|
SCUTTLEBUTT No. 963 - December 12, 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.
GRANT DALTON He already knew he had broken two ribs from a fall on board Amer Sports One on the last day of the Cape Town-Sydney leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. But doctors at a hospital in Sydney last week failed to diagnose the more serious back injuries, which could now sideline the skipper from the leg to Auckland, starting on Boxing Day. However Dalton, one of the tough guys of world sailing, is determined to race on - broken bones or not. "The future of me sailing in the next leg is in the balance," he said at home in Auckland yesterday, "but of all the legs to miss, this would be the biggest tragedy for me." There are two reasons Dalton wants to battle the pain and sail into his home port early in the New Year. For one, he has been first to the finish in Auckland for the last two round-the-world races. And then he wants to do it for his old friend, crewmate and sailing rival Sir Peter Blake, who was tragically murdered in South America last week. Dalton's wife, Nicki, would rather he stayed on land to allow the breaks to heal. But, says the veteran of six circumnavigations, "it's not that simple. This is what I do for a living," he said. "I sailed a leg and a half with a broken collarbone in the last Whitbread." In the "slim chance" he will not be on board, he has already contacted a replacement helmsman for the Sydney-Auckland leg. He would not say who the stand-in was. The accident happened when Dalton was below deck cooking a meal for his tired crewmates - a job he would not normally do - as the boat was tossed about in 45-knot gales in Bass Strait. He was carried off the boat on a stretcher when it arrived in Sydney, taken to Mater Hospital and discharged with a diagnosis of bruising. - Suzanne McFadden, NZ Herald Full story: www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=Story&thesubsection=&storyID=232955&reportID=57034
SEEN ON THE HAURAKI GULF * The new Swiss boat really has got a lot of boat sticking out aft of the boom - more so than NZL60 and the new Swedish boat Orn, to my eye anyway. . - Justin, 2003ac website forum Full report: www.2003ac.com/
TITAN WINCH HANDLES
AMERICA'S CUP And the New Zealand outpost is flouting the global IT downturn and will report revenue growth 300 per cent up on last year, says managing director Viv Gurrey. She attributes the strong performance in New Zealand to being focused on existing business and a restructure a year ago that prepared the company for a tough market. - Stuff NZ Website Full story: www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,0a10,FF.html
LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON * From David Greening: Is the media and sponsors wagging the our sports tail? However implausible Gary Hoyt's proposal, if the America's Cup were modified to accommodate the media, before long our rule makers will be proposing that 50% of all races will start downwind, interesting to watch it may be, but to a sailor this is a lottery. The current raft of unsatisfactory rules, i.e. starting sequences, no protest flags and a poorly defined "room to keep clear" all appear to be as a result of pandering to the Olympic/Volvo/AC Media circus. The recent protest decisions in the Volvo show double standards, in any Corinthian event an out of class boat or one entering a prohibited zone would be disqualified. Bob Fisher interviews Jacques Rogge in the current issue of Yachts & Yachting, he recognizes that yachting is unsuitable for live TV coverage but is better suited for edited highlights, this is great because the media can cover the interesting bits and leave the sailors to get on with the racing out of the media spotlight. At the base of our sport, there are hundreds of thousands of Corinthian sailors with genuine passion and a love for our sport, maybe the time has come for separate amateur and professional sailing federations? * From Bruce Parsons (re Gary Hoyt's AC ideas): I am not so sure about the downwind starts, and the elimination of mark roundings, but I would like to support the suggestion I heard first from John Marshall, that windward-leeward makes a race, have a two out of three or three out of five everyday. Taking out the mark rounding at the top really eliminates a whole aspect of crew performance, and it could be argued the same for the bottom mark. I know the crews would miss the opportunity to go shrimping, but taking out mark roundings is like the difference between drag racing and trying to take some turns. Do we want to turn IACC boats into straight line dragsters only? Starts are exciting, but so is sail handling, but I agree that often after a windward-leeward, the race is over. And now if we are on the subject why not change the IACC rule and throw out 1/3 the displacement, and designers then will have a real problem to grapple with - how much beam and form stability do you need to keep these things on their feet? Regards * From Malcolm Kirkland: Mr Hoyt is correct. Lay people and even sailors lose interest watching the America's Cup on TV. Period. Given the America's Cup is the global icon for sailing, then it has a responsibility beyond inward looking enhancements. I found it alot more exciting watching 12's off Fremantle than the new AC boats to-date. A lay person has great interest in a tight race and zero interest in the designer. Why not let teams optimize one-design hulls? * From Vince Cooke, PRO Louis Vuitton Cup Finals, 2000: Anticipating a flood of comments in regard to Garry Hoyt's article proposing a new format for the America's Cup, I wish to correct one point in his article. Garry says: "In the present windward/leeward courses 2/3 of the time is spent to windward--which disproportionately rewards windward performance." In actuality, there are three windward legs and three leeward legs, all of equal length, i.e., 3 miles each, except for the first and last which are each 0.25 miles longer. In terms of clock time, and reviewing just the LV Finals, over the nine races the yachts spent 638 minutes going to weather and 509 minutes on the leeward legs, or 56% and 44% respectively. In terms of breeze conditions, I would consider that the LV Finals were representative of the entire LV Cup regatta since the breeze varied from the lows of the second race of 6 to 10 knots to the highs of the third race which were 19 to 25 knots. * From Ray Wulff: The fact that Peter Bentley got sacked from the VOR site is comical. If Lisa McDonald doesn't think she's getting special treatment because she's leading an all women's team, then why hasn't she been sacked? After two abysmal results, their team should be looking within, and not at a journalist who is preaching the truth. Other teams realize that changes need to be made to improve performance (starting with personnel). Why is their team immune? Several teams have upped their game by adding new crew as they have come available. Amer Sports Two is a publicity stunt and leave it to that. * From Debbie Pettibone Cooper (edited to our 250-word limit): I have followed the uproar surrounding Peter Bentley's article on Amer Sports Too's performance in the last leg and tried to keep an open mind to both sides. However, Mr. Tappett's comments led me to ask: how can he be so convinced that he is the one who knows "THE TRUTH" about how Amer Sports Too sailed on the last leg? It seems to me that the only ones who actually know how the boat was sailed are the women that were actually on board the boat. Mr. Tappett has taken a snippet of an interview with Emma Westmacott and presented it as concrete proof of sandbagging. He then goes on to restate rumor as fact from Sydney that the skipper, Lisa McDonald, was the sole force behind Mr. Bentley's removal - without considering Mr. Bentley's role in the whole thing - and that Lisa allowed an unfavorable media article distract her from the job at hand. I find this innuendo against Lisa, her team, and Volvo Race Management to be distasteful. Now, I have some personal bias - having sailed with many of these women (including my sister Katie) I have nothing but the highest regard for their professionalism and dedication. They are true competitors and I can only imagine their incredible disappointment at their placement in the last leg. I also know that they will keep fighting on to improve their performance in the race, regardless of attacks in the media, because that is what they do. * From Gareth Evans: Maybe Peter Bentley's article suggesting the Amer Sports Too Volvo team was just cruising was right. Maybe it was wrong. We should all make up our own minds on that. Peter has, however, dared to speak out and be controversial. And as a result we are all talking about it. As the quotation says, "No publicity is bad publicity" - think of all the extra column inches Amer Sports Too have received as a result of this article. * From Fred Schroth: When mentioning fleets with intense international competition, Paul Henderson left out the OPTI and the Radial. In 2002 the three most well attended World Championships will be held in North America. Each of these boats is considered to be an entry-level boat, and each of the sailors in these boats is usually supported by a strong family. There may be a time and place for the maxis and the Americas Cup boats but every time I see another $40,000,000 sunk into a what is later described as a "failed" campaign, I am crushed. Wouldn't it be wonderful if somehow the money for just one of these campaigns could be used to put 10,000 kids in brand new sailboats? For the price of one well-funded campaign, we could give each of 400 sailing clubs 25 boats on the provision that they would hire instructors for six weeks every summer. If North Americans were to begin this program today, we would win every Olympic medal in the 2024 Olympics. * From John Aiello: Not only is the recent decision to air the AC races on a largely unavailable cable channel going to be detrimental in the effort to draw sponsors, it will also be a detriment to drawing the "billionaires" into forming AC syndicates. After all, the billionaires are underwriting the effort with the expectation of recouping varying portions of their investment through sponsorships and revenue generating activities. Without the ability to draw significant sponsor dollars, the billionaires may back out also. Then what would we be left with - just a bunch of really good professional sailors looking for a ride??? - Hmmm. * From Geoff Longenecker: OLN's coverage of the LV Cup will do fantastic things to the next series. Not only will we be able to see most, if not all of the teams racing, we will likely get the chance to see the events take place live, or at least during a somewhat sane time of day. As far as OLN is concerned, anyone who was glued to their complete coverage of the last Tour de France will tell you that their coverage far exceeded that of ABC! * From David Cook: I think more sailors need to take the step forward and put something back into the great sport of sailing. From my perspective as being one of those people organizing races and regattas, there's only a small few who do almost all the volunteer work. To all those sailors who have been getting years of benefit from racing, maybe its time you start putting something back in? The answer is simple - don't leave all the work to those few dedicated volunteers - get involved and start helping to rebuild the great sport, no, way of life of sailing!
PERSPECTIVE Full story: www.oracleracing.com/news/or-news/121101-ap-oow.html
SIMILARITY
INDUSTRY NEWS * The Acura Southern Ocean Racing Conference (SORC) regatta has announced that Sailing World magazine has renewed its print media partnership with the South Florida winter ocean racing classic. Sailing World will design and print both the Notice of Race and the Event Program, which will be included in the February issue of the publication. * Genmar Holdings, Inc. announced a plan to bring its entire 2,000-dealer network online, extending the benefits of the Internet to approximately 25 percent of all North American boat dealers through a new strategic marketing partnership utilizing the 2002 "Jump Start" program with boats.com, Inc. The partnership will allow Genmar dealers to establish a presence on the Internet by listing all new and pre-owned inventory on the boats.com website. www.boats.com
CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS * April 17-21: Pacific Sail Expo, Jack London Square, Oakland, California. www.sailamerica.com
SAILING ON TV "The original deal had been done with CNN International, which is a separate division of CNN," said Clarke. "We are in conversations with CNN in the USA now about getting this on the air in the US. It's a matter of selecting the most appropriate airing time for those concerned." - Peter Nash, Boating Industry International Online website
SWEDISH MATCH TOUR Note: Swedish Match Tour Leaderboard standings in parentheses
SPECIAL TREATMENT
THE CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION |
