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Scuttlebutt Updates
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Archived NewslettersSCUTTLEBUTT 1940 -- October 7, 2005Scuttlebutt is a digest of major yacht racing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus.GARY JOBSON -- BACK AT THE HELM It was with a great deal of pleasure that we welcomed Gary Jobson's visit to Seattle to speak at the Boat's Afloat Show. Of course we wanted to hear what this sailing icon had to say about the sailing world and view the wonderful images he captures in his sailing shows and movies, but even more we wanted to express our joy at his being back in action following his bout with cancer. It's an ongoing battle which he winning with his verve, focus, modern medicine, and the support of thousands of sailing friends world-wide. It's no coincidence that with Gary's absence there's been considerably less sailing on TV. "Sailing's definitely not jumping on TV. We've had four shows on this year. ESPNU is a new college sports only channel which has shown some collegiate racing. "Whatever we do, whether it's film or TV, we want quality, and do it with high end technology. We want to do quality stuff that will not only be good now but will last." Jobson believes that advances in technology will bring sailing into more homes in the next few years. "The hardest thing about TV is actually getting on the air. There is some exciting stuff coming up that will enable anyone to download almost anything to their TV, and that will include sailing." Along with producing movies and TV, Gary has taken on a new sailing mission. "I've had a lot of time think about things and what I've concluded is that what I want to focus on is supporting Olympic Sailing in the United States. I think it's important and should be the major sailing event. "What makes it so important? It's got nationalism, great talent and gives young people something to shoot for when they get out of college and high school. It gives them someplace to go, other than getting out of the sport for family and careers. Mounting an Olympic campaign takes a long time, it's a long term commitment. Sailors may be 28-35 before they reach their peak, and with support they can live life, continue developing their talents and still go for their dream." What about other events like the America's Cup as a pinnacle of the sport? "Just 10 percent of one America's Cup program would fund the U.S. Olympic Sailing program. "Olympic sailing is all about tactics and athleticism. That's what we should concentrate on." -- Excerpt from a story by Richard Hazelton, 48 Degrees North, full story: http://www.48north.com/oct_2005/jobson.htm FASTEST YACHT ON THE PLANET? The SailRocket project is set to hit the water again for Weymouth Speed Week between the 8 to 14 of October in an effort to climb ever closer to its ultimate goal to be the fastest yacht on the planet. The cobwebs were fully blown off SailRocket on the 30 September with three blasts down the inshore speed sailing course. The mist was 100 feet off the water and it was virtually dark but conditions were ideal for a trial sail. Some new things were tried. We have a lot of tweaks to do yet. Best speed of 28.5 knots but she felt Gooood. The new solid wing sail which was always planned for SailRocket is now entering the final stages of design. Machined moulds have been delivered and the build will commence shortly after Weymouth Speed Week. Chris Hornzee-Jones, director of Aerotrop has designed the versatile wing which will be built using a Comtech internal spar with Fibrefusion water jet cut ribs, SP Systems materials and build expertise from Designcraft. As with the SailRocket platform, the wing will be built by the SailRocket team in Southampton. SailRocket will be competing at Weymouth Speed Week this year with the refined Comptech-Doyle soft rig. The solid wing is a very tricky piece of kit to design and build. It has to be extremely well thought out in order to both perform and survive the rigours of a speed sailing program. This 'sail' needs to hold optimum shape in apparent wind strengths of over 50 knots. It will have around a ton of load upon it and yet it must be very light. It must be easy to handle on the land and on the water. It will have flaps to control the centre of effort and it needs to be used on either port or starboard tack. It must be robust to handle bumps and knocks without compromising strength. -- Excerpt from a story by Paul Larsen posted on the Sail-World website, full story: http://www.sail-world.com/ Sailrocket website: http://www.whbs.demon.co.uk/SR3/ TODAY'S THE DAY The 12 teams of the 32nd America's Cup are preparing for the last Louis Vuitton Act of the season, a three day affair that starts today will determine the 2005 Louis Vuitton America's Cup Class Season Championship. The Defender of the America's Cup, Alinghi, currently has a stranglehold on the points table for the season championship, leading Emirates Team New Zealand by 8 points and Luna Rossa and BMW Oracle Racing by 9 points. But there are close contests