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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 765 - March 5, 2001Scuttlebutt 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 and contrasting viewpoints are always welcome. THE RACE POSITIONS 2. Innovation Explorer 378.5 to finish, 3. Team Adventure, 5784.3 4. Warta Polpharma, 5. Team Legato, 9210.8 - www.therace.org CLUB MED Skipper Grant Dalton had not revealed the true extent of damage to the rope-rigging attachments throughout the competition, in the daily radio chats to the Race Center in Paris. Extensive damage to the crossbeam, some delamination, and makeshift bolting all made the hit list. The yacht ordinarily would have stopped for repairs but somehow the experienced Club Med crew kept moving. The last stages out of the doldrums and into the Gibraltar Straits must
have been all the harder on the men onboard. Struggling with a battered
boat may go some way to explaining why Dalton appeared utterly shattered on
arrival at the Vieux docks in Marseilles last night. No doubt more of the
extent of the damage and how it was contained will surface during the next
24 hours, as Innovation Explorer makes its way through the Mediterranean,
to end her own epic voyage. - Adam Chappell, NOW Sports, BIG BARGAIN? ACURA SORC Kilroy, from Malibu, CA, led the class on points for three days of the four-day regatta but came under increasing pressure from the steadily improving Barking Mad, skippered by Jim Richardson, from Boston, MA. Kilroy was the 1999 World Champion of the class while Richardson was the 1998 Champion. In addition to winning the class trophy, Kilroy was awarded the Mark Baxter Memorial Trophy for the best Farr 40 of the week. Like all skippers who competed in four-day series, he also received an Omega Seamaster 300-Meter Professional Diver watch. The Acura Cup for the best all-around performance for a boat in a competitive class was awarded to Robert Hughes, skipper of the 1D35 Heartbreaker. The one-design boat from Ada, MI, scored a convincing win with a 12.25-point margin in a hotly-contested 15-boat class. For Hughes, who is preparing to campaign a new Farr 40, it was a fitting end for a three-year tenure in the class. His boat is hull #4 and last year he won here in Miami and won the season championship. "This was our last event in the 1D35 Class. The boys were really motivated to sail as best as we could," Hughes said. "Everything was perfect. It was like a storybook ending for us." A one-quarter-point winning margin also featured in the battle for the Governor's Cup for the best all-round performance by a boat in the PHRF Class. Stephen Murray, skipper of the Santa Cruz 52 Decision, from New Orleans, LA, won the trophy after swapping the points lead all week with George Collin's Chessie Racing, from Fisher Island, FL. The Farr 50 Esmeralda, campaigned by sailmaker Ken Read and owner Makoto Uematsu, locked up the seven-boat IMS Class with seven victories in three days of racing and elected not to sail the final day. - Keith Taylor Other class winners: PHRF II: Robert Weed, Wired, Novato, CA, PHRF III: Bruce Gardner, L'Outrage, Annapolis, MD, Melges 24: Jeff Jones, Kilroy, Multihull: 1. Robert Buzzelli, Merlin, Sarasota, FL, Mumm 30: Phil Garland, Trouble, Bristol, RI, J/105: Bob Johnstone. Complete results: http://www.acurasorc.com/ LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON leweck@earthlink.net * From: Noel M. Field, Jr. (edited to our 250-word limit) - At the annual meeting of USYRU in 1975, I had the pleasure of making the presentation of the Herreshoff trophy to Bob Bavier, which. read in part: "To Robert N. Bavier, Jr. - skippper, crew, designer, builder and writer. Perhaps one does not always associate him with the field of designing and building, but his activities within the structures of NAYRU and IYRU during the past two decades relate to all of the above mentioned fields. "Since 1950 he has been a member of the Racing Rules Committee; has served on the Junior Championships Committee and the Olympic Yachting Committee; has been a delegate to the International Yacht Racing Union, served on its Racing Rules Committee, its Permanent Committee and was the first Chairman of its Multihull Technical Committee. "Also, he has served a member ot the North American Sailing Championship Committee, and in fact, the Mallory Cup competition was his idea. He has served the NAYRU as Corresponding Secretary, Assistant Treasurer, Vice President and President. He continues to serve USYRU on the Appeals Committee, as Chairman of the Racing Rules Committee and a Councillor of Honour. "As the author of innumerable sailing articles and books he might almost be considered the 'Revised Standard Version of the Racing Rules' personified. His many articles in Yachting magazine have done much to spark lively discourse on sailling and to increase enthusiastic participation in the activities of NAYRU and now USYRU." He was a fine gentleman and a superb competitor. He will be missed. * From Glenn T. McCarthy mccarthys@ussailing.net Multiply that over every single start in the U.S. (plus General Recalls) and we are saving full lifetimes of sailors time with a shorter sequence. In today's increasingly busy world, it makes sense to me to shorten my time on the water. I'm looking forward to trying this new system out, now I need to go study the sound and flag sequence so I don't look too stupid the first time out. Of course, all of the lifetimes saved on the water will be all lost at the bar, with more bar time. * From: Bob Siegel r.siegel@gwathmey-siegel.com IMS Handicapped racing is flourishing in our area. Owners who like the variety of options in handicapped racing but want to avoid the subjective monthly evaluation of their ratings by the local PHRF committee have switched over to IMS. Wonderfully designed yachts created from 1994 to the present have become available at reasonable prices, which allow owners to experience more technical options and increase their learning curve. * From: "Colin J. Case" crannis@compuserve.com * From: "Jack Mallinckrodt" malli@earthlink.net Face it - not one racer in a thousand had any significant understanding of the IOR handicapping formula. Single number scoring derived from the complex IMS VPP is perceived as straightforward and understandable. PHRF, the most popular system in the US, arguably has the most inscrutable handicap system of all, human judgment. Yet none of them suffered from