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SCUTTLEBUTT 3584 - Friday, May 4, 2012Scuttlebutt 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: Gowrie Group and Southern Spars. ACCIDENT DEBRIEF Forty-nine boats competed on April 14th in the 2012 Full Crew Farallones Race, a 58 nm contest that has run continuously since 1907. It is one of a handful of races in San Francisco that extends beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific Ocean. The 2012 edition will be remembered for the tragedy that befell the Sydney 38 Low Speed Chase, which was pummeled by waves while rounding the island, tossing five of the eight crew members overboard, and to their death. Scuttlebutt contacted Jeff Zarwell of RegattaPRO, a provider of Principal Race Officers for regattas, who was the PRO for the 2012 Full Crew Farallones Race. Here are Jeff's comments concerning the incident... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I will first state that what follows is my opinion, and does not necessarily represent the opinion any of the yacht clubs I manage races for. At the conclusion of the Farallones race, I was trying to find answers to the tragedy, as well as what I could have done to prevent this. I myself have participated in at least a dozen of these events and managed about as many over the years. The idea of setting up a waypoint perimeter did enter my mind, as well as the minds of many others. After all, if we kept boats away from the island this wouldn't have happened....right? The fact is that you and I could probably sail that same course a half dozen or more times and never have the same results as those on April 14th. On the other hand, there is the distinct possibility that I could set waypoints well off the shore of the islands (a mile, mile and a half, more?), and yet under certain circumstances, a similar result could occur. The reality is that it is the open ocean. Mariners have perished throughout the ages attempting to conquer the sea. How do we tame a wave? Can we even? Let's face it, like many other sports (rock climbing, cliff diving, motorsports, etc), ocean sailing has an element of danger to it. That's a big part of its appeal. If we could control the winds and calm the seas, would we even want to go out there? Would there be enough challenge? Read on: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/12/0503/ SEEKING TO DETERMINE THE FACTS The Lexus Newport to Ensenada Yacht Race is an easy 125 nm reach from Southern California to Baja Mexico. Typically mild winds, typically mild seas. If there is drama, it's usually at the pre-race party. Or the post-race party. But not in the race. In its heyday, 675 boats competed. Last Friday, there were 213 entrants for the 65th edition of the race. And for the first time in the history of the race, there were fatalities. It remains a mystery why on the Hunter 376 Aegean, three people died with a fourth crew is missing. A tracker indicates they hit the North Coronado Island. The debris indicates significant destruction. Of the recovered bodies, one drowned while two others died of blunt force injuries. Seeking to determine the facts is the United States Coast Guard (USCG). An investigation is now ongoing, with no details yet to release. Henry Dunphy, Public Affairs Specialist at USCG, provides some insight into the investigative process: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * What are the factors that initiate an investigation? Henry Dunphy: Any time there is a marine casualty, which encompasses loss of life, personal injury, or damage to a vessel, it is typical for the USCG to investigate the incident. We are eager to determine what happened, and if needed, take action to improve safety with either the type of vessel or the operation of the event. We are hopeful too that our findings will give family members some closure. * Who has the authority to investigate? Henry Dunphy: The USCG has the authority to investigate the incident because this was a U.S. flagged vessel involved, and had American citizens onboard. The Mexican authorities have been very cooperative in granting us access to their territorial waters. But this investigation is primarily our responsibility as we have jurisdiction. * How is an investigation conducted? Henry Dunphy: The investigators will be doing a number of things. They will be identifying and interviewing any witnesses they can find, along with speaking to past crew members and other people who are familiar with the vessel that was involved. They will be talking with family members of the crew that were onboard, and with the race organizers. They will also be collecting and analyzing any debris from the vessel that has been recovered to try and determine exactly what happened, and also looking at any information on other vessel traffic that was in the area at the time. * Will the investigation include underwater review? Henry Dunphy: It is a possibility, but to this point it has not included any diving at the location. * How much time is required to complete this investigation? Henry Dunphy: The investigators are anticipating the process will require 4-6 weeks from the time of the accident to complete their report. * Will the findings be made