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SCUTTLEBUTT 1806 - March 30, 2005Scuttlebutt is a digest of major yacht racing news, commentary, opinions,features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus. Corrections, contributions, press releases, constructive criticism and contrasting viewpoints are always welcome, but save your bashing, whining and personal attacks for elsewhere. TOUGH JOB (Global Challenge skipper Loz Marriott (Team Pindar) chats about the low period of the race which nearly forced him to quit in a story posted on the Yachting World website.) Someone once said to me that being a skipper on the world's toughest yacht race, the Global Challenge, would be the loneliest job I would ever have; they weren't far wrong. The reason for doing this race is all about the challenge - taking a group of people of which 80 per cent had never set foot on a boat before and developing a racing team that could communicate, trust and respect each other through thick and thin. Also overcoming the problems that living aboard a 72ft, 45-ton steel boat with 17 people from all walks of life, while experiencing some of the most harsh conditions in the world, with the ultimate aim of fulfilling dreams and goals. Team Pindar have had some very tough times and decisions to make, but the important thing is that we got through them together. I believe that the leader needs to be part of the team as well as the head of it - there wasn't a job I asked my crew to do that I was not be prepared to do myself. I believe a good leader is a good listener and communicator who understands his/her team's individual goals and values. Despite my intensions, I have to admit that the first two legs of this race almost got me. I was so close to throwing in the towel - closer than any of the crew ever know and hopefully will ever know. I was emotionally and physically wrecked. The fear of losing someone overboard or a major injury to a crewmember kept me awake for the short amount of time that I was in my bunk (I averaged four hours sleep or down time each day). - Loz Marriott/ Yachting World, full story: www.ybw.com/auto/newsdesk/20050229134123globalchallenge05.html Curmudgeon's Comment: Team Pindar is currently in fourth place on the 6200 mile Leg 4 from Sydney to Cape Town - 51 miles behind Dee Caffari and her crew on board Imagine It. Done. Currently, the leading yachts are expected to arrive in Cape Town next Tuesday. Spirit of Sark remains in second place, 17 miles behind the leader with BP Explorer in third, 31 miles behind the leader. - http://www.globalchallenge2004.com/en/ EMIRATES TEAM NEW ZEALAND UPDATE Summer training has been hugely productive for the team. The weather has been unbelievably good enabling them to get in more sailing time than expected. Activities have focused on a mixture of testing and in-house racing. A race series is held every couple of weeks with the fourth and final series scheduled for next week. They have been trying to develop different parts of the boat with new rigs and different appendages. Although ETNZ won the AC Championship in 2004, they never believed for a minute that they were as far advanced as either Alinghi or Oracle. Hopefully they are now level pegging. GER-68 finished sailing last Thursday. NZL-82 will hit the water on 5 April and go straight into a race series with NZL-81 on 6 April. Both boats will be sailed extensively through April before one boat is shipped to Europe on 26 April. Dean Barker will be taking his match racing team to the Congressional Cup on 10 April. Ben Ainslie will follow a couple weeks later with his first match racing regatta in Elba, Italy. One boat and a team of 50 people (including about 21 sailing crew members) will go to Valencia. The plan is to stay for about three weeks at each of the 2005 pre-regatta venues. The team will return NZ for two months between the Valencia and Malmo, Sweden pre-regattas and return to NZ after the final Sicily pre-regatta in October. Training will re-commence in NZ on November 1st. A disadvantage for the European based teams is that their summer season will be chopped into quite heavily by all the pre-regattas with time lost as one of their boats is shipped between venues. The boat that will be shipped to Europe is NZL-82. NZL-82 has been repaired following getting blown off its stand in Marseille and re-designed a little sans hula to meet version 5 specifications. It is believed to have the most potential. It has a new version 5 rig - lighter and made of higher modulus carbon - and is the only one of ETNZ's boats in version 5 configuration. - Cheryl, 2007AC.com - http://64.124.46.132/WebX?13@28.1zHEa4XcgQF.0@.ef2c7f4/3828 INTENSE Seven sailors, including three medalists, from the 2004 Olympics will gather at the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club this weekend, not to sail but to impart their know-how to about 135 of the hottest prospects on the continent. It's the annual Advanced Racing Clinic Saturday through Tuesday, April 2-5, organized by the California International Sailing Association. CISA, founded in 1971, conducts the clinic each year for boys and girls ages 13 and older who are selected on the basis of their sailing résumés. Boats to be used are Laser, Laser Radial, Club 420, International 420, Club FJ and 29er. The students will represent 13 states from Maine and Florida to Hawaii, plus British Columbia. Among the 19 instructors are Athens Olympians Kevin Burnham, Charlie