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SCUTTLEBUTT 3779 - Wednesday, February 20, 2013Scuttlebutt 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: North U, APS, and Sail To Prevail. NEXT STOP: HAWAII American Ryan Breymaier was among the nine men that successfully sailed the VO70 Maserati to establish a new reference time of 47:00:42:29 for the Golden Route, in the monohull category, from New York to San Francisco crossing Cape Horn. Here Ryan provides his wrap report... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Well the dust has finally settled. After a huge weekend, starting with arriving in San Francisco with Maserati on Saturday morning and celebrating through Sunday, I finally have time to sit and send this final Maserati New York - San Francisco wrap-up. The frustrations of the final few (light air) days were forgotten immediately as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and sailed up the bay to cross the second line between Alcatraz and Pier 39. The welcome was more than any of us expected. The sun was out and we were accompanied all the way by the San Francisco fireboat will all hoses at full power, plus a fleet of boats with journalists, photographers, local sailors, friends, family and even the local Italian dignitaries! On Sunday the festivities continued with an exceptional afternoon hosted at the Italian Consulate building in Pacific Heights. The high point of which was a forced recital of the Italian national anthem by Gio, Corrado, Michele and Guido! Our final tally for the record was just over 47 days; 10 days shorter that Yves Parlier's standing record. We were all very satisfied with this result which accomplishes our main objective of setting a modern reference time that is hopefully difficult to beat in the next few years. As a crew we had a great time though by the end of nearly 50 days together we were getting close to the end of things to talk about in the light air. The boat is now at the shipyard in Richmond (CA) where we have begun the process of stripping her down ready for a thorough refit over the next couple of months. The racing crew has started to leave town and there is just a core of the technical team that remain. The plan is to optimize the boat ahead of this summer's Transpac Race. -- Read on: http://breymaiersailing.com/?p=2138 RULES QUIZ Blue on port, and Yellow on starboard, are approaching the windward mark to be left to port. Blue tacks and passes head to wind inside the zone. After Blue completes her tack, Yellow heads up to avoid Blue and establishes an overlap to windward. Any foul here? What are Blue's tactical options? How about Yellow's tactics? Answer below. THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW When Charlie McKee, 50, took the job as the High Performance Director of the U.S. Olympic Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider, he did so with two Olympic medals already around his neck. Charlie won the Bronze medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics in the 470 class with John Shadden, and then he and his brother Jonathan tackled the new skiff event, winning a Bronze at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in the 49er class. Here Charlie reflects on how the level of Olympic competition has changed since his medal winning campaigns... "I think that the 2000 Olympics were a watershed event as far as the level of dedication that sailors were putting in on the water. [For these athletes,] sailing was their occupation and the primary driving force in their life. That's just what was required. "When [Jonathan and I] started sailing 49ers in 1996, we got a container full of boats and we learned to sail them with a group of people in the Northwest. We started out meeting after work at Shilshole and then we eventually went down to the Gorge and then to the first 49er Worlds. We weren't doing a full-time campaign, but we were doing highlevel weekend-warrior stuff. The key was that we had a group of good sailors who were sharing information. "We got second at the first 49er Worlds, then a fourth and then an eleventh as the Europeans caught up. Our goal wasn't just to win the U.S. Olympic Trials, so we quit our jobs and really dedicated ourselves. We barely hung on, but we sailed a great regatta [in Sydney], got a little lucky and won Bronze. "Now, everyone sails full-time." Complete interview in 48 Degrees North: http://digital.turn-page.com/i/106669/48 RULES QUIZ ANSWER After passing head to wind inside the zone Blue is subject to rule 18.3 - Tacking in the Zone. Even if her tack is complete she fouls Yellow if Yellow must head up above close-hauled to avoid her. So the question is: Did Yellow head up above close-hauled? Learn more about this and dozens of other tactical scenarios at North U Rules & Tactics Seminars and Webinars. The seminar includes Dave Perry's new Racing Rules & Tactics Workbook. US Sailing Memberships and Discounts! Full details and registration: 800-347-2457, http://www.northu.com TURNING THE SPORT INTO SOMETHING IT'S NOT When the ISAF Sailing World Cup came to Miami (Jan 28-Feb 2), it was the beginning of a journey for many of the athletes toward the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The event was also a test bed for ISAF as they sought to experiment with event formats they hoped would heighten fan appeal for the 2016 Olympic Games. Among the classes participating in the experiment was the Men's and Women's RS:X windsurfing events, which had devised a multi-stage format that had various steps to advance sailors to the Finals. But as 2012 Olympic silver medalist Nick Dempsey (GBR) explains, he was not a fan of the plan... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- We found out when the Sailing Instructions were issued a couple of days' before racing how it was going to work. You have to be open-minded to these things and when you know that the racing formats are being experimented with you can only form a valid opinion, and give what you hope will be valuable, credible feedback, if you've actually tried it yourself. But it was obvious right from the outset that this particular format would be leaving too much to chance. You could qualify last from each of the fleet series, quarter-finals and semi-finals and still walk away with the gold medal if you won the final six-board race. How can you spend four years of your life training for what could come down to one 15 minute blast in Rio where the winner takes all, regardless of how they have sailed in the rest of the event? A sailing regatta is supposed to reward consistency over the course of a series. Ours is an environmental sport where conditions can fluctuate from day to day. But you always know that over the course of a series invariably things will level themselves out, and the people who have been consistent across the full range of conditions - ie, the best sailors that week - will win the medals. It's the way it should be, not a winner-takes-all final race showdown. My preference would be to go back to what we had at the 2004 Athens Olympics, with no medal race at all. It was simple then; the person with the least points wins. It's like golf, everyone understood it. Now it feels like they're just trying to make the sport something that it's not, and in doing so, the sport gets further away from athletic achievement and consistent performance. The overriding feeling in the boat park was this format just isn't fair competition. - Full report: http://www.volvocarssailing.co.uk/news/view/nick_dempsey_blog/ THIS IS NORMAL Mike Golding discusses his post-race symptoms following the 2012-2013 Vendee Globe, the 24,000-nm solo, non-stop around the world race in the IMOCA Open 60 class: "My sleep patterns are beginning to return to something approaching normal – though I am still requiring catnaps in the day. The out-of-condition legs are strengthening daily but my upper body, which had been in a constant workout for 88 days, aches from the absence of the tough physical regime. I am heading back to the gym to let the muscles recover more gradually and hopefully with less discomfort. Another residual symptom is the tough skin on my hands and feet; it's dry and hard as leather during the day, but when I shower or bath the skin turns white and melts. Basically there's a general discomfort in recovering and I know it's going to take some time yet, probably months, to be symptom free. This is normal following a Vendee Globe." Source: http://tinyurl.com/MG-021913 FINAL DAYS OF THE APS LINE AND RIGGING SALE We are in our final days of the last Rigging and Line Sale of the year! Whether you are aiming for that class championship or just want to maximized your time on the water this year new rigging and line can help get your there. Less than two weeks left to enjoy savings up to 15% on the performance upgrades and maintenance replacements that you need for this season. Find out more: http://bit.ly/APSdeals REFINING THE KITE RULES Kiteboard course racing continues to grow, and while kiteboards ably compete on a typical buoy course, they have enough unique attributes that required the establishment of Appendix F - Kiteboard Racing Rules - in The Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS). The International Kiteboarding Association held their Annual General Meeting a few weeks ago and took the recently revised RRS 2013-2016 and revised them further. One of the issues they