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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 886 - August 23, 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.
THE JUBILEE It was a Down Under day at the Prada 12-Meter World Championships as Kiwi Russell Coutts and his mixed Swiss/Kiwi crew aboard South Australia, beat John Bertrand and his Aussies on Australia II in the Grand Prix Class, with young New Zealander Cameron Appleton and the Team New Zealand contingent aboard Kiwi Magic finishing third. Coutts and his Swiss Alinghi Challenge shipmates sailed their 12-Metre South Australia around the course in first place, pursued but never caught by Bertrand and the Aussie veterans on Australia II. The Grand Prix boats barely weathered the tidal trap waiting for them at the leeward mark but were able to get around the mark, harden up on port tack and then drift sideways in the tide for over a mile until they got out of the worst of the current on the Isle of Wight shore. Coutts leads on points after three races, with a low-point score of 4. Appleton is second with 8 and Bertrand is third with 11. For the America's Cup Class fleet, the first order of business was a posting from the International Jury announcing that Prada's Luna Rossa had been disqualified from the Race Around the Island. This won't affect standings on the points table, as that race isn't scored on the overall results. On the water, the same light wind conditions meant that the one race achieved on a shortened course turned into an endurance contest. Luna Rossa led off the starting line, and went up the right side of the course with the majority of the fleet. The Italians started tacking to weather of their nearest competitor, the GBR Challenge's GBR-52, and we're able to extend their lead around the track. Team New Zealand and GBR-41 went way out to the left, and were over 30-minutes behind the leaders at the top mark. At the finishing line, Luna Rossa scored a 3:42 win over GBR-52, with America3 a further three minutes behind. The America's Cup Class will complete the fleet racing section of their programme on Thursday morning, and the top four on the points table will carry on with a match racing series in the afternoon. - Peter Rusch, Keith Taylor Full results for all classes: www.americascupjubilee.com
MORE JUBILEE Italian humour cannot have been at its best when the jury disqualified Luna Rossa for sailing Ian Walker's crew on GBR52 into an exclusion zone in Tuesday's race round the Isle of Wight. They meted out the same treatment to the British challenge with a protest of their own yesterday. "Bloody hell, it's going to be a long year-and-a-half," exclaimed Walker, looking ahead to the time when the teams will be playing for vastly higher stakes in the America's Cup challenger trials in Auckland. "I suppose it's a compliment that they feel the need to protest us on a technicality." - Tim Jeffery, UK Telegraph Full story: sport.telegraph.co.uk/sport/
LIFE ON A VOLVO OCEAN RACER * We left Gibraltar around 6 pm Saturday evening with a nice following breeze. We sailed out through the straits with the kite doing 15+. It was a beautiful evening, one that prompted our skipper, Grant Dalton to say, "this is why I do this". It is nice to see that even a man who has sailed around the planet six or seven times, still has an appreciation for the small things. It just helps keep things in perspective. * The plan remained the same, test during the day, and race at night. Testing consisted of lining up with the other boat, either to weather or to leeward, sailing for 10-minutes, and then switching sides. This would usually be followed by exchanging sails with the other boat, either the headsail or kite, and then doing the test again. We would do this for 14 hours a day, then pick a waypoint, and race to it through the night. This schedule continued all week long, and we were able to test in many conditions and points of sail. * Although we are a team, the competitive spirit comes out very quickly, and the tests soon become an us versus them. All day, you try to beat the other boat. The test ends, and you do it again. Power reaching side by side, fully tanked up doing 15 to 20 knots, spray flying everywhere, right on the edge. Either you get rolled, or roll the other guy. Wednesday afternoon, we arrived at our new home for the next month. Sanxenxo, Spain. Now the brains sit down and decipher the data and try to decide which boat is faster. I can tell you it will not be an easy one. The month before we leave for England will be spent testing, refining, and figuring out which boat and sails to take. It is quite possible the final decision will not come until the last possible minute. - Keith Kilpatrick, Nautor Challenge
CARBON SAILCLOTH
LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON * From Todd Willsie: I my view the VO 60 described by Keith Kilpatrick is a an example of a very bad trend in our sport. Given the potential for injury with the kind of bunks described I would call the boat unseaworthy and irresponsible. This absurd obsession with weight is out of control and ignores the huge human factors of fatigue and general crew well being have on race performance. I blame the designers for trying to impress each other and clients with even more irrational "weight savings" ideas every year. Do these people really think speed is improved by these extreme ideas? How long before someone is dead or paralyzed by flying out of a bunk? For next time, how about feeding everyone the same nutritional goop out of a pair of carbon tanks (pumped by hand to the high side). That would save the weight of all the foil packs used for the dehydrated food and those heavy forks and spoons. The majority vote would pick chocolate or vanilla flavor for the leg. * From Alice Leahey: I simply have to reply to Ralph Taylor. There is no such thing as "Basal cell melanoma" or "Squamous cell melanoma". Basal cells and squamous cells are two types of (usually) non-invasive and curable (if detected early enough) skin cancer, which are totally different from melanoma, which is ALWAYS invasive and ALMOST NEVER curable, no matter how early it is detected. An occurrence of one of the first two types is not necessarily a good indicator of the likelihood of getting melanoma. However, all are more likely if sun exposure has been heavy in the early/teen years. Ralph is correct in stating that sailors are among the highest risk groups for all types, as we have a high exposure rate to the sun's rays, aggravated by reflection off the water. Sunscreen, hats, and protective clothing are the only ways we have of avoiding all forms of skin cancer, short of giving up the sport we love. * From Graham Kelly (edited heavily to our 250-word limit): The comments about weight limits, hiking in big boats, and "sailing for comfort" also made me think of my days as a Finn sailor. I wasn't ever able to reach the competitive level of learning to forget the pain of hiking out for long periods while concentrating on the race. In the Finn class, I never got beyond the hobby level, and the "sport" guys beat this "hobby" guy every time. So the aggressive sailors will say, "Hike heavy!" and "Slide your butt out", the rest of us will wear thick webbing belts, grit our teeth and squirm, and the wimps will hope the Camets can figure out how to pad the front of our hip bones, in addition to our oversize butts. We all struggle to remember that, even though it's uncomfortable, the wire is your friend. I agree that weight equalization is essential to fair racing, especially in one designs, and I believe it makes sense to weigh competitors throughout a competition, and not solely prior to a regatta. If you question this, watch the speedo next time the bowman gets off the rail on a windy day. On the other hand, I'm watching my weight this week in anticipation of a weigh-in on Friday at the Schock 35 Nationals, and I wonder if a 2-3 pound per person weight gain would make much difference in our 9 person crew. (But if it was 10 lbs. each, it could make a BIG difference.) * From Evans Gareth (edited to our 250-word limit): Mike Esposito talks about increasing and decreasing weight, but only briefly touches on the critical point - you must have the weight in the right place. In a round-the-cans race, we remove anything that is not required (and that the class rules allow!). We look at the weather and only take the necessary sails. After all, 2 sails in weigh almost as much as one person, and sit in the bottom of the boat not aiding the righting moment at all. If that "person" sits on the rail, they keep the boat flatter, with more sail area exposed to the wind and hence the yacht goes faster. In the Whitbread / Volvo Race, the guys cut out labels etc to reduce any unnecessary weight and hence make the boat lighter and faster. During the race all weight is moved to windward. They stack all the sails on deck on the windward rail - if it had no effect they wouldn't bother to do it with the risks involved (boats always lose sails in this way when waves hit) and the time it takes to move the sails across during a tack. At a shade over 100kg in weight (pure muscle you understand!), I have been informed that when I came off the rail whilst racing a Mumm 36 upwind in a Force 6, our speed dropped by 0.5 knots. Whatever boat I sail on now, I'm confined to the rail unless I'm going to do my mast job! * From: Jim.Bungener: As a reply to Mike Ingham's question in N0 885 concerning the safety of traveling the world let me just say that with more then 20 years of plying the world's waters on a cruising sailboat, pirates are not as bad as you fear. As long as you play smart and avoid the high danger areas you will be perfectly safe and even then, we cruised through the South China Sea between the Philippines and Papua New Guinea in constant fear of every fishing boat but without seeing a single trace of violent behavior. The Seven Seas Cruising Association SSCA (www.ssca.org) is an organization where people share sailing experiences( good or bad) through monthly newsletters. It even has lists of what equipment works and which doesn't, where to go and where to avoid and all sorts of useful stuff. All based on experiences from sailors like us. Just go out sailing and be more afraid of official bureaucrats then pirates. * From: Clark Carruthers, Toronto: There are some very good resources on the web which can be used to track piracy. 1) Web page of a Los Angles based law firm which tracks vessel casualties and weekly piracy incidents. This page has links to many resources on piracy including a very good article in the May 1998 edition of Asian Maritime magazine on 'Yacht Security' - www.cargolaw.com/presentations_casualties.html 2) International Chamber of Commerce - Weekly Piracy Report. This site has links to the IMB (International Maritime Bureau) Piracy Reporting Centre, it also has maps showing the incidence of piracy in various regions of the world and links to various commercial, insurance and shipping organizations dealing with piracy; www.iccwbo.org/ccs/imb_piracy/weekly_piracy_report.asp The emphasis on these sites is piracy involving commercial vessels, not yachts. But where these bandits can attack and board a 300,000 dwt tanker or a 35,000 dwt bulker a 40' yacht would be child's play!
