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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 958 - December 5, 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 Skipper Grant Dalton was hurt after the Frers designed Volvo Ocean 60 crashed off a wave during a gale in the Bass Strait. After crossing the Opera House finish line, the Nautor Challenge yacht detoured to the Sydney Customs Wharf and Dalton was taken off the yacht on a stretcher. He has suspected broken ribs and severe bruising. Explaining the incident, Dalton said: "I was in the galley area and I was suddenly launched into space. I broke the stove and the fitting that held it to the bulkhead and slammed into the side of the boat. Roger [Nilson, navigator and doctor on Amer Sports One] suspects broken ribs and maybe some internal damage. It is very painful when I breathe," added the Kiwi, who is a veteran of five Whitbread races. Nilson had confined Dalton to a bunk and administered pain-killers, "Grant is in severe pain and has massive bruising," he said. "Grant cannot move without severe distress." For Knut Frostad, it has been a mixed second leg. The djuice crew led the fleet for several days through the Southern Ocean, but succumbed to the lighter breezes that engulfed the yachts as they reached western Australia. Then, after several thousand miles of on-the-edge sailing in the Southern Ocean through fields of iceberg's, Frostad's crew nearly ran into major trouble with Sydney skyline just over the horizon earlier today. As djuice and Amer Sports One sped up the New South Wales coast on a wild and windy Tasman Sea, only hours from the finish, the pink and black Laurie Davidson designed yacht struck an object in the water. "As we gybed and crossed Amer's stern, about one mile behind them, we hit something very hard with the keel, doing about 15 knots boat speed," wrote Frostad in an email earlier."It could have been a whale or a large sunfish. We almost stopped and nasty sounds came from around the rig and keel. A couple of guys fell over in the cockpit, but no one got injured. After a quick check of the boat, it looks like it has survived this one as well," explained Frostad. djuice is now equal fifth overall with Assa Abloy. For Amer Sports One, her second position from leg one coupled with her fifth place today puts Grant Dalton's team in third overall, behind illbruck and News Corp. Crossing the finish line under the cover of darkness, Assa Abloy became the sixth and penultimate yacht to complete leg two of the Volvo Ocean Race. "In hindsight, we could have stayed with News Corp and had a fighting chance at SEB," reflected navigator Mark Rudiger on that decisive mistake. "The fault in our performance in the end is the responsibility of the navigator and skipper. For myself, I misread the weather in some key instances and took some larger risks to try and win rather than protect what we had." After only covering 40 miles in the last six hour period, Amer Sports Too's estimated time of arrival into Sydney to complete the second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race has slipped back to mid-afternoon on Friday 7th December (local time). At 0400 GMT on December 5, Lisa McDonald's team are still in mid Bass Strait, some 511 miles from the finish, with the strong southerly current that flows down the New South Wales coast still to negotiate. Elapsed time for leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race: 1. Illbruck, 022d 13h 22m 26s; 2. SEB, 022d 14h 35m 45s; 3. News Corp, 022d 15h 17m 29s; 4. djuice, 22d 19h 43m 35s; 5. Amer Sports One, 022d 19h 50m 12s; 6. Assa Abloy, 022d 22h 31m 05s. 7. Amer Sports Too, @ ) 0400 GMT November 5, 511 miles from finish.
MUST SEE
EVERY SAILOR'S WISH LIST
MEASUREMENT HANDICAP RACING There are now IRC rated boats in more than 30 countries all around the world. The Rule has been used at a huge number of races and regattas this year. Apart from local events, these include (among many others!) the Sydney Hobart Race, Philippines Presidents Cup, Spi Ouest France, Cowes Week, Hamilton Island Race Week, China Coast Regatta, Voiles de St Tropez, Middle Sea Race, and Phuket Kings Cup. - Jenny Howells, RORC Rating Office, SailSail website. Full story: www.sailsail.com/news/news-article.asp?Articleid=7812
LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON * From Thomas.Hurwitch: Outdoor Life Network has shown a consistent commitment to lifetime sports such as skiing, bicycling and sailing-one that ESPN has consistently ignored. By indicting OLN you are, in essence, supporting ESPN's programming-which normally dispenses with the sports we as outdoor athletes enjoy in favor of cheerleading competitions and spelling bees. This is a fantastic opportunity for a new network to have a chance at televising an event most of us enjoy watching-and proving to ESPN that these events are worth televising. OLN regularly includes sailing in its coverage-whereas we have gotten used to seeing Gary Jobson once a month, at best, on ESPN. For that matter, I welcome the opportunity for someone to try something creative with the coverage-you can keep the sailor profiles-I would rather see the action. I don't have OLN but I figure I have one year to harass my cable company enough to include it in my channel listings * From Tyler Garrett: Outdoor Life Network is not obscure. It is right next to ESPN2, ESPN, and Speedvision on my menu. All dedicated sailors should have Echostars "Dish Network". It works well, you can get service anywhere and it is cheap. In my area they will give you all the necessary equipment if you sign up for a 1 yr contract. Since ESPN is not available for free either, I do not see what the hoopla is about. Yes, it takes some effort to get Satellite TV hooked up but it is well worth it to thumb your nose at the various robber baron cable companies. And the up side is a lot of cool shows on OLN! * From Antony Barran: I want to applaud Meaghan Van Liew for her recent letter. Inclusion is the key. I agree that to grow our sport we need to make it both more approachable and appealing. However, the 'if you build it, they will come' theory is unrealistic. While the media can make sailing more appealing and approachable, getting coverage is not a chicken and egg scenario. Neither events nor audiences build Media coverage. Advertisers do. In order for sailing to increase media coverage, advertisers need to invest in the events. To do that, sailors need to master the semantics of the ad industry and defining media value. There aren't enough advertisers that have sailors in critical positions to continue on handshakes and the lure of 17th man positions. I was recently asked why great sailors, like Mark Reynolds, have a difficult time getting sponsorships. It's because they are professional sailors not advertising people; further that the competition to win sponsorship dollars is with the ad agencies, and not football. While a professional sailor may be able to out sail the agency guys 9 times out of 10 on the weekend, the reverse is true on Monday. It's about TRPs, share and brands, not sail shape, driving and tactics. If you can sell sponsorships to advertisers you can create media coverage. There is no 'silver bullet' for sailing. It is a long hard slog that will take a complete reconsideration of the value of a great sailor to a program off the water. * From Chris Brady (edited to our 250-word limit): One of the best ways to increase the popularity of sailboat racing is to encourage younger generations to sail on something besides Lasers or 420s. Although I grew up sailing primarily dinghies and continue to do so in college, my greatest learning experiences have been on keelboats with a sailor who was (and still is) eager to teach me about all the aspects of sailing. Not only did I learn tactics and rules, but sportsmanship and the type of dignity (and at times humility) that youth dinghy sailing seems to sometimes lack. I was lucky enough to sail with an extremely talented and patient individual, but I believe that every sailor no matter where they finish in the fleet has something to impart on a young sailor. You never know, involving a young sailor on your boat may even increase your own performance. It is quite plausible that you may discover something about your own sailing in trying to analyze it for the knowledge of a young mind. You may be surprised at the pure instinct and raw talent that some young sailors will bring to the boat. However, I hope that those who might have the capability of turning a young sailor off to the sport (i.e. a yeller) would have the common sense to abstain from taking this advice. Be a mentor to a young sailor - by involving the next generation of sailors you can ensure the health of sailboat racing in the future. * From Malcolm McKeag Two things: first, why this obsessive worry (Susan Daly et al) about a decline in the number of people taking up or going sailing? Fewer participants means less pressure on permanent berthing places, emptier anchorages (we might get some of our anchorages, increasingly taken over by permanent moorings, back) and general all-round good news for cruising sailors. It means less crowded fixture lists for racing sailors, hence better fleets and better racing at those events that do survive. It means a smaller marketplace for all those 'clever builders' producing the plethora of one-designs currently confusing so many sailors and setting clicking the worry-beads of so many 'Buttheads. Half - at least - might go bust, thus solving that problem too. To paraphrase Marie-Antoinette: 'let them play golf'. Second: Peter O Allan Sr recommends US Sailing declares some classes 'national' and posits this will encourage their adoption. We Brits tried that years ago, as did the IYRU, by declaring some classes respectively National or International. It does not solve this problem, since the committees inevitably appointed cannot resist the temptation to decide what the rest of us shall sail. Fact: more RYA National, and IYRU International, classes have failed numerically (hence commercially) than have suceeded. Who now sails an International Tempest? Or an International Contender? * From Clark Chapin: In response to Peter O. Allen, Sr.'s comments in Scuttlebutt 956, there are three problems with "National" classes: First is a governance issue: US SAILING can be described as a bunch of anarchists held together by a common cocktail party. There is no benevelent dictator to make such a decision. A proposal would either have to come from the One-Design Class Council (about 150 member classes) or be strongly supported by the Council. Many people think that such a national dictatorship exists until they attend their first US SAILING meeting. Second, this issue surfaces, on the average, about once every ten years. The first time was when the ODCC was formed in 1976 and the last time was in 1993-4, so we're a little early this time. The insurmountable obstacle in every case was in reaching a consensus on the requirements for a "National" class. Simply put, any class that didn't qualify wouldn't support a criterion. If 20 classes were selected, that leaves 130 dues-paying classes out in the cold. Third, what would it mean to be a "National Class"? A first step might be that only National Classes could be used for US SAILING championships. It's hard enough now to get boats without adding an additional layer of requirements. In summary, there doesn't seem to be enough of a benefit to National Classes to overcome the very real problems. * From Ward Latimer: I read with interest the comments concerning the women's entry in the Volvo, comments concerning whether they are doing the best they can, A boat versus B boat, now we are into weight and mass. When will the "boys" realize that there shouldn't be a "boys" boat and a "girls" boat, just "coed" boats. * From George Wright: Journalist Peter Bentley took a lot off heat in Scuttlebutt for suggesting the girls on Amer Sports Too might be cruising around the racecourse. I wonder if some of his critics have changed their minds now that all of the other boats in the Volvo Race finished within nine hours of each other . . . while Amer Sports Too still had a couple of days of sailing left. They were more than 630 miles behind their closest competitor.
IT PAYS TO BE A 'BUTTHEAD
CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS
INVESTMENT ADVICE
BIG Salperton is ketch rigged and will be fitted with carbon fibre spars and Leisure furl in boom furling system from Marten Spars Pakuranga, Auckland. The mainmast is 60m high. The downwind sail area is 26000 square feet. The boat will have a 4.85m draft with 91 tonnes of lead ballast in her keel. Beam is 33.95 feet (10.35m) and the yacht will displace 340 tonnes. - mailbox@alloyyachts.co.nz * To celebrate Kos's 20 years as marine sports photographer Kos decided to produce a "moving piece of art" in the form of a book - 20 x 20. The production is the largest of its kind, opening to a massive 1 meter wide and weights 10 kilos (22 pounds). Kos has produced 1,000 copies limited edition each individually signed and numbered. www.kospictures.com
INTERCLUB FROSTBITE NATIONALS, Dec 1-2 Final results: 1) Mike Kalin & Ariya Dararutana 45, 2) Steve Kirkpatrick & Craig Fagan 54, 3) Jim Bowers & Myrna Chan MacRae 63, 4) Chad Demarest & Whitney Besse 75, 5) Steve Benjamin & Adam Walsh 78, 6) Neal Fowler & Mike Collins 97, 7) Ed Adams & Carol Cronin 110, 8) Geoff & Jill Moore 127, 9) Bob & Francesca Monro 128, 10) Ben & Kim Cesare 146. Results, pictures and more at www.interclub.org
THE CURMUDGEON'S CONUNDRUM |
