SAILING:A team of Galway businessmen led by Enda O'Coineen have secured €8 million from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism for an entry in to next year's Volvo Ocean yacht race, it has been announced.
The money, which amounts to 50 per cent of the total campaign cost, means Galway will become a stopover port in the race in 2009.
In a letter sent yesterday from his department to O'Coineen of Lets Do It Ltd, Minister John O'Donoghue pledges the funding, subject to the balance of the money being raised privately.
Galway businessmen John Killeen and Eamonn Conneelly are also involved with the project, which is set to transform Galway docks.
Also involved is the Northern Ireland yachtsman Jamie Boag, who is at an advanced stage with the design of the Irish yacht, which must be ready in just over 12 months' time.
The 2008 race starts from Alicante, Spain, in October 2008.
Race organisers have stipulated that for Galway to become a mark on the 33,000-mile course, Ireland must have an entry - the first since NCB Ireland 19 years ago.
Volvo Ocean Race CEO Glenn Bourke and the race's commercial team visited Galway twice last year to inspect the venue.
The ninth leg of the race is due to leave the northeast coast of the US on May 16th, 2009, and after 2,500 nautical miles will end up in Western Europe at a venue still to be decided.
It is expected the transatlantic leg will end in Galway instead of Portsmouth, as was the case in 2005.
The penultimate, 1,500-mile, leg would then start from Galway on June 6th to a Swedish port.
"We have completed due diligence and come to the conclusion that Galway would be an ideal venue," Bourke said in December.
Itis obvious why Bourke is keen to feature Ireland. The west coast is a natural landing point on a transatlantic crossing and fits well with his plans to invigorate the route after the highly successful 2005/2006 race.
"As part of the successful model we have established for the race, where a port stopover is twinned with a boat from that region, sanctioning Galway as a port stopover is contingent on an Irish entry in the race," he added.
Although many of Ireland's top ocean sailors, including the 2005/2006 winner Justin Slattery, have raced in different outings of the race, the only previous Irish entry, NCB Ireland, was launched 20 years ago by the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, and skippered by Cork's Joe English in the 1989 race.
Then known as the Whitbread Round the World race, it will be remembered for the runaway performance of New Zealand's Peter Blake.
The Irish sloop fared badly, but at home the world-wide publicity it generated gave a glimpse of what could be achieved in one of the world's best-known sporting adventures.
But until now entry to the race has always been beyond any Irish team.
Next year, for the first time, the Volvo Ocean Race will introduce significant changes to the race format, and will visit new ports along a new route that includes stopovers in the Middle East, India and Asia.
The Volvo Ocean yacht race's reputation for offshore adventure is being matched these days by its reputation for drawing a crowd.
If Galway is successful in a bid to become a stopover port, then it can look forward to anything from 250,000 to 500,000 visitors for the two weeks the boats are in dock.
The reasons the crowds are coming is not just to see them disappear over the horizon, but also to see the short series of harbour racing that proved so popular in 2005/2006.
In their analysis of the last race, Deloitte reported that the start was worth 61 million to the local economy of Galicia in Spain. And the stopover leg in Annapolis, Maryland, with over 500,000 visitors, was worth $75 million locally.
