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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 543 - April 6, 2000MORE NORTH SAILS / SOBSTAD(Following is an excerpt from an interview the Sailing Source website did with Butch Ullmer of UK Sailmakers about the North Sails / Sobstad legal decision.) SAILING SOURCE: What do you see for the future of North Sails from this decision? BUTCH ULMER: North's future will depend on the final outcome of the legal proceedings. Their appeal might be successful but so might Sobstad's appeal on the willful infringement issue. Assuming the decision stands as is, I think the combination of damages and injunction could severely cripple them and might well put them out of business. Certainly, it would have that effect on any other sailmaking company. SS: What do you think will happen to the facility in Minden Nevada and the employees there? BU: With the injunction in place, North would either have to shut Minden down or find an alternative product that does not infringe Sobstad's patents. Certainly, the latter is a possibility. I don't think the status of the employees in Minden is an issue. This case was not about their jobs. SS: You testified on behalf of Peter Conrad and Sobstad during the trial, I presume that you are in agreement with the judge's decision and the injunction? BU: I have supported Sobstad's position in this case since 3DL sails first appeared in the marketplace. There was never any question in my mind that they infringed the Sobstad patents. Shortly after UK purchased Horizon Sails, we became involved in patent litigation with Sobstad over Tape-Drive sails. This went on for a little over a year and resulted in a settlement with UK taking a license from Sobstad. During that time, I became pretty well versed in the Sobstad patents. I think the Judge's decision as to why 3DL sails infringe is right on the mark. SS: What will be the dollar amount of the judgement? BU: BIG! I have no direct knowledge of North's sales volume in 3DL but it is obviously a very successful product. It seems to me that the judgement with interest will be an 8-figure number. SS: But punitive treble damages are precluded by the judges' decision, so it will be just the 7% royalty plus interest from 1992. BU: Your are correct but it is my understanding that Sobstad intends to appeal the issue of willful infringement. SS: What do you think will happen on Friday when North seeks to have the injunction lifted? BU: I believe the Judge will leave the injunction in place on Friday. Having concluded that North infringes the patents, he correctly made them stop immediately. I am sure he thought long and hard before rendering his decision and it does not seem likely that he will reverse himself a week later. Read the full interview: http://www.sailingsource.com/features/ulmerinterview.html THE RACE Club Med's platform is currently receiving its finishing touches. Work on spars, appendages and sails is progressing in parallel. The 33-m (110-ft) catamaran, to be co-skippered by Grant Dalton (NZ), will be completely finished within a month. About 600 m2 of carbon have been faired, sanded and at the moment are being sprayed. This means working with a maximum of cleanliness in the entire yard to avoid dust. Club Med's livery is sky blue and white with, for a figurehead, a female swimmer painted on each bow. These final stages are being used by Grant and his technical manager, Frenchman Jean Maurel, to influence a multitude of essential "details" - thus applying their "hallmark" to this generic design from the Gilles Ollier Design Team. Strict confidentiality now surrounds the operations in order to guarantee the specificity of each of the three catamarans being built by Multiplast for The Race. Suffice to say that Grant is imposing a rather Spartan approach to ocean racing - comfort is reduced to the bare minimum. The compression beam (longitudinal beam projecting forwards from the foot of the mast) is finished. This 15.50-m (50.9-ft) carbon item has to absorb considerable loads, because it is used to fly a huge, 450 m2 genaker from its extremity. Multiplast has innovated by building it in one piece, instead of two sections (one each side of the forward beam) as on Explorer (26 m / 85 ft) or even PlayStation (32.5 m / 105 ft). Also in Vannes, the half shells of the 41.5-m (136-ft) wing mast will soon be assembled, and the 14.5-m (47-ft) boom is being made. The material chosen - M46J high-modulus carbon fibre - allows the mast to be built like a shell, without any internal bulkheads. A special halyard and a trap door at the bottom of the mast even allow a man to be hoisted to the top from the inside. Another peculiarity of the mast is that its construction, like that of Club Med itself, integrates all fittings from the outset. Instead of being add-on titanium hounds like in the past, these parts are now made from unidirectional carbon fibre and are part and parcel of the mast. Full Story: http://www.multiplast-yachts.com/eng/news/news.cfm SOLING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MURCIA, SPAIN - 15-20 knots of breeze: Race 3: 1st Makila FIN, 2nd Pichugin UKR, 3rd Beadsworth GBR, 4th Madragali USA. Race 4: 1st Schuman GER, 2nd Shiduko RUS, 3rd Makila FIN (Top boat today), 4th Madragali USA, 5th Williams GBR, 6th Spitauer AUS, 7th Pichugin UKR, 8th Beadsworth GBR, 9th Abbot CAN, 10th Fogh CAN Unfortunately the website does not have regatta totals, but I'd guess Madro is doing very well. Event website: http://www.soling.com/results/world00.htm LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON ([email protected]) Letters selected to be printed are routinely edited for clarity, space (250 words max) or to exclude personal attacks. But only one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if people disagree. -- From Eric Hall -- Regarding the April 4 Editorial by the "Sailing Source Editorial Staff," referring to one of the litigants using of phrases like "..some say He is rumored to personal grudge match... power struggle.." with no attribution (not even a byline!) is cowardly journalism. If people claim certain motives for one of the parties, then name them. After lengthy and impartial review, the case was decided on the merits of legal arguments and the court has ruled. It's a shame in one way because of the havoc it causes for some. But in another way, it is reinforcing to know that the legal system vigorously attempts to protect intellectual property - even in the face of sometimes-daunting subjective pressures to do otherwise. I personally know all of the litigants. Each one is a fine man. Each believed they were right and passionately stated their cases. I commend them all for the strength of their convictions. Too bad someone had to win and someone had to lose. -- From Sean "Doogie" Couvreux in response to J. Joseph Bainton about no other classes having equal recognition) -- The 49er class routinely awards the same trophies for the crews and skippers. Both the crew and skipper are viewed as equals on the 49er. Especially since the crews have to do all the hoisting and sail trim of the main and kite. In a 49er, crews make the boat go. -- Ali Meller, VP International 505 Class Yacht Racing Association (In response to J. Joseph Bainton: "it is truly a shame that no other class of which I am aware has emulated the Star Class' long tradition of recognizing the equal contribution of the crew to a winning effort.") -- The Star class is not alone in recognizing the equal contribution of the crew. The International 505 has recognized crew and skipper equally, longer than I have been racing them -- 23 years -- and has even put the requirement for equal prizes at the North American Championship into 505 Class American Section rules. Many event results on 505 web sites list the crew ahead of the helm. When we nominate 505 sailors for awards such as the Rolex, crew and helm are nominated together as a team. Occasionally, at events run by clubs and not the 505 class, a scoring program will not list the crew's name; we edit the results for web publication to include the crew when this happens. The Star and 505 are not alone in this regard; other dinghy classes do this as well -- From Pete Mohler President, US I 14 Assoc. -- I don't know if Ali Meller of the 505 class will beat me to this, but both the 505's and International 14's have long held the crews and skippers as equals in both status and trophies. In fact it has been argued that a good crew can drag a lesser skipper around the racecourse to a better finish than a good skipper with a lesser crew. Many of the boats are co-owned. In fact I know of a couple of 505's where the crew is the sole owner, and in one of the better US I 14s, the skipper and crew trade places every race. Try that in a Star (ha ha,that was a joke) CURMUDGEON'S COMMENT: It t even close Pete --Ali beat you by more than 12 hours. -- From Moose McClintock-- I cannot believe that complaining about not having crew listed is worthy of this forum. We've been spoiled by the ease with which information can be gleaned from the Internet. Remember that results are input by feeble human fingers, if time constraints prevent certain information from getting on line in a timely fashion then, so be it. I didn't see any complaints about not seeing the 20-odd crew of the Maxi World champion listed. How about the 140 people in the Prada team? I'm sure Tom Olsen isn't concerned in the least that he wasn't listed in one of what will surely be many articles written about the Star Westerns. I can tell you that I have never felt even the smallest desire to have my name shown on any winning program I have ever sailed in. I'm in this game to become a better sailor, not to promote myself. I'm pretty sure that most crew feel the same way. -- From Skip Allen -- As some Buttheads may already know, the Van Tuijl family aboard the 44 foot sloop HAYAT from Holland was recently attacked by unknown assailants in the Caribbean, and their 13 year old son Willem was shot. He lost a kidney, and is paralyzed from the waist down, and it was only through sheer resourcefulness of his parents, the assistance of ham radio, and Willem's own grit that he survived. Their story is both tragic and inspirational. The Van Tuijl's had recently completed a circumnavigation of the Pacific, and I had the pleasure of buddy boating with them through Tonga and New Zealand. When they passed through Santa Cruz a couple of months ago, young Willem spent hours sailing my kayak with an umbrella for a sail. He and I would go for sails on my 27 footer and practice racing drills. Willem confided that it was his dream someday to get to race on a "real race boat," as he considered their floating home "too slow." Willem kept a beautiful log of their trip, and was in the process of building a model race boat. He is now recovering in a Dallas children's hospital, but will be in a wheel chair for the forseeable future. Anyone wishing to help contribute to Willem's rehabilitation can do so via the Willem Fund, c/o Southwest Bank, 1603 LBJ Freeway, Suite 100, Dallas, Texas, 75234 -- From Melinda Berge -- Regarding the lack of posted results