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SCUTTLEBUTT 3149 - Thursday, August 5, 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: Ullman Sails, JK3 Nautical Enterprises, and The Vineyard Race. ELITE SAILORS EARN TOP HONORS San Pedro, CA (August 4, 2010) - The best-of-the-best were on display at the final day of the 2010 U.S. Youth Sailing Championships, hosted by the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club. Three of the four fleets were won by US Sailing Development Team (USSDT) members. The championship was raced in diverse wind conditions today for the first time this week. Wind speed ranged from 6 to 16 knots, with fair currents. Mateo Vargas (St. Petersburg Yacht Club) overcame a narrow two-point deficit to USSDT teammate Mitchell Kiss (Macatawa Bay Yacht Club) to win the Radial fleet. Consistency paid off for Vargas. He pulled away from the Radial contenders and won by 10 points. Kiss finished second, and fellow USSDT member and defending champion, Christopher Stocke (Sarasota Youth Sailing Program) finished third. The team of Graham Landy (Norfolk Yacht Country Club) and Colin Murphy (Shelter Island Yacht Club) broke away from the pack on Wednesday and won by a healthy 18-point margin in the C420 fleet. They notched a pair of second place finishes today on their way to victory John Wallace (St. Petersburg Yacht Club), another USSDT member, led from start to finish. He won seven of the 10 races, including the first six of the regatta. Wallace won the Laser fleet by 18 points. In the 29er fleet, Antoine Screve and James Moody (San Francisco Yacht Club) successfully defended their title from a year ago. They won the final two races of the regatta to seal a 12 point win over Sterling and Hans Henken (Coronado Yacht Club). After the seventh place finish they posted in the first race of the championship, they never crossed the line worse than third over the next 13 races. -- Full story: http://media.ussailing.org/Latest_News/2010_USYSC_Final_Recap.htm HUNGER 7 KLEINER TAKE 505 WORLD TITLE Aarhus, Denmark (August 4, 2010) - Wolfgang Hunger and Julien Kleiner's team work coped with the most extraordinary conditions to win the SAP 505 World Championships with a race to spare. On a day that produced every breeze from a flat calm to a Force 6, and wind shifts of 90 degrees or more, the Germans demonstrated supernatural mastery over conditions that had the rest of the 126 competitors utterly confused. Race 1 was abandoned due to a dying breeze which postponed racing until 5.05pm. With a big dark cloud to the right, the majority of the fleet elected to start late out of the gate in the hope of picking up a right-hand windshift. For the second time that day, Americans Howie Hamlin and Andy Zinn opened the gate as pathfinder, tacking just as the gate closed at the 6 minute mark. Little did they realise that as they tacked, it was square on the face of none other than Hunger and Kleiner who had left their start as late as possible for that enticingly dark cloud. Perhaps, though, the Americans had unwittingly done the Germans a favour. After tacking off further to the right, Hunger hooked into a good line of breeze pouring down from the cloud and led around the mark by 20 seconds. The Bojsen-Møllers were back in 6th but dropped out of the top 10 as they tried some extreme tactics in a bid to gain some leverage on the Germans. Then the thunder and lightning arrived, and the wind accelerated to more than 20 knots in the gusts, and the Americans - who love the breeze - charged through the fleet. -- Full story: http://www.505sapworldchampionship2010.com/ Top ten after 8 races: 1. Dr. Wolfgang Hunger / Julian Kleiner, GER, 9 points 2. Jorgen Bojsen-Moller / Jacob Bojsen-Moller, DEN, 14 3. Ian Pinnell / Ian Mitchell, GBR, 22 4. Howard Hamlin / Andy Zinn, USA, 38 5. Meike Schomaeker / Holger Jess, GER, 48 6. Stefan Bohm / Gerald Roos, GER, 55 7. Jan Saugmann/ Morten Ramsbaek, DEN, 60 8. Christian Kellner / Martin Scholer, GER, 61 9. Martin Goerge / Rainer Goerge, GER, 69 10. Ebbe Rosen/ Olle Wenrup, SWE, 73 LIGHTWEIGHT STRENGTH FROM ULLMAN SAILS The Ullman Sails FiberPath series combines the latest in production technology and design expertise to deliver the lightest, strongest string sails on the market. The Ullman Sails Design Team understands how to address the loads in your sail using fiber selection and layout. And with years of experience designing fast, efficient sail shape, you get optimized performance sails for racers and cruisers alike. So whether you're rethinking your cruising inventory or preparing for this racing season, Ullman Sails will build sails to match your goals. For more information on FiberPath technology, contact a local Ullman Sails lofts and visit http://www.ullmansails.com TEAMORIGIN STRETCHES WINNING STREAK TO 4 WINS Cowes, England (August 4) - Racing in late day sunshine and a puffy northerly wind, America's Cup winner BMW ORACLE Racing got on the scoreboard today in The 1851 