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SCUTTLEBUTT 3235 - Wednesday, December 8, 2010Scuttlebutt is published each weekday with the support of its sponsors,providing a digest of major sailing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus. Website: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/scuttbutt Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sailingscuttlebutt RSS: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/rss/index.xml Today's sponsors: North Sails, Morris Yachts, and LaserPerformance. THE STORCK YEAR IN SAILING FOR 2010 This week Scuttlebutt announced that the Storck family in Huntington, NY had been recognized as the 2010 “SAILING FAMILY OF THE YEAR”. John Storck Jr. shares this report on the Storck year in sailing for 2010: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- First, I want to recognize the extended group of very close friends who have contributed so much to enable the members of our family to compete. In no particular order these include Erik’s crew Trevor Moore; Kaity’s crew Lyndsey Gibbons-Neff; Ian’s Skipper Declan Whitmyer and his parents; Emily Anderson, Mandi Markee, Caila Johnson, Baker Potts, Dave Waldo and Aly Whitehead who all did more than their fair share of crewing, wet sanding and rigging and unrigging boats at all hours. Charlie Terry and the Tonic for housing lots of sailors in Miami and St Petersburg and lastly Colette who washed countless loads of sailing gear and drove thousands of miles so that every boat was where it was supposed to be at any particular time. We are also very grateful for the support of the US Sailing Team and the Sailing Foundation of NY who have made much of Erik, Kaity and Ian’s exploits possible. The year started on New Year’s with John 3, Kaity and Ian with their friends, racing Vanguard 15’s in Sarasota, FL while fighting off frostbite and the effects of New Years Eve; at the same time Erik and Trevor were in Freeport, Bahamas for the 49er Worlds. Shortly thereafter, Erik and Trevor joined Kaity & Lyndsey in Miami for the OCR while John 3 and our J/80 team did Key West. Next came the St Pete NOOD for the J/80. Meanwhile, the 470 and 49er were shipped to Palma, Spain for the Princess Sophia regatta and John 3 started to prepare the Dartmouth Sailing team for the spring season. As usual, Lake Mascoma was frozen solid. Unfortunately Erik suffered an injury to his ankle forcing him to drop out of Palma. Next came a hectic European schedule for Erik and Trevor, Kaity and Lyndsey and Declan and Ian. Regattas in Holland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, England and Israel consumed much of the summer. On the home front, John 3 and I started to focus on our J/80 to get it ready for the Worlds in Newport, RI. John and I along with my nephew Bobby Storck all did the Bermuda Race, John on Genuine Risk and Bobby and I on Reindeer. Next came some J/80 sailing over the summer in Newport and the local Wednesday night series here in Huntington on our UFO 22. In August I did one of my favorite events each year, the Wooden Boat Regatta in Maine on Bob Scott’s NY 32 Falcon. As usual at the end of the summer we took the Jonrob, our 39 year old Ericson 39, cruising with all family members joining the cruise at some point in time. It served as crew housing in Marion, MA when we raced Rumor in the J/80 NA’s and later in Newport for the Worlds in October. Colette, Kaity, Lyndsey, and I sailed on the Storm Trysail Club team at the Bitter End Team Race Regatta in November while Erik and Trevor were at the 49er Worlds in Perth. We will all spend Christmas together for a few precious days when we start the year all over again with Ian and Declan leaving on Dec 26 for the 29er Worlds in Argentina and John 3, Erik and Kaity leave for the V15 MW’s. Colette and I are blessed with four offspring who truly love the sport as much or more than we do! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SPONSOR: In addition to the international recognition and the commemorative SFOTY trophy, the Storck family will be outfitted in gear courtesy of award sponsor Atlantis WeatherGear, Camet International, and Harken: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/10/SFOTY OLYMPIC SAILING - IS THE MEN'S KEELBOAT ERA OVER? Among the ten sailing events that will be held at the 2012 Olympics, none is more senior than the men’s keelboat, and no class has been in more Olympics than the Star. But when the tentative list of events for the 2016 Olympics was voted on at the ISAF Annual Meeting last month (to be finalized in May 2011), the men’s keelboat event was gone, possibly ending a history of Olympic keelboat competition that began when sailing was included at the 1900 Games in Paris, France. Intimately familiar with the Olympic Games is American Mark Reynolds, whose four appearances earned him a Silver and two Gold medals, with his Star accomplishments in 2000 earning him ISAF’s highest honor - World Sailor of the Year. Scuttlebutt checked in with Mark about ISAF’s decision... here is Part 3 of this three part interview: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * The ISAF World Cup events have such huge entry numbers that course locations are not always ideally positioned for fair racing, and the media friendly Medal race concept encourages a course position close to shore, perhaps too close for steady winds. Are these trends better suited for dinghies than keelboats? MARK REYNOLDS: Pretty much any