public? Henry Dunphy: Once the final report is done, it will get routed to the USCG headquarters in Washington, DC. Once it is approved, it will be available to the public. Additional information available here: https://homeport.uscg.mil/mycg/portal/ep/home.do http://cgmix.uscg.mil/IIR/Default.aspx HELP NEEDED: If you have any information to share with the USCG regarding this accident, please call them at 619-278-7033. MEMORIAL: Funeral services for Kevin Rudolph, one of the four Aegean sailors who lost his life in last weekend's Newport-Ensenada race, will be held at the Portofino Hotel and Yacht Club in Redondo Beach (CA) on Saturday, May 5, at 12 noon. The club is located at 260 Portofino Way; phone 805.823.0915. GOWRIE GROUP: SMART INSURANCE DECISIONS FOR TRAILERABLE BOATS Disaster stories about trailering boats abound. One sailor arrived at a regatta and realized his boat had mysteriously fallen off the trailer somewhere on I-95. People think boat insurance is just to protect against losses on the water, but with boats that are moved around on trailers and car-tops, accidents happen just as much on land. Make sure you have the insurance you need; read Gowrie Group's - the nations leading boat insurance expert - article on the five characteristics of the right boat insurance (http://tinyurl.com/trailerable). For a boat insurance review, contact Gowrie Group at 800.262.8911, http://www.gowrie.com/yachtquote (use code: Scuttlebutt). ARE WE THERE YET, ARE WE THERE YET? (May 3, 2012; Day 12) - The good news is the veering trade winds are thus far lifting the Volvo Ocean Race fleet up and over the Caribbean islands. The bad news is the race may turn inside out a few times before Leg 6 has a winner. To make matters worse, the navigators are all now having to fend off the questions from the crew..."when do we get there?" PUMA media crew Amory Ross describes the process their navigator Tom Addis uses to appease his people: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- It can be amazingly difficult to predict when you're going to arrive at a destination 3,000 miles away in a landscape of geographic uncertainty, but today's software, weather files, and boat performance profiles combine to give it an honest try. There are family flights to book, boat repairs to schedule, food and fuel to manage, and the high hopes of the 11 of us waiting for a burger, beer, and a proper shower, and they all hinge on a very simple process. Somewhere in the world somebody begins by analysing the weather. Their findings are digitized into "grib" models, a virtual record of predicted winds spanning up to several weeks out for the entire globe. These files are loaded into the onboard routing software that use our current location and our boat's performance polars (tables that suggest what speeds Mar Mostro should attain at any combination of wind speed and wind angle) to best map our course to the next waypoint. Obviously, there is more than one way to decipher the weather, so there are multiple models to choose from. With each update (several times a day), Tom downloads either the "EC," (short for...ECWF), or the "GFS," (...God Forged Scheduling?), loads it into the software, and out comes an ETA. Routing doesn't take certain things into consideration, things like a rough sea state that would prevent us from reaching our predicted polar speeds, so there's a certain degree of human interpretation for Tom before he decides on a route and a date, but eventually a day is picked. The closer we get, the more accurate the prediction power is, but one thing that's for sure is that we can never be sure. In the context of this leg, it looks like we'll be one or two days late, so it's time to start squirreling away some food again, just like we did on the last leg. Extra bars for lunch instead of a meal when the wind is light, split the chicken tikka - a notoriously large serving - into two meals, things like that. It's not the models' fault, or the forecasters that make them, because weather is weather and it changes. You can't suggest that conditions are "supposed" to be anything, because they're unpredictable by nature. All we can do is hope the models are more accurate than not! -- http://www.puma.com/sailing/news/the-unpredictable-conditions Leg 6 - Itajai, Brazil to Miami, USA (4,800 nm) Standings as of Thursday, 03 May 2012, 22:01:42 UTC 1. PUMA Ocean Racing (USA), Ken Read (USA), 1302.0 nm Distance to Finish 2. CAMPER (NZL), Chris Nicholson (AUS), 8.2 nm Distance to Lead 3. Telefonica (ESP), Iker Martinez (ESP), 17.8 nm DTL 4. Groupama 4 (FRA), Frank Cammas (FRA), 111.6 nm DTL 5. Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (UAE), Ian Walker (GBR), 138.6 nm DTL 6. Team Sanya (CHN), Mike Sanderson (NZL), Did not start Tracker/Standings: http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/racetracker/rdc.html Schedule: http://tinyurl.com/VOR-2011-12-schedule Video reports: http://www.youtube.com/user/volvooceanracevideos BACKGROUND: During the nine months of the Volvo Ocean Race, which started in Alicante, Spain (Oct. 29) and concludes in Galway, Ireland during early July 2012, six professional teams will sail over 39,000 nautical miles around the world via Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auckland, around Cape Horn to Itajai, Miami, Lisbon, and Lorient. Teams accumulate points through nine distance legs and ten In-Port races. - http://www.volvooceanrace.com SAILING SHORTS * Falmouth Harbour, Antigua (May 3, 2012) - It was yet another day of episode and drama at Antigua Sailing Week. This year's Antigua Sailing Week is producing intense battles right through the fleet with close encounters a plenty. Stress levels were running high today with start line incidents a plenty and a major collision on the first upwind leg of the day in the big boat class with just one final race tomorrow, nearly all of the classes are yet to be decided. -- Read on: http://www.sailingweek.com/v3/news.php?id=204 * Over 60 competitors made the trip to Rochester, NY for the Interclub Dinghy National Championship last weekend. The event was hosted jointly by the Rochester Canoe Club and the Rochester Yacht Club. Conditions ranged from 5 to 20+ knots on the Irondequoit Bay and there were 10 races sailed on Saturday alone. At the awards ceremony to emphasize the importance of the crews, the winning teams had their crew name announced and each crew would in turn introduce their respective skippers. Keeping with that tradition, Alexa Schuler sailing with Jim Bowers took the 2012 Nationals title. -- Full report: http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=13702 * CORRECTION: Scuttlebutt 3583 reported how the 246-foot Phocea, recently crashed into the rocks off Sardinia. While it did indeed happen, it was not recently. The year was 2005. Whoops! THE NEW SOUTHERN SPARS' RIGGED CARKEEK 40 GRAND PRIX RACER! The new Southern Spars' rigged Carkeek 40 Grand Prix racer is a ground-breaking design and represents the pinnacle of an all-round sailing yacht; she is equally at home inshore around the buoys and offshore. The Carkeek 40 has a 62ft TPT (Thin Ply Technology) hybrid modulus mast, a 19ft high modulus racing box boom, EC6 continuous carbon rigging, twin topmast backstays and hydraulically actuated deflectors. For transport considerations there is an optional two part rig for transport on a 40ft flat rack/platform container. With one already in the water and another two on order, the Carkeek 40 will be one to look out for. For more information: info@southernspars.com or http://www.southernspars.com EIGHT BELLS John Cook, owner of the English Cristabella boat saga, and one of the most loyal fans and participants of the MedCup Circuit, passed away in late April after a long struggle with a disease that eventually took him away, despite him being a born fighter, as he demonstrated both on land and at sea. The memory of the Cristabella saga and its owner John Cook will remain forever linked to the sea, the Mediterranean, the TP52 class, and the MedCup Circuit. The TP52 Cristabella was part of the fleet which started off the competition in 2005, and remained faithful to it, taking part in almost all its events, until she had to leave due to her owner's health problems, the same that would finally cause him to pass away in late April. English by birth, Cook ran under the flag of the Real Club Náutico de Palma, and was a "classic" sailor. In fact, the TP52 Cristabella was easily recognizable not only by her white hull and blue letters, but by her rudder wheel, which had not been replaced by the tiller, as it had already happened onboard the whole MedCup Circuit fleet in recent years. John Cook's is indeed an irreparable loss to the world of sailing, but his name will live on in the history of racing in the Mediterranean. PHOTOS OF THE WEEK Some of the random photos from the sport received this week at Scuttlebutt include wings and things, perfect storm, dedication, sadness, fresh, replica, seasonal, and incoming. Here are this week's photos: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/12/0504/ * Photographer Cory Silken provides this latest gallery of images from the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. It seems criminal for a pro shooter to leverage the Caribbean backdrop to capture classic yachting. Enjoy: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/12/0503/ * The west coast high school teams were in San Diego last weekend for their National Championship Team Race qualifiers. It was a sunscreen weekend with bay racing and dockside spectating. Photos by Bob Betancourt: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/12/0503a/ SEND US YOUR PHOTOS: If you have images to share for the Photos of the Week, send them to the Scuttlebutt editor: mailto:editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com VIDEO OF THE WEEK The ISAF Match Racing World Championship is awarded annually to the winner of the World Match Racing Tour, a global series for match racing. There were nine events in the 2011 tour, which has been nicely reduced to a 3:38 highlight production for this week's video profile: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/media/12/0504/ Bonus Videos: * This week on America's Cup Uncovered Episode 37, we look back at the four AC World Series events in Cascais, Plymouth, San Diego and Naples where we saw the vision of the best sailors on the fastest boats come to reality. We study