Cup versus TEAMORIGIN of the U.K. In Race 5 TEAMORIGIN suffered a breakdown when the mainsail halyard lock failed with one minute remaining in the pre-start. TEAMORIGIN attempted a repair, but couldn't start within the prescribed time period and the race was awarded to BMW ORACLE Racing. "It's too bad we couldn't race some more," said Dirk de Ridder, BMW ORACLE Racing mainsail trimmer. "We had 16 knots of wind. These boats are great in those conditions." Prior to the mishap TEAMORIGIN stretched its winning streak to four races. The British crew won Race 3 by taking the left side of the racecourse off the start line. TEAMORIGIN won the first cross and controlled the match from there. Race 4 proved to be the best match of the series that runs through Friday. BMW ORALCE Racing and TEAMORIGIN were locked in a tacking duel up the first leg, but the British crew held a slim lead at the first mark when it got a controlling position to windward on port tack. -- Full story: http://bmworacleracingblog.blogspot.com/ * Racing in The 1851 Cup continues Thursday with a reenactment of the race around the Isle of Wight that gave rise to the legend of the America's Cup. SKANDIA SAIL FOR GOLD / ISAF SAILING WORLD CUP STARTS FRIDAY (August 4, 2010) - The Skandia Sail For Gold regatta starting this Friday August 6 through Saturday August 14 in Weymouth, England promises to offer a fitting finale to the ISAF Sailing World Cup season with an official entry of over 700 boats and almost 1000 sailors from 57 nations all challenging to claim the ultimate prize of the Sailing World Cup in each of the Olympic and Paralympic disciplines. At least 10 of these nations come from the Asian/Pacific region with a large entry from China, the largest team to compete from this nation since the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. There is also a big entry from the Americas region including eight South American nations. These are joined by a growing list of participating Caribbean nation sailors who have been gaining valuable experience in youth regattas around the world. Based upon feedback, ISAF's Executive Committee approved the recommendation to modify the World Cup scoring system for 2009-2010. For the overall Sailing World Cup series score, five out of seven events would be counted; at least one of the discarded events being a European Sailing World Cup event. This decision has resulted in a mouth watering final regatta in Weymouth with almost all classes going down to the wire to decide the overall Sailing World Cup champions. -- Full story: http://www.sailing.org/33588.php FIRST-EVER SOLID WINGSAIL POWERED MOTH HITS THE WATER Former Olympic Tornado sailor Adam May last weekend went for his maiden voyage in the first ever solid wingsail-powered foiling Moth. May says for pretty much as long as he's sailed he's had a fascination with the futuristic looking C Class cats, and their wing sails. "I've always wanted to do a wing, but had imagined it would be as part of a C Class team one day. But what about building a nice scale version to get to know about them that bit better? Good plan - unless your own boat is already one of the most extreme sailing boats out there.... Oh well, got to be a bit bold sometimes. The following is an excerpt from May's blog on how he pulled it together: -------------------------------------------------------------- I've got a whole bunch of cool stuff in my little black book of design ideas, and was getting frustrated at seeing other people do things that I'd been pondering long ago. Rigs had received much thought, regarding what the next step might be. Rigging configs, wing masts and a variety of things have been sketched, but a wing was always at the end of the list as an end game solution. So why not give it a go, and miss out those intermediate steps? I knew there was interest in doing wings in USA, Switzerland, and Australia, so the race was on who would be the first to do one? A covert race began, wondering each day if you would just go online to see somebody else had got there first. Bora and I joked at the Worlds that the code word for completion of a wing should be 'The Eagle has landed' A simple skype status update would be understood to mean only one thing. The wing had long been discussed with regard to the Moth, and I'd always thought you couldn't do it, we capsize the boat just to launch - a wing wouldn't like that. It would probably be heavier, and sailing a heavy rigged Moth would not be that nice in terms of handling. But what if it did work? I'd been considering it for ages, and my weighs spreadsheet kept me honest for a while, until I simplified it enough, and had gone into some depth with thinking about the structure. It is an interesting problem, because the design and structure are so linked. Post launch, I'd say I worried about the weight too much. Launching and capsize recovery was easy enough, and the effect in tacks and gybes wasn't noticeable. The added weight up high is probably a performance gain upwind for those of us with less righting moment anyway! Design wise it is a very simple two element wing, with camber and rear element twist control (although I probably went too far in making it capsize safe, and the rear element is quite stiff!). -- Read on: http://foilborne.blogspot.com/ JK3 NAUTICAL ENTERPRISES, INC. The new J/111 Speedster is due to hit our docks soon and we couldn't be more excited to go for a sail on the latest from J/Boats! Every now and then a new sailboat comes along that fulfills a real need in the market. The J/111 is a sleek, speedy, one-design 36 footer that is the ultimate racing and weekend cruising sailboat with over 6' headroom below. As with all J Boats, the J/111 is an easy-to-handle, comfortable sailboat that will also accelerate quickly, slicing to windward at 7+ knots and capable of double-digit speeds downwind. Although we'd love to keep it, we are in the boat business and need to find a home for this speed machine. For more information, contact JK3 at http://www.jk3yachts.com CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS (Sponsored by West Marine) Is your event listed on the Scuttlebutt Event Calendar? This free, self-serve tool is the easiest way to communicate to both sailors and sailing media. These are some of the events listed on the calendar for this weekend: Aug 6-7 - Buzzards Bay Regatta - Marion, MA, USA Aug 6-8 - J 30 North American Championship - Marblehead, MA, USA Aug 6-9 - North American Challenge Cup - Chicago, IL, USA Aug 6-13 - Thunderbird International Regatta - Toronto, Ontario, Canada View all the events at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar USSDT BRINGS HOME IMPRESSIVE MEDAL HAUL Portsmouth, R.I. (August 4, 2010) - A new crop of talented sailors on the US Sailing Development Team (USSDT) and the U.S. Youth World Team, who have aspirations to make the 2016 Olympic Team and beyond, have stood high on the podium at several international events this summer, collecting six coveted medals. Even more importantly, they gained the confidence to perform in big, deep fleets and learned first-hand that discipline and hard work pay off. "We have put a big effort into development in the past few years, and these world championship medals are a collective sign that we are on the right track," said Olympic Sailing Program High Performance Director/Head Coach Kenneth Andreasen (Tampa, Fla.). "While we work hard on raising the level of the many talented sailors around the country, we also put a lot of effort into making the transition from development classes into the Olympic classes as smooth as possible. The fact we medaled in all of the non-Olympic classes this summer is impressive." In the Laser Radial, up-and-comer Erika Reineke (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) is on a successful sailing streak, exemplified by becoming the 2010 Laser Radial Youth World Champion in Largs, Scotland, only 10 days after winning a bronze medal at the 40th Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championship in Istanbul, Turkey. Two more boats on the U.S. Youth World Team won bronze medals in developmental classes: Antoine Screve (Kentfield, Calif.) and James Moody (Tiburon, Calif.) in the 29er skiff and Taylor Palmer (Miami Shores, Fla.) and Mac Agnese (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) in the Sirena SL16 multihull. USSDT's Morgan Kiss (Holland, Mich.) and Katia DaSilva (East Greenwich, R.I.) won a silver medal at the International 420 World Championship, which ended Saturday in Haifa, Israel. Kiss' brother, Mitchell Kiss (Holland, Mich.), won a bronze medal at the Laser Radial World Championship in the men's division and fifth in the youth boys division in Largs, Scotland, last month. -- Full story: http://sailingteams.ussailing.org/News/2010/USSDT_Successes.htm SAILING SHORTS * (August 4, 2010) - Sir Robin-Knox Johnston today announced two British sailors who will compete in The Ultimate Solo Challenge: the VELUX 5 OCEANS. Chris Stanmore-Major, 32, and Simon Chalk, 37, will both go head to head with an international fleet of skippers in the gruelling 30,000-mile solo yacht race, which starts from La Rochelle in France on October 17. Stanmore-Major - known as CSM - and Chalk are experienced and talented yachtsmen and are each capable of becoming the first British skipper to win a solo round the world yacht race in 41 years. -- Full story: http://tinyurl.com/25lxzza * (August 4, 2010) - The 7th Nantucket Race Week begins on Saturday, August 7, 2010 with events scheduled daily through Sunday, August 15, 2010, including the 12 Metre Regatta and the Opera House Regatta (included in the Wooden Boat Regatta Series). The Nantucket Race Week 2010 IOD Pro Am Invitational will be held on August 12-13. Nantucket Race Week is proud to be a Clean Regatta as certified by Sailors for the Sea. -- Event website: http://www.nantucketraceweek.org/page/nrw * Pewaukee, WI (August 4, 2010) - Harken today announced