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SCUTTLEBUTT 3199 - Friday, October 15, 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: Interlux and Holmatro. SUBJECT TO WSSRC RATIFICATION The Luderitz Speed Challenge 2010 is being held October 4 to 31 in Luderitz, Namibia, just over 1100 miles north of Cape Town, SA along the western African continent. This is the 4th edition of the event, which is held under the scrutiny of the World Sailing Speed Record Council (WSSRC) and the International Sailing Federation (ISAF). With a custom canal approximately 10m wide and 50-100cm deep along the shoreline, the challenge is to see who will set the fastest average speed over a 500-meter distance. Here is the latest update: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (October 14, 2010) - Since Tsunami Tuesday, which saw 40+ knot winds propel hordes of riders past world and national record marks, more moderate conditions (if you call 30 knots moderate) on Wednesday and Thursday have allowed for equipment preparation in anticipation of the forecasted big blow on Friday. John Reed, Secretary to the World Sailing Speed Record Council, contacted Scuttlebutt to clarify the official status of the speeds being set in Luderitz: “It is incorrect to state that the WSSRC has ratified the speeds reported from Luderitz,” said John. “No formal claim has yet been made, so any claim is ‘Subject to WSSRC Ratification’.” Here’s the scoop: Even though the event organizer is allegedly verifying the speeds onsite using WSSRC standards, the speeds are not truly official until a claim for ratification is submitted directly to the WSSRC. Since each claim requires a fee, not each ‘record time’ is submitted and officially published. This happened at the 2008 Luderitz Speed Challenge when kiter Rob Douglas (USA) set a new outright world speed sailing record with a time of 49.84 knots. However, you won’t find Rob’s name in the record book because he never submitted a claim. Why? Because at the same event, Alex Caizergues (FRA) later pushed the mark up to 50.57 knots, which nobody exceeded. So Alex submitted the claim, which was published in the record book after it was ratified. A year later in Luderitz, Alex raised it to 50.98 knots, which he again successfully submitted for ratification. Therefore, the speed set by Alex Caizergues (FRA) on Tuesday of 54.10 (averaged along a 500 meter distance) is UNOFFICIALLY the new Outright World Speed Sailing Record, and remains ‘Subject to WSSRC Ratification’. The official record remains to be held by the foiling trimaran Hydroptere with skipper Alain Thebault (FRA), which in 2009 set a speed of 51.36 knots in Hyeres, France. However, it is safe to say that by the end of this month, one of the kiters at the 2010 Luderitz Speed Challenge will be holding the world crown. It’s just a matter of who it will be. Luderitz Speed Challenge: http://www.luderitz-speed.com World Sailing Speed Record Council: http://www.sailspeedrecords.com RAAB/KINNEY JUMP OUT TO EARLY LEAD (October 14, 2010) - Twenty of the country’s top one-design sailors and their crew had a busy day of racing Thursday in Ideal 18s at US SAILING's 2010 Championship of Champions. Mercury 18 National Champion Chris Raab (Sunset Beach, Calif.) and his crew Robert Kinney have a 12-point lead through seven races. All of the competitors have qualified by winning a National and/or North American Championship in a one-design class. This year’s championship is hosted by the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich, Conn. The day belonged to Raab, who is making his sixth appearance at the Championship of Champions. Raab has placed in the top three on four occasions, and is in search of his first Jack Brown Trophy. Consistency was the key for Raab today. He won race six and finished in the top five in every race (4-3-4-3-5-1-3). Raab leads Marcus Eagan (Madisonville, La.) and crew Cardwell Potts by a 12-point margin. Eagan, the 2009 Lightning North American Champion, won the final race of the day and race three to stay within striking distance of the leaders. “We really needed that win in the last race,” stated Eagan. “I grew up sailing Flying Scots, which is a slower boat and requires strong tactical skills, so I think it relates to the Ideal 18s.” This year’s special guest competitor, Jud Smith (Marblehead, Mass.), winner of the 1984 Championship of Champions and the 2006 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, shot out of the gate early by winning race one handily. He followed up with another win in race two to take a four point lead over 2006 champion Alan Field (Los Angeles, Calif.). Smith is sailing this week with his daughter, Lindsey Smith. In race three, Smith dropped out of the lead and is currently 16 points behind Raab. -- Full report: http://media.ussailing.org/Latest_News/2010_CofC_D1.htm Day 1 Results (top 10 of 20; after 7 races) 1. Mercury 18, Chris Raab/Robert Kinney, 23 pts 2. Lightning, Marcus Eagan/Cardwell Potts, 35 3. Etchells, Jud Smith/Lindsey Smith, 39 4. Interclub, Danny Pletsch/Mark Kroening, 46 5. 505, Augie Diaz/Luke Lawrence, 48 6. Thistle, Mike Ingham/Delia Ingham, 53 7. Melges 24, Alan Field/Steve Hunt, 60 8. Highlander, Ernest Dieball/Jim Allen, 72 9. FJ, Olin Paine/Caleb Paine, 73 10. J/24, Patrick Toole/Dale Turley, 78 Complete results: http://tinyurl.com/2bwr7vr SMACK DOWN: The Endeavour Trophy regatta is the UK version of the U.S. Championship of Champions, and The Bitter End Yacht Club envisions a showdown between these two events at their upcoming 2010 Pro Am Regatta in the BVI on Oct 30- Nov 6. Said BEYC event director John Glynn, "We will provide accommodations & meals for the winning skipper and one companion from each event, and entry into the Pro Am, where they will line up with Russell Coutts, Paul Cayard, Ken Read, Peter Holmberg, Anna Tunnicliffe, and Zach Railey." The winning UK team from the Endeavour Trophy regatta (Stuart Bithell & Christian Birrell) has already confirmed their attendance at the Pro Am Regatta, but will the U.S. team take on the challenge? Contact John Glynn for details: jglynn@beyc.com. Event website: http://www.beyc.com/index.php/proam.html FIND THE RIGHT PAINT AT THE NEW YACHTPAINT.COM The new Interlux web site makes it easier than ever to choose the right Interlux paint for your boat, get technical information and support for any paint project. "Paint Your Boat" to see how different paint colors look on your hull. Ask questions and share paint info with other sailors. "Ask The Expert" to access the extensive knowledge base and experience of the Interlux Technical Service staff. Learn more here: http://www.yachtpaint.com ACTING IN THE INTERESTS OF MATCH RACING (October 14, 2010) - The ISAF Match Racing World Championship, which is in its 22nd year and is now known as the World Match Racing Tour (WMRT), today committed its future to monohull match racing and unveiled its future strategy which has been designed to ensure the growth and sustainability of the discipline. The strategy will focus on ensuring the tour continues to provide close combative head-to-head racing, and revealed that it will be doubling the tour’s overall title bonus prize pool to USD 500,000. When combined with the prize money for each of the tour events, sailors in 2011 will compete for a total prize fund in excess of USD 1,750,000. It was also announced that WMRT will be launching a new host city bidding process in the next 14 days which will add six new venues by 2013. To complement the addition of new cities and to ensure the Tour embraces developing technology, submissions will be invited from international designers and boat builders to create boats for the new events joining the tour. WMRT CEO Jim O’Toole said that, “As rights’ holders we have a duty to act in the interests of match racing. The majority of people feel that the true essence of match racing is about intense, highly manoeuvrable, closely fought, head-to-head battles and we have developed our strategy to take into account these views. WMRT President Peter Gilmour commented, “The decision by the America’s Cup holders to embrace catamarans means that it has moved out of the space which it had previously held as the pinnacle event in match racing and feedback that we are receiving indicates the interest remains." Complete report: http://tinyurl.com/WMRT-101410 MULTIHULL MATCH RACING While match racing has long been a part of the sport, doing it in multihulls hasn’t been. Both teams that competed in the 33rd America’s Cup - the trimaran versus the catamaran - admitted their training was focused on performance and not adapting their match race skills to the platform. But now with the 34th America’s Cup also in multihulls, competing teams will devour opportunities to test their match racing skills in comparable platforms. The only arena that is currently available is the Extreme Sailing Series, which just concluded its European season. Here is a report from IJ/IU Jos M Spijkerman (NED) on his observations: “(Monday) we did some Match Racing with the Extreme 40 in Almeria. I must admit I had quite some expectations about this. What would it be like in terms of manoeuvrability, with the slow tacking and the accelerations these big catamarans can generate? Would we be able to keep up? “Unfortunately the wind was very low, maybe 4-5 knots, and that restricted the speed and maneuverability severely. All dial-ups where greened as Port did everything it could after Starboard initiated the collision. Also every boat that won the controlling position at the start, ended up winning the match. “In the three matches only one penalty was given. And that was for a boat interfering with another one, on a different leg of the course - and that boat was not sailing on her proper course. “There was also a big difference between skippers with match racing experience and skippers without. America’s Cup challenger Emirates Team New Zealand (with skipper Dean Barker) beat her opponent quite easily, for instance. Match racing is primarily a tactics game, still. “All in all not very exciting, I must admit. Less than expected. Hopefully that will change with a little more breeze. The group sailing was spectacular in 15-20 knots.” -- http://rrsstudy.blogspot.com/2010/10/match-racing-with-extreme-40s.html SAILING SHORTS * Lanzarote, Canary Islands (October 14, 2010) - Sailors have a superstition that winning the practice race prior to a world championship is bad luck. Superstition be damned. Yesterday, Jose Juan Calero guided BMW ORACLE Racing to first place in the practice race for the RC 44 Fleet Race World Championship. Today, after the first three races, the team leads the standings with the low score of 9 points on finishes of 2-5-2. With the match racing segment complete, the fleet racing continues through Saturday, with the World Champion to be the combined low point score of both. -- Read on: http://www.rc44.com/en/regattas/news/index.php?idContent=2595 * A crew that rescued five people from Chesapeake Bay were awarded Arthur B. Hanson Rescue Medals by the US SAILING Safety-at-Sea Committee for the seamanship displayed by their crews. The incident occurred on the night of July 17, 2010 when Larry Vazzano (Mt. Airy, Md.) and his crew of three in the CS 40 Wharf Rat rescued two men and a 12-year-old boy clinging to a capsized boat near the Bay Bridge. Full report here: http://media.ussailing.org/Latest_News/Hanson_Wharf_Rat.htm * Chicago, IL (October 14, 2010) Final preparations are underway to the start of the 2010 International Championship Match Race Series for the Canada’s Cup, being held October 15-17 at the Chicago Match Race Center (CMRC). This event is a prestigious symbol of sailing supremacy on the Great Lakes since its inception by the Royal Canadian YC in 1896 as a challenge trophy between representative yachts clubs of the US and Canada. Competing for the venerable trophy is Don Wilson’s Team Chicago Match Race Center sailing Convexity (USA) and Grant Hood’s challenging Vincere team from the Port Credit YC (CAN). -- Full report: http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=10673#10673 * West Marine today reported net sales of US$172.6m for its third quarter ended October 2, 2010, a 2.6 per cent gain over the same period a year ago. Same-store sales rose 3.7 per cent or US$5.2m for the quarter. -- IBI Magazine, read on: http://www.ibinews.com/ibinews/newsdesk/20100914154659ibinews.html HOLMATRO TO EXPAND PUSH-BUTTON SAILING SYSTEMS Whether you are a short-handed cruiser or sailing a high performance racing yacht Holmatro’s new hydraulic systems, to be introduced at METS, may be for you. These systems will power all hydraulics on board from winches and windlasses to lifting keels and vangs. The modular pump and manifold system is yacht customized and is controlled through a premium grade industrial computer, which allows data logging, remote monitoring and remote troubleshooting. Visit the Holmatro team at METS in Amsterdam, stand 01.547, (across from the sushi bar) and see our ever-expanding line of innovative equipment. http://www.holmatro.com PHOTOS OF THE WEEK Some of the random photos from the sport received this week at Scuttlebutt include multihulls in a desert, monohulls on an island, foils under a wing, adversity for a junior, plus long distance training and racing from both sides of the Atlantic ocean. Here are this week’s photos: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/10/1015/ 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 In 2010, the Extreme Sailing Series presented stadium style racing across five European venues, where teams harnessed the power of 40-foot catamarans in front of tens of thousands of spectators. With the America’s Cup moving to multihulls, this circuit provides a glimpse of what lies ahead for the sport, except the boats will be even bigger and faster. The Extreme Sailing Series, one of just four circuits with ISAF's Special Event Status, has already been confirmed in 2011 with an eight event global circuit across Europe, the USA, the Far East and GCC region. This highlight video tells the story of the season: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/media/10/1015/ BONUS 1: When the J/80 class held its World Championship last week in Newport, RI, the wind gods turned up the volume and stretched the fleet to its limit. Overcoming long odds was Texan Scott Young, who helmed his new team to an impressive second place finish among this seasoned fleet. Young sits for this interview to provide some insight about the event: http://www.jboatssouthwest.com/videos/scott_young_j80worlds.html BONUS 2: Have you ever sailed on an International 14? This video provides an onboard view as if you were sitting on the bow looking aft, and doing it on Kaneohe Bay