He was gone for years. Since the loss of his radical, 102-foot wavepiercer cat "Team Philips" a few weeks before the start of The Race 2001 - the boat simply broke apart in the storm - he has actually been hiding from the scene, obviously out of shame. He's back at the start with his old friend Paul Larsen.
Pretty much everyone knows Pete Goss. On the one hand, because he fished his competitor Raphaël Dinelli from its sinking Open 60 "Algimouss" during the Vendée Globe Challenge 1996/1997 (it was blowing at over 50 knots, and Goss, who had to turn back, crossed 150 miles in the Southern Ocean with his Open 50 "AquQuorum" on the other hand). On the other hand, because the former soldier of the Royal Marines, who was named a Knight of the Legion of Honor in France, later launched the most innovative yacht building project of his time and made the construction of the high-tech giant catamaran "Team Philips" in Dartmouth a national matter.
The Wavepiercer-Kat with its two unstayed rotating masts showed its enormous potential during training drives - but one of them broke apart. Goss and the five other sailors on board survived the accident in the North Atlantic. But Goss himself was almost never seen in public afterwards.
One of his cronies from back then did, however: The Australian Paul Larsen sailed The Race as planned (on the Kat "Team Legato" by Tony Bullimore), the Transat Jacques Vabre (together with Conrad Humphreys on the victorious Open 50 "Hellomoto") and made a name for himself with his project "Sailrocket". The vehicle of the speed-mad Larsen: A tripod, the northern hemisphere counterpart to "Yellow Pages Endeavor", which is racing in Australia. Fastest speed of "Sailrocket": 48.70 knots.
On the other hand, at the RegattRound Britain and Ireland he has to put up with much lower speeds. The new Saecart 30 trimarans are known for their high speeds - after all, they are series boats. However, the course of the Round Britain and Ireland regatt is also known: for its many difficulties. Its 2,000 miles are broken by just four stops, in Kinsale, Ireland, Barr (Hebrides), Lerwick (Shetland) and Lowestoft (Suffolk). The names alone sound like fog, power cables and oil rigs. The "stopovers" of the regattas are also unique: Because every ship that has passed the finish line of a stage has to wait exactly 48 hours before it can start again - there are no classic restarts and, in the stage ports, coming and going is guaranteed for weeks. The regatta, which takes place every four years and starts in June, has seen many famous sailors, Peter Blake and Ellen MacArthur as well as Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. For a long time, the German Wolfgang Quix shared the record for the most frequent participations with the latter.