the impressive depth of talent among the skippers and crews on each team, and what it takes to live life on the edge. As we are pushing the limits on the AC45s, we check in with ORACLE Racing's build team as they are deep in AC72 design. Tune on Saturday May 5 at approx 0800 PDT 1600 BST: http://www.youtube.com/americascup * In the May 4 "World on Water" Global Sailing News Report we show the Sperry Top-Sider Charleston Race Week, the ISAF World Cup in Hyeres, France, the start of the Transat AG2R La Mondiale also in France, the world's largest one design regatta, the Guinness Book of Records breaking, Lake Garda Optimist Meeting where 1055 boats started in Race one, Matt Rutherford who is another record breaker, becoming the youngest person to sail singly handed, non-stop, around both North and South America and in our "Fresh to Frightening" segment how to do 75 km on a 12.5 kilo jet propelled Surf Board. That's if you feel the need to do so. See it all in this week's show on http://www.boatson.tv 10000 BST 0500 EDT. * This week on episode 8 of Chalk Talk, the final college inter-conference qualifiers were last weekend and the last of the National qualifiers are this weekend. Find out whose season is ending and whose is just beginning - even if you think you know, we've got a few surprises for you. Plus, the last Sailing World national rankings and the last Better Know A District. View here: http://ussailing.blogspot.com/2012/05/chalk-talk-episode-8.html SEND US YOUR VIDEOS: If you have clips to share for the Video of the Week, send them to the Scuttlebutt editor: mailto:editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com 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 Betsy Whidden: Can you please include a blurb in the Friday edition about "The Walk to Cure ALS" in New York this Saturday for John Thomson? Team Juliet Bravo Tango Infinity (JBT FOREVER) is now in the lead for donations…..this means so much to John! Editor's Note: This is for Farr 40 class champion John Thomson, who is currently battling ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Donations can be made here: http://tinyurl.com/ALS-050312 * From Jeff Johnson, SDYC Regatta Manager: I would like to point out a miss-conception about boats going aground such as Aegean at North Coronado Island. This was not washing up on a beach, or even like where Low Speed Chase went aground at the Farallon Islands. Even with a moderate sea state (4-5' swell), the NW side of the island where Aegean must have struck is very abrupt (cliff like) and also has spires at points that can hold a boat within a seething hydraulic blender and grind a boat into small bits. In most places around the island, she would have struck rock with her bow and still have 15 feet of water under the keel. I once helped a biologist photograph harbor seal colonies that live all around those three islands and have navigated closely around them all in a powerboat. It is a dangerous place to loiter. Beautiful and forbidding from a distance; deadly from too close. And a wave can transport you from 'a distance' to 'too close' in a deadly, inattentive blink of an eye. It takes prolonged exposure to the grinding mechanism to generate little bits like were found, and a freighter prop turning at 60-80'rpms isn't going to do that - 1) because the boat would get shot right out with all the thrust/ water moving, but more so 2) the boat would never get that deep under water, and 3) more than likely, the bow wave will push the boat out of the way - with disastrous consequence mind you, but out of the way, and unlikely into the props. Doesn't seem like a mystery to me. * From Robert Rice: I was on the (Newport to Ensenada) race and started developing my own theories, but then I stumbled across the tracking info which changed everything. The GPS track clearly shows where they started motoring, and there was no alteration in course or speed (7.64 kts) for over 3 hours before impact into the north shore. They hit at the worst possible location. There is a protrusion on the island that would have trapped the 6-7 foot northwest swell and repeatedly pummel the boat into the cliffs. The current would eventually spit out pieces around the corner, leaving the keel in there somewhere. The north island is very dark, and the angle they were approaching from would have created a minimal silhouette. The track is so straight that they may have had the autopilot on and dozing off, or they just didn't see it. That will be the next debate I'm sure. * From Ralph Taylor: Thanks for publishing (in Scuttlebutt 3583) Jeff Johnson's superb review of the race committee's decision-making process for the March 17-18 NOOD and thanks to him for writing it. It's an excellent contribution to the sport. CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION The Mr. Bean Guide to Fun in an Elevator: Pretend you are a flight attendant and review emergency procedures and exits with the passengers. SPONSORS THIS WEEK Quantum Sails - APS - Atlantis WeatherGear North Sails - J Boats - Team One Newport - North U JK3 Nautical Enterprises - Ullman Sails - Gowrie Group - Southern Spars Need stuff? Look here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ssc/suppliers |
