Sign up for A BRUSH with SAIL - The eMagazine A Brush with Sail publishes a monthly e-magazine featuring international sailing news, views, interviews and features for sailors, sailing industry personnel and sailing fans.
- Farr 40 Spotlight: The 'Transfusion' Story
- ' Where The Wind Blows..!'
- The Dragon - 'Class of '27'
- The Dragon - According To Klaus
- RC44 – ‘Team Aqua’ Owns Valencia
- Sailing Personality - ‘Butch’ Ulmer.
- History: 'The Gentleman Loser'
- UK - Halsey 'Sails Talk'
- New York Yacht Club Race Week
- Surviving Cancer To Sail Again
- Next Month In 'A Brush With Sail'
Summer Dreaming... 'I've Seen The Revolution!' I don’t know about it being a place where the wind blows, but it sure is hot where I’m spending the Christmas and New Year break! I like the heat, especially if I'm just loafing, sitting about dreaming and thinking... about sailing of course! We're in Brisbane, Australia for the festive time, with son’s, daughters-in-law, daughter and son-in-law and the grand children. With the temperature wandering either side of 30C, sometimes near 35, we’ve had fine days and some were not so fine, with impressive electrical storms that are always a novelty to visitors from our latitude. But regardless of the rain we had a great time and really enjoyed our time with the families we miss for most of the year.
We managed some time on the water in son Andrew’s powerboat, visiting the southern end of North Stradbroke Island and indulging in some more loafing in the water and under the sun. The young-un with us preferred surfing down the steep sand hill on his body-board. That was a great reminder of the huge amount of energy that is stored in a young body and just bursting to get out!
There’s certainly a different feel to the outdoors in Queensland, compared to my home-town Wellington, New Zealand, where 25C is a really hot day and 30C (it has happened), makes the record books! I’ve spent some loafing time supervising young grand children and their friends in a swimming pool and of course, the sight and sound of water and the accompanying relaxing effect of the heat, has got me to thinking about our sport and the happenings of the past year and how some of those happenings relate to the young sailors of today. I was thinking that it is just as well that they get on with their end of the sport with great enthusiasm, without getting too bothered about what’s happening with the America’s Cup controversy? Meanwhile (above right), my grandson Jed, discovers boat design!
Of course they will all have their heroes among the stars of sailing, who are involved in the top end of the sport, but junior and youth sailing is so well organised throughout the world now, that most young sailors are too busy with racing and development programs to worry about the so called ‘top end.’ These keen kids however, are all in the first stages of aiming for the top – in a few years time, they will be interested in taking over at the top, so look out! The future of sailing is with the youth of today, not with Ernesto Bertarelli or Larry Ellison. Those two adversaries have probably secured the future of several New York attorneys, but sailing will survive because of the skill and enthusiasm of today’s youth who in turn, will be tomorrow’s champions.
To keep those champions developing and to ensure the growth of the sport of sailing among more and more youth both male and female, the world’s yacht clubs must put as much energy and money that they have available, into the skills training for the sport. And the earlier young people enter the sport the better. Get them young (five or six year old) and introduce them (and their parents) to the Optimist, Sabot or a similar, simple class of yacht. As was the young lady (above). Her intense concentration was captiured by Rich Roberts.
I’m not quite the ‘old man of the sea’, but I’m certainly old enough to have witnessed a huge change, no, make that a revolution, in organized sailing in my lifetime. In the late 1940’s – through 1950’s, the idea of girls sailing was a joke. ‘Girls sailing…yeah right!’ And as for the skills of sailing a yacht as practised today, they were not commonly known. Peruse some photos of yacht racing at that time and you will see some truly odd sail trimming.
Admittedly, hulls and sails have gone through a revolution in materials and methods of manufacture, but I remember that many sailors, in my neck of the woods at least, talked of ‘that boat pointing high’, being the boat that sailed well. Usually, that boat that pointed well was lying way over and going sideways. ‘Boat-speed’ was not a term used at all. Also, the term ‘Sail-trim’ was not generally used nor sailing a boat upright generally practised. There were however, through the late fifties and into the sixties, examples of the ‘the penny dropping’ regarding better sail trim and boat speed practise. Among the leaders in New Zealand, were the young guns of the time, the Mander family of brothers in Christchurch and in Auckland, Laurie Davidson was among the van of young sailors in the north, who were taking the tender arts of sail trim and boat speed seriously.
At this time the 'trapeze' was beginning to be taken seriously and the senior centre-board class in New Zealand at that time, the 14 foot ‘X’ class rapidly adopted it, as did some other classes. This gaff rigged, clinker built boat, exceedingly heavy by today’s standard, was then seen sailing in fresh breezes ‘three up,’ with one crew member ‘on the wire’ when a four man crew had been the norm in breezes in excess of 18 knots. Laurie Davidson's X Class yacht 'Arrow,' (above right) demonstrates the power of the trapeze, sailing on Auckland Harbour in 1952
Generally, the yachts were then able to be sailed more and more upright as skippers and crews realised that the boats up-front were also standing upright and sailing a little lower and most importantly, faster! I think this realisation came about somewhere in the middle of the scale, between more leverage and the necessity for the helmsman to bear away at times, to prevent the trapezing crew member dragging in the water to weather, if his reactions were too slow!
Today, the trapeze and keeping your race-boat upright and 'foil efficient' is standard practice, as demonstrated by this International 14 crew (below).
This whole movement to toward better boat handling and better boat-speed, was helped greatly by the adjacent move to Dacron and Nylon as sail materials, allowing the manufacture of the first relatively stable sails. This was a giant step forward and a wonderful improvement on sails that would shrink in the rain, but even more pleasing was the fact that sail makers now had the ability to cut in shape that would stay where it should be. Almost an impossible task with cotton duck or other sail-cloth woven from natural fibres.
Now, sailing youth who are eager to learn are able to attend classes in basic aero-dynamics, amongst other subjects, which is an essential part of understanding correct sail-trim. This in turn is a basic skill needed in sailing a yacht fast and if you want to win in sailboat racing, you MUST be able to sail your boat fast!
And of course, today’s talented young sailors are able to apply their learning to boats and equipment that are manufactured from materials, that by comparison with those of fifty years ago, are other worldly.
They can look forward to having the knowledge and skills necessary to sail advanced sailing machines like the 18 foot skiff, shown below in the photo by Rich Roberts.
Today, they sail in hulls built of epoxy resin reinforced with a myriad of man- made fibres and matts, depending on boat size and price. Their masts and spars are of advanced alloy at least, but increasingly they are made from carbon fibre reinforced plastic. Sails and ropes for running rigging also, are of advanced dacron and nylon, but again increasingly, mylar, kevlar, carbon fibre and dacron, in laminates of any of those and other man-made material, with sails at the top end of the sport (and price bracket), heat fused over computer controlled moulds.
Other than solid foils, sails are now about as close to a sailor’s aerodynamic heaven as it’s possible to get! Racing sailors of all ages now wear designer brand clothing from cap, through flotation assistance, to shoes and including the ‘necessary’ brand sun protective eye-wear. This well-dressed image does the sport no harm at all. When I was a young fellow sailors generally looked like refugees. Rugby jerseys, farmer type oil skin coats and bare feet This comparison with today’s ‘team’ look is quite startling. There is no doubt as to which age feels more comfortable while sailboat racing!
So, when you put all that together, the result is the sailing revolution I mentioned before. Now you read about young people, sailing further and faster than their Fathers (and Mothers) before them and with more idea about what they are doing than their predecessors. Teenage girls and boys are sailing very long distances solo on the world’s oceans. Young women are competing successfully against their male counterparts in solo round the world racing. Young women are sailing as the preferred navigators in the world’s major ocean races. Women are owning and successfully steering their yachts to race wins... with female, mixed gender and male crew! But, shock horror! Mixed gender fleets where... wait a minute... can that be two longhaired blokes crossing the finish line first? No mate! That is an all girl crew, who have out sailed the guys, crossing the finish line first! If these young people, through skill and persarverance, reach the top of their sport, there awaits a growing professional market that contiually seeks the stars of sailing to compete at the 'top end.' The sky is the limit!
However, the sailing revolution has produced an even greater humanitarian success.
It is the design and development of yachts that can be sailed by people with severe physical disabilities and the promotion of the active organizations that encourage these people’s participation. There is now a world of opportunity for people who once could only look and dream! Many of these people are becoming inspirations to physically complete sailors everywhere!
That truly is the ultmate celebration of the sailing revolution!
Jim Bolland
OK Dinghy Lowdown The Champions Tell All (Nearly)
With the 2010 OK Dinghy World Championship being held next month in 'windy' Wellington, New Zealand, the past three world champions - Nick Craig (2005, 2006, 2007), Karl Purdie (2008) and Thomas Hansson-Mild (2009) - talk about the class, the racing and their thoughts on last year's and this year's championship. For current world champion Thomas Hansson-Mild (SWE) victory last year in Kalmar, Sweden, was a dream come true. With 20 years experience under his belt and a host of top ten places, many thought Thomas had missed his chance. However, he kept plugging away and was finally back at the front in 2008 where he finished fifth overall.
Explaining his return to form he said, 'Sailing is a sport of details, and when it comes down to it everything has to work smoothly. Family support and friends are also vital parts to get the puzzle done. Someone once said that there is need for about 10,000 training hours to become really good in a sport. OK Dinghy sailing is no exception. I began to sail very early and it's no myth that what pushed me towards my dinghy sailing was a rather troublesome pollen allergy. I did not have the allergy on the water and the bay at home became my playground in the summer.'
'In 2007 I saw how quickly Karl Purdie (NZL), sailed, and what equipment he had. He did not win the worlds that year, but he showed a momentum I had never seen before. I realised then that we were stuck in old thinking and had to reconsider. I bought a new mast and switched sail makers to Quantum. Before the 2008 World Championships, I had been training well and finished fifth with a taste for more. I won the last race and ended up just five points from the bronze medal. I went home with the feeling that now I could compete with the finest elite and this spurred me to take another step forward.'
'In the Spring of 2009, I ordered a new mast from C-Tech, New Zealand, which is at the forefront in the development of carbon fibre masts. Unfortunately, the delivery of new mast was delayed due to the pirates around Africa, so I did not have enough time to test what I wanted. But at a training camp in Kalmar, and at the world qualifiers my results confirmed that I was on the right track. It meant that I could skip Kiel Week and Warnemünde and, instead, invest in training. Mentally, it was good to skip the big regattas; I did not have any doubts about myself and the gear, but I thought it would be good not to get last minute uncertainty.'
'During the worlds I knew I had the opportunity to win if I just stayed focused. I also managed to recover and come back again. I just had to have this gold, and I felt that it was within reach, even if Karl did have a grip on it for most of the week. It may sound strange that I say so, especially since it was not until the finish of the last race when it became clear I would win, but I had felt all week long that this would just happen - no matter what.'
'In the end it felt good, really good actually. I felt a deep joy and relief when I think back on it, but I also remember having a certain emptiness after exhausting all my strength. But I think that feeling was more due to fatigue after the effort, than anything else. But now, some time afterwards, I begin to look ahead again. It´s been a fantastic feeling of course, being world champion, but as a true Scandinavian it doesn't last too long.'
For 2008 World Champion Karl Purdie (NZL), the 2009 Championship produced mixed feelings.
One of the shock results at the 2009 Worlds was the relative poor performance of triple world champion Nick Craig (GBR). His sixth place overall was his worst performance since 2002, but he reveals he had a few issues with boatspeed.
'I was slow upwind in a force 4 and a chop, which was frustrating as they are usually my best conditions in a one-design. I think it was an issue with my rig - either that or I've got old. I've only been able to sail the OK twice since Kalmar so I've tried to resolve the issue with my cheque book. I've bought two new masts as well as doing some sail development. I've also thought about it a lot, but I'm realistic about my goals in Wellington; I'll be lucky if I get a new rig right the first time. My overall plan is to sail the OK a lot in 2011 in preparation for the next year's worlds in Largs, Scotland.'
'This year I am using a Scoles Icebreaker hull, a C-Tech or Ceilidh mast and a Purple sail. The technical side of things is not my strong point as I'm not in the marine industry but I get as involved as much as I can and listen to and learn from experts such as Jim Hunt (the 2004 OK Dinghy World Champion). I'll be playing around with mast and sail combinations at the New Zealand Nationals just before the worlds, before hopefully settling down for the Worlds itself.'
Craig has built a reputation for sailing, and winning, in a wide range of different classes, but always keeps coming back to the OK Dinghy. He said, 'It's some of the best international amateur racing there is, with a friendly fleet that knows how to organise a great worlds.'
The last time the OK Dinghy World Championship was in New Zealand, in 2002, the Kiwis took five of the top seven places, with Craig the first European in a lowly eighth overall. This year the Kiwis seem determined to better this performance, but does Craig feel threatened by this?
'I don't find it an issue as they don't try to sail as a team. Once we're racing, it doesn't matter what letters are on each sail. They have a strength in depth, and I just enjoy the challenge of racing against them. I guess they should have sussed some local knowledge, but the bigger advantage they have is that the event is at the end of the Kiwi summer so they will be racing sharp and not have lost their boats in the containers for a few months.'
Over the years many very good sailors have tried and failed to win the OK Dinghy world title - so what does it take to win? 'To win any regatta you need good speed, starts and boat handling. To win a worlds over 10 races you need a composed series and a good head for it.'
In Wellington, during the first week of February, we will see who has the best head.
The Etchells Class is still as strong as ever in Australia and the line-up at the recent Murphy and Nye Australian Etchells Championship was the usual line-up of past and present champions, plus plenty of young guns who have discovered why so many experienced sailors refer to the Etchells as their favourite sailboat.
Among the 'older generation' of sailors competing was one John Bertrand, famous for removing the America's Cup from the New York Yacht Club and a a great fan of the Etchells Class. He teamed up with the great (but younger) Australian sailors Tom Slingsby and Andrew Palfrey.
Toward the end of the recent championship regatta, Bertrand was interviewed dockside:
John Bertrand commented 'There's terrific competition at these Australian titles.'
'Today we were in harmony with Mother Nature. Or as they say we are in the zone and it worked out very well for us, we are very pleased with the results. To sail with Tom Slingsby as tactician and Andrew Palfrey ... just a fantastic crew. So little said on the boat, because the team works so well.
'Today it was really tricky, light and variable out there. We tended to sail the middle of the course. When you get into one corner or the other you have no choice, so it has to be pretty powerful reason to be there.
'We had no bias one way or the other, we just sailed the shifts with the breeze splitting between the headlands and it worked out well for us today.
Bertrand, Slingsby and Palfrey. A quality combination!
'For me it is just a thrill to sail with these modern Olympians, they are both very much in tune with the wind and boat speed. We get on very well on the boat. When I am about to suggest a change, it’s already happened.
'We are going to Ireland to the do the 2010 Etchells Worlds. You are only here for three score and ten so you give it your best shot and that is what we are going to do.
'A week after the Etchells Worlds in Ireland, Tommy has the Laser Worlds. We have promised Victor Kovelenko the Australian Sailing Team head Coach, to deliver Tommy safe and sound in good body and mind for that event, so he knows we won’t be able to beat up on him too much in Ireland.'
Graeme Taylor (Magpie) smiled, ‘Congratulations to John, Tom and Andrew. They certainly deserved to win. Now we have another battle tomorrow. So far we’ve had good boat speed and we’ve done some good things and we’ve made some costly mistakes, but we look forward to tomorrow.'
Damian King (Barry). ‘After John and the guys, it’s been so close for the rest of us. It will be tight again tomorrow.’
It was tight for everybody else but John Bertrand, Tom Slingsby and Andrew Palfrey (Triad) had won the Murphy & Nye 2010 Australian Etchells Championship with one race to spare!
Not bad for an older guy and two young fellas?
Farr40's Up The Tempo At Key West
Who Will Win The World Championship? With April’s 2010 World Championship looming, there was a good turn out of the Farr 40 Class at the recent Key West Regatta and the tempo and talk, amongst these racing thoroughbreds suggested that the Yacht Club Casa de Campo, venue for the up-coming Worlds will see most of the Key West fleet there. It is expected that a fleet of more than 25 will do battle for world honors at the Dominican Republic based Rolex Farr40 World Championship regatta in April.
After 5 spectacular days of racing off Key West, Giovanni Maspero's Joe Fly team's consistency has brought them out on top of the fleet. Joe Fly finished the 10 race wevent with just 35 points. Current Farr 40 World Champions Jim Richardson's Barking Mad finished 6 points behind with 41 points, two ahead of Massimo Mezzaroma's Nerone.
There were hearty handshakes and slaps on the back among the Joe Fly crew upon return to the dock on Friday after the Italian team topped the Farr 40 class. Skipper Giovanni Maspero and tactician Francesco Bruni have brought the Joe Fly program to North America’s largest winter regatta for many years without winning in either the Melges 24 or Farr 40 classes and thus were overjoyed.
‘We are very happy to finally win in Key West. We have always been second and third so it feels good to be the champion,’ Bruni said speaking with Premiere Racing's Race Week Press Officer Bill Wagner.
Joe Fly put forth a tremendously consistent effort by finishing fourth or better in 8 of 10 races to total 35 points, six better than runner-up Barking Mad (Jim Richardson, Newport, R.I.). ‘We are quite pleased with our performance. We were by far the fastest boat in the fleet in all conditions. We had a little luck with catching shifts, but our success was due mostly it was our boat speed and crew work.’
Commentary from Terry Hutchinson’s blog in ‘Sailing World’ Magazine:
The days were hot and long and frankly some of the best days of racing that I think that I have experienced in Key West. Thursday greeted the fleet with a 13- to 18-knot southerly and Friday delivered a 7- to 11-knot south-westerly. Both directions proving to be tricky, but predominantly right hand favored. More importantly for us on the Barking Mad, these days created opportunity to battle back onto the podium. Our disappointing day on Wednesday made winning our class quite difficult. The fleet inversion in Race 6, which saw us go from 1st to 7th, really was the difference maker and as we know sometimes those are the breaks.
Highlights: There was a lot of good that came from this event for the Barking Mad. From my perspective we were the fastest downwind with the Code 1 spinnakers and fastest upwind in the medium breezes that we had on Thursday.
We also confirmed, that we need to continue to work on our technique in the 12 to 15 knots downwind as we are still vulnerable. I know that we learn the most from our losses not our wins and so I am very optimistic about how we will continue to develop for the future and the Worlds in the Dominican Republic in April. I am also proud of the way the team responded in the last race of the event. We went into this race in a who-beat-who scenario with the Italian team Nerone.
Jim did good work in getting us off the line 5 lengths clear of Nerone. As we covered them fairly tightly up the first beat I missed a right shear that allowed Nerone to slip around us. From here we went slightly backwards as some competitors took the opportunities to tack on us and send us further back.
But good boat handling, great down wind speed, and a perfect leeward mark rounding allowed us to chip away at Nerone's lead. When Nerone presented us the opportunity we were in position to pass and then defend. It was a great measure of the mental toughness of the Barking Mad team to have the lead, cough it up and then battle back.
Lowlights: There were not any. It was Key West in the middle of January so nothing to complain about. As I said above I think that this was potentially one of the best weeks of sailing in Key West that I have experienced in the last 20 years. I do not think I can compliment Peter Craig and his staff enough for the job that they do in hosting this event.
I know the event is smaller then Peter would like but there is not a more professionally run operation. They recognize the sailors want good racing but to not spend all day on the water. On Division 1 Ken Legler and crew ran efficient races but got the crews back to the dock early to enjoy the shore side activities of Key West.
Final congratulations go to the Joe Fly team for winning the Farr 40 class and John Kilroy Jr'sSamba Pa Ti for winning the Melges 32 class and Boat of the week. The boat of the week award was a funny one in that I was sharing a mudslide with John at the local Tiki Hut at about 3 pm as he was waiting to go to the airport. As fate would have it his flight got canceled and he was back at the trophy presentation unaware that he was going to win boat of the week; I guess the wind gods knew John! Congrats for that Team Samba Pa Ti.
For now it is back to family life helping Shelley out with the kids and getting the troops to and from school. Key West always represents the beginning of the sailing schedule. If the season goes half as well as the last 5 days I know 2010 holds a lot of promise. Thanks to all of those that make it happen on and off the water.
Key West Race Week has never been Massimo Mezzaroma's favorite regatta. ‘We never have had much luck in Key West,’ says the owner of the Farr 40 Nerone, based out of Punta Ala, Italy. ‘Plus, it's so close to Christmas, it's hard for us to make it over here in time. Key West has never been a major regatta on our schedule. We don't come every year.’ The team has only sailed a handful of Key West Race Week's in the last decade. They placed fourth twice, in 2008 and 2002, but by Mezzaroma's standards, fourth doesn't cut it. As recently as this morning, the perceived Key West curse still hung over the team. On the way out to the racecourse, a crewmember who had indulged in a little too much wine at the team dinner the night before fumbled a winch handle overboard.
Maybe the curse sank with the winch handle. Nerone posted a 3-1 today, earning Boat of the Day honors, the prize for which included—what else—a new Lewmar winch handle. ‘Now we won't have to make him pay for it,’ says Mezzaroma of his clumsy crewmember. ‘But we might have to teach him a lesson. [Waves winch handle in hammering motion.] This could be his punishment.’
The keys to success today were good starts and solid tactics. ‘We always have good speed,’ says Mezzaroma. ‘Today, we were able to get off the starting line in good position. And we did a good job of staying with the shifts. It took us by surprise. We were expecting the wind to be light, like five or six knots, but it was a little more. We were actually a bit light today. But we handled the shifts, and they were not easy to predict.’
Mezzaroma refused to single out a star crewmember. ‘For us, we win as a team and we lose as a team. Nobody is special. We are a team.’
Like Uka Uka, the Italian Melges 24 team that won Boat of the Day yesterday, the Nerone team has their chef to thank for their camaraderie and focus. ‘Our chef is actually my ex-girlfriend,’ says Mezzaroma. ‘She has been with us for many years. When you come all the way from Italy, when you're so far from home and everything is different from what you're used to, it's important to have something you know. For us, having good meals together and drinking some good white wine is a good thing.’
According to Mezzaroma, the hardest thing about Key West is the length of the event. ‘Most of the regattas we sail are three or four days,’ he says. ‘Key West is five days. Even on the last day, nothing is set in stone. You could go into it in first place and still come out in tenth. Tomorrow will very important. It is the turning point of the regatta.’
Despite the need to maintain a consistent scoreline, Mezzaroma will not be bashful on the starting line tomorrow. ‘In the Farr 40, you can't be conservative or else you will lose,’ he says. 'Even if you try to be conservative at the start, once the time starts counting down, it doesn't matter what you tell yourself. You will still go for it.’
With three days of racing left, anything can happen in the Farr 40 class. But one thing's certain: Nerone won't be holding back. Plus, the team has have a new winch handle. And it floats. Key West curse, be damned!
Farr40 Class. Final Results. Key West 2010 1) 06 Joe Fly Giovanni Maspero Rome, ITA 35 Points 2) 12 Barking Mad James Richardson Newport, RI 41 3) 09 Nerone Massimo Mezzaroma Punta Ala, ITA 43 4) 14 Plenty Alex Roepers New York, NY 65 5) 02 Goombay Smash William Douglass Newport, RI 66 6) 05 VincereGrant Hood Port Credit YC, CAN 69 7) 07 Nanoq HRHPrince Frederik Copenhagen, DEN 70 8) 04 Struntje LightWolfgang Schaefer Kiel, GER 71 9) 10 Enfant Terrible Alberto Rossi Anacona, ITA 72 10) 13 Flash Gordon Helmut Jahn Chicago, IL 76 11) 08 Groovederci John Demourkas Santa Barbara, CA 82 12) 03 Charisma Nico Poons Monaco, MON 108 13) 11 Spaceman SpiffRobert Ruhlman Cleveland, OH 113
Farr 40 World Championship The Farr 40 World Championship regatta, is one of the world's most recognized sailing events celebrated annually. With each new edition, an exciting destination is chosen.
In June 2009 the 12th annual event was contested at the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Porto Cervo, Sardinia . Twenty five teams took part in the regatta, which was won by Class President Jim Richardson's (USA) Barking Mad and went down to the final race.
The regatta travels to the Caribbean for the first time in 2010, to the Yacht Club Casa de Campo and Casa de Campo Marina, in the Dominican Republic. Twenty to twenty-five boats are expected to compete for the title April 21-24, 2010. In 2011 the event returns to Sydney Australia.
Sponsored by Rolex, each championship celebrated finds the sport's top professional athletes joining amateur owner/driver teams comprised of some of the world's most influential businessmen and women, as well as top amateur crew, and attracting the attention of the sailing enthusiasts and international press.
For more information about the Farr40 Class - CLICK HERE
For information regarding theFarr40 World Championship regatta click on the Farr40 World Championship regatta logo - (above, left).
The Need For Speed!
The Quest for the Fastest Monohull on the Planet. By Vlad Murnikov MX-Design e-mail: vmurnikov@verizon.net
The Dream
Twenty years ago I led the first ever Russian entry into the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race. Our yacht FAZISI proved to be among the fastest offshore monohulls at the time, with her top speed approaching 30 knots. During the race she had the second longest day run of 386 nautical miles. That was considered a great feat and many sailors believed it to be the outer limit of monohull speed.
And yet less than two decades later during the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 (the same Whitbread event under a different name) I witnessed yacht ERICSON 4 come within a hair of breaking the 600 mile a day barrier. It only took twenty years of technical advances to move the mark from 400 to 600 mile a day, improving the record by fifty percent.
How far might sailboat performance go in the future? Is there any limit after all? With progress advancing at the same pace, in twenty years we should see daily runs gaining another fifty percent and extending to 900 miles in 24 hours. In fact, multihulls are already capable of such performance and sailors have proven that they can handle the speed.
But what about monohulls? So far Volvo 70 remains the fastest monohull on the planet. With an absolute top speed in excess of 42 knots, it is in the same league with the fastest catamarans and 2 trimarans. However multihulls, with their needle-like hull forms can sustain higher speed for a substantially longer time than much wider and shorter monohulls, which tend to slow down after each burst of speed.
There’s no doubt that eventually solutions to the monohull’s shortcomings will be found and in the future we will see speed of these boats increasing steadily. But what about right now? Would it be possible today to design and build a yacht capable of covering 900 miles in 24 hours? The question kept nagging me and as a designer I started looking for answers.
Next came a classic 'napkin sketch' and some quick calculations. The more I toyed with the idea the more I realized that given today’s technology and design expertise gained in such classes as Volvo 70 and Open 60, as well in multihull and powerboat design, it just might be possible to develop an extreme yacht capable of unthinkable speed. Capable, in fact, of taking on the 1000 Mile Day Challenge. The SpeedDream™ was born.
The Concept
This project provides a unique opportunity to showcase marine industry by creating the fastest and advanced yacht ever. It would grab attention of sailing community and general public alike by tackling such formidable sailing challenges as 50 knot speed record, the fastest Transatlantic crossing and sailing 1000 mile in 24 hours.
Design and research that will go into this project and experience gained will benefit future sailboat design, setting direction for the next generation of sailing yachts. The impact of this project on sailing will be far greater that development of recordbraking multihulls, simply because the vast majority of sailboats are monohulls.
Over the course of one year from the initial idea, a design concept of the record-breaking boat has evolved. It features an extremely light 100 feet long monohull weighting only 18 tons. A superslender hull, almost triangular in plan view and featuring a long and sharp wave-piercing bow has an extremely low resistance and will cut through waves without pitching, slamming or slowing down.
