Any yacht race that has been running for more than 80 years and consistently draws fleets over 400 boats is surely worthy of the description ‘classic’.
Both scenarios are true for the world’s largest inland regatta, Switzerland’s annual Bol d’Or Mirabaud, a 126-kilometre (60-mile) circuit of Lake Geneva, which this June’s in its 83rd edition attracted a monster entry of 438 boats.
I have been aching to attend the Bol d’Or for longer than I care to remember and so jumped at the invitation by the race’s title sponsor – the Geneva based international banking and financial group Mirabaud – to watch the 2022 race in person.
A classic yacht race deserves a host club of matching stature and accordingly the Bol d’Or is run from the two-time America’s Cup winning yacht club the Société Nautique de Genève. Normally a strictly private organisation with access tightly restricted to members only, once a year the SNG throws open its doors to the sailing world for the Bol d’Or weekend.
Although famously landlocked, Switzerland has been blessed with its fair share or more of large lakes. Most of them are hotspots for freshwater sailing with Lake Geneva (actually shared with bordering country France) the most well known of them – in no small part because of the Bol d’Or.
Conditions can cut up rough on lakes like Geneva but predominantly the prevailing winds are in the light to medium wind range. This predominance of benign conditions has spawned a plethora of one-off creations and one design classes created specifically for lake sailing – most of which will be unfamiliar to sea sailors outside of Switzerland.
I saw designs of all shapes and sizes – most of which I did not recognise – on my stroll around the pontoons at the SNG in the warm early evening sunshine on the eve of the start of the 83rd edition.
Super tall rigs, low freeboard, outriggers and trapezes, and double or triple IMOCA- style large furling headsails seemed to be the order of the day on a large number of the mono and multihulls, but I was also surprised to see how many conventional boats were sporting Bol d’Or bow stickers.
Like most of the world classic yacht races it is the line honours winners who create the headlines and this year’s race had attracted plenty of star studded crews harbouring dreams of an overall line honours victory that would earn them the Bol d’Or trophy. First boat home in the monohull division is awarded the Bol de Vermeil trophy.
The ante has been upped in the multihull division in recent years with the advent of 35-foot foiling classes like the TF35 which can foil in six seven knots of breeze and can top 20 knots of boat speed. This, as you would expect, makes them on paper at least the favourites to take line honours.
However lake sailing is not simply about top speed. In races like the Bol d’Or often it is the boats that can average good speed all around the course across a range of wind strengths from full chat to drifting that can have the advantage.
The perfect example of this kind of boat is the non-foiling predecessor to the TF35 – the Decision 35 cat. Although a D35 is unable to match the top speed of the new generation foilers it can comfortably deal with sub six knot conditions and keep rolling along nicely when the foilers are struggling painfully to make way in displacement mode.
No surprise then that a D35 was the weapon of choice for veteran sailor and seven-time Bol d’Or line honours winner Christian Wahl and his and his super slick ‘W-Team’ crew who were hoping to make it a record setting eight victories at the 2022 event.
I sat down with Wahl the day before the race – his birthday incidentally – to find out from the man whose friends and rivals call ‘The Wizard of the Lake’ exactly what it takes to win this classic inland yacht race.
“There are three things you need to get right,” Wahl told me confidentially and in true wizardly style.
Firstly it turns out that – like every other yacht race ever – if you want to win the Bol d’Or you need to have a fast boat. Wahl told me that for almost all his victories he was on one of the top three or four fastest boats.
“You have to have a very good boat – a very fast boat,” he confirmed.
“It is a race where if you have the fastest boat then you have a chance to win. Racing sailboats is all about going fast. The faster you sail the cleverer you look. With a slow boat it is a big challenge.”
Although now eclipsed by the new generation of TF35 foiling catamarans currently favoured by the likes of Ernesto Bertarelli’s Alinghi Red Bull Racing, and his sister Dona Bertarelli and Yann Guichard’s Spindrift, as well as a host of other top teams, a well-sailed D35 remains a highly potent force in the Bol d’Or.
Wahl has tried foiling and said he finds it ‘interesting but too expensive on a 35-foot boat’.
He sails his D35 with a crew of five longstanding and race hardened crew members – a tactician, three trimmers, and a bowman – and steers the boat for the entire race, other than, he told me, a couple of quick 10 minute breaks to eat some food and to relax. With so much going on aboard the high speed cat, he said the idea of rotating roles amongst the crew is simply not practical.