up and down the points table, and a good finish here could move a team well up the championship table. -- http://www.americascup.com/en/ BEYOND HUGE Something like 1,900 boats expected for this weekend's Barcolana, including the the new Russell Coutts 44, and the maxi Skandia. More than one thousand boats have already berthed in Trieste (Italy) to take part in the 37th edition of the Barcolana, and about nine hundred more are expected to come by Sunday. They will all be together at the start line, one and a half miles long. The Barcolana is the most crowded mass start regatta in the world, an appointment which attracts professional sailors, huge yachts (Australia's Skandia has already been tipped as the winner) and many sailing enthusiasts coming from Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia and Montenegro. Trieste has already enforced the hospitality plan: by Sunday more than 250thousand people will be in town to participate in the race or to follow it from land. The shape of the Barcolana race course is a triangle (two buoys in Italian waters, one in Slovenian waters) about 16 miles long. B&G IS OUT IN FULL FORCE FOR RACING With the five America's Cup Acts of 2005 and the start of the Volvo Ocean Race approaching fast, it has been a busy time for the Custom Projects team at B&G. Although very different events, the teams in both races expect the highest levels of performance and accuracy from their onboard electronics and for every one of the 19 yachts that means fitting kit from B&G. This success continues B&G's long and proud association with these events and confirms their dominance in performance racing systems at the highest level. http://www.bandg.com TRUST AND RESPECT Team New Zealand tactician Terry Hutchinson is a chatty kind of guy. Ask him a question and you get a more than adequate answer. Ask him how his relationship with Dean Barker at the back of the boat is going, and he natters away non-stop. It's is no secret that a strong relationship between the helmsman and his tactician is crucial. New Zealanders Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth have shown how it is done over the past 10 years, and before that it was the Dennis Conner and Tom Whidden show. But with single-nation teams now a thing of the past, developing afterguards has become a matter of merging people from different countries in a matter of months. Before joining Emirates Team New Zealand, Hutchinson knew little about Barker. Apart from one Congressional Cup regatta, Hutchinson can't recall sailing against Barker, let alone with him. "It was a forced relationship I guess and probably the best thing that happened was that we won the acts in Valencia [in 2004]. Whether we liked each other or not, we gained instant respect for each other's ability." The relationship is based on trust. While Barker is concentrating on the boat and its speed, Hutchinson's job is to paint Barker a picture of what is going on around him and advise where he should head. "A lot of times on the boat when we have a massive screw-up tactically, he doesn't say anything. He just looks at me like 'is that the best you can do? I hope we can do better than this because this is pretty average'. "Fortunately at the time it is something I am thinking myself." -- Julie Ash, NZ Herald, full story: http://tinyurl.com/9yesq OPTIMISM The fledgling China Team are looking forward to a brighter future after notching a single win after six days of sailing in the Louis Vuitton series of 2005 off Sicily. The newest challenger for the 32nd America's Cup finished in last place but were happy with their performance. "We did fight hard on every race and it's great to have one win," said executive director of the China Team, Xavier de Lesquen. "We created the team last March and we are the last challenger to start a campaign. The result is that the China Team is now a part of the game and that's a great achievement. The next step is to accelerate. The job list is huge for next season, but hopefully we will have enough time and money to develop and maintain the energy and the skills that this team already has." The China Team, in their first season of America's Cup racing, plan to train in Shenzhen next month and hope to recruit more Chinese sailors from the national Olympic sailing team. The one win for the Chinese came on the second day of the regatta after the team took full advantage of an error on the part of the Italian +39 Challenge. The Italians had a man overboard and were stalled at the first downwind mark. The China Team powered past the Italians on the upwind leg to win the race. -- Laurie Fullertson, full story: http://sport.scmp.com/sportnews/ZZZ6Y2TXEEE.html NEWS BRIEFS * Following on from his solo Vendée Globe campaign, Offshore Challenges Sailing Team skipper, Nick Moloney, has become a member of Paul Cayard's 'Pirates of the Caribbean' campaign, acting as a consultant, coach and back-up navigator to the 'Black Pearl' crew. Currently Nick has no plans to actually sail during the race, but is really enjoying this new role in the team: "It's great to be able to sail on these new boats, and push them 110%, unlike in the Vendée Globe - something that I found hard to accept in the solo discipline * The Sea Cliff Yacht Club and the Trustees of the Deed of Gift of the International Catamaran Challenge Trophy are inviting bids from yacht clubs and/or organizing authorities to host the 2006 regatta. Submission of a bid should be made to Sea Cliff Yacht Club, immediate attention of the Trustees, at icct@seacliffyc.org. Announcement of the winning will be made on November 15, 2005. *North American sailors occupy half of the spots in the Laser Master Worlds in Brazil, but cannot match the performance of two amazing antipodeans. After six races with two discards, Murray Thom (NZL) leads the 53-boat fleets with just six points, but Peter Conde (AUS) is only two points back with eight points. The rest of the top five are Gonzalo Campero (ARG - 30 pts), Allan Clark (CAN - 31 pts) and Vann Wilson, (USA - 32 pts.) -- http://www.2005laserworlds.com.br/results.html * This weekend the Storm Trysail Club is hosting the Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta at Larchmont Yacht Club for 35 college teams. "The purpose of the regatta is to expose college dinghy sailors to big boat racing, since many have had little experience with keels, spinnakers and winches," said Regatta Chair Adam Loory. The borrowed boats will have the owners or their representatives on board acting as safety officers and helping with the sailing. The fleet includes J/44s, J/105s, J/120s, J/109s, and PHRF 72-raters (Express 37s, J/35s and a Tripp 36). Video coverage will be available on demand (www.t2p.tv).-- www.stormtrysail.org *A total of 21 competitors are racing in Italy with nine sailors competing using full servo assist winches to control helm and main and jib sheets to contest the IFDS Single-Person Dinghy World Championship in San Felice Circeo, Italy. After two races, Portugal's Bento Amaral has taken the lead, one point ahead of Colin Johanson from Australia. The USA's Herb Meyer in fourth place is the top North American. -- http://www.accessdinghy.org/2005sp%5Fdinghyworlds/index.htm * Cruising World and Sailing World magazines have published the list of boats each will consider for their separate Boat of the Year Awards. Two independent judging panels will evaluate and test boats for the respective magazines. The Cruising World awards will focus on production boats laid out and equipped for coastal and offshore cruising and voyaging. Judges on the Sailing World panel will concentrate on boats designed and built with racing in mind. Cruising World nominated 26 boats in seven categories, while Sailing World is considering 15 models. -- www.sailingworld.com / www.cruisingworld.com/ NEXT YEAR The organizers of the 32nd America's Cup have released the provisional dates and format for the 2006 season. All racing will be on the waters off Valencia, the host city of the 32nd America's Cup. The 2006 racing programme consists of three Louis Vuitton Acts. Racing is scheduled to begin with Louis Vuitton Act 10, a six day match racing regatta on the 11th of May. This will follow the same round robin format of the events this year. It will be followed immediately with a three day fleet racing event, Act 11, from the 19th to 21st of May. The racing season will conclude with the Valencia Louis Vuitton Act 12, a match racing regatta that includes a round robin, semi final, and final. Racing in Act 12 is scheduled to start on the 22nd of June, concluding on July 2nd. -- http://www.americascup.com/en/ AW, SHUCKS "Can I, on behalf of the crew of Exabyte, thank everyone at Doyle Sails for their support. Converting to Doyle sails was the best decision that we made -- the sails have stood up to a very intense two-year sailing program, and the servicing has been of the highest quality. I have no doubt that without Doyle's help we would not have achieved the results we did." --Jerry Otter, owner, IMX-40 Exabyte 2 (Solent Cup, Cowes Week, X Yachts Gold Cup winner). Want to start winning? Convert to Doyle! Call us today at 1-800-94 DOYLE; http://www.doylesails.com LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON (Letters selected for publication must include the writer's name and may be edited for clarity or space - 250 words max. This is neither a chat room nor a bulletin board - you only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if others disagree. And please save your bashing, and personal attacks for elsewhere.) * From Paul Strzelecki, Henri-Lloyd Joint CEO and International Sailing Summit: I am delighted to hear that Magnus Wheatley likes the Henri Lloyd team gear. Slightly surprised by the word retro as it features some of the most technically advanced designs and materials ever seen on a boat so is more forward looking. Thank heavens not everyone has the same view as we have sold out completely during the Trappani Act and are frantically trying to get more stock there for the final weekend. However Magnus will be able to purchase team kit almost identical to the crew from early next year and we will even give him his own number and print his name on the back. Just choose your number Magnus; no 1 is still free! Referring to Adrian Morgan's comments re punters and prats; shame on you Adrian. Our sport needs to attract more participants and fans and it can only be good for the sport of sailing that they are interested enough to turn up at an event and have the option to buy team kit. If I didn't know better I might think that you preferred the old AC steeped in mystery and hidden away from the public's prying eyes. * From Randy Tankoos: I have to comment on Scott McLeod's point regarding OLN. We both live in Fairfiled County CT which is the exclusive province of Cablevision. Many of us have been pleading for years for Cablevision to pick up OLN for its line-up without success. Considering Cablevision is owned by the Dolan family, known for its ownership of the maxi-boats Sagamore and it's Fourth of July Fireworks extravaganza in Oyster Bay, it is a shame they won't give us OLN. BTW, OLN is based in Stamford, CT, in the heart of Fairfield County. Come 'on Jimmy, give us OLN and thanks for the fireworks! * From Magnus Clarke (Re: Dom Mee rescue): If the Canadian government is going to take all the money it does from me in the form of taxes, I would just as soon see those dollars spent saving lives at sea, pretty much regardless of the costs to the Canadian Coast Guard. As has been said already, they're going to spend it either way so it may as well be for sailors regardless of their intent or skills. * From Giles Anderson: My father in-law has some sound ideas about improving road safety. His take is that with all the air bags, crumple zones, self-tensioning seat belts, and the feeling of invincibility brought on by driving a monster SUV that people take more risks than they did prior to Ralph Nader, which has resulted on the standard of driving being worse than ever. His solution, take away all the safety features for the driver - no airbag, no seatbelt. Then add a metal spike that sticks out of the steering wheel to make sure the driver gets the "point". I'd have to agree with him that it would likely raise the standard of people's driving dramatically. I'd like to propose something similar for boating as the nanny state has given stupid people too much of a safety net. We should have a delay on SAR response, say 72 hours. You send out a mayday and SAR won't start looking for you for 72 hours. Maybe we should turn off the EPIRB service too. And when SAR arrives, the crew would be rescued but the captain would be left behind. I'm open to some more suggestions as to how to help us get back on the path that Darwin paved. * From Richard Clark: As an "old" kiwi sailor who has swapped a Wetsnail for a state of the art Airstream and is 'sailing' around the American West, the first thing I purchased in Colorado before hiking the Rockies was a Search & Rescue card. This is valid for 1 year. $2 goes to the Search & Rescue Fund and $1 goes to the vendor. If I go hiking it is my responsibility, if I go sailing it is my responsibility. It is not a right, it is a priviledge, same as driving a car. I pay attention to the effect that my actions have on others, that is called being a citizen and part of a community. In the days of Chichester et al, it was vastly different. ps, check my blog for my travails. www.kiwicafe.com. * From Adrian Morgan (Re Dom Mee): Wasn't it Blondie Hasler, wartime hero and OSTAR veteran, who said that any man prepared to risk his life sailing the atlantic alone should look to his own survival, and also be prepared to die like a man? No word about women, you note. Ah. Those were the days, eh? * From Michael A. Rosenauer, Esq.: No advocate of the "private pay for rescue" position has addressed the fact that progress on the water and in the air started with various individuals who were labeled "crackpots" or embarked on "hairbrained adventures". One need only needs to review the primary sources surrounding Lindburg's flight or Fulton's steamship. If these "adventures" and ideas were not fostered during the well publicized multitude of failures in their equipment or efforts, transportation and technology would not have progressed along the historical lines with which we are familiar today. The only difference with the above examples is the fact that Lindburg and Fulton were successful and as such, moved from the realm of crackpot to the glow of genious or innovator. In short, I submit that we need to support the fringe with their development of ideas to move the status quo forward. * From George Bailey: Your government throws (literally) billions of your tax dollars at insane, not to mention often immoral causes. Against that, rescuing a few crazy sailors here and there is just a drop in the ocean (pardon the example) of wasted tax dollars. Curmudgeon's Comment: Oh my - obviously it's time to declare this thread officially dead. Done! CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATIONS "Brevity is the soul of lingerie." -- Dorothy Parker |
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