a reorganization of its global marketing team. This reorganization sees two internal promotions. Mark Wiss accepts the position of Global Sales and Marketing Director by adding marketing responsibility to his previous role as Global Sales Manager. Cathy Schnitzler is promoted to Global Marketing and Communications Manager. -- Read on: http://www.harken.com/press/Harken-Wiss_Schnitzler-Promotions.php * Den Osse, Netherlands (August 4, 2010) - Dutch girl Laura Dekker, the 14-year-old bidding to become the youngest person to sail around the world solo, set off Wednesday saying the daunting voyage did not scare her. Dekker left the port of Den Osse in southwestern Netherlands only days after winning a year-long court battle with child welfare authorities concerned she was too young to undertake the trip. -- Full story: http://tinyurl.com/2al4qsf * (August 4, 2010) - A new sailing event - the US-IRC Championship of Long Island Sound and PHRF Fall Classic - has been announced jointly by the Riverside Yacht Club (RYC) of Greenwich, Conn., and the Storm Trysail Club (STC), headquartered in Larchmont, N.Y. The event, which will be held annually, will take place at Riverside Yacht Club over the weekend of September 18-19 in 2010. For the Notice of race and information about the 2010 US-IRC Championship of Long Island Sound and PHRF Fall Classic, go to www.stormtrysail.org or www.riversideyc.org. * (July 30, 2010) - The organisers of the Global Ocean Race 2011-12 (GOR) have contracted with the Spanish island of Mallorca to host the start and finish of the circumnavigation. Situated in the Mediterranean, Mallorca will provide a stunning backdrop for the start and finish of this double-handed, round the world race: an event that is on target to attract 20 entries from over 11 nations. The course for the GOR is now confirmed as: Mallorca - Cape Town (RSA) - Wellington (NZ) - Punta del Este (URY) - Charleston (USA) - Mallorca. -- Read on: http://tinyurl.com/23tft3p MAKE THE VINEYARD RACE PART OF YOUR LABOR DAY WEEKEND Take part in this East Coast classic, presented by Thomson Reuters and hosted by Stamford Yacht Club. Three courses to choose from; cruising division; multihull division; race tracking and post-race arrival party. Join Dawn Riley at our skippers meeting. Start date: Sept. 3rd. Register today at http://www.yachtscoring.com/emenu.cfm?eID=336 LETTERS AND FORUM Please email your comments to the Scuttlebutt editor (aka, 'The Curmudgeon'). Published letters must include writer's name and be no longer than 250 words (letter might be edited for clarity or simplicity). One letter per subject, and save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere. As an alternative, a more open environment for discussion is available on the Scuttlebutt Forum. -- To submit a Letter: editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com -- To post on the Forum: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum * From Tom Donlan: (re, Scuttlebutt 3145): The AC highlights videos are pretty cool. This indicates once again that the key to having exciting sailboat-race video is to edit it. Most of a sailboat race is boring to watch in any wind speed. The action is when boats meet, at the start, occasionally upwind and downwind, and at mark-roundings. They shouldn't emphasize live coverage, but instead have a well-equipped studio with lots of experienced video editors merging streams from many cameras, so as to put on a great half-hour show each evening. If they go as close to real time as possible, then they should watch a lot of golf on TV to see how they present a combination of live and tape coverage of something that would be even more boring to watch in real time. * From Eric Sorensen (re, Scuttlebutt 3144): There is currently the discussion on AC multihull or monohull competition. Why not have both? Put out two 50' boats on either the same course or separate courses running at the same time. One could even have the starts staggered with the multis match racing 5 minutes ahead of the monohulls of the same team, on the same course at the same time. The TV value would be doubled as the commentators find action on both types of boats that would be fun for spectators. The number of starts would be doubled, and as Gary Hoyt points out, so would the excitement. Maybe add the finish deltas together for a score to make it a team effort. The smaller boats would be easier to ship around to different venues if there are chapters leading up to the final (in San Francisco). Experiment and go with what works. The AC in 2007 was a good set of races, including the chapter exposure in other ports. CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION The flea can jump 350 times its body length - the equivalent of a human jumping the length of three football fields. Special thanks to Ullman Sails, JK3 Nautical Enterprises, and The Vineyard Race. Preferred supplier list: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ssc/suppliers |
