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In between keeping (very) busy running his well-known international yacht transport operation Sevenstar CEO Richard Klabbers just won the double-handed Round Britain and Ireland Race

CEO and founder of Sevenstar Yacht Transport, Richard Klabbers, has always been a sailor and has just won the double-handed Round Britain and Ireland Race. ‘Our dedication to the sea, on a personal as well as a professional level’, he says, ‘is what makes us safe, fast and reliable’.

The double-handed Round Britain and Ireland Race is close to 2,000 nautical miles with a start and finish in Plymouth. It has three stopovers: Galway, Lerwick and Blyth. The race takes you north of Shetland Islands, which means crossing the 60th latitude. That's only three degrees south of Iceland. So, not a race for the faint hearted.

‘No, it's certainly not something you do every year’, says Klabbers. He sailed the race this summer with his friend, Pieter Heerema, in Heerema's Swan 56. When we talk, he has just returned home and had a couple of days to rest.

‘It was an interesting race’, he says. ‘It’s a big undertaking to race a boat like that, with only two people, over such a long distance. And to actually race, because that's what we did. We didn't just tour around, we raced the boat. Extreme weather hit us twice... It was as a beat all the way, we never got to hoist the spinnaker. It was very abnormal circumstances, and the weather forecasts were way off most of the time.

‘Also, this route is mostly coastal sailing, where navigation, currents and tides tend to be important factors. That makes it, the way I see it, much more interesting than, for example, a transatlantic crossing, where you often ride the same weather system more or less all the way. We had about 35kts of wind a couple of times, but the boats behind us had more than that. We were lucky to escape the worst. But 35kts is already a lot, especially when it's on the nose.’

Above: mixed conditions help keep Klabbers and Heerema in good spirits.

Klabbers founded Sevenstar Yacht Transport some 25 years ago, and the company has since skyrocketed to a market-leading position, in a market that has grown exponentially in the same period. ‘There's a relationship, of course, between what you do in your private life, and what you do in your working life’, he says. ‘Already as a young boy, about 10 years old, I knew that I wanted to go to sea. And in the end, that's what I did. I sailed with my parents every weekend around the lake, racing dinghies, quarter tonners and so on... club races, weekend races, whatever was possible. Then I went into commercial shipping. First at sea, as a seaman, and later, after I finished studies, in the office. But even then I was always sailing races whenever I could.’

‘After about 10 years in the shipping industry - this was around 1999 - I got a little bored and I came up with this idea – let's do something with these empty decks! And suddenly my work and my hobby came together, and I began working with transporting yachts.’

‘So, after I did some studies, we bought Sevenstar. At the time it was a small company, run by a local captain and ship owner. And from there on, basically, we discovered the world. Or the world discovered us, I don't know. We did it at the right time, and we grew fast. And over the years, the company became really successful. The timing was perfect.

‘The idea was always to use vessels that were already carrying various types of cargo – paper products, machinery and so on. But the decks tended to be free. So, as the cream on top, we would add yachts on deck, as an additional business. That's how we started, and that's how it still is today, at least for the majority of our business. But yacht transportation has become so big now, that sometimes we can fill an entire ship with yachts, stored both on and under deck. In addition, we bought another company back in 2013, with submersible vessels. It's a separate business today, working mainly with bigger yachts, superyachts.'

‘With our submersible vessels, we can take anything up to 160m’, he says. ‘The majority I would say are between 40 and 55m. The really big ones are kind of vessels themselves, and can easily do the delivery on their own keel. But sometimes they are out of service, and need to be transported. And we can facilitate that.

Above: Richard (left) and Pieter at the start of the 2,000nm race in Plymouth

‘So, Sevenstar is basically everything we can lift with a crane. In the beginning it was a lot of privately owned sailing boats – maybe the owners had sailed to the Caribbean, and didn't want the long sail back across the northern Atlantic. But nowadays, about half of what we do is transporting new boats. Beneteau, Lagoon, Princess, Azimut, Sunseeker, a lot of the major ship yards – we ship most of their boats to overseas markets.

‘A third segment is racing boats – taking care of their logistical needs. This is something I know quite well myself, so I used to do it as a special interest, on the side. Ten years ago, we hired a pro sailor to take care of it. Logistic operations for race teams is a dedicated business area for us. We call it Sevenstar Racing Yacht Logistics. It's not our biggest business – I mean, how many professional race teams are there, spending serious money on logistics? But still, it's a nice niche.

‘It feels good to do something that's so close to everybody's heart. And we really understand the sailors needs, because we are sailors ourselves. We can provide cradles, containers for rigging, sails and so on. We even do trucking, to deliver spare parts and such. Basically, we have a full range of logistic services aimed at professional yacht racing.

‘This is especially useful for the transatlantic races, for example the Imoca circuit, or the Class 40, where large fleets – 30, 40, maybe 50 boats – cross the Atlantic, typically to the Caribbean. And they all need to come back to Europe at the same time. In that situation we can fill a vessel and take all of them in one go. Also, we can help out in situations where boats or rigs are broken. We have a dedicated office in France now, to be close and able to act fast.

Above and below: Klabbers and Heerema sailed 250nm with a temporary repair to the gooseneck made with lashings tied together and a big rubber patch between the boom and the mast. Every four hours it had to be re-fixed

‘Breaking stuff is part of the game, as we all know. In these races you always break stuff, you're always in repair mode. When Pieter and I did the Round Britain and Ireland Race just now, we broke the gooseneck on the boom, which was very unfortunate. We were lucky to be upwind, so we could control the boom and get to it. There was still 250nm to the next stop, but we decided to continue, but it was only possible, because we had the wind on the nose.

‘So we made a temporary repair with lashings, tied it together as well as possible, with a big rubber patch between the boom and the mast. Every three or four hours we had to redo the whole thing. So, it became very, let's say interesting, to make it to the next stop. We had to depower the boat all the time, you don't want to put too much pressure on the mast. Besides, you're in a race, so you don't want to lose too much distance. It was hard because there was a lot of wind and the finishes of the stopovers are always in a port or up-river, with tide and sandbanks at times...

‘We had to tack into that in the dark, rain, more than 30kts... it was crazy, especially with this limp boom hanging there in lashings. But OK. We made it. In the end, it's always good stories, but when you are there you have to be a little inventive, to deal with these things.’

‘What I really like about a long and hard race like this,’ he says, ‘is the state of mind you get into. I takes some time to get there, to get into your own bubble, so to speak. But once you're in there, you can stay there for a long time. After, let's say day three, you get used to the weather, you are into the rhythm, it doesn't make much difference to you if the wind pipes up or lulls down, or if it's day or night, because you're always in the same sort of state... it's just one watch after the other, and you're out there.

‘So it's really about dedication to the sea for me in my personal life as well as in my professional life. And it helps make us as a company focused and successful. In a race like the one we just did, it's the planning, the preparation, that made us safe, fast and reliable. And it's not any different on the business side: Our dedication to the sea, and the planning we have learned through being sailors, is what makes us safe, fast, reliable – and ultimately, successful.’

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