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SCUTTLEBUTT No. 933 - October 30, 2001Scuttlebutt is a digest of yacht racing news of major significance; commentary, opinions, features and dock talk . . . with a North American emphasis. Corrections, contributions, press releases, constructive criticism and contrasting viewpoints are always welcome, but save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere.
PROTEST The required suffix is not publicly known and it is not mentioned on the Website nor was it published in the Leg 1 Sailing Instructions, Annex C. Therefore, the site was not publicly available nor know to all other boats, so use of it infringes RRS 41 (as it falls outside the exemption of NOR (Notice Of Race) 7.4.3); and NOR 7.4.4." Under new rules introduced for the Volvo Ocean Race each team is allowed to list 10 web sites they want to view during each leg. Navigators pick sites where they can download all the information they require for a leg, as met offices from different countries provide different forecasts and it is possible to obtain all manner of other meteorological information from currents to icebergs to different types of satellite weather images. Prior to the start of each leg these lists are compiled and published as part of the leg sailing instructions. The idea is that allowing teams to view the same web sites creates a level playing field. The hearing was provisionally scheduled for 1400 local time (1200UT) on Thursday 1st November at Race Headquarters, Cape Town. - www.VolvoOceanRace.org
GOOD NEWS / BAD NEWS * SEB finally started to dive south and head straight for Cape Town. Just little more than six hour separate them from this imaginary line that allows them to take down the sails, start the engine and set their feet on dry land after mentally difficult 7300 miles. For djuice the ordeal is not yet over. Not only being trapped for the repeated time in light wind, their only escape route leads them to the northeast, a direction where they gain little on Cape Town, while the chasing Amer Sports Too eats up the miles with big appetite. Just 15 miles separate Lisa Mc Donald's crew from leading djuice home. POSITIONS - 0348 GMT on October 30: 1. Illbruck (finished): 31d 06h 19m 49s; 2. Amer Sports One (finished): 31d 08h 20m 56s; 3. News Corp (finished): 32d 15h 57m 17s; 4. Tyco (finished): 33d 16h 37m 49s; 5. Assa Abloy (finished): 034d 18h 11m 59s; 6. Team SEB, 61 miles from finish: djuice dragons, 162 mff; Amer Sports Too, 177 mff. - www.VolvoOceanRace.org
SERIOUS MOTION ON THE OCEAN!
NEW DAUGHTER Only 30 minutes after landing at Auckland after a more than a 24-hour journey from Cape Town, Dalton had his daughter in his arms. 'She's perfect,' Dalton exclaimed, 'But very tiny. She is still in an incubator, but she is putting on weight really thriving.' Dalton is taking a week off from with the Nautor Challenge Syndicate to attend to domestic duties. When it comes to a week off, everything is relative with Grant Dalton. He might not actually be in Cape Town with the boats, but he spends several hours a day on the phone with shore manager Herve Le Quilliec and boats manager Ilan Graetz. In between phone calls he takes 10-year-old daughter Eloise and six-year-old son Mack from school, visits his wife Nicki and baby Olivia in hospital. Then he has to find time to train at the gym, go for a run and do all those chores that mount up when you've been away from home for more than six months. Dalton returns to Cape Town on November 5 to make final preparations for leg 2, and a 25-day encounter with the Southern Ocean. - Warren Douglas, Nautor Challenge website, www.nautorchallenge.com
LETTERS TO THE CURMUDGEON * From Glenn McCarthy: Andy Kostanecki gave the finest speech, I ever heard, in accepting the Herreshoff Award at the US Sailing Annual General Meeting. For those who weren't there, it's well worth the read - www.ussailing.org
BEHIND THE SCENES Even though Volvo Event Management employs the Duty Officers, mentally they are closer to the yachts and the sailors than to anybody else in the whole organisation. They are confidants of the crews and the skippers and the operations room is their domain. Information that comes in is classified until officially released by them; visitors have to obtain permission to get into this mission control centre, as the race can be followed live from here, and the information cannot be leaked before the release of the next position report. The Duty Officers core tasks are to monitor the yacht's progress in the race, to relay messages from the yachts, to issue the position reports and in case of a crisis to liase between rescue coordination centres and the yachts. At the heart of the system is a highly refined BT Race Management System, which shows the yachts' data spread on several computer screens. Recently, Brooks & Gatehouse added a new dimension to Volvo Ocean Race monitoring, when they installed five 40/40 large data display units on a mast section inside the Southampton based operations headquarters of the Volvo Ocean Race providing a valuable asset to the 'round the clock' performance monitoring of the fleet. This is the same system the yachts are using to make the yacht's actual performance visible to the whole crew. At the push of a button, the B&G 40/40s display the current boat speed, wind speed angles and directions, and compass heading from any one of the eight Volvo boats, all of which are fitted with comprehensive B&G Hercules Systems. Data is collected every 10 minutes from the B&G systems on each race yacht via an interface port on the Hercules processor. The information is then transmitted via satellite to Race Headquarters where it is translated and displayed on the 40/40 displays. www.VolvoOceanRace.org
THE KEELS WERE DIFFERENT BUT THE CLOTH WAS THE SAME
RULE 90 CURMUDGEON'S COMMENT: While this is normally not the kind of story we cover, maybe it's time to salute those who seem interested in taking the sport in a healthy direction. In past issues of 'Butt, we've had some discussion of Racing Rule 90 - "Have fun on the race course." It seems to me that the Richmond YC is trying hard to help more people understand this important, but sometimes overlooked, aspect for our sport.
THE EQUALIZER Full story: www.yachting-world.com
HOT WEBSITE
CHUCK KOBER
BYTE US NATIONALS
U.S. OFFSHORE CHAMPIONSHIP Complete results: www.usnass.org/racing/lp01FinalResults.pdf
FALL OLYMPIC CLASSES REGATTA Complete results: www.stfyc.com
QUOTES FROM THE BOATS We'll look forward to proper food and, perhaps, a taste of South African wine, which is much deserved. We know there's fitness work to be done. Because we've sailed upwind for so long, we've not had the kind of physical activity to maintain the gym fitness we had before the start. There have been plenty of sail changes, of course, but trimming a headsail is about clicking in or out a centimetre, and the helm is light. In hard spinnaker conditions, it's very physical for the helmsman and the trimmers can be grinding in a metre or more. We know we've got that to come on the leg to Sydney. So ashore we'll eat sensibly, eat plenty and try to do some training to find those muscles we've not used for six weeks. Amer Sport Too skipper Lisa McDonald, as reported in The Telegraph, UK. - sport.telegraph.co.uk/sport
PERSONAL UPDATE
THE CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION |
