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SCUTTLEBUTT 2372 - June 25, 2007Scuttlebutt is a digest of major sailing news, commentary, opinions,features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus. Scuttlebutt is distributed each weekday, with support provided by UBS, main partner of Alinghi, Defender of the 32nd America's Cup (http://www.ubs.com/sailing). IT’S ALL ON (June 24, 2007) Racing for the 32nd America’s Cup began over the weekend, and by the look of it, we appear to have a series on our hands. With good winds and nearly 800 spectator boats stirring up the waters, the defender Alinghi finally got a chance to race in an event that first began with the Louis Vuitton challenger elimination series on April 16th. After announcing last Friday that Ed Baird would helm the defense, Alinghi matched up with Emirates Team New Zealand in two races showing combined finish time differentials of under a minute. ETNZ arguably won both starts, and played every card they were dealt to near perfection. Alinghi tactician Brad Butterworth halted his unbeaten consecutive America’s Cup match win streak at sixteen races, ETNZ halted a streak dating back to 1987 and 6 Cups where one of the finalists got shut out of the win column, and with Monday’s rest day allowing both teams to study the film, all eyes are now on an event that has been in the planning stages since Alinghi won the fifth and final race in Auckland, NZ on Sunday, March 2, 2003, and is now even at 1-1. AMERICA’S CUP MATCH First team to win 5 races in the 9 race series Challenger: Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL) 0-1-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ = 1 Defender: Alinghi (SUI) 1-0-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ = 1 * Race schedule: Racing was held this past Saturday and Sunday, with Monday scheduled as the first rest day. Racing will resume Tuesday and Wednesday before the next rest day on Thursday. -- Complete schedule: http://www.americascup.com/en/americascup/program/calendrier.php * Rumorville: Russell Coutts is understood to be in talks to join the massive US Oracle team for the next Cup campaign. After turning his back on New Zealand in 2000 to join Team Alinghi, the legendary skipper is tipped to become CEO and skipper for America's Cup syndicate BMW Oracle. The Herald on Sunday understands that terms have already been discussed with Oracle's owner Larry Ellison, although a contract has yet to be signed. -- NZ Herald, full story: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/4/story.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10447564 THE JOBSON REPORT Among the leading authorities on the America's Cup, Gary Jobson is in Valencia, Spain providing Scuttlebutt with his observations from the 32nd edition of the event: RACE 1: At the start of the 32nd America’s Cup both boats, Alinghi, from Switzerland and Emirates Team New Zealand were right up on the line at full speed. Over the first mile the Kiwis gained and worked out to a slim one boat length lead. Then the wind shifted to the left and suddenly Alinghi took the lead. From that point Alinghi was in control for the entire race, and went on to win by a comfortable 35 second margin. From a distance it all looked easy. But it was not so easy aboard either of the race boats. -- Read on: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/07/gj/#Race1 RACE 2: Now we are talking! Race two of the 32nd America’s Cup, sailed in light 9-11 knot winds was a thriller. Emirates Team New Zealand made a bold tactical move on the third leg to pass Switzerland’s Alinghi. New Zealand’s tactician Terry Hutchinson was the MVP of the race, by catching Alinghi’s veteran tactic’s guru, Brad Butterworth, off guard. It was a thing of beauty. -- Read on: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/07/gj/#Race2 QUOTE / UNQUOTE “I'm a reporter, not a partisan, but I have to admit. Things are more interesting around here when New Zealand is in front.” -- Kimball Livingston, SAIL, in Valencia, Spain: http://sailmagazine.blogspot.com/2007/06/lions-one-christians-one.html KORE VS. HARD KORE It’s a question of style. Terry Hutchinson chooses the original, the tried and true Kore. Our original award-winning design. Straight-up performance. Brad Butterworth is going new-school with the new Hard Kore. A bit more attitude, a bit more style. An evolution that compliments the ever so clever and sophisticated Butterworth. Two different styles…one common theme. Superior Performance. Kaenon Polarized fit and SR-91 lens technology to read the breeze. Choose your weapon. Luxury Performance for men and women. Prescription-ready. View the entire collection online and locate an authorized dealer nearest you at http://www.kaenon.com Kaenon Polarized. Evolve Optically. HEADING TO EUROPE (June 23, 2007) In an ideal 12-knot northwesterly breeze, the three yachts constituting the “big-boat” fleet in the HSH Nordbank blue race across the North Atlantic set out from Newport, RI Saturday afternoon to join the 21 yachts that began the race on June 16th. Conditions were perfect when the 90-foot Rambler, owned by Connecticut sailor George David and skippered by sailmaker Ken Read, led the fleet out of Newport’s Narragansett Bay and into the blue Atlantic. Rambler, under main and jib, held a slight early lead over the 80-foot Bon Bon, which started with main and jib alone but hoisted a small staysail moments after the start. Bringing up the rear in majestic style was the grand, ketch-rigged, 177-foot Perini Navi Parsifal III. Read is hoping for an 11-day passage, which would bring Rambler across the finish line on the Fourth of July. -- Full report: http://tinyurl.com/ys23fp A LAST BLAST…AND THE BLOCK PARTY IS OVER Block Island, R.I. (June 22, 2007) -- The wind rallied again for the final day of the Storm Trysail Club's Block Island Race Week XXII presented by Rolex, blowing early and hard at 18-22 knots with gusts up to 25. It was a final chance for the 2000 sailors on 183 boats to better their scores from five racing days, but in the end, leads from yesterday changed in only one of the 18 classes sailing. That class was for PHRF Navigator Non Spinnaker, which headed off on its usual course around government marks while 17 other classes sailing in PHRF, IRC and One-Design competed in round-the-buoys racing on windward/leeward courses. All week it had been tit-for-tat between Paul Pakos' Swan 44 Xenophon (Sudbury, Mass.), sailed mostly by a group of Coast Guard alumni who have been coming to Block Island for 20 years, and Kel Weber's (Wilton, Conn.) J/34C Rascal, which won today's race to take class honors by a single point. Weber is familiar around these docks; he has been coming to Race Week for 18 years and has won his class five times. * Overall winner of PHRF racing, also determined by the race committee, was John Storck's (Huntington, N.Y.) J/80 Rumor, skippered by his college All-American daughter Kaity, while Stephen Tedeschi's Tastes Like Chicken (St. Petersburg, Fla.) took overall honors in One-Design racing, sailing in the 19-boat J/109 class. The skippers of Rumor and Tastes Like Chicken each received a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner timepiece, while Blue Yankee received a Rolex steel and platinum Yacht-Master as the winner of the Rolex US-IRC National Championship. -- Full story: http://tinyurl.com/yrd7ag => Complete results: http://www.yachtscoring.com/emenu.cfm?eID=131 => Photos by Amory Ross: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/07/birw ULLMAN SAILS LONG BEACH RACE WEEK Long Beach, Calif.---(June 24, 2007) Boat for boat one-design or racing PHRF by the clock, winning can be equally satisfying, as Bennett Greenwald and Alec Oberschmidt of San Diego can tell you after Acura's presentation of Ullman Sails Long Beach Race Week, co-hosted by the Long Beach and Alamitos Bay Yacht Clubs. Greenwald, who joined the J/105 class with Perseverance just this past year, fought off the regatta's largest fleet of 15 boats by winning five of seven races ---including the last four in a row over Saturday and Sunday---for his first victory and a bonus award as the regatta's Boat of the Week for winning the most competitive class. As for Oberschmidt, his Staghound, a Reichel/Pugh 50, is seldom first to finish but he often walks away with the flashiest trophies, as he did again Sunday by coming from behind to trump some bigger and faster boats in the premier Fast 50 class on handicap time, plus claim PHRF Boat of the Week honors and first place in the four-event Ullman Sails Inshore Championship for 2007. -- Full report: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/07/uslbrw LAST BIG DRESS REHEARSAL (June 22, 2007) At 1 p.m. Friday off Palos Verdes (Los Angeles, CA), a horn will sound and 11 sailors aboard Morning Light set a course for Hawaii and perform feverishly as one, trying to gain an edge on the competition. Their sleek white vessel will sweep past Santa Catalina Island and continue far to the west, through the night, during which they'll study the weather to determine the quickest route to the islands. Then the call will be made, "Cut!" and Morning Light will about-face and return to Long Beach. Friday marked the last big dress rehearsal for the vessel's long-anticipated July 15 start of the 2,225-mile Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Eleven crew and four alternates, who were among 538 sailors to have applied for Roy E. Disney's Morning Light Project, are all that's left of a yearlong endeavor that will become a feature-length movie to be released in theaters next spring. -- LA Times, full story: http://tinyurl.com/2hggz5 VANGUARD SPONSORS THE FUTURE Vanguard sponsors the US Youth Championship, June 22-28, in New Orleans, LA at Southern Yacht Club. There are very few regattas like this that consistently produce future All American, Olympic, and