“On a multihull like the D35 on this lake, you don’t have time,” he said. “Every ten minutes there is something to do, so it is much better for the crew to always be in the same configuration.
Wahl earned his ‘Wizard of the Lake’ moniker for his uncanny ability to sniff out precisely where and when the wind on Lake Geneva would appear and disappear. He has been racing multihulls in the Bol d’Or since 1997 and has racked up 13 podium finishes, including his seven wins.
No surprise then that he cites local knowledge as the second essential element required to win the Bol d’Or.
“I know the lake very, very well,” he confessed. “That is the second point – to know the specificities of Lake Geneva. It is very special and you have to know all about it. That’s why it is very difficult for people from outside to understand it.”
Wahl attributes the lake’s curved shape as the significant reason for the lake being so difficult to read.
“The wind in Geneva is not the same as in Lausanne, or as it is in Montreux, or in Bouveret – it is different everywhere around the course and that makes it quite difficult,” he said.
Wahl says that the Bol d’Or racecourse can be broken down into three distinct stage with tricky to negotiate transition zones between each of them.
First there is Le Petit Lac (the little lake) between the start in Geneva and Yvoire – a town on the southern French shore. The second part is Le Grand Lac (the big lake) and finally the Le Haut Lac (the high/top lake) at the far end of Lake Geneva near Montreux. Even if you get yourself through all of these ‘inland Doldrums’ in good shape then you shouldn’t get too excited as you have to do it all again in reverse on the way back to the finish.
“It all depends on the wind but the first transition is very important and the third one can be really tricky too,” Wahl told me. “You can think you are positioned in the right place but being 100 metres to the left or to the right can make a big difference.
“It’s a lake, so of course there is some luck involved – and that is the third thing you need,” he concluded with a twinkle and a wizardly wink.
On race day the question everyone was asking was could Wahl and his young crew really lead the fleet home for a staggering eighth time in the race’s 83rd edition?
It was a question the tight knit Swiss crew answered in resounding fashion.
They delivered a masterclass of lake sailing technique that throughout their 12 hour, 24 minute race, saw them consistently making the most sense of the prevailing light and fickle breezes to somehow manage to connect the various transient patches of wind that appeared and disappeared seemingly at will.
The W Team catamaran took the lead around four hours into the race and after six hours and eight minutes were first around the turn marks off Bouveret at the far eastern end of the lake.
Although challenged at times by a variety of rivals Wahl somehow managed to see off their advances to always hang on to the lead on the return leg back to Geneva.
The final hours before sundown were perhaps the most stressful as the breeze faded from ahead slowing the leader and allowing a gaggle of Wahl’s rivals to close in almost within striking distance.
The Swiss crew were at their absolute best however and after swapping sides from south to north at just the perfect time were eventually able to extend on the chasing pack to make victory all but certain.
Finally, shortly before 2230 CEST a tired but clearly elated Wahl – who had steered his boat throughout the marathon race – was at the helm of his jet black 35-foot catamaran it ghosted across the finish line surrounded by a flotilla of media boats and cheered home loudly from the shore by an enthusiastic crowd numbering into the several hundreds.
This latest victory is Wahl’s 14th podium result in the 18 Bol d’Ors he has competed in and sees him write his name into the Bol d’Or history books as the only eight-time winner in the race’s 83-year history.
Drenched in champagne from the celebrations on the dock and looking understandably weary, Wahl told me he was delighted to have won his favourite race for the eighth time.
“Things went according to plan,” he told me. “The conditions suited the D35 and the team sailed well throughout.’
Thinking back to Wahl’s expert advice from the previous day that to win the Bol d’Or you must have a fast boat, know the lake like the back of your hand – and have a great big dollop of luck, it seemed to me that a fourth element – having a wise old wizard on the helm – is pretty important too.
Justin Chisholm is a British yacht racing journalist based in Mallorca from where he edits the Yacht Racing Life, Cup Insider and SGP Insider websites, and hosts The Yacht Racing Podcast.
Photo credits:
© Loris von Siebenthal / Bol d’Or Mirabaud’
© Justin Chisholm/Yacht Racing Life’