this inscrutabilty perception. All this says that the perception of complexity has little or nothing to do with the handicap system but everything to do with the scoring system. It was for exactly this reason that PLS, two-number scoring system as used in AMERICAP was developed, to take full accuracy advantage of wind adaptive VPP based handicapping, with a simple, transparent scoring system. It's ironic that AMERICAP and IMS, now working under an essentially identical VPP, are battling for dwindling constituencies when they would both be far better off to join forces under a single scoring sytem. A single, simple, no-cost step by the national IMS authorities could go a long way toward making this happen. That would be to publish and distribute the five pairs of PLS scoring numbers with every IMS certificate. * From: Michael Silverman, Tulane Sailing Team msilver2@tulane.edu This idea can easily be transported to the international sailing community. To work properly it would have to be a true listserv. Everyone with race results should be able to contribute (or perhaps with a moderator). Press, and anyone curious could be recipients of the updates. If a bunch of college kids can do it, why can't the rest of the sailing world? * From: Kimball Livingston quill@pacbell.net The special aspect of the Web is that it can serve that special interest. Sailors should put it to work. Also, that kind of sailing is the heart of sailing. Personally, I don't
believe in the trickle-down theory. I don't believe that people take up
sailing because they're thrilled by hearing that a catamaran rounded Cape
Horn going fast enough to pull a water skier. I don't believe that people
take up sailing because they're inspired by seeing some rich guy spend
whats-a-millions to win the America's Cup. It's wonderful/awesome what the
crews on The Race have done/are doing. As a reporter I have witnessed
America's Cup events that choked me up with their intensity. But I think
people take up sailing because they see the water, and they see a boat, and
it's simply compelling. CURMUDGEON'S COMMENT: Coincidentally (I think), this same subject is the topic ISAF Webmaster Peter Bentley discussed in his editorial in the March issue of Making Waves. Here's an excerpt: "As I come to the end of my first year editing the daily news for ISAF, the one question that rings loud in my ears is why is it so hard to find out what is happening in the sailing world? A strange question you might think for one charged with distributing the news to others. Believe me I try to get all the results from all the major regattas, but all too often it is as easy and as pleasurable as pulling teeth. "During the course of the last year I have had to rely on competitors to supply results and reports in a timely manner from almost exactly half the Olympic classes World and Continental championships. Unbelievable! Despite considerable efforts to promote the need to send results to ISAF, it has become quite clear that the majority of event organisers are simply not up to the task. On the flip side, those who do provide a good results and report service generally do a very good job, proving just what cane be done if people want to. Thank you to the good guys. "I know I am not alone in making these criticisms and many other editors I speak to (in both traditional- and e-media) are equally frustrated. Sailing as a sport will not even hold its own in the world, still less develop, without solid, regular, high quality reporting. It is perhaps no coincidence that the class that lost out in last November's battle for Olympic status was one of those with the worst publicity record." - Peter Bentley, Making Waves 73, March 1, 2001 Full editorial: SAILING ON TV Anyone who saw Ellen MacArthur: 'Sailing Through Heaven and Hell' will agree that it was a very moving account of her experiences in the Vendee, but a source close to Ellen told madforsailing that she was not happy with the way it was edited, with the focus too much on the emotion and less on the overall experience. Even so, it was wonderful to see a heroic sailing adventure given the airing it deserved, and the picture quality was a credit to the technology and the people involved. It was also a credit to Ellen that she found the time and energy to record the most harrowing and dangerous moments of her journey. There are no airs and graces about her, what you see is what you get with Ellen. - Paul Brotherton, Madforsailing website. Full story: CORRECTION The actual induction ceremony will take place on August 24, 2001 in Cowes, on the Isle of Wright as part of the weeklong America's Cup Jubilee celebrating the 150th anniversary of the August 22, 1851 sail around the Isle of Wright. LINE 7 QUOTE / UNQUOTE - Skip Novak We still do not know if PlayStation could have cut the mustard down there. She is a very different boat: wider, lower to the water, with an enormous mainsail, and she has had problems all along in less severe conditions. Because this is a design development class (meaning no rules, no restrictions), there are no guarantees that future designs won't be over the top and downright dangerous. And, I may add, we did not meet 'The Perfect Storm' nor the 100-year wave, both possibilities in any ocean. Bruno Peyron is certainly thinking of another event in four years time and
for sure by then more boats will be built. A 38-meter trimaran is already
under construction for Olivier de Kersuason in France. My only suggestion
is that a future around the world race would most likely benefit from
stopovers. This inaugural non-stop event was a one off. For the future, to
keep the media focused (which generates the sponsorship dollars) the fleet
has to be kept closer together-and this is difficult over 25,000 miles in
such large and unpredictable sailing machines, no matter how well prepared
they may be. When things go wrong on boats that sometimes average 25 knots
and above, hundreds and then thousands of miles can separate the
competition, making it into a non-competition. This is unacceptable for an
event that must be sustained on the world stage for two months or more." -
Skip Novak, skipper of the maxi-catamaran Innovation Explorer, Outside
Online, WD SCHOCK MEMORIAL REGATTA SUNFISH MIDWINTERS Clearwater Yacht Club (68 boats) 1. David Loring (10) 2. Malcolm Smith (17) 3. Hank Saurage (22) 4. Ash Beatty (22) 5. Bishop Stieffel (25). http://www.clwyc.org/SunfishMidwinters00/FinalResults.htm THE CURMUDGEON'S COUNSEL |
