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Scuttlebutt Updates
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Archived NewslettersSCUTTLEBUTT 2097 - May 18, 2006Scuttlebutt is a digest of major yacht racing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus.GUEST EDITORIAL - Chris Upton In preparation for the Bermuda Race, we spent a Sunday afternoon sailing around a life jacket in 4 knots of breeze. It took 20+ attempts for a crew of eight. I decided to see what it would be like to be in the Gulf Stream. The closest thing in Newport is the YMCA pool. The test tried to take into account as many realities of being in the water as possible. I tried to replicate being tired and worn out from boat handling. Dressed in full foulies, sea boots, a life jacket, a t-shirt and shorts, I jumped in the pool. The first surprise was the fleece neck liner was letting the trapped air out of my foulie jacket. As the air blew out it was replaced by close to 60 pounds of water. It was nearly impossible to swim more than a few strokes. The life jacket did its job in keeping me afloat. Removing the life jacket made swimming slightly easier, but not enough to save your life. Sea boots full of water weigh too much to be able to kick your legs for swimming and treading water. Removing them helped with swimming. It did not allow for more distance covered. Treading water without the boots would be difficult in a seaway. The drag from the foulies is too great. Removing the jacket and pants was the only way to be able to swim for any distance. Just getting the gear out of the pool was a challenge. After spending 5 minutes in the water trying to swim, etc., getting out of the pool required three tries. The pool has a freeboard of one foot. The cotton t-shirt weighed over twenty pounds upon getting out. Pulling yourself up 5 feet of freeboard without assistance is not going to happen. The foul weather gear will add enough weight that crew along the rail will be unlikely to get you up and out without putting themselves at risk. Conclusions: - Wear your life jacket before you think you need it. - The boat has to come to the swimmer. You do not have any mobility in the water. You will be tired from simply floating. - Have a plan for getting a halyard onto the MOB. Putting a second person in the water to help an unconscious or injured crewman only risks a second crew and further limits the ability to recover anyone. The weight of the water in your clothes is too much to lift alone. - Wear boots that are large enough to be kicked off easily in the water. - Chlorine will ruin your foulies. Don’t try this with your good set. BIDDING A KETCH FAREWELL How do you get rid of a rotting, 101-year-old tall ship that needs $1.5 million in repairs? One way would be to put it on EBay. And that's just what the Boy Scouts say they have done with Argus, a down-on-its-luck, 92-foot ketch that has been a fixture at the Scout dock on Newport Harbor since 1972. "We're testing the waters — literally — to see what sort of feedback we get," said Charlie Abbott, director of the Newport Sea Base tall ship program, which teaches Scouts how to sail. Argus needs work. It suffers from "iron sickness," a malady that has rusted its bolts, leaving them flaking off chunks of metal. The ship's frame is also weak. "It's like the ribs of your body being soft," Abbott said. The ship's problems turned up during a voluntary Coast Guard inspection in February. The ship cannot carry passengers until repairs are made. Scouting officials said they couldn't raise enough money to make the repairs, so they turned to EBay on Tuesday. Abbott wants to lease a boat to keep this summer's program afloat. There's no word on the asking price, but Abbott said the Scouts were hoping for more than $250,000. - Tanya Caldwell, Los Angeles Times, full story: http://tinyurl.com/ku3nq IDEAS THAT WORK When a junior regatta requires traveling on Christmas day to attend, it must be a pretty good one, and that is exactly what the Orange Bowl in Miami, FL has become. With 100 420s, 190 Lasers (of various types), and 288 Optis competing in 2006, you have the kind of numbers deserving of national or international championships. But with school schedules permitting minimal travel time, the logistics of moving boats around the country had to be solved. Enter Vanguard Sailboats. With the support of Vanguard’s local dealers, they provided new charter boats for a fourth of the 420 fleet and nearly a third of the Laser sailors. The disadvantages of chartering boats over using personal equipment are largely negated by the uniformity found within classes like the Laser and 420. By eliminating the need for costly cross-country ground transportation, charter programs like the one coordinated by Vanguard at the Orange Bowl helped the event gain participants that either don’t yet have their own boats (many junior sailors use boats belonging to their