SCUTTLEBUTT No. 952 - November 27, 2001

Scuttlebutt 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 Back up to a reasonable speed after a frustrating 36 hours, Team SEB lead the Volvo Ocean Race fleet to Eclipse Island. This morning at 0348 they were the first yacht to arrive in Australia and round Eclipse Island. Even though it is the first sight of land for some time, Eclipse is just a rock, elevating less than 100 metres out of the water, inhabited by birds only, with an old lighthouse on top of it. The get-together of several vessels with illbruck's and the Volvo Ocean Race's support boats, are an exception there.

SEB rounded on an overcast day, flying full main and a number two headsail when Gurra Krantz gave an interview for the chasing camera-boat. As soon as SEB has cleared the island, SEB's navigator Marcel van Triest called for a tack, to head back south for the stronger winds that will take them to the Bass Strait.

Next to round will be illbruck in about one hour time, followed by ASSA ABLOY and News Corp another hour later. Djuice and Amer Sports One will round today as well. It's anticipated that Keith Kilpatrick will be taken off Amer Sports One near Eclipse Island.

POSITIONS on November 27 @ 0358 GMT: 1. Team SEB, 1813 miles to finish; 2. illbruck, 11 miles behind leader; 3. Assa Abloy, 21 mbl; 4. News Corp, 23 mbl; 5. djuice, 42 mbl; 6. Amer Sports One, 75 mbl; Amer Sports too, 222 mbl. - www.volvooceanrace.org

QUOTES FROM THE BOATS
"Right now we're certainly not on a high. In fact it's downright depressing! After several days of good racing and pushing the front, we are now drifting around watching all the other boats including Amer Sports One and Amer Sports Too make up big deficits. They see where the leaders park up, pick a slightly different lane, and throw the dice. With the way this ridge has formed, it is impossible to make and ETA within a day." - Rudi Rudiger, Assa Abloy

"Previously I have said that the good times always outweighed the bad when it came to the Southern Ocean but that was usually with a few years to forget the low times. With the memory only slightly blurred I think I may be turning... do not delete this message and please show it to me if I start talking about sailing another Volvo Ocean Race." - Stu Bannatyne, illbruck

"We have absolutely no wind, and had had absolutely no wind or very close to it all through the night. So as a contrast of magnitude compared to our previous days of thunder blasting down waves, we are flapping and flapping." - Stig Westergaard, djuice

"The last 15 hours have been incredibly frustrating. One boat will get a little bit of breeze and move forward and then everyone else will get a bit of a breeze and you think you are just breaking through into the lead but then you stop and hit a hole," - Jez Fanstone, Team News Corp

"It's disappointing as it feels like every mile we gained in the Southern Ocean is worth nothing as we have all come back together again but that is life in this race," - Knut Frostad, djuice

"The worst of the Southern Ocean for us was no hot food and no pasta." - Lisa McDonald, Amer Sports Too

COMMENTARY
(On the madforsailing website Peter Bentley asked some probing questions about the efforts being made by the all-women crew on Amer Sports Too. Here's a very brief excerpt from his story.)

(Skipper Lisa) McDonald conceded that Amer Sports Too had incurred a lot of minor, and time consuming, gear failures in the Southern Ocean, but does this alone account for their relatively poor performance? Sure, the all-female crew has caught up a bundle in the past 48 hours but that is nothing to do with how fast the boat is or how hard it is being driven; it's simply down to there being more wind at the back of the fleet.

So are they really racing hard? Messages and the images coming from the boat seem to indicate that the pedal is not quite so far down to the metal on Amer Sports Too as it is on the other boats.