RESULTS ONLINE For computer savvy race organizers, the user interface allows them to upload output from JavaScore, a regatta-scoring program written by Sandy Grosvenor of Annapolis. "Once a Race Committee is done with their scoring duties, they can connect to RegattaBase from any Internet connection, browse to the JavaScore file on their computer, select it for upload and they're done. Their results are available on the web in a matter of minutes. This will greatly simplify the life of Webmasters, who are becoming frustrated with demands placed on them to get results published quickly," says Emmet. Anyone interested in getting regatta results on the web can sign up to use RegattaBase. "This is a very user friendly service." notes Emmet. "The flexibility of our database design allows us to cater to everyone from a competitor in a Tuesday night Laser series who volunteers to keep score for his buddies, to International Class Associations in need of a complete scoring solution." For more information about RegattaBase and JavaScore: www.regattabase.org
IMPRESSIONS AND REMEMBRANCES - Andy Rose I have a lot of heroes in this sport and most of them are here but this is the only place where my hero's heroes are also around. Jim Hardy was really excited to see Buddy Melges, for example. And, the Legends---Olin Stephens out on Freedom on a practice day, still doing "warranty work" at 93 on a boat he designed over 20 years ago! It feels like a combination of a few America's Cups thrown together with a Transatlantic, the old SORC and a Hobart race thrown in for good measure. Definitely a "Woodstockian" reunion. The boats are great but the chance to see the people, especially the veterans, is the reason I wouldn't have missed this. A few of the vets include the Offshore Navigators --- Peter Bowker (a Fastnet race winner again this year for the umpteenth time), David "Fang" Kilponen, John "Biggles" Brooks; the Australia II gang --- Alan Bond, Warren Jones, John Bertrand, Scotty McAllister, Skip Lissaman, Ken Judge (and many more); the Ink Stained Wretches --- Keith Taylor, Bob Fisher, Hugh McCormick, Guy Gurney and the aforementioned Mundle; the designers --- German Frers (whose Stealth is the most awesome new boat I've seen); Doug Peterson, and Ron Holland (whose sail plan for his new 250 foot sloop with a 300 foot rig dwarfed the J Boat plan on which it was superimposed.) to the America's Cup US Crew Legends --- By Baldridge, Marty O'Meara and Sam Wakeman; they and many more are all here. The only disappointment is that all of them could not have joined the former Cup winners on that opening ceremony stage. They all deserved it! - Special Scuttlebutt report by Andy Rose
SOG STAINLESS STEEL POWERLOCK MULTI TOOL
EDS ATLANTIC CHALLENGE Kingfisher, in third place, has been able squeeze about one knot more speed than FILA out of their shaky rig. Skipper Nick Moloney said this morning that the late yesterday the team noticed that top of their mast was out of line and unstable. Fearing partial dismasting Moloney throttled back and lost ground on ECOVER. Sill Plein Fruit remains far south of the leaders and in fourth place. While the team is still well off the rhumline, they are enjoying far better winds than any of the three leaders. At a 13.2-knot average speed since the last poll, Kingfisher has been able to shave another 4 miles off its distance to the leader. Sill is now 137 miles back. - Stephen Pizzo POSITIONS, 22 August 2001 22:49:21 GMT: 1. ECOVER, 357 miles to finish; 2. FILA, 365 mtf; 3. Kingfisher 401 mtf; 4. Sill Plein Fruit, 494 mtf; 5. Gartmore, 649 mtf. - www.edsatlanticchallenge.com/en/
INTERNATIONAL 14 US NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
THE CURMUDGEON'S COUNSEL |