club) or might not have attended due to tight school schedules. It is the success Vanguard dealers have had in selling previously chartered boats that has enabled them to provide this program, and further expand it to additional events. This year, their charter program will be in place at the Laser NAs, Buzzards Bay Regatta, Laser Midwinters East and the C420 Midwinters. Additionally, there are many US Sailing Championship events where charter boats will either be available if desired, or the event will be exclusively sailed in charter boats, which might include V15s, C420s, Lasers, and Laser Radials. In 2007, Vanguard is supplying all the boats for the US Olympic Laser & Radial Trials. -- Complete report: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/06/cb SPEED OF ULLMAN SAILS AT ANNAPOLIS NOOD In a highly competitive 36-boat J/105 fleet at the 2006 Annapolis NOOD, Ullman Sails were used on 9 of the top 10 boats. Those flying Ullman spinnakers won every race; Ullman upwind sails finished 1st in 4 of the 7 races; and 3 of the top five boats carried full Ullman inventories. Delivering sail power and speed enables our customers to outperform the competition at all levels of racing. Congratulations to all! If you and your crew are ready for the “Fastest Sails on the Planet,” contact your nearest Ullman Sails loft and visit http://www.ullmansails.com PILING ON THE MILES The wind has increased for the Volvo Ocean Race fleet as they make their way in what has been a slow trip so far across the North Atlantic to Portsmouth. The fleet is now past the half way point of this leg and everyone is doing 300+ mile days. As the wind rose to 25 knots, Pirates of the Caribbean (Paul Cayard), blew out their big masthead spinnaker, in a costly breakage which will cost them precious miles. “There was no flogging or luffing, it just parted,” explains skipper Paul Cayard. The Pirates are now having to sail a higher angle with their smaller, reaching sail to try and keep their speed up. Cayard is hoping that the wind will increase by at least two knots, so that the team can fly their fractional spinnaker. While second-placed Ericsson (Neal McDonald), is now the most southerly boat in the fleet, 77 nautical miles south of ABN Amro One, movistar (Bouwe Bekking) is sailing quickly up towards the pack, averaging over 20 knots in the last six hours and gaining 21 miles. -- http://www.volvooceanrace.org Volvo Ocean Race Positions at 2200 Wednesday: 1. ABN Amro One, Mike Sanderson, 1364 miles to finish 2. Ericsson Racing Team, Neal McDonald, +98 miles 3. Pirates of the Caribbean, Paul Cayard, +151 miles 4. Brasil 1, Torben Grael, +153 miles 5. ABN Amro Two, Sebastien Josse, +197 miles 6. Brunel, Matt Humphries, + 245 miles 7. movistar, Bouwe Bekking, +296 miles A CHAPTER OF SAILING HISTORY When Dee Caffari crosses the finish line of her record voyage alone round the world westabout, it will mark not only the end of a monumental six-month odyssey, but the culmination of an amazing chapter of sailing history. After 178 days at sea in an incredibly harsh environment, Dee's yacht Aviva will tell another exceptional story. There has been no major damage or downtime on this record attempt and Dee is returning with a defects list totaling just 17 items - and that includes 'one slightly bent stanchion', 'port heads light temperamental' and 'port deck speaker not working'. This a vivid testimony to Dee's extraordinary seamanship, and the work done by Andrew Roberts and his team in modifying Aviva from fully crewed to solo mode, a job done in a mere eight weeks, on a budget of £170,000. Along with Dee's experience and instincts, these adaptations have produced another first for Dee and Andrew's team: on crossing the Lizard finish line, she will earn the distinction of circumnavigating in the heaviest displacement yacht ever to be sailed alone round the world in any direction by a solo sailor. -- http://www.avivachallenge.com Curmudgeon’s Comment: Dee Caffari’s Aviva is expected to cross the official finish line between The Lizard, UK and Ushant, France between 07:00 and 10:00 (BST) on Thursday to become the first woman to sail solo, and non-stop round the world against the prevailing winds and currents. A BIT OF EVERYTHING The second day of the final series at the ISAF World Sailing Games in Lake Neusiedl, Austria had a bit of everything. The wind started around 15 knots and quickly built, with thunderstorms and rain squalls coming and going. Paige Railey (USA) quickly took charge of the Laser Radial Gold fleet and holds an eight lead after three races. In the Hobie 16 Woman´s Multihull class Annie Nelson/ Susan Korzeniewski are in the third spot - just three points off the pace, and Pamela Noriega/ Andrea Mier y Teran (MEX) are in eight place. Nikola Girke (CAN) is in the tenth spot in the Woman´s Windsurfer Gold Fleet while Canadians Oskar Johansson/ Kevin Stittle hold the same spot