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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 664 - October 10, 2000OLYMPIC RETROSPECTIVE(Peter Isler had his belief in the Olympics reaffirmed as the greatest two-week period that the sport of sailing can offer. Here are two brief excepts from his story posted on the Quokka Sailing website.) * The Olympics is indeed a reaffirmation that sailing is a major worldwide sport. And sailing's international diversity was highlighted when Austria's only two gold medals came from our sport (Tornado & Men's Mistral). Sailing's ability to capture the imagination of a nation (and its media) was underscored when Australian Channel 7's live coverage of the Olympics (7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily) shifted (for the only time during the Olympiad) for several hours to Sydney Harbour. The men's and women's 470 classes were sailing their 11th and final race, and Aussies watched their sailors win the gold medal in both classes - Australia's first sailing gold since 1972. The media hyped it as the biggest day in Australian sailing since they won the Cup in 1983. There is something special about being around some 400 men and women who had all worked so hard to achieve the first step of their goal by making their country's Olympic team. Adorned shoreside in their national team uniforms, and racing boats without any advertising in sight, only huge national flags painted on the sails it's an image and a lifestyle that seems a lot healthier and more well rounded - indeed loftier than some of the other big games in our sport. * The Olympics lived up to everything that I thought it was and then some. It was a big deal seeing my friends and peers focused on the final step of their personal dream. Yes, the luck factor can still be a killer; yes, the bureaucracy can be stifling; yes, the public could have had better access to the venue; yes, our sport's protest and umpiring system is imperfect; and yes, the politics and commercialism driving the Olympics has a deleterious effect on the sport. But despite all this - sailing thrives at the Olympics. It is indeed a sport worthy of the ideal of the Games and a medal earned on Sydney Harbor is every bit an equal to one earned at the Olympic Stadium - or in the Olympic pool. Sure, each of the 11 Olympic classes have world championships ever year. Some even may feature a deeper, more competitive field. But give it up - nothing compares with this. The Olympics is more than another big regatta, it lives on its own plane driven by the feats of past Olympians like Paul Elvstrom, Valentin Mankin, Barbara Kendall and Mark Reynolds. It is further fueled by the hopes and dreams of countless sailors from around the world who believe that someday, they might be there - marching into the Olympic Stadium and seeing the flame ignited. - Peter Isler for Quokka Sports Do yourself a favor and read all of Isler's comments: http://www.quokkasailing.com/expert/10/SLQ_1009_isler_WFC.html AMERICA'S CUP The main caterer at (Auckland's) America's Cup Village has settled debts totaling $1 million arising from the exclusive floating yacht club and hospitality tents. Fifty-nine creditors owed between $1000 and $440,000 each by Corporate Host have accepted 50 cents in the dollar as final settlement for unpaid bills. Michael Laird, of Oceanic Foods, said he lost half of the $57,000 he was owed for supplying seafood and dried goods during the regatta. One of the biggest creditors was Adecco Personnel, which provided staff for the hospitality facilities. Other creditors included Allied Liquor, Coca-Cola, Heinz Wattie's, Kapiti Cheeses and Lion Breweries. Corporate Host director Steve Hollander will not discuss the settlements or troubles at the Cup village. It is understood Corporate Host paid about $800,000 for fitting out the $2.8 million yacht club, which was marketed by America's Cup Village as "an exclusive floating facility anchored at the centre of the American Express New Zealand Cup Village, surrounded by the glamour and activity of the super yachts and racing syndicates." - Bernard Orsman, NZ Herald Full story: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ac2000/ WORLD CLASS COMPETITION Take control of a 24-foot boat or a 70-foot racer and challenge the best virtual skippers in the world! Virtual Skipper, the first true 3D regatta simulator, allows you to tack and jibe to win. Work the wind shifts, breezes, lulls and currents all faithfully reproduced on the most prestigious stretches of water in the world. Play in single mode against your computer or in multiplayer mode on the Internet, against real opponents. Visit http://www.virtualskipper.com/yw.asp today and play online for FREE for a limited time. THE RACE Tuesday 10 October 2000 - Grant Dalton, back at sea with Club Med and ready for another assault on the 24-hour distance record, has reason to be envious of Steve Fossett, his American rival. Fossett's PlayStation has done four transatlantic trips to Club Med's one, and reliablity might well determine the outcome of The Race around the world next year rather than outright speed. Reliability comes from time on the water. Club Med has already proved wickedly fast, racking up 625.7 miles for the 24-hour distance record last June. But less publicly than Peter Goss's Team Philips - and no less seriously - she has had structural problems. Dalton, who heads a 15-man multi-national crew, said: "This trip is all about proving we're finally getting the boat reliable after all the work we have done on her." The 112ft Club Med suffered her own bow failure soon after starting transatlantic record attempt in July and has recently emerged from a six-week stint in intensive care at her builders in Vannes, France. Such are the pitfalls awaiting the biggest multihulls ever built. Like Team Philips, Club Med's bow problem was her own second structural failure. The fairing round the main beam had gone before. So huge and powerful are these new beasts of boats, that repairing the bows was equivalent to building a couple of 40ft yachts from scratch, especially as the bows were not just made stronger but reshaped to make Club Med easier to steer. Dalton took the opportunity to bring in New Zealand engineers to give the entire carbon fibre machine a structural audit. The reinforcement was extensive; the bill was a cool L150,000. Dalton told me about this as Club Med shredded across the Bay of Biscay, making 26 knots, trying to outrun a fast developing and very menacing depression screaming into the Western Approaches. "I'm not unhappy that the boat's stronger," he said, as the Bay turned particularly nasty hours after we had left it. "A lot was a question of bringing round the world practicality to it," said the five-times Whitbread veteran. "If it didn't look strong enough, we made it stronger." Much of what was learnt has been incorporated into Club Med's two sisterships, one to be skippered by the Franco-American duo of Loick Peyron and Skip Novak, the other by Cam Lewis, from the United States. - Tim Jeffrey, Daily Telegraph, UK Full story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=001648423620749&rtmo=kNxbCAZp&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/00/10/10/sotyot10.html BUSTED 6 October 2000 - Grant Dalton, skipper of the maxi catamaran Club Med appeared at Southampton Magistrates Court charged with contravening Rule 10 of the ColReg and for travelling the wrong way through the Dover Strait on Wednesday night. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) who brought the charges against the Kiwi former Whitbread winner, state 'a Watch Officer at Dover Coastguard noticed a fast craft had crossed over from the north east lane and was heading the wrong way at speeds of up to 20 knots up the south west lane, in effect crossing the central reservation. During the incident the Club Med passed 17 ships and several had to take evasive action. Two crossing ferries with over 800 people on board had close quarters situations with the yacht and one ship carrying dangerous goods and pollutants came within just a few hundred yards. The Club Med was eventually recorded to have traveled over 20 miles the wrong way up of what is the nautical dual carriageway against the traffic flow.' At the time Club Med was on a delivery trip to London from Southampton, and her ostensibly careering across the shipping lanes was in fact her short tacking up the Channel - gybing downwind in a 15-20 knot south westerly. Although the catamaran did not cross the shipping lanes on a perpendicular course, her course was not directly along them (everyone on board was keen to get out of the shipping lanes as soon as possible) and far from taking a cavalier approach and waiting for vessels under power to give way, she too took evasive action to avoid collisions. The attention of Dover Coastguard may have been particularly alerted as Club Med is fitted with an active radar reflector. In retrospect one can imagine the alarm of other shipping in the area seeing a vessel appearing on their radar screen, with the same speed and size of radar blip as a large ship ostensibly careering through the shipping lanes the wrong way at a speed that was in fact consistently 20-24 knots and peaked at 29 knots. - Yachting World website Full story: http://www.yachtingworld.co.uk/ VOLVO OCEAN RACE ASSA ABLOY's Volvo Ocean Race yacht will be built by the world renowned British shipwrights Green Marine. Top British sailor Jason Carrington will be construction manager and go on to be part of ASSSA ABLOY's crew. Green Marine built the Prada boat for the America's Cup 2000 as well as Intrum Justitia's second placed entry to the 1993/1994 Whitbread. Construction will begin in early October. Building expertise will consist mainly of Green Marine's craftsmen, but will also include other hand-picked individuals. Top British sailor Jason Carrington is construction manager. Construction in the UK will also involve personnel from Swedish technical Semcon, who ASSA ABLOY's official technical partner in their bid to win the Volvo Ocean Race. Semcon bring technological expertise to the project and will work with analytical, calculative and logistic issues during construction. Semcon will also be responsible for IT-support and assist in the development of the boats' IT systems and various tests. ASSA ABLOY will build two boats in order to test for the fastest possible start in Southampton on September 23rd 2001. "It's not yet decided whether the boats will be identical. Further studies in the autumn will establish this," explained Richard Brisius, project leader for ASSA ABLOY's entry in the Volvo Ocean Race. World-famous boat designer Bruce Farr, known for designing all the winning Whitbread entries since 1986 designs the two boats. - Josefine Lemmel, Sai Online website Full story: http://www.sail-online.com/html.cfm?Activedoc=article.cfm&rep1=news&NumArticle=1493 HEAVY AIR LESSONS (Dobbs Davis examined successful techniques for heavy air competition on the SailNet website. Here are two excerpts from his story.) * The most important factors for sailing well upwind in heavy air are the rig setup, sail selection, crew weight, sail trim, and steering techniques. If each of these areas is well executed, the boat will make good progress upwind, but if even one is mishandled or ignored, boat speed can suffer enormously. The optimal rig setup for these conditions will obviously vary from boat to boat, but some general principles apply to all designs. More mast rake, for example, is a desirable feature in light air to promote weather helm, but should be reduced in a breeze where the boat will have adequate helm from the increased amount of heel. If the boat has running backstays, more load on them translates to a tighter headstay, which in turn helps optimize the shape of the jib for stronger breezes. More permanent backstay pressure will also help by tightening the headstay in masthead rigs, and by bending the mast to flatten, and thereby depower, the shape of the mainsail. * Sail-trim techniques are a little more complex, but they're generally based on the principal of flattening the sail shape to depower the sail plan. Mast bend will promote flattening of the mainsail, and easing the sheet and letting the sheet lead back on the jib will allow it to depower by way of twisting off the leech. The mainsail should have the outhaul pulled on with maximum tension and the traveler should be dropped just far enough to leeward so that there's still sufficient pressure on the leech of the sail to give feel to the helm, but not so much as to cause excessive heel. If the traveler is to leeward and the mainsheet eased, using a little vang tension can keep pressure on the leech and prevent the sail from luffing. Then, as the boat sails up the leg, the mainsail trimmer constantly plays the traveler in the puffs and lulls in an effort to maintain a consistent pressure on the helm. - Dobbs Davis, SailNet website Full story: http://www.sailnet.com/collections/racing/index.cfm?articleid=davisd0012&tfr=fp WINNING SOLUTIONS FROM SAILCLOTH.COM The 2000 ETCHELLS Worlds and MUMM 30 European winners used AIRX in their winning arsenal. Next time, ask your sailmaker to use AIRX, the revolutionary new spinnaker fabric from Bainbridge International exclusively from Bainbridge International, where power and performance are cut from the same cloth. For more information, visit http://www.sailcloth.com MATCH RACING HAMILTON, BERMUDA, October 9, 2000-Adam Barboza won the Black Seal Cup for the Bermuda National Match Racing Championship on Sunday, and Paula Lewin was second, earning the two Bermudian match racers the remaining two places in this year's 2000 Colorcraft Gold Cup. Sponsored by Goslings, the two skippers and their crews will compete as Team Black Seal during the Gold Cup, to be sailed at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, October 22-29 2000. Barboza earned his title as the Bermuda National Champion of Match Race Sailing after just one day's sailing on Saturday. He advanced to the Sunday semi-finals with a perfect 7-0 record but Sunday racing was abandoned for lack of wind and the outcome was decided on the basis of the previous day's racing. Barboza's seven bullets and Lewin's six victories and one loss resulted in first and second places for the pair. This was the second year running that Barboza was named National Match Race Sailing Champion. Eight skippers contested this year's championship that started on Saturday in International One Designs (IODs) in ideal sailing conditions - a 10 to 12-knot southerly breeze and bright sunshine. The passage of a cold front overnight killed any chance of racing on Sunday, with rain and calm conditions initially forcing a postponement, before sailing was cancelled early in the afternoon. - Keith Taylor Final results were: 1. Adam Barboza 7-0; 2. Paula Lewin 6-1; 3. Andreas Lewin 4-3; 4. Glenn Astwood 4-3. Website: http://www.bermudagoldcup.com ALBACORE NORTH AMERICAN CHAMPIONSHIPS The Rehoboth Bay Sailing Association hosted the 2000 Albacore North American Championships Oct. 7-8, with 32 boats racing in winds ranging from 10-30 knots and temperatures ranging from the mid-40s to mid-60s over the course of the three-day event. Current U.S. and Canadian Champion Barney Harris (Arlington, VA) and longtime crew David Byron (San Francisco, CA) scored six bullets in the seven-race series, with their throwout race being a second place in race 5. Two races were sailed on Oct. 7 in 15 to 20-knot winds, and four on Oct. 8 in winds that started out at 15-20 during race 3 but later subsided to 5-10 by race 6. The seventh (and last) race of the regatta took place on Sunday, Oct. 8 with winds averaging 25 knots. While only 11 boats opted to sail the final race, the race committee set the course near enough to the RBSA clubhouse to provide a thrilling spectator experience for those sailors who opted to stay ashore. "The winds were oscillating by plus or minus 20 degrees," Harris said. "It was very important to stay on the lifted tack and watch for the shifts." The Albacore was designed to handle the high winds and rough seas of the English Channel, and the sailors reveled in the conditions that dominated the event. Having "flat sails" was a key to keeping the boat upright on Sunday, according to Neville Herbert and crew Ben Jones of Great Britain, who chartered a boat for the event and placed fifth in both that race as well as overall. Probably the highlight of the regatta came after race 7 had concluded. Using boathandling skills that drew applause from the sailors onshore, second-place finisher (third overall) and former Naval Academy All-American sailor Jasper Craig (Pasadena, MD) with crew Becky Craig and Doug Foord approached the dock on a screaming plane, only to bring the boat to a dead stop upwind right alongside the boat lifts. - John Liang Final results: 1. Barney Harris and David Byron, Arlington, VA (6) 2. Marty Hublitz and Pascal Buckley, Vienna, VA (20) 3. Jasper Craig and Becky Craig and Doug Foord, Pasadena, MD (23) 4. Raines Koby and Abby MacInnes, Ottawa, Canada (23) 5. Neville Herbert and Ben Jones, United Kingdom (31) Event website: http://www.my-town.com/sailing/ THE CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. |
