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SCUTTLEBUTT 3337 - Monday, May 9, 2011Scuttlebutt is published each weekday with the support of its sponsors,providing a digest of major sailing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus. Website: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/scuttbutt Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sailingscuttlebutt RSS: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/rss/index.xml Today's sponsors: Summit Yachts and Team One Newport. KEELBOATS ELIMINATED FROM 2016 OLYMPICS The International Sailing Federation (ISAF) confirmed on Saturday the ten events for the 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition at 2011 ISAF Mid-Year Meeting in St Petersburg, Russia. ISAF President Goran Petersson led the ISAF Council in more than three hours of debate and discussion before the ten events were decided. Over 50 Submissions were received for consideration following the changes to the process for selecting events and equipment that was agreed in November 2010. The ten events selected by the ISAF Council for the 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition are: Men's Board and/or Kiteboard - evaluation Women's Board and/or Kiteboard - evaluation Men's One Person Dinghy - Laser Women's One Person Dinghy - Laser Radial Men's 2nd One Person Dinghy - Finn Men's Skiff - 49er Women's Skiff - evaluation Men's Two Person Dinghy - 470 Women's Two Person Dinghy - 470 Mixed Two Person Multihull - evaluation With the Men's Keelboat event having been eliminated from the provisional event list that came from the 2010 ISAF Annual Conference held last November in Greece, there were two changes from the provisional list to the final event list. The first change was in the Two Person Dinghy, which was suggested to be a single mixed event but returned to be individual men's and women's events as they will be for the 2012 Olympics. But because of the ten event limit, one event now had to be eliminated, and the Women's Keelboat event was selected for elimination. A two-stage voting process, similar to that used by the IOC when choosing a host city for the Olympic Games, was used by the ISAF Council to decide the final list. After the first stage, 7 of the 50 submissions went through to the second stage of voting. The ISAF Council is comprised of the President and seven Vice-Presidents, along with other members of the Executive Committee (two Presidents of Honour and a Treasurer - all non-voting). There are also 29 appointed members who represent each of the regional groups of sailing nations, and representatives of the Oceanic and Offshore Committee, the ISAF Classes Committee, the Women's Forum and the Athlete's Commission (non-voting). A full report of the decisions made in St Petersburg will be published in the minutes, these include: - Decisions on the core events for 2020 were deferred until the 2011 Annual Conference in November. - 29er XX granted Recognized Class Status. - 2014 Youth Olympic Games Events confirmed as: Boy's Windsurfer, Girl's Windsurfer, Boy's One Person Dinghy and Girl's One Person Dinghy. - Olympic Class World Championships set to continue. - A single ranking system for the Olympic events to be operational from 2013 onwards. Source: http://www.sailing.org/35891.php PRAISE BE TO MOTHER TERESA FOR SAVING ISAF FROM ITSELF By Andy Rice, SailJuice (May 7, 2011) - It all came down to one vote. In a tense face-off around the ISAF Council table, the 37 members voted 19 to 18 in favour of keeping skiffs on the Olympic sailing roster, at the expense of the keelboats. The seven vice-presidents of ISAF Executive Committee had agreed to block vote in favour of the keelboats. But I've been told that Teresa Lara, the Venezuelan VP, broke ranks with her colleagues and voted in line with the recommendations of the Events Committee (ie, the skiffs). If this is the case, then praise be to Teresa Lara for having the political courage to go with her own convictions, and not be swayed by the last-minute 'volte face' of her VP colleagues. It's sad to see the keelboat not represented at the 2016 Games (although with some more enlightened thinking there could have been room for everyone - more of that another time). However, the past four years - the fallout from the multihull's exclusion, the subsequent formation of the Olympic Commission, the proposal tabled at last November's ISAF meeting - have all been about a forging a new direction for Olympic sailing. Keelboats - or more specifically the Star - were struggling to justify their place in that new vision. So, while today's announcement offers plenty of reasons to be cheerful, we also know that the leadership of ISAF have learned absolutely nothing from the debacle of Cascais 2007. The past four years of hard work by the sub-committees of ISAF came perilously close to being unraveled by three crazy days in St Petersburg. -- Read on: http://tinyurl.com/SJ-050811 SUMMIT YACHTS IN THE NEWS Summit Yachts have started the spring racing season with multiple wins. "Blondie", a Summit 40 owned by Helmuth Hennig, took first place wins in the Hong Kong China Coast Regatta, The Liptom Cup, and The Tomes Cup where he beat his arch rival, the Mills Custom 43, "Ambush". In England, Mike Bartholomew's Summit 40, "Tokoloshe, took a first place finish in big boat class 2 in the Tomes Cup with 4 firsts and 2 thirds. Race winning performance in a cruise friendly boat makes the Summit 35 and Summit 40 a tough act to beat! Check us out at http://www.summit/yachts.com NEW SEASON - GOOD. OLYMPIC DECISION - NOT SO MUCH By Ian Williams, '07, '08 Match Racing World Champion The World Match Racing Tour starts this week at Match Race France in Marseille and Team GAC Pindar are the best prepared that we have been since 2008. By securing the funding and committing to the Tour before the start of the year, we have been able to plan effectively and I feel confident that we can give a good account of ourselves this year. We have done two warm-up regattas, the Congressional Cup (Long Beach, CA) in March and last week's Open de Espana (Calpe, Spain). Both were Grade 1 events (the level directly below WMRT) and we have won both. In fact, we have not been beaten in a race in the final rounds of either regatta, with 10 wins from 10 races. So we deserve to feel confident. Of course, one of the hardest things about the WMRT is that every event is so different. We have been successful in Catalina 37s and Tom 28s (the boats used in the two warm up regattas), but now the question is whether we can continue that success in J/80s (which will be used at MRF). The J/80 is probably the hardest boat for us on the Tour as we tend to favour the bigger, more tactical, boats. The smaller boats are much faster to manouevre and the kinetics around the boat are more critical which tends to favour the younger teams and those with a stronger dinghy sailing background. That aspect can be a great leveler and we are expecting a tough challenge from any of the other 11 teams in the Event. Round robin racing starts on Wednesday. This past week the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) has been meeting in St. Petersburg for their mid-year meetings. The governing body of sailing has a huge job in governing such a diverse sport and makes decisions on wide ranging aspects of the sport, but the decisions that everybody seems to focus on is its choice of Olympic Events. I have some bitter experiences with this decision making process, having been all set to campaign a Soling for the 2004 Olympics before it was dropped only 3 1/2 years before the Athens Games. The reality of Olympic campaigning is that you rarely make it to the Olympics on your first attempt so really it is an eight year commitment just to go to the Olympics. And if you build up your skill level in one class or discipline, it is very difficult to change. Four years ago, ISAF voted multihulls out of the Olympics. That decision made them look pretty silly as the rest of the sailing world began to embrace the multihull, most notably with the introduction of the AC72 for the America's Cup. This time around, the multihull is back (as a "mixed" event) and the keelboats are out. I have to say I really feel for the sailors who have committed a great deal of time and resources to Olympic keelboat sailing as their skills are no longer relevant to the Olympics. I think that many of the top Star sailors will find another outlet in professional sailing, however, rightly or wrongly, professional sailing is predominantly a man's world so the top female keelboat sailors will be extremely frustrated by this twist. Story source: http://www.williamssailracing.com/ Open de Espana story: http://www.sailing.org/35892.php ATTRITION BEGINS 34th America's Cup Regatta Director Iain Murray told Sail-World that one of the teams that had lodged a Notice of Challenge with the Defender, Golden Gate Yacht Club had been declined. When the entries were announced at the closing date at the end of March 2011, there were ten named teams, five teams who had asked their details be kept confidential, and two of those were listed as being subject to vetting by the Defender, Golden Gate Yacht Club. The fifteen teams listed included Oracle Racing, the America's Cup Defender. While Murray would not reveal the name or details of the team, it must be assumed that it did not comply with the requirements of the Protocol for the 34th America's Cup in some way. Later in the interview, Murray responded that he expected that there could be a late entry made, but would not say if it was on the Challenger or Defender side of the entry list. Last Saturday, 30 April marked the date required under the Protocol for the posting of the first Performance Bond for an amount of USD200,000 which could be either by bank deposit or a documentary form payable on demand. Murray confirmed that not all teams had met the deadline, but would not disclose if more than just one had missed or who the teams were. He did say that the matter would now be passed to the International Jury to investigate and possibly hold a Hearing. It may well be that the teams had in fact complied with the required with the requirements of the Protocol, but due to Bank Holidays etc in various parts of the world the required instruments had not been fully processed. Sail-World was told earlier last week that in the past there had been substantial delays in processing payments, and that a slide of several days was not unusual if the payment was made close to the due date. It may well be that the issue has its roots in bank administration issues, and that there is nothing untoward. However the matter is now for the International Jury to determine, and if an omission has occurred, then that is a matter for them to determine and penalise, if required. A second Performance Bond of USD800,000 is required to be lodged by 31 December 2011. Watch video of interview: http://tinyurl.com/SW-050811 MIGRATION: Four America's Cup teams - Artemis Racing, China Team, ORACLE Racing, and Emirates Team New Zealand - have been in Auckland, NZL, training on their AC45s in preparation for the first America's Cup World Series event in Cascais, Portugal (August 6-14). But with the approach of the southern hemisphere winter, the AC45s have begun their move to Europe. Part of the design brief for the AC45 was that it be easy to ship. With removable sterns on both hulls, the canoe bodies of the catamarans just squeeze into a standard 40 foot shipping container. The wings too get pulled apart and before long, the high-tech racing catamarans are ready for transport. -- Full report: http://www.americascup.com/blog/over-and-out_128 EXTREME TEAM RACING CHAMPIONSHIP The Wilson Trophy British Open Team Racing Championship, hosted and organised by West Kirby Sailing Club, was held May 6-8 at the Marine Lake in West Kirby. The 32 selected teams, representing the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States, came to compete in what is considered one of two elite international team racing events, the other being the Team Racing World Championship held every two years. And all the top teams qualified for the 2011 Team Racing World Championship in Ireland (Aug 27-Sept 11) were at The Wilson. By the end of the 20 round, 320 race, Swiss League competition, two U.S. teams - NYYC Team Extreme and Buns & Ammo - were among the quarter finalists, but it would only be the defending champions NYYC Team Extreme that would advance to the semi-finals. Representing the U.S. team was Zach Brown and Emmet Smith, Thomas Barrows and Marla Menninger, and Stuart McNay and Michael Hession. With hordes of spectators now lining the shoreline and packing the grandstand, the semi-finals provided a breathtaking display of the highest quality team racing. NYYC Team Extreme was matched against West Kirby SC, with the host club team narrowly taking the first race. NYYC Team Extreme struck back in the second race, rounding the final mark holding first and second, a position they were comfortably able to maintain to the finish. The deciding race of this match hung in the balance until the final beat, when the NYYC Team Extreme turned on the team racing style, to take the win and set up a repeat of last year's Grand Final against West Kirby Hawks. By the time the Grand Final got underway the wind had risen considerably again and with the boats still on full rigs, the crews had some real boat handling challenges to deal with. As expected, the Grand Final was a spectacular affair, with the two teams putting on a full bore team racing masterclass, much to the appreciation of the hundreds of delighted spectators, who loudly cheered every maneuver. The first race went to NYYC Team Extreme after West Kirby Hawks squandered a potentially winning position on the final beat. Quickly regrouping, the Hawks struck back in the wild and windy second race, to level the score. NYYC Team Extreme then took the next race to establish a 2 - 1 advantage. With the wind now topping twenty knots in the gusts, the race committee in the interests of fair team racing, made the sensible decision to send the teams ashore to change to the smaller rigs. Given the extreme conditions, the pre-start action in the third race was surprisingly intense, with the two teams hurling themselves at each other like a couple of street gangs in a turf war. However, from the moment the start gun sounded, the Hawks knew they were in trouble - with two boats over early and forced to restart. NYYC Team Extreme were simply too good a squad to hand such an advantage to, and given control so early in the race, they rocketed away to close out the Grand Final with a comprehensive win. Event website: http://www.wksc.net/wilsontrophy STAY PROTECTED WITH KAENON SUNGLASSES FROM TEAM ONE NEWPORT Team One Newport has been keeping sailors warm, dry and comfortable for 26 years! And comfort for your eyes is VERY important too. We are offering a free Kaenon t-shirt with a purchase of the ultimate sailing sunglasses: Kaenon. Visit http://www.team1newport.com/products.asp?dept=114 to view the great selection of Kaenon products, and then add the free T-shirt promo to your shopping cart. Also, look at the Musto Sale items that are going fast! Team One Newport is the best place to buy your crew uniforms as well. Call 800-VIP-GEAR (800-847-4327) and ask for the crew uniform department or email Martha@team1newport.com. Get ready for your upcoming racing season and be dressed to win with Team One Newport. SAILING SHORTS * Austin, TX (May 8, 2011) - Antilles School of St Thomas, USVI won the 2011 Mallory Championship, emblematic of the high school national doublehanded championship. Hosted by Austin Yacht Club on May 7-8, twenty teams competed in FJs on Lake Travis, with both A and B teams completing 19 races. Finishing second and third were Southern California rivals Coronado HS (Coronado, CA) and Point Loma HS (San Diego, CA), respectively. Complete results: http://tinyurl.com/HS-050811 * The United States Optimist Dinghy Association completed their Team Trials regatta, where 172 sailors were hosted by the San Francisco Yacht Club. The four day regatta (May 4-7) will be used by the US to determine their representatives at the Optimist World Championships in New Zealand, the European Championships in Portugal, the Asian Championships in Singapore, the North American Championships in Cabrillo Beach (Calif.), the British Nationals and the Flanders regatta in Nieuwport Belgium. With 12 races completed, Wade Waddell dominated the competition with five firsts (29 points), followed by Russell Clarida (60 pts) and top female Martina Sly (67 pts). Full results: http://tinyurl.com/US-050811 * Portland State Sailing will be hosting The Afterguard event in conjunction with their annual Gorge Invite Regatta on May 14th & 15th, in the Gorge at Cascade Lock, Oregon. The regatta is open to NWICSA and ICSA alumni. Details: http://www.tinyurl.com/psualum * Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed into law Wednesday his controversial budget that raises the state sales tax and includes a 0.65 percent luxury tax on boats. Under the new budget the Connecticut sales tax will increase from 6 percent to 6.35 percent. A 0.65 percent luxury tax will be added on boats that sell for $100,000 and more, for a total tax of 7 percent. -- Soundings, full report: http://tinyurl.com/TOT-050811 SCUTTLEBUTT SAILING CALENDAR Events listed at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar GUEST COMMENTARY Scuttlebutt strongly encourages feedback from the Scuttlebutt community. Either submit comments by email or post them on the Forum. Submitted comments chosen to be published in the newsletter may be limited to 250 words. Authors may have one published submission per subject, and should save their bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere. Email: editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com Forum: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum * From Dobbs Davis (re, Barry Dunning letter in SBUTT 3336) I have to respond to the misunderstandings surrounding the ISAF Classification scheme. Here are some points to make to hopefully help clear the air: - The Classification system is a service to classes and events who want to define who they want to sail; it is not a requirement imposed by ISAF on all sailors; - The system has been in use now for over a decade, and has its roots in the US Sailing and RYA systems of the 1990's; - The system is completely free and web-based; - Classification Commission members are from all continents, and represent a broad cross section of both pro and amateur sailors, industry members, race committee members, judges and umpires; - Many classes who have crew restrictions word this so that they limit the number of non-Group 1's, and require Group 1's to prove this by having them apply through the system; - The system is devised this way because most classes and events want to promote amateur sailor participation, and therefore use the ISAF guidelines to help define what that means; - ISAF regularly consults with its users (events and classes) to help keep these definitions and interpretations relevant. Some classes assume in their crew administrative functions that those who are not Group 1 are Group 3, but this may not necessarily be the case, and does not have to be certified by ISAF...each team merely needs to meet their requirements under class rules to certify their Group 1's. So, the system is not a mockery, the writer merely misunderstands how classes use it: the only crew members who need to be 'properly registered' are those complying with their own class rules to be certified by ISAF to be Group 1. No one requires Group 3's to be certified by ISAF. * From Ted Beier: (re, rust in swaged cable end fittings - SBUTT 3333) Besides the lack of oxygen, the wire and inside surfaces of the fitting are highly stressed from the swaging process, which also promote corrosion. The corrosion may be inhibited by treating the ends with a wickable epoxy like Git Rot right after the swaging process and before the new stays are exposed to weather and salt. Arrange the fittings vertically with the cable end up. Put drops of the epoxy on the cable at the edge of the end fitting, and allow it to wick in. Repeat the process until the fitting will not "drink" any more just as the product would be used for rotted wood. I have been treating stays that I have made for my customers headed for salt water for years, and have never seen any further corrosion adjacent/inside end fittings. Another corrosion source is the split vinyl stay covers. If you are going to use them, treat the entire length of stay that will be covered with Git Rot as well. CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION People do not change, they only become more so. SPONSORS THIS WEEK Summit Yachts - Team One Newport Atlantis WeatherGear - IYRS - North Sails Doyle Sails - West Marine - LaserPerformance - Ullman Sails J Boats - Point Loma Outfitting - Mount Gay Rum Need stuff? Look here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ssc/suppliers |