* (After listing a lot of examples, Bentley concludes his story by stating: "While Ellen MacArthur, Florence Arthaud, Isabelle Autissier and Shirley Robertson amongst others have done nothing but good for the image of women in sailing, its hard to see how the same can be said of Amer Sports Too. Am I alone in asking if Amer Sport Too's performance really does anything to further women's sailing in the wider world?") - Peter Bentley, madforsailing website

Do yourself a favor and read Bentley's entire story: www.madforsailing.com

ONE-DESIGN
Charlie Ogletree used a full inventory of Ullman Sails to win the Santana 20 Nationals. And the same people who 'broke the code' by squeezing more boatspeed from the Santana 20 are ready to work with you to improve the performance of your boat - no matter what you sail. The proven and affordable way to make it happen is to work with the pros at Ullman Sails to spruce up your sail inventory. For the location of the nearest loft that can provide you with a price quote: www.ullmansails.com

AMERICA'S CUP
The (Swiss Alinghi) team - which contains people of 14 nationalities - now train six days a week, including sessions in the gym, in the classroom and out on the water. "The complexity of trying to get everything right is something I have liked since I started sailing," (skipper Russell) Coutts said. "This America's Cup will be the best we have seen. It will be more competitive because the talent is more widely spread."

Looking ahead to the challenger series, Coutts said the Louis Vuitton Cup was wide open. "The picture has yet to develop. Every team I look at have their strengths and weaknesses. The one sure thing about this America's Cup is that is there is no sure bet. No one thought Team New Zealand were going to win in 1995. There are always plenty of surprises.

"We believed we were going to win in San Diego in 1992. We almost believed winning was inevitable, which in many ways was our problem. You learn a lot from winning an America's Cup, but you learn even more from not winning one."

People often ask, what the most important factor is in preparing for the America's Cup. "I think most skippers would say it is not just a question of having the fastest boat - although that's a positive. But slower boats have won also. It is not technology alone, or the size of one's budget, or simply the amount of time spent preparing. Since 1987, none of the teams who have spent the most money have gone on to win. It seems that often the most crucial decisions are the big ones you make at the start of a campaign." - Julie Ash, NZ Herald

Full story: www.nzherald.co.nz/sports/

STATISTICS
(The following quotes came from a roundup by Peter Nash of the recently concluded 4th International Sailing Summit in Portugal.)

* "While 98 percent of the world population don't sail, there's a huge audience out there," said Ronstan president Alistair Murray. "If we can raise that figure just half of one percent, we will have made a huge difference."

* The decline in sailing popularity was highlighted by Susan Daly from Vanguard Boats, the USA's leading manufacturer of small boats. Vanguard's research, said Daly, showed sailing has declined 37 percent in five years. The RYA's Rod Carr concurred, "Our figures show a 7.5 percent drop, year on year, for the last three years."

* Randy Repass, chairman of West Marine, said his company figures emphasised that 92 percent of sailors were involved in recreational sailing. "Our figures show that only eight percent of sailors go racing."

* "It's obvious that sailing has a huge problem," said (Alistair) Murray. "The International Sailing Summits have recognized that problem and we are now taking steps to provide a solution that can work around the globe."

WHAT AN AWESOME IDEA
Imagine a pair of shorts that keeps you organized with giant pockets to store everything, parachute chords just in case, flashlight holders, and plenty of places to attach those whatzamacallits that can open, close, chop slice and dice everything. While Camet has created the Swiss Army Knife of shorts, the have bomb-proofed and engineered their highly popular quick drying Camet shorts for their crews to feel comfortable on the weather rail. For Key West, Midwinters etc. they are a must have: www.camet.com

RACE OFFICIALS
On an initiative from the ISAF's Women's Sailing Committee, to further develop women as race officials on the international jury circuit, the ISAF has approved as a recommendation to event organisers, that when selecting juries, that there be a least one female member of the jury when there is a reasonable likelihood of female participation in the event. Further that for youth and women's events there should be two female members of the jury. Whilst no issues have arisen to date, to ensure there can never be a question of national bias directed at a jury chairman, it was approved that for International Juries no person from the country hosting the event shall be appointed as Chairman of the Jury. - www.sailing.org

REGATTA SCORING PROGRAM
The latest version of Sailwave, a completely free sailing scoring application for Windows that is now used in some 50 countries, is available for download. As with previous versions, emphasis remains with ease-of-use rather then uncontrolled functionality - new features are added only if they are generally applicable. Changes to the latest version include the incorporation of user defined HTML templates and CSS style-sheets, a quick-reference property bar and improvements to the PHRF capabilities. www.sailwave.com

