SCUTTLEBUTT No. 954 - November 29, 2001
Scuttlebutt 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.
DAWN RILEY
K-Yachting International will unveil its project for America's Cup 2006 during the Paris Boat Show 2001. This presentation will be held on December 4th as part of a party organized onboard "Batofar" (by invitation) with Dawn Riley's in attendance.
Riley has sailed in this legendary event three times and twice in the Whitbread Round the World Race. Since last America's Cup in 2000, she often reaffirmed her fascination with the famous silver pitcher, the true sailing "Everest". Riley's expertise and focus are two of the reasons that K-Yachting International decided to join forces with her on this ambitious project.
With America's Cup XXXIIth in 2006 as a target, K-Yachting International's project will have a different approach, one which gives a key role to the human factor. An additional goal will be to develop a generation of a very highly talented crewmembers, who are able to meet the America's Cup's level of demand. Dawn Riley, who said - and proved - that "if you can dream it, you can do it", is the very person for the management of this new sailing program, which will begin as soon as 2002. Stˇphane Kandler, www.k-yachting.com
PROTEST
Amer Sport Too and djuice have been notified by the Race Committee that it intends to protest them for contravening the International Regulations For Preventing Collisions At Sea, Rule 10 (e) and 10 (b) respectively, in regards to the Traffic Separation Scheme in the approaches to Table Bay, Cape Town. These protests relate to the tracks of the boats approximately one hour after start at Cape Town.
The protest hearings will be held when the boats have arrived in Sydney. Rule 10 (b) states: A vessel using a traffic separation scheme shall: (i) proceed in the appropriate traffic lane in the general direction of traffic flow for that lane; (ii) so far as practicable keep clear of a traffic separation line or separation zone; (iii) normally join or leave a traffic lane at the termination of the lane, but when joining or leaving from either side shall do so at as small an angle to the general direction of traffic flow as practicable.
Rule 10 (e) states: A vessel other than a crossing vessel or a vessel joining or leaving a lane shall not normally enter a separation zone or cross a separation line except: (i) in cases of emergency to avoid immediate danger. (ii) to engage in fishing within the separation zone.
Following receipt of the Notification of Protest, djuice skipper Knut Frostad issued the following statement from onboard: "According to the charts with the plots for djuice's course from the start, it shows that after the gate exit, djuice crossed the traffic lane together with every boat in the fleet. However, djuice tacked in the Traffic Separation Scheme before exiting the area in question. We have never had any intention of breaking the rules. I was not aware we had crossed illegally until we received this notice, and immediately acknowledged the race committee's stand and performed a 720-degree penalty turn, in accordance with Standard Sailing Instructions (SSI) 1.6.1 (c)."
Standard Sailing Instructions (SSI) 1.6.1 (c). states that, "A boat that may have broken a rule of Part 2 or when appropriate the steering and sailing rules of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea while racing may take a penalty at the time of the incident... Her penalty shall be a 720 degree turn penalty." It will be up to the jury to decide if djuice's 720 degree turn at this point in the leg satisfies the rules. - www.VolvoOceanRace.org
VOLVO OCEAN RACE
The southwest wind is back with twenty knots accelerating the fleet to high speeds. The fastest yacht in the fleet is 24hr record holder and current leader SEB, taking out eight miles from second placed illbruck. To the back of the fleet the gaps are widening as the leading yachts got the breeze first. News Corp and Assa Abloy are still in the north, and djuice is trying hard to defend their fifth position against Amer Sports One.
POSITIONS on November 29 @ 0400 GMT: 1. Team SEB, 1376 miles to finish; 2. illbruck, 9 miles behind leader 3. News Corp, 36 mbl; 3. Assa Abloy, 44 mbl; 4.; 5. djuice, 78 mbl; 6. Amer Sports One, 83 mbl; Amer Sports too, 267 mbl. - www.volvooceanrace.org/
TAKE THE FLASHLIGHT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!