High speed would come as result of efficiency and low resistance, not just row power. A canting keel on 18 feet long strut will provide enough stability to carry a generous sail plan on a 120 feet carbon fiber mast. Very important for this boat’s performance, is deck design and layout. Since at high speed deck frequently gets submerged, its shape should be optimized to reduce resistance and provide the best protection for the crew.
At this point this is just an early design concept. Before it becomes a real boat a huge amount of design work has to be performed. A team of world leading designers working on this project will include specialists with expertise in offshore racing yachts like Volvo 70 and Open 60, multihull and powerboat designers, along with hydrodynamics and structural engineers.
Going 'Green'
A high profile PlanetSolar project is currently underway aimed at circumnavigating the globe on a 100 feet vessel powered by solar panels in order to demonstrate the possibilities of clean energy. It’s quite a noble goal, but let’s not forget that people have been using the clean energy of wind for Millennia, and with great results.
Our SpeedDream project will remind the world that sailboats are, in fact, the ultimate clean, no emission vessels, infinitely more efficient than solar powered ones. The 450sq. meter area of solar panels that powers PlanetSolar could generate 90kW of power (126hp). Sails of roughly the same area will provide SpeedDream with the equivalent of 3000hp and propel her through the ocean at 50 knots. We hope that our project will highlight the fact that sailboat are the most efficient, by far the cleanest, and very nearly the fastest vessels on the planet.
Technical Data:
Overall length -100ft. Waterline length -100ft. Maximum beam -20ft. Waterline beam -10ft. Displacement 18 ton Ballast 9 ton Sail Area (main + genoa) – 480 sq.m Sail Area downwind – 1100 sq.m
Technical Aspects
The performance potential of the SpeedDream boat could be best demonstrated by comparison to the Volvo 70 – today’s fastest monohull. A typical Volvo70 has Displacement/Length ratio D/L=40 and Length/Beam ratio L/B=6. In relative terms SpeedDream is much lighter and longer with an amazing D/L=17 (!) and L/B=10.
This means that her resistance at high speeds will be significantly lower, yet she will be twice as stable as the Volvo 70, enabling her to carry a much more powerful rig. Unlike the Volvo70 that has to perform well in a wide variety of conditions – light and heavy winds, upwind and downwind sailing – the SpeedDream performance optimization will be focused on the narrow band of wind speed (moderate to heavy) and apparent wind (close reach, beam reach and occasionally, broad reach).
Boat will always sail with a constant heel angle (around 15-20 degrees) and her hull, appendages and sails will be designed accordingly. Preliminary estimates show SpeedDream capable of reaching top speed in excess of 55 knots and maintaining 40-45 knots for extended periods of time.
From Dream to Reality
The entire project form designing the boat, building, testing and optimizing her to achieve all objectives in a series of trans-Atlantic crossings should take between 30 and 36 months. After this boat could be further used for more high visibility events like the record globe circumnavigation, participating in famous ocean races like TransPac, Bermuda Race, Sydney to Hobart, Fastnet Race, etc, and in demonstrations and shows worldwide.
With proper marketing, SpeedDream should become a major media event, bringing invaluable return on investment necessary to finance it. Funding for the project could be provided by corporate sponsorship, or it could be backed by a discriminating sailor or group of sailors who have ambition, desire and financial means to participate in this extraordinary venture and to own the fastest and most advanced yacht on the planet.
In 1985 British entrepreneur Richard Branson used a similar project as a promotional tool to win over business and clients. In order to gain maximum publicity his new airline, Virgin Atlantic, he set out to establish a new speed record of crossing Atlantic on a powerboat. Not only the super fast vessel called Virgin Atlantic Challenger helped generate enough publicity to successfully launch his airline. It also propelled Richard Branson into celebrity stardom, making him a best-known modern adventurer.
Our project promises same benefits for those brave and ambitious individuals and companies who will become our partners in bringing SpeedDream to reality.
The two near sister Reichel/Pugh designs Alan Brierty'sLimit and Stephen Ainsworth'sLoki, finished first and second, just one point apart, in the Rolex Trophy Rating Series regatta, the major warm-up for the Rolex Sydney Hobart race which was to start on Saturday, December 26. The close competition between these year-old, well-settled, professionally campaigned yachts, established them as among the top contenders for the Hobart race's major prize, the Tattersall's Cup for the overall winner on IRC handicap.
Both are Sydney-based, from the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race's host club, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. Limit is 63ft in length overall, Loki is 62ft, by virtue of a more plumb bow profile. Limit's crew included Volvo race and America's Cup veterans Ian ‘Barney’ Walker as principal helmsman and Rodney Keenan as tactician. Loki had Irish-born international sailor Gordon Maguire as sailing master. Maguire, who lives in Sydney, has sailed in 15 Hobart races.
The Rolex Trophy Rating Series, over four days of racing, tested boats and crews in broad spectrum of conditions. The first two days of short windward-leeward course racing, were gear busting and body bruising, with winds of 25-28 knots and rough, confused seas off the Sydney coastline. The small fleet of grand-prix racers contesting the rating series were joined for the last two days by a fleet of 26 more yachts, ranging in size from the maxis Alfa Romeo (Neville Crichton) and Investec Loyal (Sean Langman) down to 30-footers, in the Rolex Trophy Passage Series of two races over 27nm and 19nm offshore courses.
Also emerging with Tattersall's Cup-winning prospects from this mix were the Judel/Vrolijk TP 52 Shogun (Rob Hanna), which placed third in the Rolex Rating Series and the three place-getters in the Rolex Trophy Passage Series: Geoff Ross' Reichel/Pugh 55 Yendys beat the UK-based Judel/Vrolijk 72 Ran (Niklas Zennstrom), with veteran Sydney racer Syd Fischer's Farr designed TP52 Ragamuffin in third.
Neville Crichton's Reichel/Pugh 100, Alfa Romeo won the first race of the passage series by more than 12 minutes on corrected time. As the maxis can do in the Rolex Sydney Hobart, Alfa Romeo got a huge jump on the smaller boats in a changing light air wind pattern. She reached all the way on one leg to the seaward mark and back before the wind shifted from west to south-southeast, giving the rest of the fleet a much slower dead downwind ride back to the harbour. Alfa Romeo did not compete in the second passage race, preferring to spend the time on sail evaluation and crew training.
In the Rolex Rating Series, Limit and Loki, went into the last race tied on equal points. Limit, badly beaten the previous day after a crew error jammed the furling system on its Code Zero reacher, made no mistakes this time. ‘We went out an hour and a half early at the owner's orders and we trained, and we trained until we got it right and we fixed the problem,’ said principal helmsman Walker.
Limit had a good start and led Loki, who was boxed in by a bunch of boats congregated at the committee boat end of the starting line, on the outward leg to the seaward mark, and rounded seven minutes ahead. Loki, gained on the light-air run back to Sydney Harbour to finish just over two minutes behind Limit. They finished second and third on corrected time behind Michael Hiatt's Farr 55 Living Doll, sailing the perfect race with UK-based Australian Volvo Ocean racer, Andrew Cape, navigating.
Despite the last-race win and a third in the first race, Living Doll, another Tattersall's Cup prospect, did not make the podium - retirements due to sail mishaps from two races on the rugged first two days of the Rolex Rating Series ruined her chances.
Limit's owner Alan Brierty, puffing a cigar as he sat on the rail said after the last race: ‘A little bit nerve wracking. We got a good start and it's the old story when you get in front you've got to stay in front. Barney was sensational’. Barney Walker was pleased with the way Limit's campaign came together, sharpened by the boat-on-boat competition with Loki. ‘When you've got two boats that are so close you really get the best out of them, and having that second yacht there really keeps you honest,’ he said.
Loki's owner Stephen Ainsworth has a similar perspective: ‘We enjoy racing against each other because it's closely contested and we've learned to sail our boat better by racing against them.’
Third-place Rolex Rating Series skipper Rob Hanna, from the strong Victorian offshore fleet, was competing on his Judel/Vrolijk TP52 Shogun formerly Wot Now, a boat he had only purchased last month. But Shogun, built by Hakes Marine in New Zealand, had a good track record in the upcoming Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, finishing third overall in IRC in the 2008 edition.His crew, including Sydneysiders tactician Steve McConaghy and helmsman Sean Kirkjian, added to Hanna's Victorian regulars, had not raced the boat before the opening day of the Rolex Rating Series. ‘The boat's fantastic and this has been a great learning curve so far,’ said Hanna.
December 24, 2009
The low pressure system remnant of a tropical cyclone crossing the continent was setting up a tricky wind pattern for the Rolex Sydney Hobart race, especially for its Boxing Day start. While the scenario was changing, pockets of light breeze to be negotiated between two major wind systems looked to have removed the prospects of a record-breaking run by one of the hi-tech collection of maxi yachts in the fleet. Barry Hanstrum, senior forecaster for the NSW Bureau of Meteorology, predicted that the fleet of 100 boats would probably start in a light to moderate southerly, which would mean a spectacular spinnaker start in Sydney Harbour, then a beat to windward in 10-20 knots as the fleet reaches the open sea.
While the wind would back to the east - northeast offshore, a low pressure trough could create lighter air inshore. A west to southwest change on Sunday night in the Bass Strait of 20-30 knots would continue into Monday, December 28. YendysWill Oxley, one of the fleet's top navigators with 11 Hobart races on his CV, saw the situation on the first day as even trickier. ‘It looks quite important to stay in the east; in the west you are likely to run out of breeze earlier. The big boats will get into the nor'easterly breeze, clear of the trough, first.’
But Oxley believed the big boats will run out of breeze and ‘park’ in the lee of the Tasmanian coast. ‘I think the race is going to be won or lost off the Tasmanian coast with the transitioning of that light wind area into the new breeze that comes on the 28th.’ Against the forecast and form shown in the Rolex Rating warm-up regattas, the two well-prepared, settled, Reichel/Pugh 100s Wild Oats XI (Bob Oatley) and Alfa Romeo (Neville Crichton) looked like leading the charge of the seven maxis towards the line honours finishing gun on Battery Point, Hobart. The forecast, with its mix of light weather, would not suit the Farr 100 ICAP Leopard, a great upwind performer, owned by Brit, Mike Slade (pictured right). ‘We'd like strong upwind for the first 12 hours and then when you look down to Gabo Island going into Bass Strait, there's pockets there of intense weakness and you could sit there for five hours,’ said Slade. ‘I've done that in this race in the 1990's and the boys that had gone offshore in a different breeze came in six hours ahead of us.’
Top prospects for the race's major prize, the Tattersall's Cup for the overall winner on IRC handicap, were to be found in IRC division one, the 50 to 63 footers. Among these were the TP52s, including 2008-9 Tattersall's Cup winner Quest (Bob Steel), Ragamuffin (Syd Fischer), Cougar II (Alan Whiteley), all Farr designs. Others include the Reichel/Pugh near sisterships Loki (Stephen Ainsworth), R/P63 and Limit (Alan Brierty), R/P62; Farr 55 Living Doll (Michael Hiatt); R/P55 Yendys (Geoff Ross) and the UK-based Judel/Vrolijk 72, Ran (Niklas Zennstrom), the overall winner of last year's Rolex Fastnet Race.
Ran's tactician Adrian Stead, who has sailed in two Rolex Sydney Hobart Races, said of the official race forecast, ‘We knew it was going to be difficult getting out and away from Sydney depending on where the trough lines up.’ He said the weather was still evolving. ‘It's not a straight-forward race, so that means we've got to think a lot. We're going to see a range of conditions, which is good because there are a lot of boats here that are probably fast in one condition, slow in others. So I think it could be a well-balanced race.’
Sole American entry is Rapture, another 100-footer, a Farr-designed performance cruiser, owned by Brook Lenfest and crewed by a mix of international and Australian sailors. Since launching in 2007, she has raced and cruised more than 24,000 miles on a world circumnavigation. In Sydney, her crew has stripped out much of the cruising gear to reduce weight. Lenfest, who competed in the 2002 RSH in his previous yacht, a Swan 86, enjoys the challenge of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race. ‘We have had a lot of races around the world sailed in lighter winds that are very predictable,’ he said. ‘We like the unpredictability of the Hobart race and we like a lot of wind.’
Back for the second successive year was 41-Sud, an Archambault 40 from New Caledonia, skippered by Jean-Luc Esplaas, who with the Young 11 Noumea, survived the 1998 Sydney Hobart Race storm to place third in their division. Last year by contrast, 41-Sud slowed for 11 hours in calms off the Tasmanian coast to place seventh in division.
Also back for more after suffering in those calms last year was Pinta-M, a 1972 vintage aluminium Sparkman & Stephens 41, owned and skippered by Atse Blei from the Netherlands, which has raced successfully in North Sea events and finished fifth overall in IRC on corrected time in the 2005 Rolex Fastnet Race. Pinta-M placed third in their division last year after being becalmed for a frustrating hour, only three miles from the finish. Blei decided to leave the boat in Australia to contest the latest race, hoping for the robust upwind conditions that she enjoys most.
The Spanish entry Charisma, owned by banker Alejandro Perez Calzada from Barcelona, is on an around-the-world cruising mission with racing in major events along the way. This is another S&S IOR boat from the 1970's, which under original owner JessePhillips raced for the USA in the Admiral's Cup international teams series in 1973 and 1975. Calzada bought the sturdy aluminium-hulled Charisma from a Seattle owner in 2003, restored her to better than new condition, fitted a new carbon mast and rig and began his global racing program with the 2007 Rolex Fastnet Race. She sailed the Newport Bermuda Race in 2008 and last year won her division in the Los Angeles-Honolulu Transpac Race.
December 26, 2009
Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeo took round one of the battle of the maxis at the head of the 2009 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race with smart downwind tactics in Sydney Harbour.
After a two nautical-mile spinnaker run from the start off Shark Island, before a 10-knot south-southwesterly breeze, Alfa Romeo rounded the first clearing mark at Sydney Heads 30 seconds ahead of her near-sister Reichel/Pugh 100 design Wild Oats XI (BobOatley), with another 20 seconds to the British Farr 100-footer ICAP Leopard (Mike Slade). These three strongly sailed, professionally managed maxis were favoured to lead the fleet into Hobart, 628n miles from the start. Manoeuvring these giants for a downwind start among the smaller boats in the 100-boat fleet was challenging. With a minute to go, Alfa Romeo was caught ahead of the line and had to re-round to start on the gun.
Wild Oats XI, with speed and a smart spinnaker set, showed out as the early leader from a clear start near the middle of the long starting line spanning nearly the width of the harbour, followed closely by ICAP Leopard. Alfa Romeo, starting nearer to the line's pin end, sharpened up with pace to gain an overlap to leeward on Leopard. Off Watsons Bay on the harbour's eastern shore, Alfa gybed away first on a patch of good pressure breeze; Wild Oats XI and Leopard followed. But as Alfa Romeo gybed again and came back at a faster angle on starboard gybe, she cleared them both to round the mark between the Heads clear ahead. From there Alfa comfortably held her lead in a procession over the one nautical mile reach to the second clearing mark, another mile to seaward.
As the fleet then sheeted on to head south, another procession developed. Starboard tack on about 155 degrees was by far the gaining leg towards not only Hobart, but the favourable flow of the Eastern Australian current, so tacking away on to port and heading inshore was not an option for the boats behind Alfa. Next to round the seaward mark was another 100 ft maxi, Investec Loyal (Sean Langman), followed by the UK Judel/Vrolijk 72 Ran (Niklas Zennstrom), which was one of the favourites to take the race's major prize, the Tattersall's Cup, for the overall winner on IRC corrected time. She was followed by Lahana (Peter Millard/John Horan), the Brett Bakewell-White 98, ex-Konica Minolta; Rapture, Brook Lenfest's 100ft Farr performance cruiser from the USA; Limit, the Reichel/Pugh 62 (Alan Brierty); Ludde Ingvall's Simonis Voogd 90 YuuZoo, which took line honours in 2004; the R/P 63 Loki (Stephen Ainsworth); R/P 55 Yendys (Geoff Ross) and the Farr 55 Living Doll (Michael Hiatt).
Grant Wharington's Jones 98 Etihad Stadium (ex-Wild Thing) retired with rig problems soon after starting. It was a near-miracle that Etihad Stadium even made the start after a two-week around-the-clock effort by crew members, mast-makers, and riggers to replace the mast broken on the delivery voyage from Melbourne. The mast, a rebuild of a spare acquired from Neville Crichton, had to be cut in two for air-freighting from France to Sydney and re-rigged just in time for Etihad Stadium to get to the start line without time for any testing under sail.
Wharington explained that ten minutes before the start, the crew discovered that the finely-tuned mast could not be kept in column. Misalignment of the runner blocks from the old rig meant that the runner tension of up to 15 tons could not be maintained. ‘It was an incredibly tight set of circumstances and we needed everything to fall into place with 100 per cent agreement on everything to go to Hobart,’ Wharington said. ‘It's an amazing feat to get to where we got, obviously disappointing just to miss out by the last one or two percent. I am enormously disappointed obviously and for my team more than anything because we've had probably 50 people working on this for the past two weeks and an enormous amount of input from every single person.’
Another sad retirement was the Inglis 39 She's the Culprit (Todd Leary) from Hobart, seriously holed on the long journey home in a collision with another competitor (as yet unidentified) soon after the start. Un-typically for Sydney at this time of year, Boxing Day was wet and cold, which greatly reduced the size of the spectator fleet. Though with this came the benefit of also reducing the crush of power-boaters that often disrupt the fleet with their wakes once past the outer sea mark, which is beyond the spectator control areas inside the harbour.
Five hours after the start, with the sou'-wester freshening to 25 knots and a difficult short chop developing offshore, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's satellite yacht tracker system showed Alfa Romeo still leading by a mile from Wild Oats XI, which was just 0.2nm ahead of ICAP Leopard. Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeo remained in control of her nearest maxi opponents through a changing wind pattern overnight and into the second day of the 2009 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.
Alfa's afterguard, including tactician Michael Coxon and navigator Tom Addis, kept the yacht perfectly positioned at the head of the fleet to be first into the anticipated shift in wind direction from south-southwest experienced from the start to southeast off the south coast of New South Wales. Alfa Romeo tacked on the shift at about 2145 on the previous night to converge back towards the coast on port after the long gaining starboard tack the fleet followed after clearing Sydney Harbour from the 1300 start. At 0800, 19 hours into the race, the Reichel/Pugh 100 was 24 nautical miles northeast of Green Cape, 2 miles ahead of Mike Slade's Farr 100 ICAP Leopard, which was three or four miles to seaward, with another 2nm to Bob Oatley'sWild Oats XI,. Alfa had covered 193nm of the 628nm course and was doing 10.8 knots. All three were close to the shortest-distance rhumb line between Sydney and Tasman Island and on course for the island, but were starting to slow as the wind dropped from its 25 knot peak of the previous evening to 10-12 knots and less in the morning.