BROKEN RUDDER
Since the Farr Yacht Design team was initially informed on the morning of November 14th of the Volvo 60 TYCO's rudder problems in Leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race, we have been working tirelessly to assist their team. We remain confident in our VO 60 rudder design methods and have been consulting with the boat's builders to establish TYCO's rudder construction process. Our review of TYCO's situation has concluded that their rudder was built using a different construction process than those of the other VO 60s built to our design, and therefore, based on the information sent to us on the damage to the rudder stock, we consider it unlikely that other teams will experience the same problem. - Margaret Rodgers, Farr Yacht Design, Ltd, www.farrdesign.com

237 ENTRIES!
For its 16th edition, the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) is setting off again from Las Palmas (Canaries) heading for Rodney Bay in Saint Lucia (Caribbean). On the program, 2700 nautical miles (5000 km) along the trade wind route for a festive and safe transat and some 12 to 24 days at sea. There are no less than 237 entries for this 2001 edition, making the ARC one of the most popular transats for cruisers. This impressive number of boats can be explained by the choice of a very attractive course and by the simplicity of the conditions of participation. Indeed, the ARC is open to all types of boat, both mono and multihulls, sail and power, with all the same a few "safety" restrictions. - ISAF Website

There is lots more: www.sailing.org/Article_content.asp?ArticleID=1599

Event website: www.catana-live.com/wica_v1_uk_edi/index.cfm

FITNESS
(No matter what kind of sailing you do, you're involved in an active sport, and at some point you have to deal with the issue of conditioning. Dan Dickison examined basic fitness for sailors in a story he wrote for the SailNet website. Here are two brief excerpts.)

Flexibility - Stretching out prior to and after athletic endeavors has long been preached by professional athletic trainers. This practice loosens your muscles, but it also lessens their recoil, which is a feature you want for explosive activities like jumping a halyard or quickly gathering a spinnaker on a takedown. Trainers today promote the idea of dynamic stretching for such explosive activities and sailing is full of them. Doing stretching routines like high-knee steps or arm windmills instead of static stretching before sailing will help you achieve that kind of fitness.

Endurance - Sailing and marathon running-the embodiment of endurance in sports-don't appear to have much in common, but consider that most races mean that you're out in the elements hiking, grinding winches, and concentrating on performance in pretty much a non-stop fashion for long stretches of time. That requires a certain level of endurance on the part of your body, right? The goal of endurance training is to raise what's called your VO2 max-the number of milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight your body metabolizes in one minute of exercise. Forget the science and keep in mind that you want to train for 60 to 90 minutes three times a week at 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. After that you can kick it up a notch and do what the professionals call interval training, which means that you train harder for a while and not so hard for a while. In sailing parlance, that means doing 10 tacks or jibes in a row and then taking a break before doing it all over again. - Dan Dickison, SailNet website.

Full story: www.sailnet.com/collections/seamanship/index.cfm?articleid=ddcksn0481&tfr=fp

TIMME ANGSTEN MEMORIAL
Chicago Yacht Club - The 2001 Timme Angsten Memorial Regatta had warm (60 degree) temperatures and (relatively) steady southerlies for the first two days. Sunday brought cooler temperatures and more typical harbor conditions, with gusty winds from multiple directions. The University of Washington (Michael Karas '02/Erin Harkins '04 Ryan Storkman '03/Cuyler Boad '03) sailed consistently to take the title. The University of Michigan claimed the Fall MCSA Championship.

Final results: 1. Washington, 149; 2. U. of Rhode Island, 159; 3. Boston College, 160; 4. Brown, 165; 5. Navy, 256; 6. South Florida, 317; 7. UC - Berkeley, 325; 8. Kansas, 341; 9. Michigan, 343; 10. Queen's, 364; - www.chicagoyachtclub.org

THE CURMUDGEON'S COUNSEL
When you say, "I'm sorry", look the person in the eye.