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SCUTTLEBUTT 2145 - July 26, 2006Scuttlebutt is a digest of major yacht racing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American focus.WHIDBEY ISLAND RACE WEEK (Thanks to Dennis Muri and Liza Tewell for submitting this great explanation for what happens each year in the Pacific Northwest) Known for all its 24 years as "Adult Summer Camp," Whidbey Island Race Week was marked this year (July 17-21) by technically challenging winds and currents, the maximum numbers of races, no drifters and an after-race party every night pumping live music. Add sunshine, a morning beach volleyball tournament, fresh-air camping, just-caught Dungeness crabs plus local Penn Cover mussels and you’ve got the ingredients that melt away a year’s worth of city stress. Kids, by the way, are welcome too. In fact, many of the adults who come every year were once junior sailors themselves and have never missed 'Whidbey.' Held in the waters off the town of Oak Harbor, this week-long regatta draws boats from California to Canada, and racers from around the world. What sets Whidbey apart from other race weeks is its location, which juxtaposes a startling natural environment against one of the top US Naval Air Stations in the country. While racing in Penn Cove, where all the week’s races were run thanks to 6- to14-knot westerlies, Great Blue Herons, Kingfishers and Bald Eagles often filled the sky alongside EA-6B Prowlers and P3-C Orions practicing touch-and-goes. Settled by Dutch immigrants, this north end of Whidbey Island (one of the longest salt-water-surrounded islands in the continental US) lies just two hours in either direction from Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Its proximity to civilization is part of its allure, as is its remoteness. One gets to the island by boat up Puget Sound’s Saratoga Passage or down through the narrow Swinomish Channel, past the tulip town of La Conner. By car, a 30-minute chug on a ferry across from the old mill town Everett drops you off at the island’s southern tip. Or loop around the top and cross the Deception Pass bridge where down below the currents boil and swirl like the waters of the river Styx. - Here is the complete report on this very fun event: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/news/06/wirw/ Got your own story from WIRW? Add it here: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/forum/2006/wirw CALENDAR OF MAJOR EVENTS (Sponsored by West Marine) Events listed at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar ASIAN INSIGHT China Team are now entering their second season as challengers for the holy grail of yachting, the America's Cup, which is scheduled to begin in June 2007. When the final Louis Vuitton pre-regatta events for 2006 wrapped up in Valencia last weekend, China Team had sailed 15 match races and lost them all, earning only three points overall for the 2006 season. The predominately French and Chinese outfit struggle not only with language barriers and inexperience, but with a notoriously slow boat and old gear and sails. In 2005, syndicate chief Wang Chaoyong partnered with Le Défi, France's former America's Cup syndicate, in a joint venture. In one fell swoop the fledgling syndicate acquired knowledge, hardware, personnel, two boats (CHN 69 and CHN 79) and, perhaps most importantly, a start in the America's Cup business. The team will follow this campaign through to the end, Wang says, but he concedes their hopes of winning the 32nd America's Cup are remote and that they will have to wait until the 33rd edition to make an impact. "My motivation is that this America's Cup event will make China more open to the world," says Wang, a Beijing-based venture capitalist. "We have already made history by challenging for the cup and we are trying to prepare both the Chinese team and our society to embrace the sport of yacht racing.” Their new boat will be the first International America's Cup Class boat built in China by renowned Australian marine company MacConaghy International. It will be built in the city of Dongguan in Guangdong province. China Team members will return to Valencia in January 2007 to begin training with the new boat. - Laurie Fullerton, South China Morning Post, full story: http://sport.scmp.com/sportnews/ZZZRY03SAPE.html PARTY TIME IN MACKINAC Eagle, a Sydney 38 skippered by the O' Neill Family has won the Mackinac Cup as the overall IRC winner in the Chicago Yacht Club’s Race to Mackinac. The team won with a corrected time of 43 hours, 28 minutes and 1 second. Smokum Too, a Canadian team took the Chicago-Mackinac Trophy Cup with a corrected time of 42 hours, 46 minutes, and 13 seconds. Multihull honors went to Gamera, a 27-foot F25C from the Midwest Open Racing Fleet with a corrected time of 44 hours 24 minutes and 25 seconds. The Royono Trophy, given to the first monohull to finish was won by the largest boat in the fleet, Windquest, a ZMax 86 yacht skippered by Tom Geisler and his 18 man crew. Windquest clocked in with a time of 34 hours, 43 minutes, and 23 seconds. -- http://www.chicagoyachtclub.org/ TEAM NER’S QUEST FOR GOLD The bubble wrap is off, mast is up, and the quest has begun. Ken Read is outfitting his brand new Melges 24 with only the best, New England Ropes. Tapered V100 Main Halyard, Endura Braid almost everywhere as sheets and control lines, and our latest and greatest Spyder line for all small diameter cords. Splash down set for next week. Look for updates on sail trim, crew work, and other go fast ideas on the NER website Others make line, we make line perform. -- http://www.neropes.com FITNESS (Following are some excerpts from a story by Dan Dickison posted on the Sailnet website.) Being in good physical condition is an imperative at the top levels of our sport, just witness any Volvo Ocean Race or America's Cup camp and you'll see that. And being in reasonable condition should be a priority for almost every sailor—racer, cruiser, or daysailor. Imagine suffering a hernia as you try to get the staysail out of the lazarette 100 miles offshore en route to Panama. That's a scenario we'd all do a lot to avoid, or at least we like to think we'd do a lot to avoid it. Ideally you want a regimen that allows you to work with equal measure on strength, power, endurance, and flexibility. Tou want to create a training regimen that allows you to work on all four areas with equal emphasis. Here's a quick digest to get you started: Flexibility Stretching out prior to and after athletic endeavors has long been preached by professional athletic trainers. This practice loosens your muscles, but it also lessens their recoil, which is a feature you want for explosive activities like jumping a halyard or quickly gathering a spinnaker on a takedown. Trainers today promote the idea of dynamic stretching for such explosive activities and sailing is full of them. Doing stretching routines like high-knee steps or arm windmills instead of static stretching before sailing will help you achieve that kind of fitness. Strength The best measurement of overall strength, say the professionals, is the conventional pushup because this activity involves many of the major muscle groups. If you're between the ages of 40 and 49 and you can do more than 24 rapid pushups non-stop with good form, you're in good shape. Pushups also make for a good on-board maintenance exercise because they don't require any gadgets, just you and some good old-fashioned exertion. Stomach crunches are also a good exercise for sailors because they strengthen the essential stomach muscles that support our backs, and we're always putting our backs to work on a boat. Endurance Sailing and marathon running—the embodiment of endurance in sports—don't appear to have much in common, but consider that most races mean that you're out in the elements hiking, grinding winches, and concentrating on performance in pretty much a non-stop fashion for long stretches of time. That requires a certain level of endurance on the part of your body, right? The goal of endurance training is to raise what's called your VO2 max—the number of milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight your body metabolizes in one minute of exercise. Forget the science and keep in mind that you want to train for 60 to 90 minutes three times a week at 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. After that you can kick it up a notch and do what the professionals call interval training, which means that you train harder for a while and not so hard for a while. In sailing parlance, that means doing 10 tacks or jibes in a row and then taking a break before doing it all over again. ~ Dan Dickison, Sailnet website, full story: http://tinyurl.com/q5l5v TECHNOLOGY CORNER According to a report posted on the Valencia Sailing blog, Alinghi has been testing a very black mainsail. They report that the “…black main may have very high carbon content. In addition, no loadpath ‘strings’ are visible at all in the sail (supposing they are there, but hidden by the depth of color). The overall shape is very fine, a distinct blade. That shape is as good or better than those of Emirates Team New Zealand (who I feel had the best main sails for well over a year now). North Sails has a few new materials that are said to be improvements on their 3DL string technology (which was state of the art not so long ago).” For pictures and more: http://valenciasailing.blogspot.com/ 29ER WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP Day 2 -- Another long day here in Weymouth, England at the 29er World Championship. The fleet was greeted with good breeze when we arrived at the boat park, however the 49ers went out for the first races inside the harbor so the 29er Yellow fleet went outside the harbor and sailed one race before the breeze completely shut off and all 8 fleets of 29ers and 49ers took turns racing inside the harbor. Shifty light winds continue to dominate the racing. Most North American teams are ready to return to San Francisco for some more exciting blasts across the Bay. The locals tell us that the hot weather should break in the next few days and the wind should return. Cameron Biehl and Matt Noble continue to lead the US team with a 1st and 6th in today's races. Matt reports "We're hoping for more breeze but sailing consistent so doing well. But can we have another Worlds in San Francisco". Wednesday all fleets will complete five races and hopefully a few more and then the fleets will be split into Gold, Silver, Bronze, and possibly Emerald for three more days of final series racing. -- Jennifer Morgan Glass, http://www.9erchamps2006.com/ ROAD SHOW (Following are a few excerpts from a story posted on thedailysail subscription website.) The German capital of sailing is hosting an extraordinary guest these days: BMW Oracle Racing’s America’s Cup Yacht USA 71. The 24-metre high-tech yacht is due to arrive in Kiel this evening at 7 pm after nine days on a container ship from the Spanish Mediterranean to the German Baltic Sea coast. On Monday morning last week, the boat, attached to its keel, was loaded onto a container ship in the harbour of Valencia. A mast, two containers with equipment, and a chase boat were also shipped. BMW Oracle Racing will race USA 71 from 3 to 6 August when the team joins two other America’s Cup teams for the premiere German Sailing Grand Prix. The crew of CEO and skipper Chris Dickson will compete against Team Shosholoza from South Africa and United Internet Team Germany, the German Challenger for the America’s Cup 2007. Chris Dickson is pleased that the team has the opportunity to race in Kiel. “BMW Oracle Racing has many ties to Germany, so this event allows our team a chance to celebrate our German connections by bringing the excitement of America’s Cup Class racing to Germany for the first time. In addition to our partner BMW, our sponsor and supplier family includes many German based companies including Allianz, Geo. Gleistein, Bitburger and Roland Berger.” -- http://www.thedailysail.com ONION PATCH SERIES "Kalevala II", a Grand Soleil 37 owned by Tapio Saavalainen, won Class 7 in the New York YC Annual Regatta with a full Doyle Stratis inventory. "Kalevala II" performed consistently across a wide range of conditions, finishing 1, 1, and 2 in the three races at the NYYC Annual Regatta. Doyle’s new Stratis load-path sails are fast, light, easy to trim, and durable. To find out more about Stratis, call us at 1-800-94-DOYLE or check out Stratis online: http://www.doylesails.com/stratis.htm SAILING SHORTS * Free video of the Chicago YC’s Race to Mackinac, Shake-A-Leg’s Martin 16 US National Championship and the New York YC Race Week at Newport is now available on demand at http://www.t2p.tv. And on the other side of the pond, Cowes Online has posted a video report on the British Classic Yacht Club's annual regatta at Cowes. There is some great footage of some very beautiful yachts with interviews with their owners, including one with Gryf Rhys Jones. Cowes Online also will be producing daily videos during Skandia Cowes Week starting on Saturday, 29 July. -- http;//www.cowes.co.uk * The Buffalo Yacht Club hosted the J22 Great Lakes Championship July 22 & 23. 40 boats entered, sailing seven races in a variety of breeze and weather ranging from driving rain and 17 knots for part of Saturday, to drifting conditions in the first race on Sunday. The winner was former J22 World Champion Terry Flynn, with crew of Dave Van Cleef and Paul Grenauer, but only by one point over Kevin Doyle, of Youngstown YC. Third, coming all the way from Texas, probably to escape the oppressive heat, was Jim Barnash. Complete results: http://www.buffaloyachtclub.org/eastern-great-lakes-j22-championship-res ults.php * Photographer Glennon Stratton sent us images from the Laser Pacific Coast Championship in San Pedro, CA that were held last weekend, and was used by many as a tune-up for the Laser Radial World Championship next week at California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, CA: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/photos/06/0725/ * 15 year old Haley Powell from St. George's, Bermuda won the 2006 Opti National Girls Championship running away from the other 93 competitors. The Bermudians are noted for their heavy weather prowess, but Powell was untouchable in the 4-8 knot light, shifty winds on Sarasota Bay. Marlena Fauer finished second in the four race event with Laura Wefer taking third place. Complete results: http://www.sarasotasailingsquad.com/2006OptiNationalResults.htm. 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. You only get one letter per subject, so give it your best shot and don't whine if others disagree. And please save your bashing, and personal attacks for elsewhere. For those that prefer a Forum, you can post your thought at the Scuttlebutt website: http://sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi) * From Adrian Morgan (Re: Richard Clark’s letter): Since when did New Zealanders say "Go Dude"? Aussies probably say something like "Wy t gow, mite" and British would say "Best of luck with your challenge, Mr Dickson old chap". Kiwis? You tell me. This is surely just another symptom of the way the America's Cup is going: the deplorable blurring of national distinctions (and language). Where will it end? I ask myself sadly... CURMUDGEON’S OBSERVATIONS The best computer is man, and it's the only one that can be mass produced by unskilled labor. Special thanks to New England Ropes and Doyle Sailmakers. |