Critical for all boats will be traversing the light airs and calms expected today in the Bass Strait, between the Australian mainland and Tasmania, before a forecast 20-30 knot westerly change that evening. Wild Oats XI navigator Ian Burns said: ‘The wind is pretty light now, between 6-10 knots and quite variable. The seas are flatter - it was a little rough at times last night. We've had quite a few wind shifts and some big lulls. At one stage the guys behind us [Ran and Lahana] ran almost up to us. We exchanged some tacks as the southeast-southwester fought it out but it has been hanging in the southeast for some time now. Some forecasts are calling for no wind at all across half of Bass Strait. The fact that we will head butt into the light stuff gives us a bit of a chance. Leopard is doing a great job for a big boat in the lighter wind, but the race hasn't really started yet; that will be today.’
The overall handicap leader on IRC corrected time at that time, was Michael Hiatt's Farr 55 Living Doll over the UK-based Judel/Vrolijk 72 Ran (Niklas Zennstrom), followed by the Jones-modified Volvo 70 Ichi Ban (Matt Allen).
One of the handicap favourites, Alan Brierty’s Reichel/Pugh 62 Limit, was among the retirements during the previous night due to problems with the halyard locks.
That brought the number of retired yachts to four in the 100-boat fleet that started yesterday from Sydney.
December 27, 2009
The fleet leaders stalled and stopped in calms off the far south coast of New South Wales. The smaller boats came up on a developing coastal sea breeze while the maxi leaders and 50-60-footers were stuck inshore on the morning of the 27th, trying to struggle around Green Cape and Gabo Island at the entrance to Bass Strait. Alfa Romeo, which had led the race from Sydney Heads, was first of the three leading maxis to struggle into new pressure to pass Green Cape and sail to the west of the rhumb line (straight distance) course from Sydney to Tasman Island. The big boat took off on a two-sail reach in a freshening east-northeaster and by 1800 was well into Bass Strait, 58 nautical miles south of Gabo Island with 330nm to go to the finish.
The three leading maxis were achieving extraordinary speeds in only 10-12 knots of breeze and on course for Tasman Island, the last major rounding landmark on the 628nm course. Alfa Romeo, making 16.7 knots, was 16nm ahead of ICAP Leopard, with Wild Oats XI, another 2nm behind Leopard and closing the distance. Wild Oats XI was making 16.7 kn to Leopard's 16.2kn.
While these are very respectable speeds, the weather forecasting models were in agreement that were to be more calms and light patches ahead. Respected yachting forecaster Roger Badham, who provided pre-race weather predictions to many top boats in the fleet, said : ‘The big guys will have some running in Bass Strait this afternoon, but there are still a lot of potholes between that and the finish. Anyone of the three could finish first.' One certainty was that Wild Oats XI's race record, set at one day, 18hrs, 40mins, and 10secs in 2006, was in no danger. Given the calculations of speeds so far, Alfa would be expected to finish at 2030 Monday night, with Leopard and Wild Oats XI finishing after midnight.
But a westerly change turning moderate southwesterly was predicted for Tasmanian waters the following day and that could still create those potholes of calm and light patches off the east coast under the wind shadow of Tasmanian's high interior. From Alfa Romeo, Murray Spence reported, as she picked up the light nor'easter, ‘We are now enjoying the sunshine; not the usual way to cross Bass Strait.’ He said the crew was driving the boat hard today, although they were keen to get some rest after reefing most of the night had meant ‘intense work from all on board’. Wild Oats XI skipper Mark Richards (pictured at right) said 'Oats' had been within three or four miles of Alfa Romeo in the morning calm before Alfa accelerated out of sight in the first of the new breeze. ‘There's always the element of luck in these races and right now it has gone his (Alfa's) way and not our way. But there's a long way to go, so anything can happen yet,’ said Richards. He said the attitude on the boat remained very positive. ‘We have a fantastic bunch of guys on board here; we won't give up 'til the death.’ Adrian Stead, tactician on the British Jude/Vrolijk 72 Ran, was upbeat even though the light conditions are not expected to suit this powerful boat. ‘We are just past Green Cape and the breeze is filling back in. We have done okay with the current but had a light morning. It's nice to still see the maxis, but we are conscious of boats behind using the sea breeze this afternoon.’
The concertina effect completely scrambled the IRC corrected time calculations. The new IRC overall leader was reckoned to be NoelCornish's Sydney 47 Jude, crewed by a group of friends from the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. The Sydney 38, Mondo, had retired earlier in the day with rigging problems and was heading to Eden, bringing the number of retired yachts to five, with 95 yachts still racing.
December 27, 2009
The maxis leading the Rolex Sydney Harbour race fleet cleared a barrier of light air and calm in Bass Strait in the early hours of the morning of the 27th to reach away on a new westerly flow at speeds of up to 20 knots. Race leader Alfa Romeo, was first to clear the calm-creating ridge of high pressure to the north of Tasmania and opened a healthy lead of 30 nautical miles on her nearest maxi opponent for line honours, Mike Slade's Farr 100, ICAP Leopard. At 0700 Alfa was 22nm east of St Helens on Tasmania's northeast coast, doing 14 knots and on course for Tasman Island, 41nm from the finish. She had 150 miles to sail and was expected to finish in the early evening. ICAP Leopard, making 16.7 knots, was still three miles ahead of the race record holder Wild Oats XI.
Alfa Romeo was not only on track for the line honours win; computer calculations had her leading the race for the Tattersall's Cup, the race's major prize for the overall winner on IRC handicaps. Alfa, Leopard and Oats had gained a huge jump on the rest of the fleet. The fourth boat, Sean Langman's Elliott 100 maxi Investec Loyal, was 80nm behind Wild Oats XI, 51nm east of Flinders Island making 9.2 knots; much slower than the leading trio.
Tom Addis, Alfa's navigator, said: ‘We got the ridge pretty well. It's always stressful going through transitions like that but we did as much homework as we could and it all went to plan. Our aim was to be first boat out and cross (the ridge) at the narrowest point. We made big gains on the way out.’Ian Burns, co-navigator of Wild Oats XI, said: ‘We managed to cross the ridge as it was spreading up. We drove west to get around it, as did Alfa and Leopard; we never slowed more than six or seven knots. The guys behind us got swallowed and are still there. We were last through the gate. Alfa gets richer and richer, looking like a handicap winner, too. It was a very calm night, pretty warm with a nice moon. And now new breeze is coming in quite nicely from the Banks Strait '(northeast of Tasmania).
Burns warned that the leaders faced one more difficult wind situation in the lee of Tasmania. Tasmania's high interior splits westerly flow into a nor'wester around the north of the island and a sou'wester around the south. ‘We have one more transition to go, when the northwesterly meets the southwesterly,’ said Burns. ‘But Alfa hasn't made a missed step yet and they are unlikely to. So far, the race has favoured the leaders and in all probability will continue to do so.’
December 28, 2009
Rolex Sydney Hobart Race leader Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeo leading over the final miles to the finish of the 628 nautical mile classic and with a healthy 17nm advantage over nearest rival Wild Oats XI faced a final hurdle -- a strong sou'-wester that would give his weary crew a final hard upwind workout. Through another day of stop-start sailing, Alfa retained the race lead she has held since clearing Sydney Heads. Wild Oats XI, the near sister Reichel/Pugh 100ft maxi, passed Mike Slade'sICAP Leopard and gained on Alfa, which had led her by up to 30 miles throughout the morning. The three supermaxis had opened a huge 80nm gap on the remainder of the fleet by emerging first from calms and light air created by a high pressure ridge in Bass Strait, then ran into more frustrating light patches off the east coast of Tasmania.
Leopard, the heaviest boat of the three, suffered most, down to just over a knot of boat speed at noon while Alfa and Oats also lost time ‘parking’ in the soft spots. Wild Oats XI passed Leopard and gained on Alfa to be 13nm behind off Maria Island, 70nm from the finish, with both yachts under spinnakers and traveling at about 14 knots on a nor'-wester that swung northeast under the influence of coastal sea breezes. But the with the southwest change looming, the race for line honours was not over, Crichton warned. ‘We still have a lot of racing to do because we are 30 miles from Tasman Island, with another 40 miles into the Derwent and the forecast is for 20-30 knots on the nose, so anything can happen.It's difficult because we are going to run into the southerly first and they are still under spinnaker. I guess we will have to wait until we get into the sou'-wester and see where they are, but we will certainly cover wherever possible.’
Australia's most respected yachting forecaster Roger Badham saw another hurdle in the wind pattern: a curtain of total calm descending on the Derwent River over the last 11nm to the finish after 2100-2200 hrs. Wild Oats XI tactician Iain Murray said there were still opportunities to catch Alfa after rounding Tasman Island. ‘It's a difficult part of the day; sailing into the night. We're in a north-easter; we know there is a sou'-wester around the corner, there will be a transition zone. It's been a very challenging race, keeping the boat going the whole time, obviously doing a lot of tacking and gybing, changing sails. It keeps you right on your toes.’ At 1800, Alfa was only 5nm from Tasman Island, 17nm ahead of Oats and making 12.4 knots to Oats' 11.9 kn with Leopard another six miles behind.
The next-sized group of boats, the 50-70 footers, got going again through the day after clearing the Bass Strait doldrums, to make fast progress in the nor'wester which freshened to 15-20kn off Flinders Island and 20-25kn off Eddystone Point at the north-eastern extremity of Tasmania. On the final miles of the Bass Strait crossing they reached at speeds of 15-17kn under reaching headsails and staysails. One of them, the British Judel/Vrolijk 72 Ran (Niklas Zennstrom), jumped to the top of the overall IRC handicap calculations at 1800, followed by Yendys, Geoff Ross' Reichel/Pugh 55, the TP52 Shogun (Rob Hanna), Reichel/Pugh 63 Loki (Stephen Ainsworth) and Farr 55 Living Doll(Michael Hiatt).
Alfa Romeo, which until this morning had led the corrected time calculations, was back in 16th place. But this group still had to traverse the light patches along the Tasmanian coast. For much of the day, the smaller boats in the back end of the fleet remained stuck in the Bass Strait doldrums or in light southerly headwinds. In the afternoon Love & War, the 1970s vintage Sparkman & Stephens 47 that won the Tattersall's Cup IRC overall in the 2006 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race in strong upwind conditions, was doing only 3.8kn and was calculated to be 72nd on overall IRC corrected time.
Another 1970s S&S design, the 41-footer Pinta-M (Atse Blei) from the Netherlands, was down to 2.7kn and 54th overall on IRC.
December 28, 2009
After sailing a near perfect tactical race in extremely difficult conditions, with extremes from a testing 25-knot southerly, with a bumpy seaway through the first night, to a calm in the notoriously rough and windy Bass Strait, Neville Crichton'sAlfa Romeo was first to finish in the 2009 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, with an elapsed time of two days, 9hrs, 2mins, 10secs for the 628nm course. The line honours win, with a Reichel-Pugh designed canting keel 100-footer, was Sydney-based New Zealander Crichton's second in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race. His previous win, in 2002, was with his first Alfa Romeo maxi, a water-ballasted Reichel/Pugh 90.
Alfa, with good speed and crew work, as well as tactics, led from the start, holding off all challenges from her arch-rival Bob Oatley's R/P 100 Wild Oats XI, a very similar design from the same builder, McConaghy Boats in Sydney, launched only a few months apart in 2005, and Mike Slade's (UK) Farr 100, ICAP Leopard.Wild Oats XI won their first line honours battle with Alfa in the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race by an hour and 16 minutes. Crichton then took Alfa Romeo to the northern hemisphere for the Mediterranean regattas in 2006 and 2007 where Alfa and Oats swapped line honours wins until Wild Oats XI broke her mast in the 2007 Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in Porto Cervo and was shipped back to Australia. This year's Rolex Sydney Hobart was their first encounter since in a major offshore race.
Crichton's fears of slowing in a southwest headwind in calms in the River Derwent over the last 11 nautical miles to the finish were unfounded. She stalled only once in a light patch and finally steamed home to get the finishing gun at Battery Point just after 2200, with Wild Oats XI 17nm behind (Wild Oats eventually finished just over two hours later.) A crowd of several hundred people crowded the Constitution Wharf marina to watch the finish and cheer Alfa in to the dock. Asked, as Alfa Romeo berthed, how he was feeling, Crichton said: ‘It's fantastic and the welcome here in Tasmania is unbelievable.’
He praised his crew, half of them New Zealanders and half Australian: ‘The 22 guys I have are the best crew in the world. The two days coming down the coast was hard work and it was good; the boys did a helluva job on the boat and it was very, very close racing.’ Was the lack of wind frustrating? ‘Oh no, we were very busy the whole race.’ Did he see the win as sweet revenge for the 2005 defeat by Wild Oats XI? ‘Every win is a good win. It has taken me four years to come back and do it, so it was even nicer.’ He added, ‘Winning the Rolex Sydney Hobart is the ultimate in ocean racing.’
Crichton was presented with a Rolex Yacht-Master timepiece and the JH Illingworth trophy for his line honours win. The victory-pumped Crichton showed his mischievous sense of humour at the dockside presentation. MC Steve Barker asked Crichton if he had any message for the skippers of Leopard and Wild Oats, who had challenged a couple of times. He raised a big laugh with the answer and a gesture toward the River Derwent: ‘Where ARE they?’
At 0015, ICAP Leopard was 35.6nm from the finish making 8.6 kn. There were 93 yachts still to finish from a fleet of 100 starters, with five retired.
December 29, 2009
The 2009 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race line honours podium filled on the morning of the 29th when Wild Oats XI and ICAP Leopard finished in second and third positions. Wild Oats XI finished at five minutes after midnight, two hours and three minutes behind AlfaRomeo. Leopard, a Farr 100, finished at 0545, five hours and 40 minutes behind Wild Oats XI. Next to finish, at 0734, was another 100ft maxi, the Greg Elliott-designed Investec Loyal (Sean Langman), which previously raced for New Zealand owners as Maximus.
Fifth home, at 0927, was Niklas Zennstrom'sRan from the UK, a Judel/Volijk-designed 72-footer that was overall handicap winner in the 2009 Rolex Fastnet Race. Ran had a chance of winning the race's major trophy, the Tattersall's Cup, for the first yacht on IRC corrected time. She had certainly beaten Alfa Romeo, which led the IRC overall standings for a time yesterday, denying Crichton the rare handicap/line honours double.
Wild Oats'Mark Richards was gracious in defeat. ‘It was a tactical race and we never got a look in really,’Richards said. ‘They had a little edge on us on the first night and the next morning we were in a big parking lot together. They got out first and put 30 miles on us before we knew what had happened.’ Mike Slade had an historical perspective of the close three-way battle of the maxis: ‘When Napoleon turned up at Waterloo he knew he was in for a bad day, he had a bad day at the office didn't he? I've been a bit like that. It was a fantastic race and well done Alfa, bloody marvellous.’
Slade said that thay (Leopard) had gambled by sailing farther offshore than Alfa and Oats down the east coast of Australia rather than sailing in Alfa's wake. ‘We went offshore because there was no point in covering Alfa's tracks; she had about 20 miles on us and we just got locked out. We had about four shut downs and it was as frustrating as hell. We sat there for hours, watching them go away. That cost us. We got punished.’ Rounding Tasman Island was the worst Slade had experienced. ‘There was no wind and appalling seas; really nasty because it's a lee shore, you've got no steerage because there's no wind, but the seas were huge and that took us a couple of hours. Alfa and Oats had already gone round. The rich get rich and the poor get poorer, that's what the game's all about. So it was a shocker but we loved every minute of it. We will be back to do another one I think - the boat's a glutton for punishment.’
Ran, after performing well in the fresh upwind work on the first night, parked in calms before zooming back into handicap contention with a blistering run on the new nor'-west breeze off Flinders Island. Ran's owner/skipper Niklas Zennstrom said: ‘The race at times was frustrating, we got parked up. Yesterday afternoon we had a fantastic run, we were reaching at up to 24 knots of boat speed, averaging 18 and 19 knots. It was excellent sailing. This morning was also very good; last night we had a few stops and goes. But we are happy with how the boat performed on corrected time and we will have to wait and see how the other boats are going on handicap. At times it looked really, really bad for us and really good for the small boats, but that's how it is. All you can do is sail as good as you can and avoid making as many mistakes as possible. I don't think we made too many mistakes.’
Ran's tactician Adrian Stead said that after riding the nor'-wester fast, Ran hit a light spot last evening, 20 miles northeast of Maria Island. ‘We got through that and sailed the last bit up here pretty well, very conscious that 10:20 was our deadline to beat Alfa,’ he said.
With six yachts finished, and five yachts retired, there were 89 yachts still racing.
December 30, 2009
The smallest boat in the fleet, Zephyr Hamilton Elevators, was as of the evening of the 30th, still well in the running to win the IRC overall handicap division of the 2009 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race. Zephyr is a Sea Nymph 33 co-owned by James Connell and Alex Braddon from the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. She won division E in the 2007 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race. The Sea Nymph 33 design is extremely fast downwind and is well-suited to the strong northerly wind prevailing on the lower Tasmanian east coast, forecast to reach 20-30 knots by evening.
The final 40 nautical miles of the 628nm course, with the northerly, forecast to blow at 15-25 knots with gusts to 30 knots, which will put Zephyr on the wind, and will certainly slow and may have ended her chances of winning the Tattersall's Cup for IRC overall handicap. At 1550, Zephyr had 46 miles to go, and was doing 9.7 knots for an estimated finish at 2311, well inside the time she needed to take first place (0131 on Dec 31).
Second and third on corrected time standings were two of Beneteau's new First 40s, which have already finished: Two True (AndrewSaies) from the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia and Wicked (Mike Welsh) from Sandringham Yacht Club. The Farr-designed First 40 is a replacement for the successful Beneteau 40.7. A Beneteau 40.7, First National Real Estate skippered by Michael Spies, was the overall handicap winner of the 2003 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race.
