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Scuttlebutt Updates
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Archived NewslettersSCUTTLEBUTT 2479 – November 20, 2007Scuttlebutt is a digest of major sailing news, commentary, opinions, featuresand dock talk . . . with a North American focus. Scuttlebutt is published each weekday with the support of its sponsors. BAD KARMA Famous photographer Gilles Martin-Raget has gone on a rant, and who better to listen to than the keen observations and translated thoughts of a well-traveled French man: What’s happening? Did we have a specific solar eruption for the sailing world only? Is the sport of sailing now reaching such a momentum that it can only destroy itself with bad moves and wrong decisions? If you pile up the news of recent weeks, with the complete mess in which the America’s Cup has put itself in, the totally stupid decision of ISAF regarding classes that will be used in the 2012 Olympic games, the last race of the 60ft multihulls in Transat Jacques Vabre, a race which, at the moment, will have no more boats to send across the Atlantic in 2 years time as IMOCA has decided to do something else (which doesn’t exist now...) and Class 40 being crossed against the organization, if you look at those two races – Jacques Vabre and Barcelona World Race - that send racing offshore the same type of boat within a height days interval, well you can only conclude that something is strongly wrong in our sport. Oh yes, I could also add the jury result for Rolex Yachtsman of the Year award. Nothing to say for Claire Leroy and crew for being awarded, but, frankly, even if Ed Baird is a great sailor who did a fantastic job behind Alinghi’s wheel and has a strong career, what Ronan Veal has done for sailing at large in promoting foiled sailing with his Moth will let much more memories and lead to more drastic changes in our sport. -- Read on: http://martin-raget.blogspot.com/2007/11/bad-karma.html * The basis of Scuttlebutt’s trivia question last week was the rumor that a decision on the America’s Cup court case would come this Wednesday. If Justice Cahn does decide this week, it will be nothing more than an epic coincidence, as it was in 1987 that an America’s Cup decision was also handed down from the NY courts on the day before the US holiday Thanksgiving Day. Otherwise, there is absolutely no basis for this rumor. Additionally, there was chatter about Alinghi making a huge announcement on Monday (didn’t happen), and that they have now instead gone silent until the lawsuit is settled (conjecture). There was also talk of the Swiss instigating the eviction of the BMW Oracle Racing team from their base in Valencia. However, this appears to have been smoke too: http://bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=18449 RECORD ATTENDANCE AT OD SYMPOSIUM An all-time record of more than 130 one-design sailors and class or fleet leaders traveled from across the country to Columbus, Ohio, last weekend to attend US SAILING’s One-Design Sailing Symposium. The record attendance at the fourth annual Symposium represented an increase of more than 20 percent compared to previous years. The event featured many seminars and workshops, including presentations by sailing experts Dave Perry, Stuart Walker, Greg Fisher, and many more. Organized annually by US SAILING, the Symposium is geared towards one-design sailors who are interested in keeping the one-design sector of the sport healthy and thriving and in improving their own sailing skills. In addition to seminars and workshops, US SAILING presented several awards to one-design sailors and organizations: * Greg Fisher (Annapolis, Md.) was presented with the One-Design Service award for distinguished service and exceptional dedication in the promotion of one-design sailing and class organization. * Bill Fastiggi (Winooski, Vt.) and Allan Terhune (Annapolis, Md.) received the One-Design Leadership award for successfully creating the revolutionary International Lightning Class Association's (ILCA) boat grant program, designed to help young sailors experience the high level of competition offered by the Lightning class. * Cedar Point Yacht Club of Westport, Conn., received the One-Design Club Award for administrative excellence, fleet growth, creative programming, regatta support and member contribution at regional, national and international levels of one-design sailing. * Fishing Bay Yacht Club (FBYC) in Deltaville, Va., received the national award for organizing the best One-Design Regatta, the Flying Scot 50th North American Championship. -- Complete report: http://www.ussailing.org/pressreleases/2007/odsswrapup.asp YOU CAN GO FASTER! Doyle sails are powering Offshore One Designs to victory. Doyle-powered Beneteau 36.7s won the San Diego, Annapolis, Detroit and Chicago NOODs, a Doyle client won the J/109 North American Championship and the Larchmont NOOD Regatta, and a Doyle-powered J/122 won the American Spring Series and the Greenwich Cup. The secret? Doyle Offshore One Design customers are