Jolie Brise - Boat Is Vintage, but Most of the Crew Is Still in School - NYTimes.com LONDON - Jolie Brise needs no introduction in a Fastnet Race, but its skipper, Toby Marris, still makes a good one. "I believe we're the oldest boat in the race with the youngest crew," Marris said last week, in advance of the start of Fastnet on Sunday off the Isle of Wight in the English Channel. Jolie Brise, a gaff-rigged pilot cutter, is celebrating its 100th year with a vintage turn in the ocean race that made it famous in sailing circles. Yet this historical wooden treasure remains largely in the hands of those too young to drive or vote in Britain. Since 1977, the 56-foot yacht with its magnificent sail plan has been the property of Dauntsey's School, an English day and boarding school in the landlocked village of West Lavington. Dauntsey's students maintain and sail Jolie Brise throughout the year and will be doing the hard work again as the yacht returns to the Fastnet, competing against 346 other yachts. "It sounds stupid, but for us, a 600-mile race leg isn't that big of an adventure," Marris said. The boat does 220 days sailing a year, and we very often go much further afield. We sail across to the States on a regular basis. For this relative sprint, Marris said the crew will consist of eight students from Dauntsey's, aged 15 and 16. There will also be two other crew members, from the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust, the charity organization started by MacArthur, a British sailor, in 2003 with the aim of giving young cancer patients a chance to rebuild confidence through sailing. "Both of those sailing with us are in remission and are 22 and 24," said Marris, who, at 48, is accustomed to being the oldest person on board Jolie Brise. The cutter, built in Le Havre, France, in 1913 and later converted to an ocean racer, won the inaugural Fastnet in 1925 and then won it again in 1929 and 1930. No other yacht has won the overall trophy, the Fastnet Challenge Cup, three times. Jolie Brise has had plenty of adventures and misadventures since then, and was even firebombed in Portugal during political turmoil there in the 1970s. But Ran, a 72-foot mini-maxi owned by the Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennstrom, has a chance to give Jolie Brise company. Ran won the Challenge Cup in 2009 and 2011 and is back with Zennstrom, his wife, Catherine, and much the same crew for a run at a third straight victory. "We were quite quick to decide that of course we have to go for a third time, although we know that the odds are really against you, given the fact there's younger boats starting the race," Zennstrom said in a telephone interview from France. Zennstrom, 47, is accustomed to being chased after acquiring a technological edge. He and his business partner, Janus Friis, founded Skype, an online phone and video service, selling it to eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion. He has since had more time to devote to sailing, a childhood passion that he developed on his family's boat in the Stockholm archipelago. He raced dinghies as a teenager in Sweden. He now puts in about 80 days a year on the water, training with his professional crew and competing in offshore races as well as in events like the TP 52 Super Series, in which he can match skills at the helm with pros like Ed Baird, the helmsman for Alinghi when it won the America's Cup in 2007. Zennstrom continues to express no interest in investing his skills and millions in the America's Cup, particularly now that it involves 72-foot catamarans that do not appear to leave room for amateurs, even if they own their teams. "For me, this is all about going sailing," he said. I would think I have failed if I would be the one sitting on the shore or in a chase boat looking at a team, my team, if I'm not sailing or not helming the boat. But Zennstrom is hardly averse to open-ocean risk. Ran has participated in two Sydney-Hobart Races in Australia, winning its class each time. "I would certainly put the Fastnet up there as one of the tougher ones," Zennstrom said. We really like it from a tactical point of view, and that's also where I think we as a team are pretty strong because Adrian Stead, who's our tactician, and Steve Hayles, our navigator, and Tim Powell are all local, so I think that gives us a little bit of an edge, because the team knows the course pretty well. They also know their historical competition. Ran and Jolie Brise are often moored at Hamble Yacht Services, a boatyard on the Hamble River in Hampshire on England's southern coast. "That's where we used to do our weekend sailing, so I've been moored next to and outside Jolie Brise several times," Zennstrom said. And it's funny. You look at that boat and say, "Wow, it's amazing that's a Fastnet winner because it doesn't look so fast." " That is because it is not. "If we're doing 12 knots, we're very happy, very happy," Marris said. But the boat is remarkable. She gathers a crowd wherever she goes.