Even when the sun is shining, there are dark hidden cubbyholes and parts of your engine room that never see daylight. Put a big flashlight in your mouth, lean into the engine room and then try asking your crew for a tool or part. Sailing Angles' Petzl head-held lights give you a third hand - and one that's pointed right at the work you want to do. Starting at $39.95. See: www.sailingangles.com
QUOTES FROM THE BOATS
"The worst thing about the tacking is, when you are off watch and in your bunk trying to sleep and the call comes to tack, the off watch has to move all the down stairs gear to the new windward side all up. It takes about twenty minutes and then you try and go back to sleep before you are due back on deck. Throw in a few tacks while you are resting on your off watch and you are stuffed." - Noel Drennan, illbruck
"After 4000 miles of crashing through the Southern Ocean being thrown across the boat on the end of your harness tether, you don't expect to have the bowman on the bow calling a cross with another boat, as we did with News Corp today. A scene much more typical for a close Americas Cup match on the Hauraki Golf." - Richard Mason, Assa Abloy
"The cuts on my hand are healing well. On day two I took on a wrestle with the conventional lavatory system to my loss. Going upwind in a strong breeze and large waves, I was in the bow when I got air-time as the bow left the water, and having restricted movement with my pants around my ankles, landed on the Satcom B radar system, cutting my hand quite well. A rather embarrassing and painful mess ensued. I now have a refined safety technique when on that mission now days." - Anthony Nossiter, djuice
REACTION
(Susie Westmacott, sister of Amer Sports Too crew woman Emma, responds to Peter Bentley's madforasailing article about Amer Sports Too. It's a very long response that madforsailing carried in its entirety. Here's a brief excerpt.)
I feel compelled to write something after the scathing attack by Peter Bentley on Amer Sports Too, the all female campaign in the Volvo Ocean Race. My instant reaction is - do men feel so threatened by an all-female team that they have to condemn them in this manner? These are top class female sailors wanting the opportunity to compete at this level in a round the world race. Is that so wrong? Let's face it, their only chance of achieving this in such a male dominated environment is to carry out their own campaign which Lisa has managed to achieve.
For anyone unaware of the circumstances, most of these Volvo campaigns are up and running years before the start. Even Amer Sports One was up and running a year before the start date, although the new boats were late being built. Lisa's crew were brought in at the last minute, in July of this year the core crew got together. - madforsailing website
To read the whole letter: www.madforsailing.com/SAIL/Articles.nsf/c78cc8b64ba44e74802568ed00504f3d/03f12141feb3aa9d80256b11003218fa?OpenDocument
FYI - madforsailing has been short-listed for the British Nautical Awards' Sealine media prize, "for using the medium of the internet to provide up-to-the-minute, original and creative reporting in the sport of sailing to 'blue water professionals' and 'club racers' alike."
LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON
leweck@earthlink.net
(Letters selected for publication must include the writer's name and may be edited for clarity or space - 250 words max. This is not a chat room or a bulletin board - you only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if others disagree.)
* From Chris Welsh (edited to our 250-word limit): Sailing's problems are two fold - one external (everyone has less time), and one internal - Fun. We prioritize by reward - and parts of sailing work against the reward. How appealing is sailing with weigh-ins, rules no one seems to be able to understand anymore, and a starting sequence that varies from club to club?
So what do we do?
1. Change the rules back. Heresy, I know, but the old rules generated 1/10th the controversy the new rules generate.
2. Change the starting sequence back. I have yet to participate in a regatta where the new sequence generated a measurable benefit to the overall flow of starting. I know it has probably happened somewhere once, but it hasn't happened too often - and the old way wasn't that broken.
Fun makes a difference. Members at Newport Harbor Yacht Club went out to design a keelboat daysailer for racing, to get past racers back on the water. The Harbor 20 is the result:
No hiking (crew weight doesn't matter much), No launching (boat must be wet sailed) Easy rigging (jackstays on the main and a roller jib, about 120 seconds to rig) Comfortable Easy on the crew (jib is on a boom and self tacking, wives and girlfriends like it) Fleet sail purchases (keeps it cheaper)
The result? Schock has sold over 100 Harbor 20's in Newport Harbor alone. We routinely get 30+ boats on the starting line.
* From Glenn Selvin: I'd like to respond to Dierk Polzin's posting on sailing's decline, because I think he is right on point here. Everything I read in all of the glossy sailing rags is about Farr 40 this and ID35 that! Those boats cost more than my house! It's no wonder that everyone, sailors and non-sailors alike, think that yacht racing is a rich man's sport. How about if the great time we local weekend warriors had in our $3000 Cal 20's were that heavily publicized. Or if people knew how much fun we were having racing our $1000 Lido 14's and Lehman 12's! Maybe it would begin to show even the non-sailors that sailboat racing is a great time, and is no more expensive than other sports like golf or skiing, in that we buy our old Cal 20's, Lido, Lasers, etc., and go racing and have a fantastic time on the water. People think that sailing is so expensive, because all we show them is the Farr's, Schock 40's, and huge Reichel / Pughs. Start showing reality, and they will come.
* From Georges Bonello DuPuis: I refer to Chris Erickson's letter regarding the choice of the IJ Chairman for a National Event not being a National of that Country. As a regatta organizer, I cannot agree with him more. Once there were never any doubts or favoritisms involved, why change it. The ISAF has created a massive headache for regatta organizers.
I for one, will be very negatively affected. Having John Ripard IJ in Malta as Chairman of the International Jury for the Middle Sea Race was extremely helpful and positive. When preparing the race documents for the Middle Sea Race, just a quick phone call or a five-minute drive to John's house to discuss the race documents layout and format was nearly a daily occurrence. His knowledge when appointing the other IJ members on the jury was another added bonus.
What are my options now? Either drop the International Jury from the event, which might lessen the importance of the Middle Sea Race or go through more expenses and appoint a foreign IJ to act as chairman.
Either way, the regatta organizers will loose out...
* From Chris Spalding (edited to our 250-word limit): I'm a 19 year old from Vancouver BC. For the past two years I have been actively racing PHRF in the Pacific North West. As I've grown up and looked around my boat and the others that I racing against. I see maybe a hand full of people who are near my age and rarely any one under 18. When you are 14 or 15, walking up to a group of 30-50 year old guys and girls drinking beer and rigging the boat to go do the Wednesday night been can race asking if they need crew was intimidating to say the least. I'm not saying nobody takes juniors on board. I know people who go out of there way to take juniors sailing. Just not enough people are.
When you're just a junior racing a Laser, Byte, or whatever double handed boat your club has, getting an interesting job on a big boat is hard (and yes contrary to popular belief rail meat isn't interesting). Not enough people teach kids to do what they're doing as they do it. So uninterested juniors just walk away and most don't come back.
Juniors want to sail. They just need an usable outlet to go out on big boats. This is not a problem that will be fixed in one or two years, it is one that will take the eforts of everyone every year forever, not just until the numbers pick back up.
* From Gary Richardson:: It's very easy for someone to criticize a trailing boat in the Volvo from their armchair. But the girls on Amer Sports Too have got off their backsides, and are racing hard around the world. And while I defend them from shore based attacks, I am sure they don't want our sympathy . . . and I don't think they set out to prove anything about women's sailing, I think they are trying to prove something about ALL sailing...full stop. It's just that the tall poppy gets cut down first.
* From Phillip Olbert: While some of the questions about the relevancy of women's sailing that was expressed by Peter Bentley may be controversial, never the less the fact that the women of Amer Sport Too do not seem to be pushing their boat as intensely as the men is certainly relevant. They have accepted the responsibility of taking a very expensive boat with all the associated costs around the world, and as such they owe it to the sponsors and support team to do the very best they can. As Bentley pointed out, this certainly does not appear to be the case.
KWRW
Entries are running strong for Terra Nova Trading / Yachting Key West Race Week 2002. Leading the way are 40 Melges 24s -- about half the total of 70-plus anticipated by class secretary Fiona Brown for what will be the class's rescheduled world championship, which will run alongside as many as 18 other classes on four racing circles. "The entry count is running only slightly behind last year's record pace of 326," said Event Organizer Peter Craig. "Historically, over half the fleet submits their entries in the last three weeks before the deadline."