Ogletree, Lenka Smidova, Katie McDowell, Isabelle Kinsolving, Pete Spaulding and director Peter Wells. Four days of intense instruction ashore and afloat will cover boat handling on Saturday, boat speed on Sunday and tactics on Monday, climaxed by a championship regatta on Tuesday. How intense will it be? Adults accompanying the students are instructed: "Plan to drop off your sailors at 8 a.m. each day and pick them up at 8:30 p.m." - www.cisasailing.org JUST IN TIME Raider RIBs have a perfect yacht club tender. This 22-foot Raider 665 is the ultimate tender for a yacht club, a sailing program or a sail coach. The 665 is a center console, deep V hull with a 115 horsepower 4-stroke Yamaha engine, a galvanized trailer, towing post, and it even has an enclosed head. The Raider 665 is available for immediate delivery with special financing for a non-profit or yacht club junior program. Call for details at 1-877-7RAIDER, or check out the Raider 665 at our website. http://www.raiderboat.com ROUTING 'BIBLE' Since leaving the Southern Ocean Doha 2006 has sailed what might seem to be an erratic course up the Indian Ocean. In fact they have followed the traditional route taken by sailing ships for over a century. In the days before modern electronics, satellite imagery and whiz-bang computers, sea captains consulted their 'bible,' a thick volume entitled Ocean Passages of the World. The tome, first published in 1895, was one of the most important pieces of equipment aboard an old sailing ship. In it you could find the most up to date information about the best shipping routes to take between two ports on the planet. If you were leaving New York and sailing to England it gave coordinates that would keep you in the fair current of the Gulf Stream with the wind at your back and caution against sailing the more direct route in the strong westerlies until halfway across. More than a hundred years later most of those same routes are still the most efficient way of crossing an ocean. It's tropical sailing for Brian Thompson and his Oryx Quest 2005 team aboard Doha 2006 as they enjoy near perfect weather just east of the Chagos Archipelago. Doha 2006 is just under 400 miles south of the equator sailing at 15 knots. They have found a small trough of southwesterly wind which is allowing them to sail a direct course to the Gulf of Oman. The seas are relatively smooth and with a fat moon lighting the way, the crew are dreaming of home and future projects. - At 0027 GMT Tuesday Brian Thompson's Doha 2006 was 2592 nm from the finish with Tony Bullimore's Daedalus 2820 miles further back. - www.oryxquest.com/ NEWS BRIEFS * Racing Tuesday in Santa Barbara Hobie Tiger Worlds was abandoned. The race committee tried to get a racing underway but with strong winds and big seas, racing was abandoned before the first start. With the weather improving the sailors are eager for more racing. http://hobieworlds.com/tiger2005/ * Attention artists and/or would be artists - In recognition of the 100th year of Transpac, a contest has been launched for the design of the t-shirts worn exclusively by the Transpac Honolulu Committee. That t-shirt is the only 'pay' these volunteers get for an incredible amount of work and unprecedented hospitality. First prize in the design contest is $125 - but the designs must be submitted by May 5 to be considered for the judging. Complete contest rules: www.transpacificyc.org/ * The Columbia Sailing Club in South Carolina hosted the 38th Annual J/24 Easter Regatta this past weekend on Lake Murray. Over 40 boats traveled from around the US to sail on Easter weekend in Columbia, SC. Conditions were very light and variable on Lake Murray and six races were completed over the 3-day weekend. Final results: 1. Brain Cramp, Mike Ingham; 2. Jesus Lizard, Dan Borrer; 3. Team Fusion, Scott Nixon. Complete results: http://columbiasailingclub.org/easter/ IN MEMORIAM It's with great sadness we have to report the sudden death of Newcastle-based boatbuilder Dave Ovington. Dave, 50, was with his family on Lake Windermere when he died suddenly on Easter Sunday afternoon, doing what he loved best - messing around on the water. Not only was Dave a highly respected boat builder with his successful business Ovington Boats producing some of the world's fastest dinghies including 29ers, 49ers, Musto Skiffs, Flying 15s, B14s and 18ft Skiffs, but was a great sailor too. One of his most significant sailing achievements was winning the International 14 Prince of Wales Cup in 1987 in a boat he'd built himself. As a perfectionist in the boatbuilding industry Ovington believed that one of the keys to success of a company was to "deliver on time." Admitting a few years ago in an interview: "If you don't care about delivering on time then you probably don't care about the boat." Another key to success was, of course, producing fast boats. His first break came in 1987 when Lawrie Smith bought one of his Enterprises. "I was made," he said, "he bought one of my boats and won the championship. From then on I had plenty of orders and had a two-year waiting list!" In addition to his highly successful dinghy building business Dave progressed into the big boat industry and in 1997 started the successful production of Mumm 30s at the company's Tanners Bank yard also based in Newcastle. The most recent project - also currently in build - is the production of Backman 21s for Hans Backman. Dave is survived by his wife Glynis and sons Adam and