Brian Thompson is often referred to as one of the fastest offshore sailors on the planet; he’s sailed everything from 21-foot Mini Transat racers to 140-foot Maxi trimarans, so it’s no surprise that he’s a part of the Gunboat 72 Layla crew this week at BVI Spring Regatta, who took third in the first race of the week, the Round Tortola Race for the Nanny Cay Cup.
Layla is a Gunboat 72, the second one built, launched in June last year in France and Thompson was present for the launch because he works with Doyle Sails who made the sails for the boat. He was on board for the initial sea trials then the boat did some cruising, attended the Cannes Boat Show, and then it was sailed across the Atlantic to St Maarten, onto Antigua, more cruising and finished up with a win at the St Maarten Multihull Challenge in February before heading to the BVI.
“It was really great to win in St Maarten; we were racing against the HH66 Lee Overlay Partners which is a good competition for us, plus there were many other good boats in the fleet so we were pleased with that result,” Thompson said.
This week he’s calling tactics and some helming when needed, and while it’s different from his regular gigs as he mainly sails offshore trimarans like the MOD 70, or a Class40, or an IMOCA, he’s been impressed with Layla’s performance.
“She definitely has more luxury than I am used to but she has great speed as well, it’s astonishing -she goes upwind like a train!” Thompson commented. “Going around Tortola we had 22 knots of wind and were going upwind at 13-14 knots of speed which is incredible.”
Thompson added: “Racing around Tortola was great, we had a very good start and first beat until right at the end when there was a big wind shift and a squall. We were slightly on the wrong side of that so we lost a couple of minutes there but we made up for it on our downwind leg, caught up, then had another big squall on the back side of the island when we saw 28 knots of wind in 25 knots of boat speed which was exciting. She really is a great machine and I’m very lucky to sail on her.”
It’s been a while since Thompson sailed the BVI; he raced Spring Regatta once about 40 years ago.
“Everything has changed completely!” Thompson smiled. “I’ve sailed most of the other Caribbean regattas including the RORC Caribbean 600 probably ten times, so it’s really good to come back to the BVI, it’s such a beautiful place to sail.”. For the rest of the week I’m hoping that the wind stays as it is, this is perfect for anyone but really good for this boat and hopefully a nice race to Scrub Island with a little bit of reaching in there, it might be our only reaching leg of the event. I’m hoping we get a full complement of competition in our class. The F31s came in 1st and 2nd in the Round Tortola, beating us by 20 minutes, there was no way we could beat them. They sailed really well, really impressively, and they know the waters very well. They are quite well-tuned for exactly these Caribbean conditions so it’ll be hard to beat them!”