in the Hobie Tiger Gold Fleet. -- Complete results: http://www.worldsailinggames2006.at/results/ MAKEUP RACE * In a makeup of a race abandoned last week, the American BMW Oracle Racing team beat Italy's +39 Challenge today to complete racing in Louis Vuitton Act 10 and extend its lead on the points table. On Tuesday BMW Oracle Racing won Act 10, when it was determined it would win the four way tie-break scenario at the top of the table. With today's win the Americans are one point clear, their only loss coming to Alinghi. Despite having won Louis Vuitton Act 10 on Tuesday afternoon, today's race was important to BMW Oracle. That's because the 11 challenging teams are also racing for Louis Vuitton Challenger Ranking Points and for this purpose, ties are not broken. This challenger ranking is used to award bonus points prior to the challenger selection series in 2007. By finishing one point clear of its rival challengers - Luna Rossa and Emirates Team New Zealand- on the Act 10 leaderboard, BMW Oracle Racing drives them further down the Louis Vuitton Challenger Ranking table, increasing its lead for those important bonus points. Racing begins again of Friday with the first fleet race of Louis Vuitton Act 11. -- http://www.americascup.com * As expected it was a pretty one-sided affair in the re-match that was called off earlier in the week, between BMW Oracle and +39 Challenge. I spoke to Percy afterwards, and asked if he had even seen a glimmer of hope of beating BMW Oracle today. “No,” he said, matter of factly. “If we were racing in 15 knots, yes, but in that wind? No. I don’t want to make the mistake – which I did against Alinghi - of doing something radical. That’s not the way to learn. Where are you in a year’s time? You’ve got to take your weather calls, pick your right side, then you one-tack up and make the cross - normally. Of course you’re not going to do that when you’re 3/10s of a knot slower, but we got to sail BMW Oracle today. You still learn from that.” -- Excerpts from a story by Andy Rice, full story: http://sailing-talk.blogspot.com/ NER TEAM GEARING UP While 2-time Rolex Yachtsman of the Year Ken Read races this week across the Atlantic on the Volvo Ocean Race, New England Ropes is gearing up for when he returns. Ken has joined forces with New England Ropes, and will skipper the NER Melges 24 program. The new boat, to be delivered in June, will feature all of NER’s core technical products including V100, Endura Braid, Endura 12, Flight Line, and Salsa Line. Between Ken’s world championship know-how and the world’s best running rigging, the Read/NER team will be a force to be reckoned with in 2006. http://www.neropes.com BENEATH THE SKIRT (The Daily Sail subscription website spoke with BMW Oracle Design Co-ordinator Ian Burns about his experiences of tandem keels. Here are a few excerpts.) What is undeniable is that on the water this week USA-87 has proved to have the turning circle of a London taxi and she also has the strange ability to stop dead in the water almost as if a handbrake had been applied. Both these are useful weapon's in Dickson's pre-start armoury. The boat also at times shows the unusual sideways sliding 'shopping trolley' movement of a boat hiding more than one steering appendage beneath the water. In interviews with those involved with the Amrica's Cup we have learned the hard way that you get laughed at if you ask direct questions such as 'what appendage package do you have?' Nonetheless we sit down with America's Cup legend Ian 'Fresh' Burns, BMW Oracle Racing's Design Co-ordinator to talk around this particular question. The advantages of the tandem keel is that it provides a better support structure for the keel bulb and also it is less draggy as the combined foil area is smaller, the sections working closer to the optimum. ".In theory there are pretty good gains," says Burns. "There are also some gains in not having the main lifting body right under the middle of the trough of the wave the boat makes going through the water so combine those two things, there is potential for it to be quite an exciting package. If you want to turn there is twice the problem we now have with only one control surface that steers the boat." -- http://thedailysail.com ANOTHER IDEA THAT WORKS Post race ice-bathing has been introduced as a recovery method for muscle fatigued Team Shosholoza crew who are racing eight hours a day, for ten consecutive days, in America’s Cup precursor events like the current Valencia Louis Vuitton Acts. “Ice-bathing athletes is very normal practice. We use it in many sports and are now using it in sailing as well. The crew has a very long and hard physical day out on the water and the ice bath successfully helps to minimize swelling and inflammation of the muscles and enhances muscle recovery. It is a very well known technique in all contact and endurance sports”, explains Shosholoza biokineticist, Julian Calefato. In typical South African improvisation Calefato uses a standard black dustbin as a make-shift ice box for the arms and a garbage skip for submerging the body from the waist down. “We believe some of the top America’s Cup teams use ice jackets for recovery purposes. But we don’t know of any others using ice baths. They might not need to as they have bigger sailing squads. Some have A and B teams and in the case of Alinghi two full sailing teams. This gives them the advantage of being able to rotate and rest fatigued crew and rely on a natural recovery period,” says Calefato who has been seconded full time to the team by the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town. The crew is content with this new recovery method: “It’s really helped reduce stiffness and pain in my elbows and wrists. It’s not my favourite five minutes of the day but something I realise I need to do,” says grinder Shaun Pammenter. Mast man Charles Nankin founds it has definitely made a difference for him: “We have had no serious injuries this regatta whereas we have always had problems in the past. It is internationally recognised recovery treatment in physically demanding sports. The proof is in the pudding.” And mid-bowman Golden Mgedeza has already experienced that the ice bath has worked wonders for his back and legs. -- http://www.teamshosholoza.com SAILING SHORTS * Andy Meiklejohn has been awarded the Musto Seamanship Trophy for bravely climbing the 30 metre mast on Brasil 1 during a vicious squall, to save the vital mainsail from destruction. The Musto award, presented for outstanding efforts of seamanship is one of few trophies in the event presented to individual crew members – and only on major legs of the event. Andy, a New Zealander, is a mast specialist and no stranger to the event, having competed in Team NewsCorp four years ago. * Twenty year old ginder Reinhardt Rauscher of Team Shosholoza is the youngest crew competing in the Valencia Louis Vuitton Acts 10. By comparison Alinghi’s youngest sailor is 28 years old and the youngest with Emirates Team New Zealand is 27. Even more extraordinary is that Rauscher sailed his first yacht race ever in an America’s Cup event less than a year ago. Weighing in at 240 pounds, he is among the most powerful of South Africa’s grinders. -- http://www.teamshosholoza.com * A search throughout Canada is on to locate any of the 17ft National One-Designs that are still alive. The National One-Design was by the same designer of the outstanding Snipe. Anyone who knows the whereabouts of any National Ones in Canada should e-mail Rene Serrao: serrao@eastlink.ca. * Hunter Marine has a new flagship -- the Hunter 49 -- designed to be a luxurious passage maker with a versatile floor plan for total extended offshore cruising, offering a complete range of live aboard accommodations (49’11”, plus 14’5” beam and 6’9” salon headroom). As part of its launch, the 49 will embark on a six week dealer and media introduction tour along the east coast, starting in Jacksonville, FL and ending in Newport, Rhode Island. The all-new 49 will replace the Hunter 46, a mainstay in the Hunter product line since 1997, boasting more than 250 units. -- http://www.huntermarine.com/ftp 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. 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. For those that prefer a Forum, you can post your thoughts at the Scuttlebutt website: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi) * From Ed Cesare: After reading the news piece in 'Butt 2096 about regulating the tightness of "hiking lines" in the Melges 24 class I had to go to the website to see if I was missing something - I wasn't. The piece of equipment referred to was indeed what used to be known as LIFELINES, just sort of amusing. * From Jeff Penny (in response to Brian Watkins letter regarding transponders for Swiftsure): This maybe a good thought, but it's the wrong way to go. First of all this has been tried & tried again. Not only for Swiftsure but for other PNW races, they have never worked. There are two very specific shipping lanes in Juan De Fuca strait, which all ships are very vigilant to follow, considering how narrow that stretch of water is. The race instructions clearly state how to transit these lanes, both out bound & inbound. Also most competitors are in constant communication with ships in there vicinity, as we were last year. So instead of confusing the poor coastal pilots with 250 plus blips on there radar screen, lets promote better knowledge of the "Rules of the Road" & collision reg's. Plus the logistics of supplying 250 plus transponders & the collection & return of deposits is "Mind Blowing". Let’s just sail smart & safe. CURMUDGEON’S OBERVATION "If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead." -- Johnny Carson Special thanks to Ullman Sails, New England Ropes. |
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