boat can sail any course; I don't really see an issue there. I do think to encourage the best sailors in the world to continue to sail the Olympics we shouldn’t make the courses too short or sail them in substandard conditions. It's already a difficult decision to dedicate so many years to have the chance to make the Olympic team, and to represent your country. If I knew starting out that everything could hinge on an extremely short race in super shifty conditions, I probably wouldn’t have made the commitment. I would have found other avenues to excel in the sport, as have many of my contemporaries. The move to an inshore short course is to attract the media and interest of an audience. However, more importantly, we need to change the way the sport is presented and not the way the sport is practiced. We really haven’t put much effort yet in that area. In all my years of Olympic sailing, I had a camera on board during a race just once, (the 2000 Worlds) and my coach was dead set against it. At the Olympics, the media would show up with cameras a few days before the first race, and then discover there was no easy place to mount them. This still wasn’t solved in 2008, despite the fact that the technology is now much better. The closest and most exciting race at the last Olympics was the medal race for the Men's Keelboat, which I watched from the water following the Tornado medal race. GBR started ahead of SWE but was passed on the first beat, putting SWE with the points for the Gold but only by meters. GBR moved into Gold position on the first run. Each of the ten boats in the Medal race finished within fifty-five seconds, with SWE losing the silver to BRA because they got nipped by FRA by one second at the finish line! It's not really about the course or the boats, it's about the presentation. Put the viewer onboard with multiple cameras; it doesn’t even have to be live, but can be quickly edited down to a 4-5 minute summery of all the action . Do this for the ten classes and you have a great sixty-minute program. Golf, a 5 hour walking game in near slow motion proves that there is a way to present it to an audience without just changing it. They don’t just follow one guy walking down the fairway to hit his ball again, they move from player to player to keep the action and competition moving along. Complete interview: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/10/1205#p3 SAVE 20% OFF ALL ORDERS OF $125+ AT NORTH SAILS GEAR Attention holiday shoppers! NOW is the time to SAVE at North Sails Gear! We will deduct 20% off all orders on NorthSailsGear.com (prior to tax & shipping) of $125 or more. Don’t delay... this offer is only valid through Friday, December 10th! Enter ‘SAVE20’ in the comments box during check-out and we will apply the savings to your order. When style counts, head North: http://www.northsailsgear.com ROLLICKING START IN MIAMI Miami, FL (December 7, 2010) - The RC 44 class made its debut in American waters today in conditions that make Miami a renowned racing venue: a northwesterly breeze gusting over 20 knots and the boats planing around the racecourse north of Government Cut at speeds of 17 to 20 knots. The ORACLE RC 44 Cup Miami commenced today with the 14-boat fleet split into two groups of seven for preliminary match racing. If time permits by mid-Thursday, semifinals and a final will be held for the top two from each group. Owner/driver fleet racing is currently scheduled for Friday through Sunday. In Group Alpha, Cameron Appleton has Chris Bake’s Team Aqua tops in the group with a 5-1 record, followed by Harm Müller-Spreer and Markus Wieser in Team Sea Dubai. Sea Dubai actually posted a 6-0 record, but had penalty points applied by the umpires. In Group Bravo, Terry Hutchinson guided Torbjorn Tornqvist’s Artemis to the top of the group with a 5-1 record. Vincenzo Onorato’s Mascalzone Latino enjoyed its best day since returning to the class and is second at 4-1 with one flight to complete the round. BMW ORACLE Racing, with Larry Ellison and Russell Coutts, is third at 4-2. The conditions taxed many of the crews, who were sore from being thrown about the light-displacement yachts, but none other than Daniel Calero’s crew aboard Islas Canarias Puerto Calero. The Spanish crew from the Canary Islands was forced out of action with a broken mast before morning had turned to afternoon. -- Full story: http://www.rc44.com/en/regattas/news/index.php?idContent=2695 POPCORN: Moviegoers can follow the racing with Live Ticker and Virtual Eye: http://www.rc44.com/en/live/index.php BIG BOYS SLATED FOR INAUGURAL SERIES Mike Slade’s Farr 100, ICAP Leopard and George David’s Juan-K designed, Rambler 100 (formerly Speedboat) will be among the main attractions when the inaugural Atlantic Ocean Racing Series commences this winter in the Caribbean. The RORC Caribbean 600 and the Pineapple Cup (Miami to Montego Bay) are the first events in this inaugural series that includes seven of the great blue water races in the world. After these two races in the Caribbean, the series moves up the U.S. East Coast with the Annapolis to Newport Race. Right after comes the Transatlantic Race 2011 from Newport, Rhode Island to the Lizard, just west of Plymouth, England. The European races then kick in with the hugely popular Rolex Fastnet Race, a new Biscay Race organised by the Royal Yacht Squadron from Cowes to Sanxenxo on the northwest corner of Spain and on to Malta for the Rolex Middle Sea Race organised by the