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SCUTTLEBUTT 1828 - April 29, 2005Scuttlebutt is a digest of major yacht racing news, commentary, opinions,features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus. Corrections, contributions, press releases, constructive criticism and contrasting viewpoints are always welcome, but save your bashing, whining and personal attacks for elsewhere. THE FIRST TIME IN 30 YEARS Dennis Conner won't have a team in the America's Cup for the first time in 30 years, and a northern California group trying to become the second U.S.-based challenger was barely treading water as the entry deadline for the 2007 regatta approached. Conner, who has won and lost the oldest trophy in international sports more than any man in history, has said for more than a year that he likely would be priced out of the next America's Cup. Bill Trenkle, a crewman with Conner since 1980, made it official on Thursday when he said Team Dennis Conner will not file a challenge with organizers in Valencia, Spain, by Friday's deadline of 4 p.m. Central European Time (7 a.m. PDT). Conner didn't come close to raising the staggering amount of cash needed to challenge for the cup, Trenkle said, and recently sold the two sloops he used in 2003 to an Italian syndicate. Conner wasn't available for comment. Conner could still join another team in some capacity, since national residency rules were stripped away after Alinghi of Switzerland beat Team New Zealand 5-0 in March 2003 to become the first European team to win the cup. And he's not ready to officially announce his retirement, Trenkle said. "I could certainly see him lead a campaign next time if it went back to New Zealand or someplace where he enjoyed it," Trenkle said. "All we're doing is not challenging this time." Sausalito Challenge, meanwhile, wired the entry fee of approximately $1.6 million to America's Cup Management in Valencia, Spain, and was trying to secure a letter of intent from one of three possible sponsors, sailing manager John Sweeney said. "We have half of a business day in Europe to get it done," Sweeney said by phone from the Sausalito Challenge, which is based across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. "It's really tough." Sweeney said chances were slim. "We still have to get a company tomorrow to sign something, and these big companies take forever," he said. "But we've been working on this for a year and a half, so we're going to exhaust every avenue." - Bernie Wilson, AP, full story: www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20050428-1528-americascup-deadline.html SPAIN DROPS OUT The Decision Challenge - the team representing the Real Club Náutico de Madrid -will not be challenging for the 32nd America's Cup. In a letter posted on the Challenger Commission website, Guillermo Olivié explains the sudden action. "The decision from our Main Sponsor did arrive yesterday and they will not support our venture for this campaign, although we will work together for being challenging for the 33rd America's Cup. Therefore, we could not guarantee our team competitiveness for this America's Cup edition with the sole back-up of the supports we already had on-board." - www.challengercommission.com/ SURPRISE A surprise late entry is about to be made for the next America's Cup. The final deadline for entries is in the early hours of Saturday morning, our time. A late German entry is about to be confirmed, and the Berlin syndicate will bring the list of challengers to 10. The Germans will join syndicates from New Zealand, the US, South Africa, France, Spain , Sweden and Italy. - News Talk, Auckland, www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=71740 IT'S NOW OR NEVER Friday is the absolute deadline for entering the 32nd America's Cup. As written in the Terms of Challenge, challenges will be accepted "until 16:00 on the 29 April 2005". No new challenges will be considered after the deadline passes. Prospective teams are still in contact with the Société Nautique de Genève and the event organizers, working to beat the deadline to become a challenger. Monday's issue of Scuttlebutt will let you know who made it. A POWERBOAT SAILORS LOVE TO BRAG ABOUT Inspired by the rugged, reliable New England lobster boats and built to the highest standards by the leader in composite technology, the Pearson True North 33 and 38 are changing the minds and souls of sailors everywhere. Professional sailor Ken Read became a convert with his True North 38 - and now the boats are on tour at shows across the US. Plan on attending the Newport Boat Show this weekend in Newport Beach, California to see for yourself. Contact Jeff Brown at 619-709-0697 for show details, or view the boats online at http://www.pearsonyachts.com CHANGE OF PLANS Maximus, the 100ft supermaxi was supposed to have arrived in Antigua on a ship from New Zealand (with Nick Lykiardopulo's Kerr 55 - Aera) on 22 April giving the crew just enough time to prepare her for 38th Antigua Sailing Week. But just a couple of days before the start of the regatta that the onion ship carrying the two boats broke down which meant the yachts wouldn't make it to the regatta on time. A week on, co-owners Charles St Clair Brown and Bill Buckley are still seething about the situation and still can't quite believe they've spent a whole week at Antigua Sailing Week with their entire crew 'twiddling their thumbs' while their multi-million pound yacht was floating somewhere in the mid Pacific on an old onion ship. St Clair Brown commented: "We raced Maximus to Tauranga, spent the weekend packing her up, getting her ready and putting heron the ship, and she was scheduled to arrive here on the 22 April. It was always going to be fairly tight but we had it planned out and we were going to be ready. So it was very disappointing and expensive for us since we had 24 crew and all the hangers on, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives coming along, so we are most disappointed." The ship is now underway again and should arrive in St John's harbour, on the north-west of Antigua, on Saturday or Sunday. "We're going to do a 24-hour shift, get the rig and sail her round the island for fun on Monday. Maybe we could get Titan who set record of five hours today for the Yachting World Trophy, to come and join us," concluded St Clair Brown. Bearing in mind Maximus has been stuck on an onion ship for the past few weeks I can't imagine Titan going anywhere near her! - Sue Pelling, Yachting World, full story: www.ybw.com/auto/newsdesk/20050329000158antiguaweek05.html CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS (Sponsored by West Marine) Events listed at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar FACTOIDS Two weeks ago, US Sailing announced the members of the 2005 US Sailing Team. Comprised of a total of 76 sailors from across the country, the Team recognizes the top-five ranked sailors in each of the boat-classes selected for the next Olympic competition. Taking a closer look at the members of the Team: - The team is geographically diverse with representation from 21 states. The largest percentages are from California (24%), Florida (15%), New York (8%), Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Rhode Island and Texas (5% each), with sailors also from Connecticut, South Carolina, Louisiana, New Jersey, Washington, Wisconsin, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia. - 21 of the 76 sailors have never been on the US Sailing Team before, - 12 members of the Team have sailed in previous Olympic Games, - total medals won by current members of the US Sailing Team is 9, - the youngest member of the team is 16, the oldest is 56. NEWS BRIEFS * Racing begins Friday for the Carloan.com Melges 24 U.S. National Championship at the Annapolis YC, with a lot of big names on the entry list: 2002 Melges 24 World Champions Jeff Ecklund and Harry Melges, III; winning America's Cup Helmsman John Bertrand; 2004 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year and Olympic Gold Medallist Kevin Burnham; 1999 U.S. National Champion Brian Porter; 1999, 2000 & 2001 MCSA (Midwest Collegiate Sailing Association) All District Team Member Bora Gulari; 2004 Silver Medallist Charlie Ogletree and 1996 Olympic Silver Medallist, double U.S. National Champion Morgan Reeser. For daily video: www.t2p.tv/; For daily reports: www.usmelges24.com * Ben Ellison, electronics editor at both Sail and Power and Motor Yacht, has started up a web log devoted exclusively to marine electronics. Ben is certainly one of the top electronics writers currently working, and is extremely adept at following this ever more rapidly evolving piece of the marketplace. - www.panbo.com * Junior women sailors, 13 to 17 years old, who are interested in gaining international sailing experience, are invited to participate in the 2005 Rolex Next Step Program. The three-day training event takes place September 16-18 and is held in conjunction with US Sailing's Rolex International Women's Keelboat Championship (Rolex IWKC), September 17-23 at the Annapolis Yacht Club. Established in 1997 to expose juniors to advanced women's sailing in a mentoring atmosphere. This year's program features Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year Jody Swanson, America's Cup campaign veteran Tucker Thompson, US Sailing Instructor/ Trainer Nan Leute Walker and U.S. Olympian Liz Filter. http://www.annapolisyc.org/2005rolex * A heavy fog enveloped Hyères Thursday morning, the fourth day of racing at Semaine Olympique Française, masking the islands, the jetty and the harbor entrance. After a long postponement, racing started with a light south easterly at 1p.m. for most classes. Unfortunately, four hours later, the wind finished rotating to the west, dying to 2 knots and leaving the place to the fog again. With no racing in the Yngling class, Americans Sally Barkow, Debbie Capozzi, and Carrie Howe, the only Americans competing in the event, keep their first place going into the last day of racing on Friday. - Event website: http://62.193.237.105/gbr/news/home.asp?intitule=informations * The Médiatis Région Aquitaine technical team left Las Palmas, Gran Canaria yesterday at 1900 hours French time, aboard Iron Bull, a 2,400 horsepower tug boat. Their mission: to recover pieces of, and re-right, the capsized catamaran. 34m long and 10m wide, Iron Bull is equipped with a zodiac and with a crane to facilitate operation of rescuing Yves Parlier's Médiatis Région Aquitaine. Positioned 500 miles from Las Palmas, the technical team will need approximately 48 hours to arrive at the location where Médiatis Région Aquitaine capsized in the early hours of Monday morning during Parllier's speed record attempt. - www.parlier.org/hydraplaneur/index.php * This year's calendar of Junior Olympic Sailing Festivals includes 24 events hosted by sailing organizations in 18 states. Created to help young sailing enthusiasts develop their sailing skills while having fun on and off the water, the program is organized by US Sailing. West Marine, continuing its support of youth sailing, is presenting sponsor of the program, has it has been since the program's inception in 1997, and the program is also supported by Gill. - www.ussailing.org/youth/racing/jo * On what has been a perfect Caribbean racing day, with sunshine and 15-18 knots of warm tradewind easterlies, Tom Hill and his US crew on Titan 12 have conclusively walked away with the Yachting World Trophy for the fastest elapsed time in Antigua Sailing Week's new Round the Island Race. In the absence of big boats such as Pyewacket or Morning Glory at Antigua Sailing Week, the fastest round Antigua was not really in dispute, and there were no close contenders to spar with. - Elaine Bunting/Yachting World, full story: www.ybw.com/auto/newsdesk/20050329235018antiguaweek05.html Event website: www.sailingweek.com/imc/index.html * Three days after competing is Stage 5 of the Swedish Match Tour in Porto Azzurro, Italy, Ben Ainslie (GBR), Ian Ainslie (RSA), Ed Baird (USA) and Peter Gilmour (AUS) - will trek straight to Germany for Match Race Germany in Langenargen, Germany, May 11-16. There, they will meet Jesper Bank (DEN), Sébastien Col (FRA) Bertrand Pacé (FRA), Staffan Lindberg (FIN), Luc Pillot (FRA), Mathieu Richard (FRA), and Ian Williams (GBR), who's making his Tour debut. The event will be sailed on Lake Constance in the Bavaria 35 Match, with prize money totaling 25,000 Euros. - www.SwedishMatchTour.com RULES QUIZ 19 The racing season is beginning and you probably think there isn't time to learn what's happened in the racing rules. But there is time, and UK makes rules' instruction free and easy. Click on Rules Quiz 19 - http://www.uksailmakers.com/RulesQuiz/quiz_19.html - to get the animated action many have described as the clearest presentation of rules they've ever seen. This and our other quizzes cover one or more rules each, and new quizzes are added regularly. Already visited? Go back - we've added new quizzes and surprising upgrades. Try it now before some Protest Jury teaches you the hard way. LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON (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 nor a bulletin board - you only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if others disagree.) * From Pat Broderick, San Francisco YRA ODCA President: I don't have a magic wand, either, but I couldn't agree with Peter Isler more about more one design racing. In a sailing world where faster and bigger and obsolete seems to rule, there are still many of us who think sailing older, tried and true one design boats against each other is the ultimate "fun" on the water. We believe the true Corinthian spirit is amateurs competing fairly against one another, with the best skipper that day winning. As One Design Class Association President for the San Francisco Bay YRA, I'm proud to assist fleets, ranging from my own 40-year old Santana 22 class up to the newest Alerian Express 28 class, participate in one design racing. I say, if you're interested in competing bow-to-bow, check out the one design fleets in your spot of water. * From Bruce Thompson (re quiz answer in yesterday's 'Butt): Another perspective on Sailors One & Two would be this. Imagine both are on rafts with a billboard for a sail and the billboard is aligned across the stream facing downstream. Sailor One starts with a three knot current flowing past his raft dragging it downstream and a zero knot headwind. As his raft accelerates, the headwind builds until the current drag is equal and opposite to the headwind drag and the raft reaches equilibrium speed of less than three knots. Now Sailor Two has two energy sources to draw from, the current and the wind. He starts with a three knot current drag and a three knot tailwind drag! Working together, these drags accelerate his raft until it nears three knots. At that point it continues along at a constant speed (Newton taught us "a body in motion tends to stay in motion"). Sailor Two will get to the finish line first! (If he has a good enough hot rod, he might be able to extract energy from both energy sources and get there even faster.) * From Jim "J.D." Stone: Regarding VIAO's decision to retire - as I understand the facts, VIAO crossed the finish line, but then drifted and struck the mark at one end of the finish line. Since RRS 28.1 says that "after finishing she need not cross the finishing line completely" she had already finished when she hit the mark and therefore did not hit the mark while racing, and thus did not commit a foul, or am I wrong about this? Curmudgeon's Comment: Yea - you're wrong about this. However, you were right in saying that VIAO had 'finished' … but she was still 'racing' until she 'cleared' the finish line - and thus are still subject to the Racing Rules of Sailing. In the definition section of the RRS you'll find: "Racing - A boat is racing from her preparatory signal until she finishes and clears the finishing line and marks or retires, or until the race committee signals a general recall, postponement or abandonment." You should also read the definition for a finish - particularly the last nine words: "Finish - A boat finishes when any part of her hull, or crew or equipment in normal position, crosses the finishing line in the direction of the course from the last mark, either for the first time or after taking a penalty under rule 31.2 or 44.2 or, under rule 28.1, after correcting an error made at the finishing line." * From Jim Gardiner If you want to compare fast surface finishes, you can get race results from racing the water on the finish rather than racing the finish on the water. Prepare a panel with the same gelcoat, anti-fouling, paint, whatever that is on your boat bottom. Then sand/coat to your hearts content parallel "tracks" on the panel that reflect different surface finishes. Plop a drop of water at the top of each track, the slowly raise the panel. Gravity pulls on all of your "racers" equally, and the first drop to the bottom should represent the fastest surface preparation. * From Bruce Munro: If the Christopher VanEpps piece on how to get your hull smooth had appeared on April 1, I would have bet it was an April Fool's joke. Since it did not, I have to assume he is serious. I wonder what the ratio is for his sailing time vs. the time spent sanding, compounding, waxing and polishing? * From Scott Corder, Class Commodore, S2 9.1 Meter North American One Design Class Association: The bottom preparation and multi vs. monohull debates converged in SB 1827 when Ralph Taylor wrote "the more minor the differences, the more seriously they are taken". This notion applies to nearly every issue in sailing. Most sailors (myself included) spend immeasurable amounts of time and money on any remotely viable technique or gadget that might microscopically improve our performance. Because professionals have taken competition and science to a level where this can make a small difference, the rest of us aspire to sail at that level. But reality for most of us actually lies in the major, not minor issues. The saying goes in our Class: "No matter who has the best boat or the best gear, we're all capable of taking ourselves out of a race ... and prove that on a regular basis". The minor issue of mono vs. multi hulls also ignores the major issue that few sports offer as many delightfully different ways to participate. Quite simply, the world's greatest bottom on any number of hulls won't win a race if you sail the wrong direction. But alas, perhaps the fact that we're all obsessive-compulsive, fanatically competitive, easily distracted and rarely perfect purveyors of our sport is what makes me proud to be part of such a charmingly unique collection of dysfunctional diehards. Anyone care to join me as I cheerfully continue sanding my hull and crafting my next epistle to scuttlebutt regarding a topic that won't change my perpetual propensity to sail the wrong direction? * From Russell Painton (re multihulls vs. monohulls): Well put, William Cook. With all due respect, I think Bob Lang misses the point, which is definitely not to see how fast you can go, in an absolute sense. If this is your goal, William has the solution in his letter. However, the point is to master the many nuances present in monohull sailing, and to do it better than your competitor. Or, if your not a racer, to simply do it well. If your idea is to get out on the water and go really fast, then pass on the multihull, and get a cigarette boat. Curmudgeon's Comment: Enough already - this thread is now officially dead. CURMUDGEON'S OXYMORON Money can't buy happiness -- but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Lexus than in a Pinto. |
