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SCUTTLEBUTT 2946 - Thursday, October 8, 2009Scuttlebutt 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. Twitter updates: http://twitter.com/scuttbutt Today's sponsors are Ullman Sails and Harken. BEN LEXCEN: A CRAZY LOVABLE ROUGE By Blue Robinson Ben Lexcen was a remarkable man who did much more than design Australia II, the boat that won the 1983 America's Cup, thus ending New York Yacht Club's 132 year winning streak in the event. As a reminder, here is an article on Ben I wrote for Seahorse magazine which appeared in August 2007: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ben Lexcen arrived at the Mexico Olympics as a reserve in 1968 with his passport in one pocket and a toothbrush in the other. He borrowed clothes from friends, and during one dinner at the sailing teams hotel marched in with a 20-piece brass band he found on a street corner, who had "about six teeth between them". When they started playing Ben (who was Bob Miller then) walked around the room with a tuba, calling for money to be thrown in for the band. Ben Lexcen was not a conventional man. He grew up without a Father, and being bundled from one relative to another by his Mother, finally fetching up in Newcastle, north of Sydney. There, living with a Grandfather, he attended school until he was 14; left to work at a metal foundry, then apprentice fitter and turner for the railways. Weekends were spent at the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie dinghy clubs, where he sailed dinghies and sixteen foots skiffs. Transferring from Newcastle to Sydney, he decided to become an apprentice sail maker, working for Peter Cole in Inner Sydney, where he "adopted' the Ryves family in 1956. Sleeping on the couch, he washed his trousers by wearing them in the shower, then ran around in them until they dried. His other passion was the harmonica - which he played in the shower whilst scrubbing his trousers. -- Read on: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/09/1002b FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY It has been five years since the IRC rule (ircrating.org) was adopted in the United States. With the recent news of the inaugural US-IRC Championship of Long Island Sound and the New York Yacht Club hosting the Rolex US-IRC National Championship at Newport next year, it is clear that IRC in the U.S. (us-irc.org) is healthy and continuing to progress steadily. �The IRC rule is now part of sailing at all levels, ranging from club races to major offshore events,� said US-IRC President John Brim, who successfully skippers his RP55 Rima2 in national and international events. �US-IRC exists to both educate American sailors about the benefits of the rule and encourage race organizers to utilize IRC in their events.� Brim noted that in addition to the new US-IRC Championship of Long Island Sound, there are regional US-IRC Championships for the Great Lakes and on the Pacific and East Coasts, together with the national championship, which rotates among regions each year. IRC is also featured as the principal handicap system in many other major regattas and distance races, including the Acura Key West Race Week, the Miami Grand Prix, the Bayview Port Huron to Mackinac distance race, the Pineapple Cup-Montego Bay Race and the Rolex Big Boat Series in San Francisco. -- Read on: http://www.us-irc.org/newsfull.cfm?ID=191 SPANISH TEAM CAPTURES PLATU 25 WORLDS Last week�s 2009 Platu 25 World Championship in Punta Ala, Italy was the scene of a hard-fought world class event featuring 92 boats from 14 different Countries and three Continents. The Spanish Team �Vilagarcia� powered by Ullman Sails with Carlos and Anton Paz, Esteban Ganete, Bernardo Paz and Joaquin Cores, won by a margin of 16 points. Anton and his crew consistently showed top speed throughout the regatta, finishing with 2 bullets, 6 races in the top 3, and no recorded finish below 6th place. For your Investment in Performance contact the nearest Ullman Sails loft and visit http://www.ullmansails.com CARNAGE IN BERMUDA Hamilton, Bermuda (October 7, 2009) - British Olympic Gold medal winner Ben Ainslie was first out of the box in the first match of flight 2 for Group 2 at the Argo Group Gold Cup Wednesday morning. He took the win from Bermuda�s Olympian Paula Lewin-Crews. Ainslie went on to win three matches today. With another first in Tuesday�s dying breeze, he stands at the top of Group 2 with 4-0, four wins and no losses. Group 3 took to the water after the 4th flight for Group 2 and also completed four flights after a slight pause to allow a powerful wind and rain squall to pass. They raced the two pre-squall with jib and main only, but the rainstorm dampened the wind enough to allow the boats to sail with spinnakers. Group 2 and 3 will complete their round robin on Thursday, weather permitting. Group 1 then returned to the water late in the afternoon and after several breakdowns were repaired the racing was about to get underway in 22 knots of wind when Eric Monnin (SUI) and Torvar Mirsky (AUS), undefeated on Tuesday, tangled rigs. The jumper struts on Mirsky�s rig were damaged and he could not sail so he returned to the Royal Bermuda YC. His Match 1 Flight 5 with Keith Swinton will be sailed Thursday. Ian Williams� defeat of Mirsky in the final match of the day sees him lead Group 1 with six wins. GROUP 1 6-1 Ian Williams (GBR) Team Pindar sponsored by Argo Group 4-1 Eric Monnin (SUI) Search.ch 4-2 Torvar Mirsky (AUS) Mirsky Racing Team 3-3 Reuben Corbett (NZL) 3-4 Damien Iehl (FRA) French Match Racing Team 2-3 Keith Swinton (AUS) Black Swan Racing 1-5 Robbie Allam (GBR) 1-5 Ian Evans (USA) GROUP 2 4-0 Ben Ainslie (GBR) Team Origin 3-1 Adam Minoprio (NZL) Emirates Team New Zealand/BlackMatch Racing 3-1 Sebastien Col (FRA) French Match Racing Team/K Challenge 3-1 Bjorn Hansen (SWE) Alandia Sailing Team 2-2 David Perry (USA) 1-3 Alvaro Marinho (POR) Seth Sailing Team 0-4 Rasmus Viltoft (DEN) 0-4 Paula Lewin Crews (BDA) GROUP 3 4-0 Mathieu Richard (FRA) French Match Racing Team 3-1 Peter Gilmour (AUS) YANMAR Racing 3-1 Johnie Berntsson (SWE) Berntsson Sailing Team 2-2 Mattias Rahm (SWE) Stena Bulk Sailing Team 2-2 Phil Robertson (NZL) WAKA Racing Team 1-3 Blythe Walker (BDA) 1-3 Donald Wilson (USA) 0-4 Charlie Enright (USA) The forecast on Thursday is for 40 knots of wind to come through so there might be some waiting around before the action starts again. After each group completes a round robin, the top two teams from each group, plus the top two from a 'repecharge' round robin, will then progress to the quarter finals on Friday, followed by the semi-finals on Saturday. The final and petit-final will take place on Sunday October 11. -- Complete report: http://www.worldmatchracingtour.com/da/100384 HIGH WINDS CANCEL RACING Rochester, NY (October 7, 2009) - For the first day of the US SAILING�s Rolex International Women�s Keelboat Championship, the event organizers wasted little time in determining the outcome of the day. For the 35 teams representing five countries, host Rochester Yacht Club cancelled racing at 8:30am due to high winds. Said 20008 Olympian Anna Tunniclifee (USA), �We woke up this morning to rain and winds, already gusting into the high 20kt with the forecast for it to get windier throughout the day. Tomorrow's forecast is for the wind to be around 10kt, so it should be a very pleasant day for sailing.� Inaugurated in 1985 at the instigation of US SAILING's Women�s Championship Committee, the International Women�s Keelboat Championship quickly became the premier women�s sailing event in the U.S. and worldwide. Held biennially, the event provides women keelboat and offshore sailors high quality racing and an opportunity to compete with the top national and international sailors. -- http://www.riwkc.com/ LET'S LOOK AT THE NUMBERS By Matthew Gregory The Volvo Ocean Race is a great place to dig into the numbers that show that sailing does, indeed, deliver for sponsors. It has a global reach that is incredibly unique in the sponsorship marketplace due to its 9 month duration and its physical touch points in most of the worlds major markets. The preliminary numbers from the first half of the 2008-9 VOR are outstanding, both in their absolute size and also in their growth from the 2005-6 race. * In the first 5 months of the race, 2.41 million unique visitors visited volvooceanrace.org, up 39% for the same period in 2005-6. * In the first 5 stopovers, the total number of spectators to pass through the turnstyles of the race village was 2,350,392. This is a 250% increase over the first 5 stopovers of the 2005-6 race * The pro-am race day in Alicante brought 68,400 people to the village, while the total stopover attendance was 937,000 people. * Cochin India, by comparison, brought in a total of 811,677 people with a peak day attendance of 107,289. Yup over one hundred thousand people in the race village on a single day. You'd have to see it to believe it....From being there I can assure you that it was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately we don't have data from the individual teams that participated in 2008-9 quite yet. However, we will look at two examples from 2005-6 to set a base line; Ericsson and ABN Amro. Here are some very top line results their sponsorships in 2005-6: http://sailvolvooceanrace.blogspot.com/2009/10/lets-look-at-numbers.html QUOTE / UNQUOTE Peter Gilmour (AUS), four-time World Match Racing Tour champion and five-time America�s Cup competitor, on what advice he would give to young aspiring sailors: �The first advice you give to a young sailor is to follow your dreams because situations change and evolve and suddenly doors open up where you didn't think they were. �I think following your dreams is the first good bit of advice although it's a difficult notion to explain to kids because they are looking for instant gratification. Sailing is a sport for life. �Sailing is a sport whereby you can't expect results quickly; you have to be patient and chip away over the long term to achieve results. It's really important to take a steady as it goes kind of approach. You also have to happy competing inside your own skin.� -- Bermuda Sun NO RESTRICTIONS "Rugged, stretchy Softshell material kept me dry and warm without restricting my movement the way bulkier foul-weather gear does," said a photographer who wore a Harken Squall Jacket to the choppy VOR Boston start. Wear your own Harken Squall Jacket on a soaking wet chase/race boat or just while relaxing on a cool summer's night-they're comfortable and look great wherever you go. Pick yours up now and get a FREE Harken Ultimate Sailing calendar at http://harkensport.com TP52 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP (October 7, 2009) - The autumn evening sun was already dipping low in the sky as Quantum Racing (USA) took the winning gun for the second of two races today at the TP52 World Championships off Palma, Mallorca. Their win, paired with a fifth from the first heat ensures the current world champions lead overall by a single point. It wasn�t until 4:00 pm that the sea breeze was sufficient for racing, and then it only peaked with short spells offering 11 knots and mostly averaged around 6-8 knots, providing a tricky afternoon over which the usual Palma tactical conventions did not always hold true. Noted Morgan Larson, tactician, Quantum Racing (USA), �It proved to be every bit as challenging today as Palma can be. Sometimes it is like that where the right looks windier but everyone knows about that geographical left shift. I think the race committee did a nice job of making the right hand a little favored so it was enticing�� Racing continues through Sunday with a maximum of 11 races to be sailed. Overall standings after Day 1: 1. Quantum Racing (USA, Terry Hutchinson), 5+1= 6 points 2. Synergy (RUS, Sergey Pichuguin), 2+5= 7 points 3. Matador (ARG, Alberto Roemmers), 3+4= 7 points 4. Brib�n (ESP, Gonzalo Araujo), 7+2= 9 points 5. Cristabella (GBR, John Cook), 1+9=10 points Complete story: http://www.tp52worldchampionship.org/2009/news/index.php?id=1299 SAILING SHORTS * (October 7, 2009) - Pilot Paul Larsen and the Vestas Sailrocket team are once again in repair mode after going airborne on Tuesday at Walvis Bay, Namibia in their attempt to break the all out speed record of 51.36 kts set on September 4, 2009 in Hyeres, FRA by skipper Alain Thebault onboard Hydroptere. The craft was boosted off a freak wave, with the repairs estimated to require 7-10 days. -- Complete report: http://www.sailrocket.com/node/201 * The International Kiteboarding Association (IKA) has announced all future Kiteboard Pro World Tour (KPWT) events are not sanctioned anymore by the IKA and thus do not count for the world rankings. The KPWT has been in material and persistent breach of the sanctioning agreement between IKA and KPWT, and has failed to remedy this breach after being requested to do so. Therefore the IKA had to terminate the sanctioning agreement with immediate effect to protect the interest of their national members and competitors. For kiteboarding, the International Kiteboarding Association is the only official ISAF International Class Association. -- http://www.internationalkiteboarding.org * In response to a tightening California state budget, University of California Irvine�s sailing team this season lost significant funding, and was forced to change its status from a varsity sport to a club sport. However, that hasn�t slowed them down yet, as the Anteaters won the Sloop Pacific Coast Championship, qualifying to compete at the 2009 ICSA Sloop National Championship at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut later this month. Full report here: http://www.anteatersailing.com/newsmediainfo.htm * In Sailing World's College Rankings as of Oct. 7, 2009, Yale tops the coed rankings while Old Dominion maintains the top spot in the women's rankings. Boston College is second in both. Full rankings here: http://tinyurl.com/y8w7uv3 SHEIKRET WEAPON A little-known, oil-poor sheikdom in the United Arab Emirates -- run by a crown prince on the verge of entering into a friendly nuke agreement with the United States - just might be Iran's best friend in the race to acquire nuclear weapons. Ras Al Khaimah - the underdeveloped ugly duckling of the United Arab Emirates, controlled by a heavily perfumed crown prince named Saud al-Qasimi - is the site of the next America's Cup yachting race. But it's the tiny UAE emirate's strong ties with Tehran that might propel the ministate out of the Persian Gulf backwaters to the top of the world's terror list. In addition to the string of business deals cementing their friendship, the RAK has reportedly become the port of choice for Iranian smugglers to bring in illicit weapon materials and flout UN sanctions. The cozy relationship is particularly problematic since an agreement, set to go into effect Oct. 25, will allow the United States to share peaceful nuclear technology with the seven United Arab Emirate states - including RAK. Canadian officials recently discovered that RAK has become a smuggling hot spot for Iran to get banned weapon materials into the country, according to a report in the National Post. -- NY Post, read on: http://tinyurl.com/y8wf7ls CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS (Sponsored by West Marine) Is your event listed on the Scuttlebutt Event Calendar? This free, self-serve tool is the easiest way to communicate to both sailors and sailing media. These are some of the events listed on the calendar for this weekend: Oct 10-11 - Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open - Rye, NY, USA Oct 10-12 - iShares Cup Almeria - Almeria, Andalucia, Spain Oct 11 - Tour-de-Lake - Canandaigua, NY, USA View all the events at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON Please submit your comments to the Scuttlebutt editor (aka, �The Curmudgeon�). Published letters must include writer's name and be no longer than 250 words (letter might be edited for clarity or simplicity). One letter per subject, and save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere. As an alternative, a more open environment for discussion is available on the Scuttlebutt Forum. -- To submit a Letter: [email protected] -- To post on the Forum: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum * From Hans "Oily" Liniger, President Swiss Sailing Promotion: Regarding Paul Cayard�s comments in Scuttlbutt 2945, the SNG (Societe Nautique de Geneve) happens to be one of the oldest and most distinguished Swiss Sailing Clubs of which Mr. Bertarelli has the honor to be a member. Together with the Z�rich Yacht Club and the Yacht Club Thun, they form for many decades the very heart of sail racing in Switzerland, especially focusing on Olympic Sailing and youth training. By no means does Mr. Bertarelli "own" SNG or any other Swiss sailing club; nor does he stand for sail racing as such in Switzerland. More than a good share of the 25,000 active sailors in this country do not agree with the present situation around the America's cup and consider the whole affair as detrimental to their sport. * From Will Baillieu: The Louis Vuitton Trophy�this is great news. A proper event for IACC yachts, involving most or all of the original AC challengers. What a novel idea. SNG has been telling us the 33rd America's Cup is to be held in Ras Al Khaimah in February. Ernesto has told them it is a prestigious event, but who's going to be there? Just two teams. Check the RAK website: http://www.raktourism.com I have a suggestion for how BMW ORACLE RACING can save a heap of money, keep Ernesto happy, and sort out the AC mess for the rest of us, all in one go. DON'T GO to RAK. Simply don't turn up. Ernesto can race around the course by himself in the silly boat. It would be a dream come true for him. He will love it. Meanwhile, the rest of the world can focus on the real event, the Louis Vuitton Trophy in Nice in November. It will be great. True competition in proper boats. The rest of us will love that. Maybe Scuttlebutt should start a viral campaign based on the simple slogan "DON'T GO". Over to you Larry. * From Craig Fletcher: After reading Mike Urwin's piece (in Scuttlebutt 2945), one can only conclude "IRC is the new PHRF". Why would you need a measurer when you take to few measurements to scientifically estimate speed? Cost, ha! IRC does not measure righting moment, thus producing very expensive, under built unsafe boats. Add in old age, electric winch penalties etc. etc. etc. and the "New PHRF" appears. * From Capt. Rick Rahm: On the subject of promoting sailing, I raced for over 20 years and enjoyed every minute of it. I soon learned that to have fun you must decide early on what type of racing program you have the dedicated time for and the resources to be successful. Set goals that are attainable and realistic based on your level of commitment. Get a boat that you can afford to maintain and have a core crew that will race with you on a regular basis. Have 10 people available to call for a 6-7 crew PHRF racer. Work with your sailmaker to have the best sails for your budget and listen to his advice. Make sure your boat is maintained to the highest level for safety reasons as well as not losing a race because of a breakdown due to failure of a component. Sail every race you can and practice if time permits with peoples busy lives. Try to have fun in each race whether you win or lose, be a good sport. Practice your boat handling skills, read the racing rules, all the race instructions and share this knowledge with your crew. I stopped racing a few years ago and moved on to other interests. But I do miss the racing with my many wonderful crew members that I have sailed with over the years and the excitement of winning a big race. And I thank them all for the good times we enjoyed together. HOLIDAY WISH LIST There have been a lot of businesses contacting Scuttlebutt lately with their holiday gift ideas. Since all the ad space is sold out in 2009, a special �Holiday Wish List� Forum has been set-up to provide a means for this information to be circulated. This Forum is for business and individuals that have legitimate gift ideas. If postings are not in the spirit of this Forum, they may get moved to another Forum or simply deleted. The current plan is to keep this Forum up until early January 2010, and then close it. To post on the Forum: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum CURMUDGEON�S OBSERVATIONS Gas Station sign: �Please do not smoke near our gas pumps. Your life may not be worth much but our gas is.� Special thanks to Ullman Sails and Harken. Preferred supplier list: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ssc/suppliers |