Royal Malta Yacht Club. Participation in three races, one of which must be the Transatlantic race, are required to qualify for the AORS and IRC rating will be used throughout. The seven qualifying races and their starting dates are: Pineapple Cup - Montego Bay Race, February 5, 2011 RORC Caribbean 600, February 21, 2011 Annapolis to Newport Race, June 3, 2011 Transatlantic Race 2011, June 26 through July 3, 2011 Rolex Fastnet Race, August 14, 2011 Biscay Race, September 5 - 6, 2011 Rolex Middle Sea Race, October 22, 2011 Details: http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=10951 MILESTONES AND MILES: BERMUDA By Kimball Livingston, yachting journalist There were no weather briefings back in 1906, when Rudder Magazine editor Thomas Fleming Day convinced a few people to join him in testing an untested notion, namely that it makes sense to go to sea to race as amateur crews in modest craft. Or, as I put it to myself a hundred years later, that it makes no sense, but it makes grand nonsense. Compelling, grand nonsense, so let’s go. Following the Centennial Transpac, the Centennial Bermuda Race would be the second step in my scheme to sail milestone editions of America’s three distance classics, Transpac, Bermuda, and Chicago-Mac. The first decade of the 21st century offered that unique opportunity, and we’re about to run out of decade, and this is my recap. The original Bermuda race went off a few months ahead of the original Transpac, both in 1906. My story would be nicely balanced, if, having sailed the one-year-early Centennial Transpac on the ultimate West Coast plastic classic, a Cal 40, I had then sailed the Centennial Bermuda on the ultimate East Coast plastic classic, a Hinckley Bermuda 40 yawl. I stand by that, though I should note: The big-show winner in the Centennial Newport-Bermuda Race, 2006, was a Cal 40 named Sinn Fein, owned by one Peter Rebovich, Sr. out of Raritan Yacht Club, New Jersey. This came after class wins in the two previous races. And Rebovich came back again in 2008 and repeated as the big-show winner. He became only the second skipper in history and the first (complete with loyal amateur crew) to win the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse Trophy in consecutive years since the legendary Carleton Mitchell pulled it off 1956-58-60. Rebovich missed a three-peat in 2010; Carleton Mitchell stands alone. But, apparently, our West Coast classics do OK on the Mysterious East Coast, and so far, the only person I’ve heard from who also sailed all three of the milestone editions was another left coaster, Ben Mitchell, who went maxi all the way: Transpac on Pyewacket; Bermuda on Titan; Race to Mackinac on Genuine Risk. -- Read on: http://kimballlivingston.com/?p=5522 MORRIS YACHTS RECEIVES CONTRACT FOR HULL #6 OF LEADERSHIP 44 Bob Hallock of the United States Coast Guard Academy came to visit Morris Yachts to see the infusion of the centerline of hull #1 of the Leadership 44. He also brought with him the contract for hull #6 and the news that the final two contracts should be signed by the end of the year. All funds for the project are being raised privately. They believe firmly that putting midshipmen under sail is the best way to teach future maritime officers the ways of the sea. To see the infusion and hear from Bob Hallock, go to: http://www.morrisyachts.com/news SEEKING ADVICE FOR J/109 NEW NAV GEAR Dear Electronics Gurus: My J/109 is in need of some new nav gear. I am true electronics geek at work and home, but I'm feeling overwhelmed by the options when it comes to my boat. I've been dealing with a bit of a mishmash since I bought her; the previous owner didn't seem to apply any rhyme or reason when selecting electronics. Suffice it to say, out with the old and in with the new... I'm in the market for a new nav system, some instruments, and an AIS. I have also been debating a new radar. Honestly, I'd really like to do a total refresh at this point, save my Simrad pilot, which works fine. I have been reading and researching a lot online lately and in some magazines, and the one thing I'm definitely thinking is that I'd like to try to stay with one brand if I can ... not only because I think it's a clean look, but also because it seems like there are a lot of cool things you can do these days over a network with compatible technology. So, for starters ... what do you think about my one brand idea? Do you have any recommendations? And, is there anything I should definitely steer clear of? -- Greg Anyone want to come to Greg’s rescue? Post your reply here: http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=10910 WHY SAILING LESSONS MAKE A GREAT GIFT For that next occasion, why don't you give somebody a gift of freedom topped with a new found confidence? Have you ever thought that you can give such a precious gift? Now you have with sailing lessons. It's a real out of the box gift idea that will surely put that sparkle in your recipients eyes, next thing you know, that person will be planning that next well deserved leave or time off because someone gifted him/her with a worthwhile activity. It is a great present that will give bigger results than expected. Here's why sailing lessons make a great gift. Sailing is a liberating activity; realize how much your hands and feet have been bound down to the daily routine called life. You just have so much on your plate that you barely notice breathing. Too many meetings, too many deadlines, too many challenges to face. Sailing lessons will definitely help you take a load off. In an entirely different classroom and campus. Do something productive and earth friendly for a change. Have the ultimate fun in a vessel that is driven by nature's forces instead of carbon filled fuel. Sailing is more exciting than riding a bike but still more earth friendly than riding a motocross bike. Sailing lessons are a great way to meet new friends, learn new knowledge and discover skills you thought you never had. You get to enjoy an activity that is new to you, with interesting people and with great rewards of learning. Almost anyone can learn to sail. It can be enjoyed by both young and old. Sailing is a physical activity, and for those who lack exercise, sailing can be a great way to start on it. Apart from the physical benefits, sailing keeps you mentally alert and can be a great mind exercise as well. -- Read on: http://www.ucoolstuff.com/blog/why-sailing-lessons-make-a-great-gift/ SAILING SHORTS * The World Sailing Speed Record Council announced that a benchmark time has been established by skipper Brad Jackson (NZL) on the VO70 "il mostro" from Bermuda to Newport, RI. Jackson and his crew of seven set an elapsed time of 42 hours 3 minutes and 29 seconds on June 23-24, 2010, covering the 635 mile distance at an average speed of 15.1 knots. -- http://tinyurl.com/WSSRC-120710 * Armenia is the sixth addition to the 100+ national membership of the International Optimist Dinghy Association in the last 18 months. IODA immediately agreed a "6 for 5" grant towards the purchase of 12 new Optimists and builder Far East Shanghai, one of several which generously help in IODA's development work, offered to supply at ex-factory cost. Armenia follows Albania, Costa Rica, Iran, Mozambique and Sudan in joining IODA recently and is the 22nd national Optimist fleet to have been created or radically regenerated in the last ten years. -- Full report: http://www.sailing.org/news/34826.php * Warm ocean Laser sailing is on the menu for anyone sailing off the coast of Palm Beach, FL, in the historical Florida Masters on February 12-13, 2011. And for anyone with an inkling of creativity, they can enter at no cost. What’s the catch? All you have to do is submit the winning slogan and T- shirt design for the regatta. Details here: http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=10854 * The International 210 Class has posthumously awarded the Vice President’s Trophy to Pat and Tony Gretzky for their long term contributions to the Class and their local fleet in Muskegon, Mi. Tony Gretzky was awarded the Ralph Warren Sullivan Trophy in recognition of his long history of Corinthian sportsmanship during 45 years of active participation in the Class. Son Jim accepted both awards on behalf of the Gretzky Family. -- http://www.210class.com 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS @ LASERPERFORMANCE Need help with that special gift for the dinghy sailor in the family? The elves at the LaserPerformance workshop have selected 12 different specials. Program starts TODAY December 8th and run thru December 19th with some great deals! Call your LaserPerformance dealer for the details or go to http://shopna.laserperformance.com INDUSTRY NEWS UPDATES The Industry News category of the Scuttlebutt Forum encourages companies to post their new hirings, product and service updates. Scuttlebutt editors will select Industry update each week to include in the Thursday edition of the Scuttlebutt newsletter. Here is the link to post Industry News updates: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum/industry_news GUEST COMMENTARY Scuttlebutt strongly encourages feedback from the Scuttlebutt community. Either submit comments by email or post them on the Forum. Submitted comments chosen to be published in the newsletter may be limited to 250 words. Authors may have one published submission per subject, and should save their bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere. Email: editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com Forum: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum * From Steve Gregory: Congrats to the Storck family, and for Scuttlebutt taking on the unenviable task of determining the inaugural recipient of the award. But from what I have heard about this clan, they would have gotten my vote too. * From Peter Meyerson: The story about the Storck family reinforces my beliefs about introducing sailing to children. Our temptation is to enroll them in the best junior program, and then measure their progress within the sport against their peers. Instead, we need to remove the ‘sport’ reference and replace it with ‘lifestyle’. Throw away the schedule, and just let them mess around in boats. Our desire to keep improving things can sometimes backfire on us. * From Eric Monroe, US Sailing Team - Star (2006): The modern Olympics is all about money, TV and spectators. This equals short race courses, necessity of visual “speed”, “visual” boat handling, and close quarters racing. All of which negate classic sailing tactics. The Star did not have a chance. CURMUDGEON’S OBSERVATION Famous Last Words...“These are the good kind of mushrooms.” SPONSORS THIS WEEK Ultimate Sailing - West Marine - Henri Lloyd Melges Performance Sailboats - North U - Camet - North Sails LaserPerformance - APS - Ullman Sails - Harken - The Pirates Lair Need stuff? Look here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ssc/suppliers |
