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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 835 - June 13, 2001Scuttlebutt is a digest of yacht racing news of major significance; commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American emphasis. Corrections, contributions, press releases, constructive criticism and contrasting viewpoints are always welcome, but save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere.
VOLVO OCEAN RACE Speaking from the Nautor Challenge's base in La Ciotat, France, Grant Dalton today confirmed to madforsailing that the second of Nautor Challenge's two boats now has funding, will definitely be sailing in the Volvo Ocean Race and will have a female crew. Although the campaign's two boats are not identical, Nautor Challenge will be the Volvo Ocean Race's equivalent to the EF team in the last Whitbread Round the World Race with the boats having joint sponsors and branding. The skipper of the second boat has yet to be decided. "Who the skipper is, we'll announce when we find one! I'm in negotiations..." Dalton is tight lipped about who this person is but admits he is in fact a long way down the track in discussions with one person. Who might this female skipper be? It is not Christine Guillou who skippered EF Education in the last race. However there have been a number of other women who were trying to get campaigns together for this race including Dawn Riley, Lisa Charles and Katie Pettibone and Isabelle Autissier. Autissier sailed a few legs on EF Education and was trying to get a project going with Around Alone/Vendee Globe winner Christophe Auguin for this race. If it is Riley then it is known that Ellen MacArthur was speaking to her earlier this year about joining her crew for some legs. Or could it be....Ellen? We will have to wait to find out. - James Boyd, madforsailing website. There's lots more: www.madforsailing.com
GROWING Only 22 boats lined up in 1996. This year, the 23rd Tour Voile has nearly twice as many entries and will nearly beat its record of 41 boats in 1988. Tour Voile 2001 should reach even higher coverage than in 2000 which was more than a hundred hours of TV coverage, about 12 hours of radio coverage, plus a million hits on www.tourvoile.fr
LEWMAR CARBON FIBER WINCH HANDLE
COLLEGE SAILING Collegiate sailing provides such an intense, pure-racing environment for sailors that it's often regarded as a breeding ground of future Olympians and Americas Cup contenders. In races that last just 20 minutes, every inch matters. Boat speed is minimized as a factor because the small college boats are practically identical. Tactics, positioning, lightning-quick decision making, and strong execution are what win races in this arena. The collegiate circuit allows teams from all parts of the nation compete against each other, weekend after weekend, for the entire fall and spring seasons. And a strict governing body-the Intercollegiate Sailing Association-enforces rigid rules to keep things even. As an example, scholarships are prohibited, which allows schools with small budgets to attract top recruits as successfully as their larger rivals. A varsity team such as the College of Charleston, which has a relatively large budget, has no real recruiting advantage over a club team such as the University of Rhode Island. - Seth Siegler, SailNet website Full Story: www.sailnet.com
LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON * From George Bailey (Regarding: "But authorities fear some people will try to use gene therapy to secure a competitive edge on the playing field. . . .Among the procedures under consideration to ferret out genetic cheats . . ."): If you can improve your body without harming it through gene therapy, what makes that cheating? Is it cheating to read another person's book on how to race well? You are using an artifical resource (someone else's ability) in an attempt to improve your ability. If you do better, you cannot take credit for it. Credit goes to the book's author. So I guess this is cheating too. We had better start giving racers tests to determine if their racing competence is self-taught or if they cheated by getting better in some "unnatural" way (using a coach, reading a book, etc). I suggest everyone rethink the principle behind why some things used to enhance performance (steriods) should be banned and others should not (coaches, books, hotter equipment, etc.). Once we have a grasp of the principle that ought to be used for deciding, use it to decide if gene threapy should be banned. * From Larry Ehrhardt: As Bill Heintz reported, American YC successfully made use of a 10 minute early warning signal (code flag Foxtrot") at its Spring Regatta. The same signal was used to begin the signaling for each race during at last week's J/80 Worlds in Newport. The only shortcoming I observed was that once a Postponement was flown, the next Warning occurred one minute after AP was lowered, regardless of the reason for the postponement. This was fine as long as the postponement was for a short period such as adjusting the line. However during an indefinite postponement (such as waiting for the breeze to come in) a fleet can tend to relax and drift over a fairly wide area. In such conditions it is hard to keep equipment and crew ready for a five minute sequence. This problem could be alleviated by providing an optional postponement signal (AP over Foxtrot) which meant that the Warning would be made six minutes (rather than one) after lowering. Anyone care to try it? * From Malcolm McKeag. Taking the F-flag from RRS Appendix C (the Match Racing Appendix - C3.1) and putting it in the SIs as an optional signal for general fleet racing provides a versatile and useful five-minute warning to the five-minute sequence. The Royal Thames YC and several others here in 'jolly old England' have tried this system this season and it works a treat. If for whatever reason there is any uncertainty about the time of the start for the next race and if the one minute warning period of the new system is not enough for the competitors to get from loitering mode to racing mode Flag F - Attention provides the necessary 'heads up'. The SI needed to use Flag F this way reads: 'Flag F - Attention. When displayed with one sound signal Flag F means "the next signal will be made in five minutes". Flag F will be lowered, with no sound signal, one minute before the next signal is made.' Particular attractions of this system are that no new race signal is being invented, merely an existing one given wider use; no RRS have to be changed; only one, very short, special SI has to be introduced; there is complete flexibility of choice for the RC to go with a 10-minute or a 5-minute sequence as circumstances require. * From John Fox, Fleet Captain, Boston Harbor Star Fleet: I have a couple of suggestions for coping with the reduced sequence that I arrived at after a discussion with the race committee for our Star Fleet. 1. Start on time. We have a published start time and if boats are a half a mile away or more when the warning gun goes off, then it is their problem. If the race committee makes a practice of starting on time, the competitors will soon learn to be at the line on time. 2. The race committee can fly the L flag several minutes before they fire the warning gun. This signal is already in use as "come within hail" so any boat seeing it should, without additional instruction, be headed for the committee boat. Note that you can fly L even if the postponement signal is flying to give boats a bit more warning that something is happening soon. This gives the additional warning without altering the starting sequence from RRS in any way. Personally, I have come to like the new sequence and am quite happy with it. * From Bruce Campbell: I read the note about Olin Stephens and the gathering of S&S boats with great interest. Some day this column will be filled with notes about Olin and all that he has done. I say "Don't wait". Get yourselves to Mystic and meet the man and thank him in person. I started sailing in a Lightning and feel I owe my love of the sport to a great boat and the remarkable people at S&S. * From John Rowley: As an addition to the excerpts from Dan Dickison's 'The Philosophy of Racing' please consider that there is perhaps one more possibility - Radio Controlled Yacht Racing. We race under the same rules, with some clarifications in Appendix E. You can find a racing yacht that has eye appeal that suits you from the four International Classes or the additional dozen or so recognized in the United States. We are organized and friendly, welcoming beginners to become the experts of tomorrow. The International classes hold National and World events, as well as Regional regattas. Each is a chance to race against the best. And the best are always willing to help the novices, in person or by email from all over the world. We are not cruisers in the usual sense, it would be hard to do in a boat just a meter or so long, but I take my "yacht" along in the back of the car on most vacations and am always on the lookout for a nice pond, maybe with some other model yachts around. We are always looking for new sailors to join us, and we are helpful, sometimes to a fault, in trying to get more people involved in the sport. In fact my effort at a handout to interested parties at our pond turned into a monster and is now the International One Metre Compendium. To see how to put together a boat: http://home.earthlink.net/~askducksoup/index.html * From David McCullum: Mallory's comment "because it's there" is almost always taken out of context. Mallory was frustrated with answering the same question over and over again and finally threw out was surely a sarcastic comment. I like this Mallory quote much better: "The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest ?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is no use'. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for." - George Leigh Mallory, 1922
EASY TRANSITION
PENFOLD'S POINTERS Get 2 x 1 metre lengths of 2mm elastic and replace the lace with it then tie the ends together to form a loop... The elastic will slip through the lacing eyes really easily allowing you to get them good and tight, then 'flip' the loop over your foot a couple of times to keep the top nice and tight and stop them coming undone. Taking them off is easier too... Just slip off the loops you secured them with and slacken them off. - By Penfold, BOATmagic website. More pointers: www.boatmagic.com
WORLD MILITARY SAILING CHAMPIONSHIPS
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