finding that not only are their sails faster than the competition, but that the Doyle Set-Up and Tuning Guides help them go faster across a wide range of conditions. You too can go faster - take the first step and contact your local Doyle loft, 800-94-DOYLE, http://www.doylesails.com MONDAY MORNING TACTICIAN by Andrew Campbell (USA), 2008 Olympic Laser representative While I was home in San Diego last weekend, I had the pleasure of joining my father and some of the regular crew aboard Doug and Pam Werner’s J105 Javelin. While I was holding down the pit and sewer, I got to banter back and forth with my old man about tactics and strategy getting around the racecourse. On the way in after a day-winning 1-4-1 in the ten-boat fleet, we were chatting about how steady the conditions were. I had spent the last few weeks sailing in very shifty, puffy conditions on the east coast, and honestly the steady 270 degree 4-6 knot westerly seabreeze surprised me. Boatspeed was king and clear lanes were worth their distance in gold. After expressing my surprise, Dad’s comment to me was “That’s the thought right: West Coast sailors go straight better and East Coast sailors sail the shifts better.” I thought about that comment and laughed at its stereotyping and generality. Sailors like to generalize with the East Coast/ West Coast argument all the time. Even Midwesterners, Gulf Coasters and Hawaiians take sides in the argument. Stereotypes and accusations fly exerting superiority of optimists versus sabots, 420s versus FJs, comparing windy and light air venues across the nation. The stereotypes are fairly clear. -- Read on: http://tinyurl.com/24hrf4 WHY I GAVE MY A-CAT "WINGS" by Ben Hall, Hall Spars & Rigging While everybody else was feverishly working on new hull shapes or sail designs in preparation for the A-Cat Worlds, I decided to replace my mast/sail combination with a wing. Why? Because we can in this development class, where we all want to go faster. Building the wing is really like building a big model airplane and as a kid I did a lot of that (maybe it was the glue). The wing on my A-Class Catamaran was inspired Steve Clark’s C-Class Catamaran Cogito built for the Little America’s Cup (see www.cclass.ca for pictures). Steve convinced me that it was really not that hard to build a wing, so I decided to give it a shot. Dave Hubbard designed the wing and Steve and Henry Elliot were a big help along the way. The carbon elements were constructed in the Hall factory, and I assembled most of the parts in my basement until I needed a bit more room to put the entire wing together.” The design of the wing is a simplified version of the Cogito wing. It has two elements while Cogito has three. The wing is slotted and both elements have twist control. The controls are simpler than the standard A Class rig. The Wing has four controls: a 2:1 mainsheet, camber control (this adjusts flap angle from 0 to 35 degrees), twist for the main element, twist for the flap element. (The standard rig has: traveler, mainsheet, outhaul, downhaul, rotation, over-rotation, and diamond tension controls.) The length of the wing is 29 feet. The top two elements are a little over nine feet, and easily removable to facilitate transportation. The wing stores in a 21-foot trailer box that’s six feet wide and two feet high. The boat sits upside down on top of the box. I can tow the entire set-up with my mini-van. -- Read on: http://www.hallspars.com/News/article.htm#news SAMBA GEARS UP FOR 2008 Fresh off her victory at the IRC East Coast Championships in Annapolis, MD, John Kilroy’s TP52 Samba Pa Ti is taking a brief side trip to Goetz Custom Boats in Bristol, RI for IRC optimization in preparation for Key West Race Week. Samba’s team manager, Eric Arndt, describes the changes as including a new bow sprit, heavier bulb, and new deck and interior layouts. “Last year was very good to us, with many wins, but we know that IRC is a building class and to be competitive we need to make some changes,” says Arndt. It was, according to Eric, a lot of work to do in a short period of time. Following a conversation with Goetz Custom Boats’ John Boone, however, he learned that GCB’s former home at 15 Broad Common Road had been converted to a facility focused on grand prix refits and aftermarket work, and had the boat moved to Rhode Island for the overhaul. “It was a big production to finish our last regatta in Annapolis on a Sunday, break the boat apart and have it on a truck to RI by Tuesday… but it all worked out well,” Arndt reports. HOW TO BE A WINNING SKIPPER Do you ever wonder why the teams that win regattas also look good when doing so? It is most likely that they have spent a lot of time practicing...and skippers and owners have dressed their teams in team gear. So don't you think that it's time you and your team look AND sail like winners? Come to Camet.com and see our line of sailing gear and start winning! Camet Clothing is a U.S. manufacturer of high performance shorts, shirts, and outerwear! http://www.camet.com/?Click=597 BARCELONA WORLD