Yachting News 1st November 2010
Greetings yachties,
Sally-Anne, Ian and I had a great sail around Ponui Island yesterday, a stunning little island off the coast of Waiheke and in France the solo sailors set for the Caribbean. We live in a great time of yachting from the pro’s and locals able to enjoy our fantastic sport.
In this issue:
Round Ponui Island on Panui,
Scuttlbutt USA – latest issue here,
Scuttlebutt Europe – latest issue here,
Can you help Tom?
Route du Rhum start,
Jeanne Socrates,
Velux 5 Oceans – where are they now?
Sail-World NZL – latest issue here,
Sail-World Australia – latest issue here,
Sail-World UK – latest issue here,
Sail-World Africa – latest issue here,
Lectronic Latitude – latest issue here,
IFDS Bulletin – latest issue here,
Enjoy
Sailing in Marin
Last week Grant Dalton met with Marin Independent Journal sailing columnist Michelle Slade in Auckland, NZL to offer his perspective on the plans for the 34th America’s Cup
* Is 2013 an aggressive date for AC34?
No, a team that can’t get itself together will say it’s aggressive, not possible and it should change. The world has had enough of the mess of the America’s Cup and I think correctly BOR has identified an aggressive date – a lot of teams will cry that they can’t be ready for 2013 – for sure they will. But the fact is that they couldn’t be ready in 2020 because they could never raise the money. Those calls will come – probably coming by email to BOR every day now. 2014 you run into World Cup Soccer and you don’t want to run into too many things in one year – San Francisco needs to make this it’s own. By 2013, it’ll be six years since an America’s Cup was sailed that anyone actually gives a damn about, that’s way long enough. Seven years will not change the dynamics of the number of teams that will be in it because those teams can’t be in it anyway. The Rule, the way it is worded to share design allows those teams to buy a stock design from somebody and if they’re real lucky they’ll be there.
*Your thoughts on the world cup (AC45) series?
GRANT DALTON: Alinghi pioneered the idea of the pre-regatta series and I thought it worked really well, absolutely. At least teams were able to show sponsors that there was something else going on before the next event started in the 4 years in between. You have to have something. It’s a mechanism for a commercial team to pay back to its sponsor(s) and ultimately the prize is the America’s Cup. It doesn’t change that. And it’s absolutely no doubt that SF is great for sponsors. No-one can give me a reason other than Emirates doesn’t fly directly to SF from NZ and it’s a bloody long way through Dubai, – it’s like if Emirates Team NZ won it, why would they take it to … Korea? It just doesn’t make any sense!
* What does your team look like at the moment?
GRANT DALTON: We’ve shed our sailing team – financially we can’t survive and progressively over the years of survival we’ve had to make people redundant. Now we know its not a mono hull we’ve had to do another round. It’ll be revamped but there’ll be some guys who will be common because our culture needs to be retained as we move through – Dean’s a constant for example. But it’s definitely going to be different.
Match Racing on Auckland Harbour T bone
Downwind speed tips
Dave Flynn of Quantum Sails explains how downwind angle changes as pressure increases.
It can be useful to divide sailing downwind into three modes: under 10 knots true, 10-14, and over 14.
If you own a relatively standard mono-hull, the magic true wind angle is around 140 degrees in 10 knots of wind or less. In 10-14 the optimum angle quickly becomes broader, probably somewhere between 140 and 155 degrees true wind angle. Once there is more than 14 knots of breeze, you should be sailing as deep as you can with control.
The only exception to the rule is if your boat has a very high horsepower to weight ratio, in which case you may sail slightly tighter angles on average, and in 18-20 knots it will actually pay to head back up into the low 140’s. If your boat is light enough, it will begin to plane and surf in this much breeze.
Hi folks
I was wondering if someone could help me out here. I have a friend called Tom who lives just outside of Thames and he was part of the crew who won the World Blind Sailing Champs for NZ last year.
Now Tom is only partially blind and can see enough to walk around without a guide dog or a stick and he’s been crewing once or twice in a Frostply (2-man dinghy) at Thames with no probs whatsoever.
The selection trials for this year’s Blind Sailing World’s team is only 6 weeks away and he desperately needs to spend a little time crewing for someone to get in some practice and with someone who’s good enough to help him with his sail trimming (jib or main) etc. The trials will be for match racing but competitive fleet racing experience would be better than nothing as far as he’s concerned.
Tom is an extremely pleasant guy and would be very grateful for any help he can get. Would one of you helmsmen be willing to take Tom out in your Hartley for racing this weekend? Perhaps a fortnight after that too? You could help Tom win another world title for NZ in sailing this year…… how awesome would that be?
Please get back to me asap. Many thanks.
Regards
Christine Headey
Christine@trevormasters.co.nz
La Route du Rhum 2010
St Malo, France
It was appropriate for the record fleet of 85 skippers who set off from Saint Malo this afternoon on the ninth edition of the Route du Rhum-La Banque Postale that the send off proved nearly perfect in every way.
Given the choice a large proportion of the solo skippers spread across the five different classes, from the 105 feet long giants of the Ultime class, to the venerable 12m multis in the Rhum class, might have preferred a little more breeze than the gentle SE’ly which sent them on their way, answering the start gun off Saint Malo’s Pointe du Grouin at 13:02hrs.
But the light going was ideal for those feeling their way into the first few hours of what promises to be an engaging race, a complex weather situation marking the early strategic decisions on the classic 3542 miles passage from Saint Malo to Pointe-a-Pitre in Guadeloupe.
The early grey skies rolled back to offer a day of pleasant Autumn sunshine for the huge crowds who had begun assembling from long before dawn.
Undoubtedly the enthusiasm and warmth of the send-off was buoyed by the appreciation that the magnitude of the fleet has broken records already, 24 multihulls and 60 monohulls: nine Ultime giant multis, nine IMOCA Open 60′s, 12 Multi 50′s, 44 Class 40 monos, and 11 Rhum monos and multis. Visitors numbers passing through the Corsair City’s Route du Rhum-La Banque Postale race village also surpassed all expectations.
With the final morning check out, the mononhulls locking out from 06:15hrs this, by breakfast time Saint Malo’s streets were strangely quiet. The hubbub and hype of a week of frenetic activity, more than 1 million vistors, suddenly replaced by empty docks and deserted quaysides.
Instead there were many who lined the beaches, piers, slipways, rocks and took to their boats to bid farewell to the skippers as they made their way out on to the Bay of Saint Malo to wait for the start. Through the morning for most spectators their race was always to secure the best possible viewing point to see the armada depart.
Cape Fréhelis traditionally the best vantage point, where the first mark of the course – 18 miles after the start – compresses the fleet. More than 50,000 spectators mustered there, and an estimated six thousand more on the water in a huge variety of carefully marshalled craft.
With 8-11 knots of SE’ly wind, the start – when it came – was just brisk enough. As the gun went the huge fleet of spectator boats swarmed into action.
Franck Cammas on Groupama 3, the most powerful of the Ultime’s – setting out for the first time on their first ever head to head showdown of the giants – forged steadily ahead of the pack in this nine boat class, as befits the holder of the Jules Verne crewed non stop around the world record, and was first to pass the first mark at Fréhel, challenged initially by a surging Yvann Guichard on the race record holding Gitana XI, but Groupama eased slowly and steadily away, leading by nearly two miles after four hours of racing.
Doldrums mayhem for Velux 5 Oceans fleet
The intertropical convergence zone has been playing havoc with race leaders in the Velux 5 Oceans fleet.
They say it’s tough at the top, and that’s something American ocean racer Brad Van Liew knows only too well as he struggles through the Doldrums at the head of the Velux 5 Oceans fleet. The 42-year-old skipper of Le Pingouin has a seemingly comfortable lead of around 80 nautical miles on his nearest rival, Polish solo sailor Zbigniew ‘Gutek’ Gutkowski. But for Brad and his fellow competitors it is not just a battle against their opponents on the water, it is a battle against nature itself.
Sweltering temperatures, unpleasant humidity, ever-changing weather conditions and severe lack of sleep have dogged the leaders for several days after entering the Doldrums, the notorious moving band of low pressure that runs a few hundred miles from the Equator. One moment the ocean racers could be totally becalmed, bobbing about on a tranquil sea. The next, without any warning, they could be in the centre of storm battling 30 knot winds and lashing rain. This, combined with the sheer frustration of sailing alone through this area of the world, has taken its toll on the fleet, now 12 days into their 7,400 nautical mile sprint from La Rochelle to Cape Town.
Photograph by: Debra Brash, Times Colonist, Times Colonist
Jeanne Socrates prepares her boat Nereida, docked in Victoria’s inner harbour, for her solo, non-stop voyage around the world, which she plans to begin next week. The 67-year-old retired schoolteacher from London, UK, has logged more than 55,000 miles of ocean sailing.
Attempting to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world may not be the typical behaviour of a 67-year-old grandmother.
But Jeanne Socrates is not typical. And next week, weather permitting, the retired schoolteacher will cast off from Victoria in her 38-foot boat, Nereida, on an epic, seven-month journey.
Her date of departure depends on ocean weather conditions which, for the next few days, are poor.
Socrates, who was born and lives in London, UK, chose Victoria as her starting point partly because it’s a favourite spot and she has lots of sailing friends here.
It also places her well north of the equator to clock up the mileage required for her attempt to be recognized.