addressed was the manner in which the rules addressed alternative penalties. Here is the current rule and the revised rule CURRENT: A kiteboard may take a 360 Degree Turn Penalty when she may have broken one or more rules of Part 2 in an incident while racing. Sailing instructions may specify the use of some other penalty. However, if the kiteboard caused injury or serious damage or, despite taking a penalty, gained a significant advantage in the race or series by her breach her penalty shall be to retire. REVISED: The previously used 360 Degree Turn Penalty only required the hull to be in the water during the turn - with no gybe nor tack required. This penalty was not felt anymore to be appropriate for a breach of a rule of Part 2 - right of way rules. The new penalty turn which is introduced through the Sailing Instructions requires the turn to include a tack and a gybe, with forward movement established after each manouvre. This turn requires much more time now and also makes the movement of the kite during the term more predictable, reducing the risk of tangles while someone is taking a penalty. Source: RRS: http://www.sailing.org/documents/racingrules/index.php IKA: http://tinyurl.com/IKA-021913 PRACTICAL SAILOR: HARD ANTIFOULING PAINTS AND HAULOUTS In the March 2013 issue of Practical Sailor magazine, they rated the performance of more than 50 different kinds of bottom paint. Some of the best performing antifouling paints in their most recent test were hard, modified epoxy paints. One of the drawbacks of these paints is that they can lose their effectiveness after being hauled out and stored ashore for more than 30 days. Even newly painted hulls can lose their effectiveness, if the launch is delayed too long - something to keep in mind, if the boat you are buying is newly painted, but has been in storage for a long time. What many people don't know, however, is there are ways to reactivate a hard paint on a newly painted boat that has been stored ashore for less than a year, or one that has been hauled out for less than 30 days. Kop-Coat, the maker of Pettit Trinidad bottom paint, which earned the highest "Best Choice" rating, offers this advice for owners who intend to launch or haul out and re-launch a boat painted with Trinidad: http://www.practical-sailor.com/blog/-11003-1.html SAILING SHORTS * Photographer Sharon Green has launched a youth fundraising program, offering her famous 2013 Ultimate Sailing Calendar at a significantly reduced price to allow junior sailing programs to resell for profit. Contact crew@ultimatesailing.com or (800) 827-3186 for details. Supplies are limited. * The 27th Calema Midwinters Windsurfing Festival, including the 2013 Techno 293 North Americans Championship, will take place Merritt Island, Florida, USA February 28-March 3. The Calema Midwinters Festival brings together World Cup pros, Olympic class competitors, beginner sailors and all other levels in between. Classes are available for all skill levels and type of equipment along with Youth and Masters fleets. The event is based at Calema Windsurfing and Watersports. -- Details: http://tinyurl.com/IWA-021913 * (February 19, 2013; Day 2) - The first finishers in the RORC Caribbean 600 race are expected in the early hours of Wednesday morning, with every possibility that at least one record will be broken. Peter Aschenbrenner's 63-foot trimaran, Paradox, with multihull legend Cam Lewis on board, is on record pace and will need to cross the line before 03:11:05 on Feb 20 to beat Region Guadeloupe's 2009 record. Paradox will need to cover 190 miles in 12 hours to eclipse the record. -- Event website: http://caribbean600.rorc.org * Sydney , Australia (February 19, 2013) - The defending champion Gotta Love It 7 team gave a faultless display in the 10knot North-East wind to take out Race 3 of the Winning Group 2013 JJ Giltinan 18ft Skiff Championship on Sydney Harbour today. Seve Jarvin, Scott Babbage and Peter Harris recorded a 1m24s win over Coopers-Rag & Famish Hotel, and now hold a 1-2-1 a three point lead in the championship. Race 4 will be sailed Wednesday with further races on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. -- Full report: http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=15230#15230 * (February 19, 2013; Day 102) - Eighty miles off Cape Finsterre, remaining quietly patient but on a state of high alert due to the high level of shipping traffic, Italian skipper Alessandro Di Benedetto is content to wait until the winds pick up on Wednesday to propel him the final 400+ miles to the finish of his Vendee Globe, now expected to be on Friday. Alessandro is the final finisher, and will claim 11 place of the 20 original starters. -- http://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/ * CORRECTION: There were two mistakes in Scuttlebutt 3778: 1) The intro to Dave Perry's report on the definition change of Mark-Room mistakenly included a reference to "the new Trash rule"; and 2) The Curmudgeon's Observation stated that Napoleon died in battle. He actually died of stomach cancer while a prisoner on St. Helena. SAIL TO PREVAIL Overcoming Adversity. We teach this life skill to disabled children and Veterans who participate at Sail To Prevail in Newport, RI. Are you disabled or challenged? Please join us in conquering the waters of Newport in our fully adapted sailboats. Please contact paulcallahan@sailtoprevail.org or visit http://www.SailToPrevail.org 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 George W. Carmany, III: Regarding women sailing the 18 footers (Scuttlebutt 3778), I can't speak for the JJ, but in the early 1970s a colorful all-girl crew who sailed under the name Boobs competed regularly in the Sydney Harbour fleet. While their efforts were not always crowned with success, they were a welcome and widely followed addition to the racing of that era. One afternoon after a spectacular capsize, while being towed back to their headquarters at the Sydney Flying Squadron, an old Dragon sailor (not you Ingate) observed "great day got a swim was it girls?" and was smartly met with a rejoinder more readily expected from the men in those days: "Get stuffed!" * From Scott Parker: We are doing something right when we can celebrate accomplishments that aren't recorded in the race results. Thanks for doing this with the Katie Love interview in Scuttlebutt 3778. * From Al Johnson - Seattle, WA: Far and away the most fun per dollar I've had in 40+ years of sailing was on a 1941 Johnson E-Scow that a friend and I bought in 1973. It was spring of my sophomore year at the University of Washington, and there were already two old wooden E-Scows moored on the UW docks pretending that they belonged to the UW sailing club, so we figured why not three? It cost us $800 for the boat, complete with a clear finished hollow "box" cedar mast, and set of 1948 Murphy & Nye cotton sails. The first time we sailed the boat in a good breeze, the jib blew out into three or four large pieces, plus some small ones we never recover, but it gave us a chance to learn how the club's sewing machine worked. Fortunately, the class had just legalized aluminum spars, which meant all the boats that raced in the Midwest needed to upgrade to a new mast, which required new sails. There soon became lots of used sails available, and after buying a used set of Dacron sails from a boat on White Bear Lake (sail W-111) for $110, we were in back in business. We put two sets of trapeze hookups on the boat, bought a used Soling chute from Bill Buchan, and we were on top of the world. There were markers for a measured nautical mile painted on the 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington at that time, and you knew exactly when you were even with them because there was a flash of daylight when the pilings lined up. We'd go out in 15-20 knots of breeze with a stopwatch and sail screaming beam reaches in the smooth water to leeward of the bridge. Our best one-nautical mile time was 5:03, for an 11.9 knot average. -- Forum, read on: http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=15233#15233 * From Peg Miller: While it was sad to see the news about PUMA leaving the sport (in Scuttlebutt 3778), I was always puzzled at them diving in as hard as they did. It is one thing to leverage sailing events for brand marketing, but did they really have to develop a full kit of gear? They are a shoe and soft goods company, but they went way beyond that - making a significant investment in product development - at a time when the sport was not growing. Amazing! FREE CLASSIFIED ADS The Scuttlebutt website provides a marketplace for private parties to buy and sell, or for businesses to post job openings...for free! As a bonus, each week the Scuttlebutt newsletter includes some of the recent ad postings. Here are some of the recent ads: * Evelyn 32-2 for sale * US Powerboating Courses now available in New Bedford, MA * Sailing Center Manager needed in Nantucket * Hiring Launch Driver for the north shore pf Long Island View/post ads here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum/classified_ads CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION Broken pencils are pointless. SPONSORS THIS WEEK North Sails - Atlantis WeatherGear - Gunboat - North U - APS - Sail To Prevail - Ullman Sails - Team One Newport - Block Island Race Week - Need stuff? Look here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ssc/suppliers |