amid the famous Hawaiian Pacific Trade Winds: http://www.sailgroove.org/coverage/237703-I14-Pacific-Rims/video/359310-Race -2-highlight-On-board-video-from-Jake-Sorosky 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 are 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 Gregory Scott, Kingston Ontario: In the Q&A about the America’s Cup (in Scuttlebutt 3198), I find Russell Coutts diving head long into assuring anyone who had almost gotten past the ‘Facebook and Flinstones’ comment will be right back to their level of frustration. It seems to fly headlong into the face of fact. Kids don't have money - 40-50 year olds do. Fans pay to see known names in sport - not kids. If his vision was durable, ask any GM paying an aging "star" why? Nobody cares according to Russell! NASCAR and F1 would dump all the experienced old guys and gals for kids - but they aren't. The NFL would be rookie QB's only to save money. But they aren't. And the answer is simple - rookie QB's throw interceptions. Fans don't pay to watch fumbles!! I enjoy watching experienced sailors performing very well because of knowledge and only a coincidence that they were also not 20. There is a link between age and experience - between age and quality of play. If Russell is of the belief that fans will watch because the sailors are young - how does he explain a profound lack of interest in Olympic Sailing?? We have had over 50 years to grasp The Little Americas Cup. Very few yacht clubs can accommodate Hobies and Tornados. Very few budgets can support a wing mast cat project. If kids do accept this as the future of sailing, their parents may have a different view. A 49er campaign takes a big enough bite - a wing mast cat is a different matter all together. Look up Fred Eaton - http://www.thestar.com/article/283826 ... $300- $500,000 per boat ... * From Adrian Morgan: I read Walter Keller's letter in Scuttlebutt 3198 convinced he was a ghost, speaking through a medium, from the early years of the last century. I quote: "The Cup has become a contest for billionaires (he must be referring to Lipton, Sopwith and Vanderbilt) racing overly exotic, outrageously expensive boats (that'll be Reliance, Shamrock or the J class no doubt) with over-paid crews (mostly Scandinavian in those days, I believe, not Kiwis. And how much was Charlie Barr paid? As much as Russell Coutts?). Those boats and their teams bear no resemblance to the sailing craft we enjoy messing about in (neither did they in the 1930s). We find it impossible to vicariously place ourselves on their boats (nor could ordinary sailors in those days)." Why do AC commentators so often show a complete ignorance of its history? The Cup has always been a sport for the stupidly wealthy. That's the whole point. It began as an attempt by a group of rich Americans to make money, betting on the outcome of races between their schooner yacht America and any British yachts willing to race her. It was only because America looked so fast that no one came forward, until shamed into a match arranged by the Squadron for a hastily bought off-the-shelf-jug worth Ł100. * From Chris Bulger: No doubt, as Walter Keller points out (in Scuttlebutt 3198), AC33 was “a contest for billionaires racing overly exotic, outrageously expensive boats with over-paid crews.” AC33 was nothing like the glorious egalitarian 12 Meter campaigns that were dominated by amateurs. The fact is AC33 was a throw-back to sailing’s last period of perilous excess, the 1920’s - a period of provocative dancing in short dresses without underwear and ridiculously out of proportion Amercia’s Cup J Boats. AC 33 wasn’t Flintstones or Facebook - it was Flappers all the way. Like BMW’s big tri and Alingi’s cat, J-Boats were (are) totally awesome and totally unobtainable to anyone but the filthy rich. It took a World War and depression to give birth to the very accessible 12 Meter. With access came better competition. I am very excited about BMW’s approach to the next cup - because they appear to be determined to embrace both technology and some level of cost control. While the boats may be Facebook - there appears some hope that budgets will be Flintstone or even 1950’s. With access comes better competition. SCUTTLEBUTT ADVERTISING IN 2011 Scuttlebutt provides a limited amount of text ad slots in each newsletter, and these are often sold out well in advance. Most of the ad slots for 2011 will be booked in the next few months, so if you are interested in advertising, but always had heard how hard it was to get on the schedule… think again. Ad placement for 2011 is now available; contact for details: 619-299-5678 or advertising@sailingscuttlebutt.com CURMUDGEON’S OBSERVATION “The greater the level of calmness of our mind, the greater our peace of mind, and the greater our ability to enjoy a happy and joyful life.” - Dalai Lama Special thanks to Interlux and Holmatro. 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