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SCUTTLEBUTT 1824 - April 25, 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. AMERICA'S CUP OVERVIEW - Tom Ehman It's hard to believe that it has been two years since the America's Cup left New Zealand. And, it is equally hard to believe that there are now less than 24 months to the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup here in Valencia in April 2007. For the first time ever, not only is everyone preparing for the grand finale in 2007, but the organizers are preparing, and the teams are racing in, three to six pre-regattas in each of the three intervening years. No wonder everyone involved in the America's Cup is busier than ever! We have already concluded three preliminary regattas, or "Acts," as they are known in current Cup-speak, which is a marked departure from the old Defender vs. Challenger relationship that existed for 153 years. The Acts have been a big step forward for the America's Cup and professional sailing, and most of the issues have been overcome in terms of logistics, media and spectator interest, and action. Now there's a high profile yachting event that can take place out of a large area of hardstand in a dock area in just over two weeks from set-up to break down. Far from being the tedious set pieces that many feared, the 2004 Louis Vuitton Acts in Marseille and Valencia took on a character of their own. And, one that was different from the Cup itself, and the "Road to the Cup" regattas held in New Zealand. All of the competitors had their shining moments, and certainly the Acts did not turn into an "Alinghi and BMW Oracle Show" with the other teams just playing supporting roles. The six Acts set for 2005 -- two in Valencia, two in Malmoe, Sweden and two in Trapani, Italy - look even more promising. We now have ten official teams - nine challengers and the defender - with the prospect for one or two more challengers before the final April 29 deadline. The biggest issue for Cup teams, and another big limiting factor on the number of teams, is that the Cup campaigns run too long, making for many months of costly overheads for each team. However, the marginal cost to the teams to participate in the Acts and the Louis Vuitton Cup and AC is not large. What we are learning is that the more racing we have, the more revenue everyone gets. So if we have more events in less time -- less "burn rate" -- the net cost drops, and that's good for everybody. We have already come a long way from the 31st America's Cup to the 32nd. And now we must make the next step which is to figure out how to have a "main event" every other year. If the next event can be held in 2009 rather than 2011, then we will have done the sport a big service. But it takes four years to prepare a good venue. There are discussions afoot about how to make the Cup happen every two years, and still allow four years for venues to be developed. And, if Valencia does a terrific job as host, it is even possible that a 2009 event could be held in Valencia regardless who wins. - Excerpts from an English language translation of the a story that appeared in the Spanish national newspaper El Mundo. - Written by the AC Challenger Commission Chair Tom Ehman and posted on the Commission website: www.challengercommission.com/dox/elmundo.doc LESS A YEAR AWAY Annapolis, Maryland - As it stands, the (Volvo Ocean) race will begin in 197 days from Vigo, Spain, with only seven competitors, the lowest number in the 30-year history of the race. "Personally, I'm a little disappointed. I was always hoping for the same number [eight] as last time," Glenn Bourke, CEO of Volvo Ocean Race, acknowledged. "But with the global economy suffering, I think we've done quite well." In addition to the Disney (Pirates of the Caribbean) boat, there are entries from Australia, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, and two from the Netherlands. Four of the seven were designed by Farr Yacht Designs of Annapolis. The boats are being built as broadcast platforms, with fixed cameras on each, to give viewers a ride on the world's largest washing machine. "It's 10 cameras on a boat 70 feet long and 18 feet wide. We'll capture everything, not just the sports action, but life aboard, as well," said (race director Andy) Hindley. "The system has a trigger so when the boat tips past a certain degree, the cameras click on automatically." The bow man will even have a camera in his helmet so that viewers can get an eagle's eye image as he climbs the mast. A "panic button" linked to a digital recording system will archive remarkable images, like the waterspout that came within a mile of several of the yachts during the last race. "If you have a wipe-out in the Southern Ocean or a whale jumps across your bow, you can just hit the button to save it," Bourke said. The Volvo is more than just a race and a tourist attraction, Bourke said. Corporate sponsors of the yachts will use the stopovers to wine and dine customers, take them