Americas Cup sailors. Vanguard is proud to contribute to the next generation. Stay tuned at ussailing.org/championships/youth/youthchamp and http://www.teamvanguard.com US YOUTH SAILING CHAMPIONSHIP (June 24, 2007) The beginning of the US Youth Sailing Championship on Sunday began hot and still, with the fleet remaining ashore waiting for the breeze to fill in. Just before noon, lunch was served and the postponement flag dropped. The race course is split into two: one for the 29ers and one for the C420s, Radials and Lasers. While results have not been posted at this writing, preliminary results in the Singlehanded fleets show that David Hernandez has taken an early lead with a first and second in the Laser fleet. In the Radial Fleet, Ian Heusler, just back from the Laser North Americans, had two wins in the first two races. In Club 420s, three teams - Chris Barnard/ Nicole Popp, Tyler Sinks/ Morgane Renoir and Taylor Canfield/ Perry Emsiek - have shown great consistency, all finishing in the top five in the first two races of the championship. The 29er fleet, with the top eligible teams competing for a chance to represent the United States at the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds later this summer, have four teams that have all finished in the top five in the first two races: Emily Dellenbaugh/ Briana Provancha, Judge Ryan/ Hans Henken, Oliver Toole/ Willie McBride, and Taylor Lutz/ Evan Aras. -- Event website: http://www.ussailing.org/championships/youth/youthchamp RUSSIAN – BRITISH ALLIANCE British yachtsman Adrian Flanagan, 46 is ready to make sailing history. During July and August he will attempt to sail the first ever single-handed transit along Russia’s Northern Sea Route. Flanagan set out on the Alpha Global Expedition, his quest to sail the first single-handed ‘vertical’ circumnavigation of the globe, on 28th October 2005. He has so far covered 26,000 miles going west around Cape Horn to Nome, Alaska where his boat has spent the Arctic winter. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who achieved the first single-handed, non-stop circumnavigation in 1969, has described Flanagan’s Alpha Global Expedition as, ‘A serious challenge’. Expedition Manager and Flanagan’s ex-wife, Louise says, ‘The Alpha Global Expedition Arctic Phase is the greatest challenge of the voyage. The Russian Government has shown vision and imagination in granting Adrian unprecedented access to their territorial waters’. Only 4 yachts have ever made the Arctic transit on the Russian side – French, German, Irish, and Russian, but none of these was single-handed. If successful, Flanagan’s 40ft stainless steel sloop, ‘Barrabas’ will become the first British boat to join this group. -- Full story: http://tinyurl.com/2edcfz SAILING SHORTS * 117 Lasers and Radials enjoyed three days of ideal conditions and brilliant sunshine at the 2007 Laser & Radial Canadian National Championship, Buffalo Canoe Club, Ontario, Canada, June 22-24. The fleet each sailed nine (9) races in the hotly competitive fleets. Emery Wagner sailed consistently to win the Laser class with eighteen points, three better than runner-up John Pearce. Evan Lewis, Ben Richardson and Zach Marks rounded out the top five. In the Radial class, John Wallace dominated, winning by a fourteen point margin over Genoa Griffin. Issac Bussin, Durk McLaughlin, and Kristen Hope rounded out the top five. Full results at http://www.buffalocanoeclub.com * The sea trials of the world’s first sailing yacht equipped with a 1 KW fuel cell have begun on-board Voller Energy’s Solent-based Beneteau Oceanis 411. The tests are to confirm the unlimited capacity of the fuel cell, which should allow for as many gadgets running without ever running out of power. The 1 KW fuel cell generator works by automatically monitoring the battery voltage. When the battery voltage falls, it switches itself on and recharges the batteries. Once the batteries are fully charged the fuel cell switches itself off to conserve fuel. -- http://www.ibinews.com/ibinews/newsdesk/20070522104600ibinews.html * The 42 entries in the Bermuda 1-2 started the second leg of the event last Friday, with the fleet returning to Newport, RI after the first leg began there and concluded at Bermuda. -- http://www.bermuda1-2.org * Two-time Santana 20 National Champion Bruce Golison (Rossmoor, CA) and crew Blair Wallace and Andrew Kerr continued their winning ways at the 30th National Championship, scoring 2-1-1-2-3-1-3 for 13 pts. The event was sailed June 18-22 at Windycrest Sailing Club, Tulsa, OK. Eric Kownacki (Rancho Bernardo, CA) took 2nd with 16pts, closely followed by Kenny Baggett (Tulsa, OK), 17pts. Teams dealt with a variety of conditions on Lake Keystone including light air, high water from weeks of Oklahoma rains plus a huge thunderstorm with widespread lightning Tuesday night. See complete results at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=poeXwtZv9Lyx9FkvpvWBJCw * The North Sails Caribbean Keelboat Championship, sailed in St. Maarten on June 16 and 17, proved once again to be an event like no other. With competitive sailing and great camaraderie between competitors this event was a complete success. Eighteen teams from throughout the Caribbean competed in the round robin format, sailing three qualifying races to determine the gold and silver fleets and then six more races to determine the winners of each fleet. -- Read on: http://www.caribbeanracing.com/artman/publish/article_880.shtml * The 2007 Flying Scot North American began Sunday at Fishing Bay Yacht Club, Deltaville, VA with the Womens and Junior championship. Racing for the Open championship will begin Monday. -- Results: http://tinyurl.com/2gn2la CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS (Sponsored by West Marine) Events listed at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON Letters selected for publication must include the writer's name, and may be edited for clarity or simplicity (letters shall be no longer than 250 words). You only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot, don't whine if others disagree, and save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere. As an alternative, a more open environment for discussion is available on the Scuttlebutt Forum. -- Scuttlebutt Letters: editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com -- Scuttlebutt Forum: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum * From John Payne: (regarding the Laser North Americans photo gallery in Issue 2371) It's interesting what you sometimes catch with a photo. I am guessing the PRO had his hands full as they had a rough time getting the races off on Saturday. Between wind shifts, current and the pin boat's anchor stubbornly refusing to grab the bottom, they had lots of trouble with the starts. Look at the 6th photo on the first page. It is the one of the full rig start. Look closely and you will see the puff of smoke from the starting gun. At least 10 boats were over, but they let them all go. Sometimes I guess you throw your hands up and say, "What the F-__-__-__." Curmudgeon’s Comment: Here’s the gallery: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/07/lna * From Wes Oliver, Rowayton, CT: A tidbit from Block Island Race Week is that the J/92 ‘Bangarang’ is being sailed by a crew of Junior Sailors from Norwalk Yacht Club. Aged 14-16, the crew is the "Varsity" from the Norwalk Yacht Club Junior Sailing Big Boat program, with owner Kirk Stirland as their advisor. Don't know if this is a first for BIRW, but it emphasizes the interest of teens in sailing big boats and their capabilities. * From Bob Hofmann (regarding the Open 60 righting test as shown in Issue 2370) Somehow I can't see that having a rollover test without the rig proves anything. Are we to assume, and we all know what that means, that any rollover will take the rig out of the boat? I think not. Come on guys, if you are serious about safety, either have the rig on the boat for this test, or admit that the righting test without the rig on won't do anything to improve the righting ability of a vessel. The only way that a boat such as the one shown in the video could right herself starting with the rig on, would be to have some way of cutting the rig loose while turtled. * From George Clyde: I personally have no strong views on the America’s Cup nationality debate, but anyone advocating a restriction on hiring non-nationals should check out Title VII of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and perhaps comparable laws in Europe and New Zealand) that prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of “national origin”, which has been interpreted to include discrimination on the basis of citizenship as well. Of course, there are many questions as to jurisdiction, as to whether nationality is a “bona fide occupational qualification” for America’s Cup teams, etc. A field day for lawyers, as usual! * From Andy Pilcher - Doyle Sailmakers NZ: Emirates Team New Zealand has to win the America’s Cup for one, simple reason. With the Cup being held in Europe, the races are on from about 1:00am – 3:00am NZ time, not counting the build up before the race, or post race debrief and interviews etc. With upwards of 90% of the New Zealand population watching the races live, people are turning up to work (& school) late, bleary-eyed and unfocused on anything other than discussing the details of last night’s race. Productivity is going to plummet, people will be sacked, and everything is going to turn to custard. Come on lads, please bring the Cup home, we’re only two races into this regatta and I don’t think my health can stand it much longer. CURMUDGEON’S CONUNDRUM How do you know when you're out of invisible ink? Special thanks to Kaenon Polarized and Vanguard Sailboats. Scuttlebutt is also supported by UBS, main partner of Alinghi, the Defender of the 32nd America's Cup. |
