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SCUTTLEBUTT 3455 - Tuesday, October 25, 2011Scuttlebutt 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 U, North Sails, and J Boats. BRUCE GOLISON - THE RACING PRO It's a short list of people that are as dominant as a competitor as they are competent as a principle race officer. Our list only has one... California's Bruce Golison. After winning the 2010 Etchells North American Championships in San Diego, Golison traveled to Marblehead Massachusetts to run the 2011 edition. Scuttlebutt checked in with Golison about his experience in wearing both hats: * How did this all begin for you? BRUCE GOLISON: Peter Craig is one of the best PRO's in the world, and he asked me to come down to his Key West Race Week regatta and help out on the water. I had been hosting an annual keelboat regatta in Southern California, but I was always onshore and was looking forward to learning about it from one of the top PRO's. After two years of being his 'caddy', Peter said he had too much to do ashore running the event and that I would be taking over running the big boat circle as the PRO. Running the grand prix big boat circle with six classes at Key West for my first time as a PRO was sort of like being thrown in the deep end of the pool while learning to swim. Fortunately, I had an awesome group of talented race committee people supporting me and things went well. For the next eight years I ran one regatta a year, which was the big boat circle at Key West Race Week. With the downturn in entries at Key West three years ago, the event went to three circles and I stepped out. But I had developed a passion for running races in the manner that I thought that they should be run, and was looking for new challenges. I picked up the phone and called Harry Melges and Andy Burdick at Melges Performance Boats and after a good conversation on racing, I found myself running Melges 32, Melges 24 and Melges 20 class regattas, and it has taken off from there. * What has led to the emergence of the travelling PRO? BRUCE GOLISON: There are multiple reasons for this. First and foremost is that this is being driven by the one design classes themselves. As boat owners travel from place to place for their major regattas, the time and financial commitments to do so have become quite substantial. The expectation of having consistently well managed regattas is most important to them. Another key component is having PRO's who are familiar with their own class's preferences. All of this is why many competitive classes look to bring in a PRO who they are comfortable with. It simply takes a level of uncertainty out of going to a new venue. There are several other reasons for the emergence of the traveling PRO....1) some yacht clubs want their race committees to have an opportunity to learn from a top level PRO (or to at least see a different perspective in running regattas), 2) a boat owner wants his club to host his class's championship regatta and the club simply does not have a championship caliber race committee, 3) some clubs who are hosting a major class championship, where their own members will be competing, prefer to bring in an outside PRO to eliminate any potential "home club preferences" issues, and 4) at certain ISAF or US Sailing events, the PRO is appointed by the respective organizations. -- Read on: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/11/1024/ "LIKE NO OTHER REGATTA I'VE EVER SAILED" Sailing onboard the U.S. J/24 entry at the XVI Pan American Games in Puerto Vallarta (Oct. 17-23), Dan Rabin was posting daily comments on Sailing World about their silver medal winning experience. Here are some excerpts: * Security has increased significantly since we first arrived. Getting into the hotel or the yacht club is like going through security at the airport. In addition, the Mexican Navy is patrolling the coast of our hotel and the sailing area - wow! * I feel like karma should be on our side. The Canadian team's jib got lost in transport, so we gave them our practice jib which only has a few days on it. Otherwise, they would have been sailing with a jib that looks older than the kids I coach at Brown. * We had a nice cross-class dinner after the first day of sailing with the Lightning team and Clay Johnson. I learned that Farrah Hall, the U.S. boardsailor went for a run while waiting for her redress hearing. Boardsailing must be one of the most intense physical activities on the planet, and Farrah goes for a run to cool down! I explained to Jay Lutz that if I ran from our dinner table to the restaurant door I would probably go into cardiac arrest. I guess I'm getting old, or maybe I'm flat-out already there, but being on the water for 6 hours in 90+ degrees takes a lot out of me. * Another competition going on in the midst of the Pan Am Games is the country pins. All of the athletes are given about 20 pins which have a national team decal. The idea is that you exchange pins with athletes from other countries. I am failing miserably on this front. I imagine that the pin exchange is a great introduction to meet people if you are single. I am not single, and I'm a bit shy by nature. So far, I have a couple of Mexican pins that I got from one of their American coaches I was already friends with - pathetic, I know. I gave a pin to a waiter today just for getting me some parmesan cheese, and I gave another pin to a waiter with the promise of a Puerto Rican pin in exchange tomorrow. * For our day off, we managed to find the only place hotter than a J/24 deck downwind: the beach volleyball court. The U.S. men's and women's teams had matches, so most of the sailors went down to cheer them on. During the men's match, a group of 30 Mexican elementary school students were cheering "Los Estados Unidos", so I'm thinking that NAFTA thing has worked out pretty well. * The Pan American Games was like no other regatta I've ever sailed. An outsider might look at it and see there are only 7 boats, and think, "That can't be nearly as hard as a Worlds or North Americans." The comparison is pointless. They're so completely different that it's not really the same game. Full report here: http://www.sailingworld.com/blogs NORTH U SEMINARS, CLINICS, RACE WEEKS, BOOKS & CDS - Find out how your club can host a NorthU seminar. Contact Fran@NorthU.NorthSails.com - It's not too early to start planning for 2012 racing & match racing clinics. - Race Week XII starts April 15. Ten boat limit. A coach on every boat. - Special Deals on Rules and Match Racing books, CDs, and DVDs. - Order your holiday gifts now with free shipping for Scuttlebutt readers. Add 'Scuttlebutt7245' to comments. You can spend a lifetime learning to be a better sailor. Accelerate the process at http://www.northu.com WORDS OF WISDOM The inaugural induction ceremony for the U.S. National Sailing Hall of Fame (NSHOF) this past weekend was one of those once in a lifetime moments. The Hall now stands to provide recognition and inspiration to sailing enthusiasts. Here are a few of the comments made during the ceremony at San Diego Yacht Club on October 23, 2011: George R. Hinman, Jr., NYYC staff commodore and NSHOF board member: "I was at a (National Sailing Hall of Fame) press conference when a local reporter came to me and said, 'Can you explain to me why the New York Yacht Club, which has a beautiful clubhouse in New York City and another in Newport Rhode Island, would become a founding member of an organization that is domiciled in Annapolis?' I had to pause, as I knew I would hear this question again, and members of the N board would hear this question again. I said to the reporter, 'If this is going to be successful, if this is going to be relevant, it has to reflect the entire country.' From that point on I think everything the Hall's board has tried to do, the composition of it, has gone in that direction. We now have 25 founding yacht clubs, which represent both large and small memberships from throughout the entire country." Dennis Conner, 2011 NSHOF inductee: "It is very special to me for the event to be held at San Diego Yacht Club. I really feel that without this venue, this club, I don't know what I would be doing, but I know I wouldn't be standing here and going into the Hall of Fame. I grew up a half block away, my father was a fisherman, and he would drop his fish off nearby. I think we are all a creature of our environment, so it was normal for me to come down to the yacht club to hang out and learn how to sail. "Fortunately for me, I can look around here and see so many of the people responsible for what success I've had. As a young guy, and you start hearing the names of Lowell North and Malin Burnham and Carl Eichenlaub, and all the special things they've done, I feel so privileged to have lived up to their standard. Especially Lowell, who in my mind is probably the greatest sailor that we've ever had." Paul Cayard, 2011 NSHOF inductee: "I would like to acknowledge my father who is with me today, and who built the El Toro that is on display. That was my very first boat that he built in our garage in San Francisco in 1968. Fate is an interesting thing. My parents didn't sail, and we had no sailing in our family. It was when I was in school, and a second grade classmate's family sailed and they invited me to a small lake in Oakland called Lake Merritt. "I went sailing there a couple times, and my dad could see that I was passionate about sailing. I was just eight years old, and he probably thought that this was just another fad that would pass. But he went ahead and built me a boat in the winter one year, and that was the beginning. Obviously we all here have a lot of sailing talent, we are born with it, it's in our blood, but what if we never had the opportunity to realize it? (Thankfully) life and fate took care of that." NSHOF website: http://www.nshof.org Scuttlebutt Facebook photos: http://tinyurl.com/Scuttlebutt-FB-102411 CORRECTION - MACKINAC TRAGEDY US SAILING Offshore Director Dan Nowlan has reviewed Dawn Reiss's article on the Chicago Mac Race tragedy that was published in Scuttlebutt 3449 titled ' In Too Deep - Behind The Race To Mackinac Tragedy'. Here are his comments: "We'd like to bring Scuttlebutt readers' attention to an error that was present in the article on the WingNuts capsize. It reported that WingNuts 'passed' her Offshore Racing Rule (ORR) stability test. This is a misunderstanding of what the ORR certificate communicates. ORR reports the measured Limit of Positive Stability (LPS) and calculated Stability Index (SI - resistance to capsize). It's up to race organizers to decide whether minimum limits of either LPS or SI are needed for their event. The certificate can be used by the race organizers as a source of data, but does not make a judgment." The Chicago Yacht Club asked US SAILING to conduct an independent study of what happened. The complete findings of that panel will be presented to the public in Annapolis on October 29th at the US SAILING Annual General Meeting in Annapolis, MD. Meeting details: http://about.ussailing.org/US_SAILING_Meetings.htm Scuttlebutt 3449: http://tinyurl.com/Scuttlebutt-3449 DESIGN DIFFERENCES When the six Volvo Open 70s line up for the first In-Port Race of the 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race on October 29th, each team will be quick to analyze their relative performance. For a race with nine distance legs and ten In-Port Races, the teams that don't continue to improve will get left in the wake. Chris Nicholson (AUS), skipper of CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand, describes a couple areas to look for: "The boards continue to be a big ticket item on these boats. Our boards are behind the mast, and we are the first VO 70 to put them in that position. Everybody else has their boards in front of the rig. As for board breakage, the only way to truly avert damage is to avoid ocean obstacles. I can say it is an area of the boat where we did not spare any expense in terms of weight and structure. "The other important area is the sail program, as with fewer sails allowed in this race, we have some real holes in the inventory so our designs have to be doing a better job to improve each sail's versatility." Skipper, Team, Yacht Design Frank Cammas, Groupama, Juan Kouyoumdjian design Iker Martinez, Team Telefonica, Juan Kouyoumdjian design Ken Read, PUMA Ocean Racing, Juan Kouyoumdjian design Chris Nicholson, CAMPER, Marcelino Botin design Mike Sanderson, Team Sanya, Farr Yacht Design Ian Walker, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, Farr Yacht Design Photo of all the teams can be seen here: http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/gallery/photos.html WHO WILL WIN THE 2001-12 VOLVO OCEAN RACE? With less than a week until the start of the 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race, all six teams (five of which are powered by North Sails) are prepped and ready to go in Alicante, Spain. Which of the six teams do you think will win? We have started a survey on our Facebook page and so far, the overwhelming majority of those who have voted think PUMA Ocean Racing is the top contender. Let us know your opinion... http://www.facebook.com/NorthSailsUSA SAILING SHORTS * La Trinite-sur-Mer, France (October 24, 2011) - For the second day of competition at the Student Yachting World Cup, racing was cancelled due to big waves and winds that exceeded 40 knots. Fifteen of the best sailing teams from universities representing 14 countries are racing in the 9.54 m Grand Surprise through October 28th. Among the 15 teams are Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and Maine Maritime Academy (Castine, Maine). Event website: http://www.sywoc.org/ * Just before 0100 CEST on Tuesday, 24 October, Igor Simcic's Esimit Europa 2 crossed the finish line in Marsamxett Harbour in Malta to claim the line honours win at the 606 nm Rolex Middle Sea Race. The 100-foot Slovenian boat completed the course in an elapsed time of 61 hours, 24 minutes and 35 seconds. As Esimit Europa 2 crossed the line in Malta, the nearest yacht, Rán (GBR), was approximately 90 nautical miles behind, and was expected at the finish in Malta Tuesday afternoon. Seventy yachts started the 32nd edition on October 22nd. --Full report: http://www.rolexmiddlesearace.com/news/?ID=267&f * San Diego, CA (October 23, 2011) - The third annual PCISA Girls High School Invitational was held this week-end. Created by Mary Brigdon Snow, the winners were the defending champion Francis Parker High School, with Newport Harbor Blue in second and Corona del Mar in third. Sailing A division for Francis Parker was skipper Marly Isler with crews Michelle Pond and Kaitlin Driscoll. Sailing B division was Emily Bohl with crew Kristen Stipanov. Casey Hutcheson and coach Bryan Rigby complete the Parker team. -- Full results: http://www.sdyc.org/juniors/11results/pcisa11_res.txt FREE CLASSIFIED ADS The Scuttlebutt Classified Ads provide a marketplace for private parties to buy and sell, or for businesses to post job openings. Scuttlebutt will highlight a selection of the ads in the Wednesday edition of the Scuttlebutt newsletter. View/post ads here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum/classified_ads 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 Old, Australia: A sailing friend and fellow Yacht Club barfly, one Charles Blundell (aka in the sailing world as 'Chas from Tas') is looking for photos of Windward Passage taken during the brief period when she was ketch-rigged. I only managed to find one, which is a rather grainy shot running with Mizzen Staysail, but no Mizzen. Would you or your readers be able to assist? HELP: The legendary Alan Gurney-designed 73-footer Windward Passage was built of wood on a Bahamian beach, and was the pacesetter for many the classic ocean races in the 70's. If you have images of this trendsetter with her mainsail mizzen, please email them to the Scuttlebutt editor. Here is the image Steve mentions: http://i42.tinypic.com/2eyl1zb.jpg * From Dawn Riley: I read Scuttlebutt every day but don't normally chime in, but I'm hoping my comments on the current coaching can help. A few years ago I started doing some coaching for individuals like Stan and his team from NASA Ames and for the Beneateau 40.7 fleet in Chicago. It was fun for me and the progress was awesome. This definitely influenced us when we created the Oakcliff Sailing Center. We are a nonprofit coaching and training center for ALL sailors mostly adults. Tuesday's are match racing drills; weekends will see regattas but mostly 'clinegattas' where there is a day or two of clinic and then a regatta. Next year we will partner with Sagamore who runs the Wednesday night races and one start will be the Oakcliff Coaching start. Anyone who is a supporter of the foundation can sail one of our boat or their own boat and coaching will be provided from coaches on RIBs and depending on the day onboard coaching. Final note: With the exception of the above fleet coaching system. I think coaching while actually racing is virtually impossible. You end up getting too involved. A coach will say "hmm, are you sure that you are set up for a jibe set?" A coach under pressure of racing will say "run the gear around nowwwwwww! $#*+Â¥!" Coaching here at Oakcliff is quality efficient fun. Everyone is welcome to come and visit and train with us. NEW J/108 SAILS IN ONLY 5' OF WATER The J/108 is the newest "performance cruiser" from J Boats. This shoal-water capable 35' yacht has a comfortable interior, a spacious cockpit and an easy-to-handle furling spinnaker on a fixed sprit/anchor roller. She draws only 4' with board up and her twin rudders provide exceptional control for a fun ride. http://www.jboats.com/j108 CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION Any given computer program, when running, is obsolete. SPONSORS THIS WEEK JK3 Nautical Enterprises - The Pirates Lair - North U - North Sails J Boats - Melges Performance Sailboats - Doyle Sails - Salt Harbor Studio Team One Newport - Ullman Sails - Premiere Racing - Gowrie Group - Samson Need stuff? Look here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ssc/suppliers |