RACE Open 60 doublehanded round the world race (started Nov 11; 25,000-miles) (November 19, 2007) Paprec-Virbac 2 roared through the second scoring gate in the Canary Islands at 07:01 GMT this morning, leading the fleet for the second time past a course milestone. PRB was some three and half hours later, and both had opened up a reasonable (50+ miles) gap with the bulk of the fleet chasing them. Behind the top pair, an intense battle has been waged over the past two days between Veolia Environnement and Delta Dore, more akin to a match race than an around the world ocean marathon. The pair has matched each other tack for tack and approach the Canaries gate at a dead heat. Both teams are anxious to get clear of the islands, sensing an opportunity ahead. Further back, the frustration continues for teams like Hugo Boss, Temenos II and Estrella Damm, who sent a photo illustrating exactly how calm the conditions can be. Out furthest west of this pack is Hugo Boss, who was sailing fast, but had that advantage effectively neutralised by the additional miles on its track. -- Complete report: http://www.barcelonaworldrace.com/default.asp?section=10&sid=10780 Day 9 Positions - November 19, 2007 - 18:00 (GMT) 1. Paprec-Virbac 2 - Jean-Pierre Dick (FRA)/Damian Foxall (IRE), 23,310 DTF 2. PRB - Vincent Riou (FRA)/Sébastien Josse (FRA), 26 miles DTL 3. Delta Dore - Jérémie Beyou (FRA)/Sidney Gavignet (FRA), 92 4. Veolia Environnement - Roland Jourdain (FRA)/Jean-Luc Nélias (FRA), 93 5. Hugo Boss - Alex Thomson (GBR)/Andrew Cape (AUS), 115 6. Estrella Damm - Guillermo Altadill (ESP)/Jonathan McKee (USA), 132 7. Temenos II - Dominique Wavre (SUI)/Michéle Paret (FRA), 145 8. Mutua Madrilena - Javier Sanso Windmann (ESP)/Pachi Rivero (ESP), 154 9. Educación sin Fronteras -Albert Bargués (ESP)/Servanne Escoffier (FRA),433 Race website: http://www.barcelonaworldrace.com SAILING SHORTS * Jacksonville, FL - Bora Gulari at the helm for Chuck Holzman on 'Flyer' played his trump card as they took the Melges 24 King's Day/Atlantic Coast Championship title by one point this past weekend. Forty-one entrants competed in the mostly light air event, where skippers Bill Hardesty and Terry Hutchinson rounded out the top three. Sailing with Gulari and Holzman was George Peet, Wally Cross, and Todd Jones. -- Complete report and results: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=5533 * Long Beach, CA -- With all of those turkeys awaiting the winners, Alamitos Bay Yacht Club almost needed the wishbones to settle some of the class championships in their annual Turkey Day Regatta this past weekend. Among 262 boats in 17 classes, four titles were determined by tiebreaking rules when leaders completed the six-race schedule even in points, and a few others were hanging in the balance to the end. Winds were a light 5 to 7 knots both days for an event that has evolved into a cult classic of sailing over the years. – Complete report with results: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=5536 * It was the situation this past weekend at the Ft. Worth Boat Club (TX) that would find the entrants at the College Sloop Nationals facing the gauntlet of wind conditions. Ten teams competed in J/22s, and they were greeted on Friday with winds in the high teens to low twenty's, with several gusts in the 25-30 range, Saturday was ten or less, and Sunday morning was even lighter, a zero to five drifter, before filling back in to a very nice ten to twelve. St.Mary's won the event, with Boston College and Navy filling out the top three in that order. -- Final report with results: http://www.collegesailing.org/nas/fall07/results.asp?RegattaID=244 * Video highlights (4:34 minutes) from the latest event on the World Match Race Tour - the Vitoria Brasil Sailing Cup 2007 - are now online, where the on the water action is laced with a surplus of verbal banter and the shoreside events showcase the dancing skill of energetic locals, all tied together with vibrant tunes: http://www.sail.tv/player?cid=540&scid=5&source=wmrt * Singapore will host a stopover for the 2008-09 Volvo Ocean Race. It is the first time in the 34-year history of the event that a southeast Asian destination has been included in the route. The fleet, which is scheduled to stop over in Singapore in late December 2008, will call at the resort island of Sentosa and be based at the new, state-of-the-art One Degree 15 Marina Club, one of Asia’s leading marinas. The race route is nearing finalisation with the offshore start set for Alicante on 11 October, 2008. -- Race schedule: http://www.volvooceanrace.org/abouttherace/raceschedule * The Notice of Race is now available for US SAILING's 2008 Youth World Qualifier Regatta, which will take place January 18-21, 2008 in Long Beach, CA. Racing will be in Lasers (boys' singlehanded), Laser Radials (girls' singlehanded), 29er (boys' and girls' doublehanded), RS:X (boys' and girls' sailboard) and SL16 catamaran (open multihull). The winners of the multihull division will also be named 2008 US Youth Multihull