on boat rides and hold business meetings. The state Department of Business and Economic Development and a private consulting firm hired by Volvo estimate the race to be worth more than $50 million to Maryland's economy. Constellation Energy Group, the Baltimore-based parent of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., is paying $500,000 to be title sponsor of the three-week party. - Excerpt from a story by Candus Thompson, Baltimore Sun; full story: http://tinyurl.com/ble8a MUSTO IN THE USA The Volvo Ocean Race, the Vendée Globe, the Mega Cats and the Super Maxi's: Musto is the favorite brand of foul weather gear amongst the crews. It is available to purchase across the States - try one of the following retailers: Annapolis Performance Sailing, Fawcett Boat Supplies, Fisheries Supply, Layline, Pineapple Sails, Sailing Supply, Team One Newport, The Sailing Pro Shop, or West Marine Stores. You don't need to be a professional sailor to experience Musto. Give it a try next time. For product information and a store finder, check out http://www.musto.com/usa FIRST VERSION 5.0 AC BOAT UNVEILED Cape Town, South Africa, April 22 - Team Shosholoza today unveiled the hull of its new America's Cup Class yacht for its world premiere at the Royal Cape Yacht Club in Cape Town. It is the first boat built to meet the new Version 5.0 standards of the America's Cup. The British boat designer Jason Ker developed the high-tech construction. The team of engineers, experts in aerodynamics and composite materials and software specialists worked for a total of six months on the new yacht. The hull is the result of 15,000 hours of research and design work. Building time took a total of 25,000 hours. The hull of the Shosholoza will leave Cape Town tonight straight after the presentation (on a container ship) and steer a course for Valencia. There the yacht will be officially launched on May 19th. - Full story: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050422/ukf004.html?.v=7 Curmudgeon's Comment: The new V5.0 boats will weigh 24 tons - one ton lighter than the 2003 generation boats, have a deeper keel, and carry more sail area with spinnakers 8 percent bigger - all making the boat faster. The crew number has increased by an extra man to 17, plus an 18th man as a spectator on board. MOVING DAY Emirates Team New Zealand are ready to embark on the next part of their mission to reclaim the America's Cup. The syndicate's summer training programme in Auckland has ended and the team are now packing up and heading to Europe for this year's six pre-cup regattas or "acts". NZL82 will be shipped to Valencia next week for the first regatta in June. Most of the sailing crew will compete in various regattas until they are required in Spain. While main rivals Alinghi, Oracle and Luna Rossa are set up and sailing in Valencia - the host city of the 2007 event - Team New Zealand managing director Grant Dalton is confident it was in his team's best interests to conduct a training programme in Auckland during the European winter. "They were literally sitting by the fire in their snow shoes until recently," Dalton said. Ben Ainslie, who was Dean Barker's strategist in last year's regattas, will sit out this year's acts to work on his helming skills. "I had to make a decision whether to concentrate on helming or the original role of doing the weather and strategy," Ainslie said. "I enjoyed steering more so I thought I'd stick with that. "The consequences are I don't get to race on the race boat, which is obviously a little bit of a shame, but in the future I want to helm so I have to start somewhere." - Julie Ash, NZ Herald, full story: www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=4&ObjectID=10121950 NOW IT CAN BE TOLD Testing of rebuilt yacht NZL82 has shown that Team New Zealand gained no advantage from the "hula" during their America's Cup defeat, syndicate boss Grant Dalton said today. NZL82 was relaunched earlier this month, minus the controversial hula or hull appendage, and has been sailing against largely unchanged sister boat NZL81. Dalton, who was not part of Team NZ's unsuccessful 2003 defense, said he was now able to resolve "one of the great debates and one of the unanswered questions" from that contest. "We're pretty clear now that there was no advantage at all to the hula from the testing that we've done," he said. "Let's just put that in the `further distraction' category that the 2003 campaign had." Team NZ's hula innovation was a major talking point before the showdown with Swiss challengers Alinghi off Auckland two years ago. However, NZL82 ended up being beset by major gear failure in a 5-0 defeat to a rival crew that included a number of former Team NZ sailors, including skipper Russell Coutts. The yacht was hit by further bad luck last September when it was severely damaged by a tornado in southern France. It has been repaired and modified to conform with the latest cup regulations, which include a ban on hulas. - NZPA, full story: www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3257097a1823,00.html A WINNING COMBINATION! Ockam offers integrated instrument solutions with proven race-winning performance for all boat types. The powerful Tryad processor supplies a smarter, faster & lighter platform that includes built-in RS-232, GPS & NMEA ports and a polar module. All of your data streams unimpeded throughout the system's simple "daisy chain" network eliminating the need to purchase a separate processor. Add the Teeter-Todter 3D compass and get the most stable, accurate numbers available. And take advantage of the versatile Matryx display's 18 user defined pages including graphical stripcharts of any function. Cross to the front of the fleet, contact Ockam. mailto:lat@ockam.com NEWS BRIEFS * Peligroso, Mike Campbell and Dale Williams' new Tim Kernan-designed Dencho 70, was the overall winner of the 466-boat Lexus Newport to Ensenada Race. Roy Disney's Reichel-Pugh maxZ86 Pyewacket took line honors in a light air affair in which the course record was never threatened. - www.nosa.org/ * The Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta has drawn to a close after some of the best racing conditions the Classic Regatta has ever experienced. The winds were on the light side but it gave all of the yachts the opportunity to fly their largest and best sails resulting in a beautiful spectacle of sail. The overall winner this year was the 65 ft Nat Bengiman schooner Juno, who also won the Schooner Class. The Fife Ketch Sumurun was first overall in the Classic and Vintage classes and was the overall winner of the Boat International Concourse d'Elegance. - www.antiguaclassics.com/ * According to a story in The New York Times, Serono - the company of which Alinghi's Ernesto Bertarelli is the Chief Executive Officer - seems to have a bit of a problem: "The setting aside of $725 million by Serono, Europe's biggest biotechnology company, to settle investigations involving its AIDS drug Serostim seems to suggest that the company is preparing to pay one of the largest settlements ever in a government pharmaceutical inquiry. But the lack of specifics from Serono executives left financial analysts bewildered yesterday." - Full story: www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/business/worldbusiness/23serono.html * Registration for the 38th annual Antigua Sailing Week closed with 183 boats representing 27 different countries. Racing kicks off Monday and Sunday afternoon saw big seas with rainsqualls and 40 knots of breeze and whiteout conditions. The forecast for this kind of weather continues until Tuesday. The much-anticipated participation of the 100-foot Maximus has been foiled by engine problems with the transport ship - which has yet to enter the Panama Canal. Maxmius is now due to arrive in Antigua as Sailing Week finishes and she'll undoubtedly miss the racing. - www.sailingweek.com DON'T GET CAUGHT NAKED AT THE ANNAPOLIS NOOD Let VC Performance Rigging outfit your program with all the latest in one-design standing and running rigging upgrades. Stop by the mobile shop in the Fawcett's parking lot from April 28 through May 1 for emergency repairs and accessories- or order in advance for quick and easy pick up. http://www.vcperformancerigging.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 Rory Lewis: Now that we have solved Archimedes, the fundamentals of flight and relative motion, can we talk about an engineering problem that has current relevance, hydraulic canting keels. The basic forces are easy to calculate for the steady state, but assumptions have to be made about the transient case, i.e. hitting the trough after falling off a wave. Structures are designed around these numbers to hold the boat together and builders build according to the design. But obviously something in this process has not been working well considering how many boats have broken. My question is why are they even trying to design/ build a structure to hold these extremely high, and hard to calculate, shock loads. It is a swing keel moved by a hydraulic system, why not let the keel swing down when the hull hits the water. Use the hydraulic system to dampen this motion and swing the keel back out to the side. A hydraulic accumulator, probably spring backed, with an orifice to control the flow would spread the force of the impact over a much longer period, thus reducing the high shock loads to more manageable levels. There maybe some fractional increase in hydraulic system weight and pumping power (fuel used during the race), but this is better than broken boats. * From Gareth Evans: Now that you have everybody's thinking caps on, here is another question. What is the fastest hull finish? I believe it is an eggshell kind of finish - I have been told that then a boundary layer of water adheres to the hull, resulting in water-water friction. With a very smooth hull you have water-plastic friction, which apparently is higher. Am I right? Please help! What sort of finish do the AC boys have? Judging by some of the distinguished names of my fellow readers, there must be somebody out there who can spill the beans! * From John Harwood-Bee (Re the Daily Sail's story on G- Class yacht development): When a sponsor asks 'how fast can we go?' we ask 'how much money do you have?' conversely 'How much will it cost?' is met with ' How fast do you want to go?'. As long as there are people with the ambition and the funding, these maxi vessels will be built and speed sailing development will continue. But take into consideration the recent history of these giants. It's not all plain sailing. Team Philips was a catastrophe. Orange II had serious shake down problems, as did Geronimo before either of them showed any potential, both being beaten by the older and more traditional and multi record holding 'Playstation/ Cheyenne' of Steve Fossett. These maxi multihulls may individually set records but racing against each other is a different matter. You only have to look at the recent Quest to see that nothing is a foregone conclusion. Who would have thought that the two oldest (and least expensive) yachts would be 1st & 2nd. At the moment it is 'all comers' when they enter the few races available but with further launches perhaps we shall have sufficient numbers of varying sizes to create a handicap system. A fleet of ten,fifteen or more of these giants would be an awesome sight. And when it comes to money? Peanuts compared to the $millions sunk into that bottomless pit that is the Americas Cup. As for obsolete, tell that to Brian Thomson and Tony Bullimore. * From Ron Baerwitz: I have known Charlie Segal for 25+ years and was astonished to hear it was he who passed on Wednesday night. We all knew there was a death on the course but not the circumstances or the actual person. Charlie has been an Icon in the Marina del Rey community from his first job at the sail boat rental dock to his position heading up the MdR Catalina Yacht Brokerage. A more honest and reliable gentleman you won't meet. At age 46 he had a great relationship with his wonderful wife, Rosie and the proud father of his children. What a great guy to be lost. I am still in shock of this tragedy. * From Enrico Ferrari: David Dellenbaugh's term 'Wind Shadow' is fine but here in Puget Sound we must have watched too much Get Smart. We call that effect 'the Cone of Death' and use it as an offensive weapon. It is one of the more satisfying moves in sailing, particularly when their spinnaker drops like a deflated balloon. * From R. Howard Strube: I have been following your stories about large race boats with canting keels, trim tabs and bow canard rudders with some amusement. The patron saint of the One Hull Fundamentalists who design, build and own these boats must be Rube Goldberg and suggest the scantlings for these cantlings be included on the www.rube-goldberg.com/ web site. Is the next iteration in this illogical progression … a canting rig? It is probably a good thing that the Monomaran Fundamentalist resist being converted to the light Multihull side where stability of form has overcome the dogma of heavy ballast. The southern California sailor and TV star Buddy Ebsen (a.k.a., Barnaby Jones) once remarked that boats come in three configurations. There is the boat (catamaran ), half boat (monohull) and boat and a half (trimaran). Having owned my share of lead mines and a folding trimaran I am now very content cruising my catamaran. I am looking forward to Scuttlebutt's next installment of "As the Keel Swings". * From Eugene Altwies: In the recent discussions of lee-bow effect, and Archimedes principle, I was inspired to dust off the book "Aero-Hydrodynamics of Sailing" by C.A. Marchaj. Chapter One, Fundamental factors governing yacht performance, starts with a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci: "Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who steers a ship without a helm or compass, and who can never be certain whither he is going." * From Luiz Kahl: Following your note on the IRC TCC Rating Table on Friday's Scuttlebutt, I thought you may want to pass along to everyone the link to the dynamic time table generation. I created it for our Bacardi Bayview Mackinac Race and US-IRC web sites. This table allows you to enter your boat name and TCC and up to 12 of your competition names and TCC. On a click of a button, it will generate for you - in order - a table of time differentials and a second table of elapsed times for various time intervals. These tables will help you with the "How are we doing" question on the race course and you can find them at the following URLs: - Bacardi Bayview Mackinac Race - www.byc.com/mack05/irc-timetable.cfm - US-IRC Web site - www.us-irc.org/irc-timetable.cfm There are links to both of these at the USSailing site in the IRC section. These tables are not IRC specific but can be used for any other straight ToT rating calculation (CSA, IOMR, etc) CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'. |
