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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 594 - June 20, 2000NEWPORT BERMUDA RACE'Sagamore' finished first in the Newport Bermuda race just before midnight EDT to snatch line honours from rival maxi 'Sayonara' in the 42nd Newport to Bermuda Race. 'Sagamore' finished at on Day 3 at 23hr 02 min 39sec closely followed by 'Sayonara' on Day 3 at 23hr 15min 50sec. After 515 miles at a record breaking pace, the yachts ran into the light winds of the Bermuda high surrounding the island. Sailing the last 120 miles to the finish line off of St. David's Lighthouse took them 16 hours. 'Sagamore' is owned by Jim Dolan (Oyster Bay NY). Joining him as tactician was US America's Cup and US Admiral's Cup helmsman Kenny Reed (Newport RI). Ian Moore (Souhampton UK) was navigator. 'Sayonara' is owned by Larry Ellison, but was captained by Chris Dickson since Ellison was unable to be aboard for the race. Also aboard were ocean racing veterans Mark Rudiger as navigator, kiwi tactician Brad Butterworth and a who's who crew. 'Blue Yankee' (Bob Towse, Stamford CT) with Ross Field as navigator and Peter Isler tactician crossed third on Day 3 at 23hr 53min 44sec beating out the third maxi and course record holder 'Boomerang' which finished on Day 4 at 00hr 03min 59sec. Daily position updates and results: http://www.bermudarace.com OLYMPICS After securing his position as the Finn Olympic Representative for Sydney's Games with his win at the U.S. Team Trials in early April, Russ Silvestri (San Francisco, Calif.) secured his entry to the Games at the just concluded Finn Gold Cup (world championship) in Weymouth, England. Except for host country Australia, all nations must qualify for entry in each of the nine classes (11 divisions) at the Olympic Regatta, scheduled for September 16-October 1, 2000. A qualification system to determine entrants, set by the International Olympic Committee and the International Sailing Federation (ISAF), is based on Olympic class world championships in 1998, 1999 and 2000, qualifying approximately 30% of the entries, with the remaining 10% to be determined by an ISAF committee. With an entry limit of 29 boats for the Finn event at the 2000 Games, Silvestri needed to finish as one of the first nine countries that had not previously qualified. He did so with his placing of 25th overall in the 89-boat fleet. The countries qualified to date in the Finn class are: Poland, Sweden, France, Belgium, Greece, Croatia, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, South Africa, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, Turkey, Hungary, Denmark, U.S.A., Brazil, Russia, Spain, Estonia and Austria. The final three places will be assigned by ISAF in the coming weeks. (For a complete list of countries qualified, by event, visit: ussailing.org/olympics/2000Background.htm). The U.S. has berths now guaranteed to the 2000 Olympic Regatta in all 11 divisions - Europe, Finn, 470 Men, 470 Women, 49er, Laser, Mistral Men, Mistral Women, Soling, Star and Tornado. - Jan Harley For U.S. Olympic Team information: http://www.ussailing.org/Olympics/OlympicTrials POWER GLOATING When you win, you want everyone to know about it...and nothing tells the story better than sharp looking crew apparel from Pacific Yacht Embroidery. For a winning program, the look of your crew gear is as important as the cut of your sails. Pacific Yacht Embroidery will take the time to make that special effort to set your crew out from the crowd. Get it touch with Frank Whitton to learn how affordable his high quality crew apparel can be. Even if you lose you will feel better because you look so good. Frank delivers. Pacyacht@aol.com/619-226-8033 EUROPE 1 NEW MAN STAR Nineteen 60-foot monohulls, the largest and most competitive fleet ever assembled, took the start of the Europe 1 New Man STAR on the 4th June in Plymouth, UK. The race had attracted the best in the world, all wanting to qualify for this year's Vendee Globe singlehanded non-stop round the world race. The winner was the 23-year old Ellen MacArthur, a bright and talented British/ European sailor. In so doing she beat the fleet home and became the youngest person ever to win a class in the 40-year history of this race. In fact Ellen is the youngest person ever to enter this race, which is celebrating its 40 anniversary this year. Sailed in predominantly strong upwind conditions, three boats were dismasted in the first big depression and many other boats suffered substantial damage. Only two major incidents in the race ever threatened her. One was slipping on deck and a big fall down the hatch of her boat resulting in a cut head and a pair of black eyes, the second was running into a 15-foot whale a couple of days later, something that affected the skipper more than the boat. - Marcus Hutchinson Website: http://www.europe1newmanstar.com/uk. KINGFISHER Ellen MacArthur's 'Kingfisher' was designed by a European team including Merfyn Owen, Rob Humphreys, Giovanni Belgrano and Alain Gautier. She was built in New Zealand, by Marten Yachts, and is fitted with Southern Spars mast and boom. Sails are by North Sails France, and the deck hardware is split between Harken winches and Frederiksen blocks. She is slightly heavier and less powerful than many of the Finot designs, but has been constructed very much around Ellen and the challenge of lasting for a 100+ days on the Vendee Globe. - Mark Turner Photos of the boat: http://www.kingfisherchallenges.com BRUCE FARR SPEAKS OUT (The Yachting World website took a look at the Open 60 class used for the Vendee Globe Race and questioned why they capsize and stay capsized. Here are some the thoughts of Naval Architect Bruce Farr on that subject.) '. . . from an onlookers perspective it would seem that the Open 60 class does need to do something to improve the inversion prospects for these boats. It would be hard to imagine a simple rule to reduce the inverted stability to some (yet to be decided) acceptable level, let alone one that would not be type forming. One could establish a relatively simple notion, such as a minimum static limit of positive stability (capsize angle), maximum negative righting arm, or maximum negative area of the GZ curve but measuring these is not necessarily straightforward full size nor reliable from drawings. Even such a simple approach would likely type form the boats toward some or all being of narrower beam, heavier displacement (and therefore keel), deeper keel, more deck height or camber and perhaps swinging keels. Another approach would be to put limits on beam (max), freeboard (min) and displacement (min) to directly ensure less inverted stability, but this approach would more strongly type form (which may not be bad) and not guarantee the desired result. I do not believe that you can make all existing boats comply with some new tough requirement without incurring pretty substantial cost as some boats might need substantial modifications and may not be viable any longer.' - Bruce Farr, Yachting World website Full story: http://www.yachtingworld.co.uk/ LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON (leweck@earthlink.net) Letters selected to be printed are routinely edited for clarity, space (250 words max) and to exclude unfounded speculation or personal attacks. This is not a chat room. You only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if people disagree. -- From Chris Welsh (Re: Whale Collision) - Is it April Fools? Noisemakers on "silent, quick boats"? Any race boat moving at speed makes a hell of a racket, especially in the carbon fiber era. So we need something like those little deer whistles from Kmart? I'm starting production right now, send $29.95, and don't worry if you don't hear anything, it's range is higher than human hearing (yeah, I know the deer whistles are $2.95, but this is a marine product). And only 300 Right Whales left? Someone is reading a little too much Greenpeace literature. Various internet sites report populations of 2,000-3,000 worldwide, with 300 along the Eastern Seaboard. Good intentions, but let's be rational here. -- From John Drayton (Re: Whale Collision) - Did you know that every Right Whale singlehandedly kills 100,000's of brine shrimp and other defenseless crustaceans every hour! Right whales are also enormous plankton feeders, are they are slaughtering vital members of the food chain at an alarming rate. In order to stop this senseless slaughter, maybe we should be re-routing more sailboat racing into this region in order to "Save the Shrimp." On a slightly more serious note, does Mr. Stocek have any idea about the odds of hitting 1 of 300 of anything in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? It would make the odds of winning the lottery look like a good investment. -- From Dan Meyers - A new height of hypocrasy has been reached in the America's Cup nationalities argument. The xenophobes contend that professional sailors should be limited to sail for their nation of birth. This is absurd for some very simple reasons. First, what ever happened to free will? A professional sailor should have the right to pursue their vocation. They have families to support. This is not just a weekend game for them. Second, what if they come from a country that does not put forth an effort? Third, why should there be a restriction if the talents of that specific sailor are more acutely demanded by a specific group? Should the sailors of a small but talented country be limited to one team? It is time for people to get off their high horses. In the US, no one complained that Bruce Farr designed for NYYC. No one has complained that Laurie Davidson and Peter Gilmour might find their way here. And why? Because it is for our benefit. But it is easy to cast stones in the direction of others. For the first time in the history of the America's Cup, the US was not represented in the final match. Is it a big surprise that new syndicates would cast a wider net this time? The resulting market forces here are good for the sport, the sailors and their families, the development of talent in the younger ranks, the sponsors who pay the bills and yes, the spectators. -- From Loren Barnett Appel (Regarding competitor eligibility) - Andrew Burton and others should not be upset with US SAILING. They are merely providing a tool. Complain instead to your class or event organizers. It is their choice to use US SAILING's system instead of open entry, class- or event-devised eligibility or handicapping methods like SALT. -- From Bill Lee - The Olympics are intended to be much more a test of athletic skill rather than dollars. If there were to be a bigger Olympic boat, I would suggest something VERY athletic such as a 25-foot skiff or 25 foot catamaran. In either case, the boat should be VERY overpowered so the top sailors go blazing fast and the average sailors are upside down. But they should not be so overpowered that they cannot sail in the full wind range the other Olympic classes sail in and for cost and simplicity control, one rig should take them thru all conditions. The marks should be pylons or barges of sufficient size for a TV crew. Don't hit the mark. No big class should be introduced unless it is: a) one design b) does not require a boatyard c) is VERY spectacular for television. The boats should be one design in hopes they will be more robust than development boats and for all the other obvious reasons. Bigger isn't better, how boring is it to watch a 747 land ?? BLOCK ISLAND RACE WEEK Faced with a dying breeze, at 1:15 p.m. event organizer Premiere Racing decided to abandon races in the all but the one of twelve classes. The bigger boats of IMS Class A had finished their 5.1 mile race before the wind got weird. Sailors across the Sound gave the committee a hip, hip, hooray. 'It was a premiere decision. The wind had shifted 180 degrees," said Rudolph Hasl, of Douglaston, NY. At the time, from where Hasl's Pearson 37 Hasl Free drifted in the shifty airs, he could see spinnakers coming and going on the same leg. In IMS Class A-the one class to finish--Virago, Bache Renshaw's N/M 49, warded off challenges from Farr 42 Mascalzone Latino, owned by Vincenzo Onorato, and R Wave 3, Ira Futterman, to win the coveted Boat-of-the-Day trophy, awarded to the yacht winning in the most competitive class of the day. But Mascalzone Latino was a winner, too. Within the eleven-boat IMS class, six are also racing as "IMS 40 footers." Mascalzone sailed to the top of the 40-foot class Monday. Over the two legs sailed by the Soverel 33s in the first race of their National Championship, defending champion Deviation, Iris Vogel, was in the lead after three-time America's Cup winner Dennis Conner, sailing Menace XX, was over the starting line early and had to recross. Conner was catching up fast though. He had raced his way back to second place in the six-boat fleet, hot on Deviation's heels, when the race was abandoned. Event website: http://www.Premiere-Racing.com FACIAL HAIR With his upper lip naked for the first time in 31 years, Tom Schnackenberg is a little nervous about entering the United States this week. The head of Team New Zealand lost his trademark moustache for $10,000, paid by an anonymous phone bidder, at a cancer charity auction on Saturday. Schnackenberg will try to grow the 'mo' back while he's on holiday in Maui later this week, but is concerned that his passport photo no longer matches his face. "Maybe I'll have to keep a false moustache in my pocket to whip out at US Customs. Maybe I'll be arrested," he mused. "I keep looking at this strange face in the mirror. My wife seems to like it - she says she can see me smile more often now." - Suzanne McFadden, NZ Herald Full story: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ac2000/ TRIVIA QUESTION Q: Did 505 world champion Mike Martin get down on one knee when he asked Stephanie Keefe to become his wife this past weekend? A: Who cares. What's important is that Stephanie said, "yes." WOMEN'S MATCH RACING The Rolex Alpena Invitational Women's Match Racing Regatta 2000 (ISAF grade 4) was held the weekend of June 16-18 on Thunder Bay of Lake Huron. Friday's practice to become familiar with the Ynglings took place as a low pressure system moved across the Great Lakes. The winds were 15 to 20 knots from the South, building to 25+ knots from the Southwest. Waves 2 to 4 feet. Racing began Saturday morning as a high pressure system moved in, with shifty offshore breezes of 10 to 15 knots from the West, veering to the Northwest. Waves less than 1 foot. Excellent conditions made for spirited racing, and by the end of the first day Jody Swanson and Hannah Swett were undefeated, with Liz Baylis having just 1 loss. Racing resumed Sunday morning with South Winds of 6 to 8 knots, waves of less than 1 foot, backing Easterly and building to 15 to 20 knots after noon, with waves of 2 to 3 feet. In the end the team of Hannah Swett, Melissa Purdy and Joan Touchette squeaked by the team of Jody Swanson, Cory Sertyl, and Abby Ruhlman by just .5 point. Liz Baylis, Amy Hess, and Stephanie Wondolleck were 3rd, just 1 point off the lead. Hannh Swett wins an invitation to the ISAF Grade 1 Thompson Cup, to be held August 24-27, at Seawanhaka Corinthian YC, Oyster Bay, N.Y. - Walt Jacquemin Final Results: 1-Hannah Swett, 2- Jody Swanson, 3-Liz Baylis, 4-Katie Pettibone, 5-Karen Lynch, 6-Suzie Leech, 7-Sandy Hayes, 8-Sharon Seymour. Event website: http://www.aycalpena.com/ TOMORROW'S HEADLINES Later today, the Seattle YC is expected to officially announce that they will be supporting a challenge for the America's Cup from a syndicate headed by their member, Craig McCaw. THE CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATIONS As you get older, you tend to ignore health foods - you need all the preservatives you can get. |