Champions. -- http://www.abyc.org/event.cfm?id=280 * (November 19, 2007) The monohull fleet in the Transat Jacques Vabre, a 4,300-mile doublehanded ocean race from Le Harve, France to Salvador, Brazil, is led by Foncia, Michel Desjoyeaux/ Emmanuel Le Borgne (Open 60; 252 mile DTF) and Télécom Italia, Giovanni Soldini/Pietro D'ali (Class 40; 1396 miles DTF). The ORMA 60 multihull contingent has completed the race, with Class 50 leader Crèpes Whaou!,Franck Yves Escoffier/Karine Fauconnier 181 miles from the finish. -- Event website: http://www.jacques-vabre.com/en RACE FASTER AND SMARTER If you want to improve your racing results, you should read Speed & Smarts. This bi-monthly newsletter, written by winning America's Cup tactician Dave Dellenbaugh, is full of race-winning tips on boatspeed, tactics, strategy, rules and more! To see a sample issue or get a subscription, visit http://www.SpeedandSmarts.com LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON Letters selected for publication must include the writer's name, and may be edited for clarity or simplicity (letters shall be no longer than 250 words). You only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot, don't whine if others disagree, and save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere. As an alternative, a more open environment for discussion is available on the Scuttlebutt Forum. -- Scuttlebutt Letters: editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com -- Scuttlebutt Forum: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum * From Jack Dinelli: Until in Issue 2478 when former ISAF president Paul Handerson wrote a 100% correct post, everyone was blaming and accusing the ISAF (for the 2012 Olympic events decision). Has anyone considered that those who sit on the ISAF Council are those who run the sport of sailing in their countries/ areas and that they are aware of what the sport of sailing is in their countries/ areas, which strengths and which weakness it has? Does anyone really think that the "gurus", journalists, bloggers, and experts know better then everyone else in the sport of sailing? It seems to me that one thing is talking about where the sport of sailing should go or would be nice to go, and another thing is where the sport of sailing can really go. I wonder if all those who are speaking, for instance, in favor of the skiff for women, have ever paid attention to the speeches of the delegates in the various ISAF committees and of the ISAF Council members coming not from USA, GBR, or countries where skiff sailing is well established? Well, you would have heard another story about the desire of the women to jump on a skiff! * From Ray Tostado: OK, so the multis are being 'phased out' by market brokers of monohulls. Fine, market power is great. This will have no effect on ocean racing venues, but just wait until next year when lakes are fallow of water and the only white triangles on the horizon belong to 18" draft multis. It's not a matter of if. It's here now! Maybe there is a fortune to be made by entrepreneurs who offer bus travel tours to visit land locked marinas and fest the keel in mud statues of idle monos. Multis may not have qualified for the Olympics, but they will, for the immediate time, rule the race courses on inland waters. Farewell, nine-foot drafts.... * From Paul Notary: Dave Tommela may have Issues about "Butt 2477" and I agree with him about Tabloid Magazines & "Lurid Articles”, however this report is not sensational nor titillating; it has reported a predator and a Criminal act. In Australia, we may be half way around the world and upside down but the last two decades have seen major achievements in both child protection and the safety of citizens in public places by strong legislation plus checks and measures for employees to help avoid such sad and abusive situations. From the late 1970s, we as a Nation realized that the biggest crime is the silence or silencing of victims. The "Affirmative Action" process began that covered every thing from inappropriate comments at work/ school to full scale abuse, resulting in many new laws being passed to cover situations and ensure that the victim would not be further violated via the court process. Shortly our courts will have streamlined measures in place so a victim will not be dragged through a muck raking process further traumatizing them. Top marks to Scuttlebutt for posting the article as later down the track it may just stop someone from employing this sad individual and also alerts all of us to be a bit smart about our surroundings in this digital age and way too easily used equipment. => Curmudgeon’s Comment: The incident that we reported on last week was the second such occurrence included in Scuttlebutt within the past month, and hopefully it will also be the last one. Thread closed. CURMUDGEON’S OBSERVATION I don't want to become immortal through my work. I want to become immortal through not dying. Special thanks to Doyle Sails, Camet Clothing, and Speed & Smarts. |
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