for the Fort Worth Women's Match Race, and Doran Cushing's criticism of sailboat racing's ineptitude in providing racing results, the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association is working to develop a Windows-based scoring program that will be fully interactive with the web. CBYRA's website (http://www.cbyra.org), implemented last year, is database-driven and has a complete listing (with many NORs and/or SIs) of the season's over 200 Chesapeake Bay events. Our biggest problem is obtaining race results that can be posted with the event listings. As Cushing observes, existing scoring programs were developed by racers with programming skills who made the effort to write a program. They are mainly DOS-based, have no web output, and cannot interact with modern software. Our goal is to have race results automatically uploaded to the web site at the conclusion of scoring a regatta, and to also automatically calculate overall year-long scores for 25 handicap classes (in four regions), 10 cruising one-design classes, 18 one design classes, and 6 junior classes. Present compilation of such standings requires many hours of volunteer labor, including great effort just to retrieve results. CBYRA is coordinating with US Sailing, and is moving towards the technical specifications phase for a web-interactive stand-alone scoring program. We hope to have a professionally-written beta version by year's end. The problem, of course, will be obtaining funding. Software development is expensive, and the market is too small to make commercial development attractive (which explains why such software does not already exist). Comments would be welcome: [email protected]. -- From Peter Huston -- Back in the fall of last year, Tom Ehman proposed in Sailing World that a new Cup cycle be set up as part of an overall "fix it" plan. One of the key points made by Ehman was that Auckland would host several of the next Cup events, win or lose. Ehman knew then, before the racing had even begun, that Auckland was going to be a special venue - one that everyone would want to use for years to come. It just was plain common sense to want Auckland to play host to the Cup on an on-going basis - more often than once every three years. Well, as we all know, TNZ won. And now alot of people want to know what happened to alot of money. And the locals who paid for the great waterfront redevelopment want to have a more constant use of those facilities. Who can blame the Mayor for investigating new uses of this land - and for not wanting any aspect of government to fund any further operating costs for this facility, which after all serves an exclusive group of participants. But because the holders of the Cup refused to have reasonable discussion about the future, Auckland is now in relative turmoil. Maybe the naive people who supported TNZ should have been careful what they wished for. NEW ISAF ADVERTISING CODE The ISAF Executive Committee has reworked the advertising code and their new proposal is now posted online. According to the latest issue of the ISAF's online publication, "Making Waves," their concern is that, " small groups within ISAF will try and add to, or modify, what is currently a rounded proposal, making a carefully structured document into a rag-bag of bits and pieces with no clear direction." Look it over, and decide for yourself: http://www.sailing.org/midyear2000/advert2.html NZ ETCHELLS CHAMPIONSHIPS The fifth annual International Etchells Class New Zealand Championships were held out of Pine Harbour Marina. The series was notable for the number of World Class Sailors taking part, headed by Dennis Conner, Chris Dickson, John Cutler, Murray Ross, David Barnes, Cameron Appleton of Team New Zealand fame, Kelvin Harrup and Dawn Reily of America True and five top Australian crews including Rob Bird of Perth, Jake Gunther from Melbourne and Barry Topple from Sydney. Americas' Cup weather persisted for this series with the light and shifty winds allowing the Race Committee to complete only five of the scheduled seven races. -- Doug Reid Final results (34 boats): 1. Dennis Conner / Noel Drennan / Jon Bilger; 2. Rob Bird / Dean McAulley / Nick Gray; 3. Murray Ross / Colin Booth / Rodney Keenan; 4. Barry Topple / Peter McNeill / Wade Morgan; 5. David Schmidt / Miles Addy / Phil Ash; 6. Chris Dickson / Graham Fluery / Mike Sanderson SAN DIEGO LEUKEMIA CUP Sailors looking for an edge will never have a better opportunity than in the Volvo Leukemia Cup at San Diego May 5, a prelude to the Yachting Cup and the Volvo Inshore Championships. They can buy a better rating. For the Volvo Leukemia Cup, a boat may increase its handicap rating one point for each $100 raised for the Leukemia Society of America. The overall winner will receive the Carl B. Saunders Perpetual Cup, named for the 18-year-old San Diego sailor who fell to the disease in 1998. As many as 60 entries are expected for the Friday twilight race, which will start inside San Diego Bay at 4 o'clock. The winner last year was Roy E. Disney's 1997 Transpac record-setting turbo-sled Pyewacket, whose crew of nine teenagers went door to door to raise $10,000 of the $54,000 total generated by the event. The top individual fundraiser was Blake MacDiarmid, a leukemia victim who collected $7,500 and plans to race his Melges 24 Widespread Panic again this year. -- Rich Roberts Entry information is available from Rebecca Chazan - [email protected] THE CURMUDGEON'S QUOTATIONS "One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them don't exist except in our imaginations." - Steve Allen |