J/Boats will also be out in force with as many as 75 of their one design 80s, 105s and 29s expected. In the handicap classes, the list of PHRF-1 heavyweights will include Bill Alcott's Santa Cruz 70 Equation, trucking on down from Michigan; George Collins' CM 52 Chessie Racing from Maryland and Mike Rose's new J/145 Raincloud from Texas. Early IMS entries include Isam Kabbani's C/M 60 Rima, 2001 owner/driver winner Ennio Staffini with his Farr 49 Uarshek2 and Larry Bullman's Farr 49 Javelin. The event has added a new dimension: a multihull one-design class of a dozen or more Corsair F-28R trimarans. - www.premiere-racing.com
MORE KWRW
If you're thinking about taking your boat to the Terra Nova Trading / Yachting Key West Race Week, now is the time to evaluate at your sail inventory to make sure you'll have the speed necessary for a podium finish. The pros at Ullman Sails will be happy to work with you to help provide those elusive tenths of a knot that make the difference. It's more affordable than you think. For the location of the nearest loft that can provide you with a price quote: www.ullmansails.com
TODAY ON THE HAURAKI GULF
I am watching the boats coming down and rounding the leeward mark for the start of the 2nd beat, and there are 7 IACC boats in close company all hammering uphill on Port tack into about 17-20 knots of NE breeze and Hauraki chop. The 2 Swiss boats are beating close together. For some mysterious reason SUI64 is wearing the sail for SUI59 and vice versa, but there is no mistaking the different hull forms. In the same frame are the 2 OWC boats locked in close combat uphill, and further out towards Rangi, the lone Swedish boat SWE38 is also flying uphill The 2 Prada boats have just started their 2nd windward, YA well in front of LR. At one stage all 7 sails are overlapped in my view, and I thought how good it looked - all that magnificent gear flying uphill in a single small patch of water.
Observations: YA seemed to be going better uphill than LR in those particular conditions and the setup of the boats at the time - despite the fact that it looked to me like YA was actually hobby-horsing a bit MORE than LR - difficult to be sure though.
The new Swiss boat looked to be going slower than her BeHappy stablemate, but again, this is not certain - just looked that way to my eye. The new Swiss boat really does have a lot of the profile of NZL60 about her - she also has the long stern sticking way out past the end of the boom - much further than the other boats out there today. - Justin, 2003ac website
Full report: www.2003ac.com
CORRECTION
The official URL for the Atlantic Rally For Cruisers (ARC) is www.worldcruising.com.
I-14 WORLDS
Royal Bermuda Yacht Club - A 55-boat fleet of International 14 dinghies continues to wait out bad weather today in Hamilton, Bermuda, where Hurricane Olga, off to the east, is generating conditions outside the envelope of a world championship regatta. With a forecast of winds to 40 knots, it is likely that another day will pass without racing. While some of the sailors play games, scoreboard leaders Zach Berkowitz and crew Trevor Baylis of California are patiently waiting for Olga to slip south, as it is expected to do. "I think we'll be sailing on Thursday and Friday," Berkowitz said. "We still have time to get in a regatta."
Berkowitz is eager to get back to racing after winning Races 1 and 2, the second race by more than six minutes. His background had him prepped for plenty of wind, Berkowitz said: "Trevor and I grew up sailing on San Francisco Bay, and we trained in Santa Cruz and the Gorge. We have good survival techniques. But we didn't come here expecting to be the breeze kings. We thought 6 to 15 knots would be our forte." - Sail magazine website, www.sailmag.com/html/briefing.html#havana
STANDINGS: 1st Zach Berkowitz & Trevor Baylis, USA, 2pts, 2nd Jonathon Pudney & John McKenna, UK, 9pts, 3rd Zeb Elliott & Tim Hancock, UK 10pts, 4th Kris Bundy & Jamie Hanseler, USA, 10pts, 5th James Fawcett & Bruce Grant, UK, 13pts. - www.rbyc.bm/
SINGLE-HANDED SAILING
Flushed with success, having won in the Open 50 class in the Transat Jacques Vabre race (Le Havre - Salvador), Alex Bennett has signed up for his first round the world yacht race, Around Alone, becoming the 27th sailor to do so. The Around Alone sets sail from Newport, Rhode Island on 15th September 2002.
The One Dream, One Mission skipper Bennett, at only 25 years of age was the youngest skipper in the monohull fleet. Along with Australian co-skipper, Paul Larsen, the two young gladiators finished the race within 2 days of the Open 60 Winner,Sill Plein Fruit (Jourdain/Le Cleac'h) and 7 hours ahead of their nearest rival Saving (Le Youdeac/ Bacave). One competitor in the Open 50 fleet has yet to finish. - Yachting World website
Full story: www.yachting-world.com/
THE CURMUDGEON'S CONUNDRUM
How do blind people know when they're done wiping?
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