Matthew aged 20 and 18-years-old respectively. - Sue Pelling/ Yachting World, www.ybw.com/auto/newsdesk/20050229114534ywnews.html MARION - BERMUDA & BUZZARDS BAY WEATHER ADVISORY! Catch the wind shift! Improve your inshore and offshore sailing skills. The comprehensive weather seminar on April 16th uses cutting edge graphics. Learn the theory at New Bedford's Whaling Museum. Combine weather & currents. Aboard or ashore from his office, Bill Biewenga, veteran ocean racer and weather router is also available to work with you, your crew, or club. Bill brings 340,000 ocean miles & 18 years of weather routing experience to each project. Review the full range of weather seminars - live & online. Email mailto:billbiewenga@compuserve.com or visit us at http://www.weather4sailors.com LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON (Letters selected for publication must include the writer's name and may be edited for clarity or space - 250 words max. This is not a chat room nor a bulletin board - you only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if others disagree.) * From Chris Ericksen: 'Butt 1805 included some interesting comments about the America's Cup. Gunther E Hering talks about "the upcoming race series which...calls itself the America's Cup" and opines that it has "absolutely nothing to do anymore with the original Deed of Trust (sic)." Ted Ritter is tired of the "daily news tid-bits about ...an event 2+ years away." Me, too, Ted--but I'd love to hear if anyone else thinks this race series ought not be for the America's Cup. Just now Canadians are talking about the Stanley Cup. It was dedicated by Lord Stanley as a trophy to be awarded to the best hockey team to play in Canada; it was decided some years ago to be awarded to the winner among North American professional hockey teams. Now that the NHL is on strike/ lockout, some Canadians think it is time to take the Stanley Cup back and award it to a hockey team that is actually playing hockey. Is it indeed time for the New York Yacht Club to take back the America's Cup and find another event in which it may be won? * From Dick Enersen: With respect to the "wingeing about the America's Cup" thread, I propose it be closed forthwith. I further recommend to those who are appalled by the behavior of its participants, the archaic nature of the boats, the evolution of the event, or the astronomical costs associated therewith that they simply do as I do with the Oryx Quest or the Global Challenge reports; ignore them. The AC is what it is, to quote a late friend, and some of us continue to be interested, if only to see what it will become and/ or what form of mischief will be perpetrated next. De gustibus non disputandum est, as the Romans used to say. * From John McNeill: With all due respect, what good does closing the thread do? If one can ignore that which is inherently uninteresting, then the 'whine' also qualifies. If it weren't for the open forum of Scuttlebutt, who would these misanthropes communicate with? They would only, in their desire to be heard, trap us at the club bar rather than vent online. Let 'em rant on, and spare us all from personal confrontation. * From Enrico Ferrari: Ted Ritter had a point about the AC being 2+ years away and the daily news about it. I am an avid follower of the sport and have not yet figured out the significance of the new AC/ LV format. There seems to have been deadlines for entry but those are forgiven and some type of point structure for early events but where does one follow that? Scuttlebutt is my primary source for sailing news and I read 95% of them and I haven't seen a simplified version of the point structure. The news is always filled with controversy about Couttes or something but the actual event seems less clear than the legal wrangling. I believe the fleet racing and the other exhibition races are a good thing for this event but can someone please put the event in a simple format from here to the finish as to how one advances. If most sailors are having a disconnect from how it works, imagine the general public! * From Nick Roosevelt: Let's all start talking about AC 2010, so that the organizers are not tempted to wait until 2011. Three years is long enough. AC 2007 would have been AC 2006 were it not for the World Cup in 2006. I will be sad and disappointed if RC is not in AC 2007 as a sailor. But I will still watch. * From Geoff Stagg: It was with deep profound sadness that I learnt today of the death of a great person, boat builder and friend in Dave Ovington. At 50 years of age he will be deeply missed by his Wife Glyns, sons Adam and Mathew, his crew at Ovington Marine and the many owners and crews of the hundreds of boats he built around the World over many years. I was privileged to meet Dave many years back when Peter Morton insisted that Dave would be the builder of the Mumm 30 for Europe. In the 10 years I have known Dave I got to know him as the most honest, hard working, fairest, ethical person imaginable with a great sense of humor and to say he will be missed is a major understatement. A dedicated family man he apparently suffered a heart attack while putting his restored Riva on the trailer with his boys while on Easter vacation with his Family. Rest easy my friend I will miss you, and I will do my best to follow the example you set. CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION Wrinkled was not one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up. |
