacht Sudpack, a new Judel/Vrolijk design.

As elegant as she was fast, the 1984 winner of the One Ton Cup, Passion 2

The third race was the short offshore, which was started in a near calm and Passion 2 was able to overhaul Super Stroumpf, a First 40 Evolution, soon after the first mark. Briand held the lead from there on to the finish, while mid-fleet placings changed constantly throughout the day and night. The racing was so close that 22 of the 24 yachts finished the 26 hour race within 30 minutes.

Close downwind action during the 1984 One Ton Cup, with Coyote leading Cifraline III

Passion 2 to weather of competitors in the 1984 One Ton Cup (Coyote to leeward and Regardless ahead to the right)

This win put Passion 2 at the front of the overall results. She lead from Sudpack, but the next race was the windiest, with up to 21 knots and Sudpack ran into difficulty when rig tension began to crush the composite construction beam supporting the mast. Sudpack was the most extreme of the new boats, with a measure beam (B) of 3.8m (right), and was finished only four days before the start of the series and competed without a full sail wardrobe.

The 1984 One Ton fleet head downwind (Sudpack leading from Passion 2, Sirius II and Jade)

Sudpack, the widest of the One Tonners in 1984 - construction problems in the fourth race forced her out of the final race and she finished 12th overall

The distinctive topside flare and curved sheerline that borrowed much from Briand's earlier winning Half Tonner Free Lance

The increased breeze suited the new Farr design Sirius II, owned and crewed by the Spanish Navy and assisted by Geoff Stagg, and she went on to lead the race from start to finish, to make amends for only average placings of 7/4/9 in the previous races. The win was all the more impressive for the margin of one minute, over another First 40, Coyote. Passion 2 finished fifth.

Passion 2 chases Sudpack downwind during the 1984 One Ton Cup

Sirius II (above and below) - enjoyed the breezier conditions of the fourth race

Passion 2 - above and below

The surprise boat by the end of the fourth race was the vintage Holland design, the masthead rigged Regardless which had been a top contender in the 1979 Admiral's Cup.  Regardless was lying a remarkable second overall and had put together a solid series with placing of 3/7/5/4.  The boat had benefited from a new mast, rigging, deck gear, carbon rudder and new sails to bring her up to 1984-standards. Experienced observers were heard to mutter, "if Regardless wins, she will set IOR design back five years!". 

The last race, the double points long offshore (255 miles), began with the overall result still wide open and the promise of more light weather. Passion 2 came again to the fore, rounding each mark consistently ahead, but with Coyote in close company. After 40 hours of racing, Passion 2 took the gun, and a clear 24 point lead to win the One Ton Cup. French yachts filled four of the top five places, with only Sirius II getting in on the act in third. Cifraline 3, a Daniel Andrieu design, finished second. Regardless finished a lowly 17th in this race, and had to settle for seventh overall.

Another view of Sudpack, from astern and showing her wide beam

One of the four First 40 Evolutions in the 1984 One Ton Cup, Fair Lady, and seen below to leeward of Sudpack

It was also notable that, with the series being the first under the new 30.5ft IOR rating limit, that the top Admiral's Cup and SORC yacht of 1984, Diva, finished tenth, and the second Admiral's Cup boat, Sabina, finished 18th.  In addition, series production yachts did reasonably well against the custom boats, with Fair Lady, Coyote and Super Stroumpf, all First 40 Evolutions, finishing fourth, fifth and ninth, and Alliance, a new X-Boats One Tonner from Denmark, finishing eighth. Diva, in German hands for the series, finished tenth.

The Danish X-Yacht Alliance (above and below) - finished 8th overall (placings 10/8/14/13/4)

 

Cifraline 3 rounding a windward mark

Stern view of Passion 2

Entries from England had disappointing results. Jade, the Humphreys masthead One Tonner, won the opening race to raise English hopes, but 11th was her next best result. The new Jade would make amends, however, in the 1985 series.

Jade rounds a windward mark ahead of Coyote

Free Lance (Briand Half Tonner)

Free Lance was another favourite Half Tonner of mine, this time from the board of French designer Philippe Briand, sporting perhaps some of the sweetest lines of any yacht from the IOR era.

Free Lance was generally considered to be a small Half Tonner, but this was probably an impression given by her low freeboard and modest sail plan, the latter being necessary to offset her fair lines, which resulted in a high rated length, and her moderate displacement. Briand commented that "There are two ways to design a boat. One is to bump the measurement points to gain as much sail area as possible and the other, which I used for Free Lance, is to define how big a sail area is needed and then draw a clean and fast boat".  

The distinctively elegant sheerline and low freeboard of the 1983 Half Ton Cup winner Free Lance (above) and easy underwater lines (below)

Free Lance made her first appearance in the 1982 Half Ton Cup, skippered by Briand himself. However, while she entered the regatta as one of the favourites, and started strongly, she was disqualified from the fourth race for a startline luffing incident with Greek yacht Jonathan. This was viewed by many competitors as unduly harsh, and with some anger by the Free Lance crew. In protest at the perceived unfairness of the decision, the Free Lance crew elected not to start the final long offshore race, resulting in a disappointing 20th place in the final standings.

Free Lance seen here during the 1982 Half Ton Cup

For the 1983 regatta, held in Hanko in Norway, Free Lance was the most dominant of the five French yachts that filled the top six places. The regatta benefited from good winds throughout.  Free Lance lead from the beginning, winning the first inshore race with a display of tremendous downwind speed.

Free Lance shows her downwind prowess against the 40 boat fleet during the 1983 Half Ton Cup

Fram VIII from Norway, skippered by Prince Harald from Norway, was the only non-French yacht to break into the top group, and with her upwind speed finished the race in second, and then went on to win the second race. Free Lance finished third. In the longer legs of the middle distance offshore race the results were all French, with Free Lance being edged out by Daniel Andrieu's Cifraline 2. Fram VIII finished in seventh.

Fram VIII - a strong upwind performer and designed by Norwegian Eivind Amble

Free Lance makes her way upwind during the 1983 Half Ton Cup

Free Lance sails upwind during the 1983 Half Ton Cup (photo Facebook)

The last inshore race was a hard fight between Free Lance and Fram VIII, with an exciting tacking duel on the last leg, which Fram VIII, with her slightly superior upwind speed, was able to take out. The final long offshore race was another French-dominated affair, and although Cifraline 2 won, Free Lance's second place was more than sufficient to win the Cup. Cifraline 2 finished second, with Scillonia third and Fram VIII fourth.  The defending champion, Atalanti II, finished outside the top ten.

Free Lance approaches a finish during the 1983 Half Ton Cup

Free Lance is still sailing today and appeared in the results of the 2005 edition of the Half Ton Classics Cup, finishing 20th.

Free Lance in more recent times

These photos are from the excellent collection of (mostly French) magazine articles held on the Half Ton History site. Many thanks to 'Chorus' for his assistance in translating one of those articles regarding the 1982 regatta.

Article updated August 2023