Two True, in second spot, still had to face the protest by the Tasmanian Inglis 39, She's the Culprit (Todd Leary), which was badly damaged after the race start in a jam of boats converging on the first rounding mark at Sydney Heads and had to retire. With some of the boats named in the protest documents still racing, the International Jury had deferred the protest until Dec 31.
Zephyr signaled by radio to the race committee that she would also lodge protests against three boats, without specifying who they were, after finishing. That protest may have also arisen from the crush of boats in the 100-boat fleet converging to leave Sydney Harbour.
Two Trueand Wicked finished fast under spinnakers before a moderate southeasterly sea breeze early in the afternoon, with TwoTrue crossing 22 minutes ahead of Wicked.
Saies said: ‘It was a very difficult and frustrating race. Having had a couple of light patches on the way down, we thought we were through it and then we got a third one, 25 miles from Tasman Light last night; around 3:00am we were flapping around for three hours.’ Tactician Brett Young said Two True had followed a strategy of always being well east of the rhumbline and had received a favourable push from the current in two major eddies.
‘Our routing was always east of the rhumbline,’ said Young. ‘It's the first time I've ever done that. And we had really good competition from Wicked. They sailed hard, but we got through them. We really stuck to our game plan, even with the weather not being anything like what it was originally forecast. We only came into Tasmania when we could lay Tasman Island.’ Young said the First 40 had performed well in the bumpy seaway following the southerly front. ‘Last night was a tough night, but that's when this boat comes into its own. In a seaway, it just goes faster.’
Mark Welsh, boat manager and tactician on Wicked for his owner-skipper father Mike Welsh, said: ‘We chose the design after a lot of searching around the world for one that would be very competitive in IRC racing and it looks like we might have chosen successfully.’
A third new First 40 was racing, Paca (Philippe Mengual) from the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. ‘So our race really depended on watching the other two boats,’ said Mark. ‘All credit to Two True, they sailed an absolutely sensational race. On the second night out, even though we were with them off Gabo Island, we couldn't hold them. They sailed very, very well that night, got through us and from there we were just playing catch-up and we couldn't catch them. They did a great job.’
The only IRC division decided at that stage, with all boats finished, is Division 0 for canting-keeled boats. The line honours winner Alfa Romeo (Neville Crichton), a Reichel Pugh100, won from the Cookson 50 Evolution Racing (Ray Roberts), with the modified Jones Volvo 70 Ichi Ban (Matt Allen) third.
With 48 yachts finished, and five yachts retired, there were 47 yachts still racing to the finish in Hobart.
December 31, 2009
Andy Saies'Two True survived a protest heard on the afternoon of New Years eve, to be confirmed as overall winner of the Tattersall's Cup, the major prize in the 2009 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race for the overall IRC handicap winner.
After a two-hour hearing, the International Jury dismissed the protest entered by the Inglis 39 She's the Culprit (Todd Leary), the Hobart yacht damaged in a crush of boats approaching the first rounding mark after the race start on Sydney Harbour.
Two True, one of the first new Beneteau First 40 stock production racer/cruiser to be imported into Australia, won IRC overall by 42 minutes from another new First 40, Wicked, (Mike Welsh) after a close race-long duel in which they followed a similar strategy - stay well east of the rhumbline.
Ian Mason's Sydney 38 Next, in third place, another 1hr 19min behind, was similarly pushed by close competition in the six-boat Sydney 38 fleet racing one-design, as well as on IRC handicap. Another Sydney 38, Swish (Steven Proud) from the strong Sydney fleet, was fourth and Tony Kirby's Jeppersen X-41 Patrice Six, fifth.
In sixth place was the 2009 Rolex Fastnet Race winner Ran (Niklas Zennstrom), from the UK.
Two True, from the Cruising Yacht Club of South Australia, is the first yacht from South Australia to win the Tattersall's Cup since Kevan Pearce's win with SAP Ausmaid in 2000. The South Australians continue to be strongly committed to the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, sailing 1000 nautical miles just to get to the start. Owner-skipper Saies said he was absolutely elated at the win after being in the surreal situation of not knowing the outcome until after the protest hearing. ‘Obviously we are very happy with the jury's decision. We believe we did everything in the circumstances to avoid significant damage to the other boat. We gave our intention to protest, we did a 720 (degree penalty turn), though the damage to the other boat was minor and superficial.’
‘I respect the decision of the skipper of She's the Culprit not to continue racing in those circumstances, but obviously we are very happy and delighted with the outcome.’ He thanked his crew, which raced the two prior Sydney Hobart Races on his previous boat True North, a Beneteau First 40. ‘The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race cannot be won without a great team, a great boat and an ounce of Sydney Hobart luck. Our team are fabulous guys. We have worked together for the past three years on my previous boat True North.’ Saies particularly thanked Brett Young, his team and boat manager. ‘Energetic, tireless work ethic, great understanding of the rules.’
He said the race was a physical endurance event over 628 miles. ‘The wind was in, the wind was out, we drifted, we went backwards, we lost internet access, we didn't know what was going on until the last few minutes. It was a classic Rolex Sydney Hobart event and we were in it up to our back teeth and it came our way in the end. Great boat, this new Beneteau it just jumps out of the water, jumped a bit too hard in the last day or so in those big short waves. It's a fast boat, we had belief that this boat was going to rate well and do okay in this event, if the weather conditions allowed a small boat event.’
‘We may be privileged enough to have a boat and a team that gets to this position as people have in the past. But in yacht racing to have everything going right in one event at the right time is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So it meant so much to get this right this time. So celebrations, back to normal, business as usual, great boat, great team looking forward to the next regatta in Melbourne, the next Sydney Hobart.’
The last boat to finish, Chris Dawe'sPolaris of Belmont (AUS/NSW) was due to cross the finish line at 0830pm that night.
January 1, 2010
On New Years Day 2010, owners and crews, friends and family, gathered on the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania lawn in warm sunshine for the presentation of trophies for the 2009 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. They saw the trophies more widely distributed than usual with the race's varying wind patterns suiting the smaller boats in all handicap divisions. During the race, the winds alternated between calms and light air to strong 25-35 knot headwinds and tailwinds. And there were opportunities to gain a push south in two major eddies of the East Australian Current, which extended into Bass Strait, between the Australian mainland and Tasmania, further than usual.
At different stages of the 628 nautical mile race, IRC overall handicap leaders varied throughout the fleet, between one of the biggest yachts, the Reichel/Pugh 100 maxi Alfa Romeo (Neville Crichton) and the smallest, Zephyr Hamilton Elevators (James Connell), a Sea Nymph 33. Zephyr was still poised to win at Tasman Island 40 miles from the finish until early morning calms in Storm Bay ended her chances. She finished seventh overall on IRC.
In the end, smaller production yachts topped the podium. Two of the new Farr-designed Beneteau First 40s, Two True(Andrew Saies) and Wicked (Mike Welsh) placed first and second. Third and fourth were two of the Murray, Burns & Dovell Sydney 38 one-designs, Next (Ian Mason/Jay Krehbiel), and Swish (Steven Proud).
These first four boats followed a similar strategy; heading well out to sea from the start, staying mainly east of the rhumb line and chasing the current eddies. And they pushed each other hard, racing one-design. The two Sydney 38s ended their 628nm match race with a gybing duel over the last 11 miles in the River Derwent. Swish crossed half a boat length in front to win the Sydney 38 One Design division ahead of Next, but placed fourth behind Next on IRC overall because she has a slightly higher IRC overall handicap for carrying a masthead spinnaker.
Next's skipper Ian Mason said: 'It was a very tough race. It was just match-racing for nearly 400 miles with Swish. We were never more than about 800 metres apart and then she beat us by five seconds.'
Two True also won the ORCi division, introduced into the race for the first time this year in response to a growing push among Australian owners for a more measurement-based, transparent rule than IRC. Ragamuffin's veteran skipper Syd Fischer, strongly behind the move towards ORCi was surprised and gratified that 33 boats in the 100-boat fleet, raced under ORCi as well as IRC. ‘I think it will be a great rule because it's fully measured, transparent and we don't have anyone's input into it other than the measurements,’ he said. ‘It's fair. I can't stand anything that isn't fair because people spend a lot of money on these boats. If you look around the world there's billions of dollars spent on them and they've come into what's a club rule.’
At the presentation, Matt Allen, Commodore of the race organizer, Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, who sailed his first Hobart race in 1976 and the 21st this year on his own modified Volvo 70 Ichi Ban, said: ‘The race to Hobart has certainly captured my imagination. Now it has never been in better health and I'm convinced that the best years are ahead.’
Matteo Mazzanti from Rolex SA presented overall winning skipper Andrew Saies from Two True with a Rolex Yacht-Master timepiece, and the Tattersall's Cup for the overall handicap winner in IRC. Saies, sailing in his fifth Rolex Sydney Hobart, but on a brand-new boat this year, was clearly touched and said, ‘You can't win without a great boat, a great team and an ounce of Hobart luck….This is an iconic race, if you're a yachtie in Australia, you want to win this race.’
Results of the 2010 Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race:
IRC overall: 1, Two True (Andy Saies, SA), Beneteau First 40, corrected time 04 days 07hr 57min 43sec; 2, Wicked (Mike Welsh, Vic), Beneteau First 40, 04:08:39:08; 3, Next (Ian Mason, NSW), MBD Sydney 38, 04:09:48:54.
IRC 0: 1, Alfa Romeo(Neville Crichton, NZ), Reichel Pugh 100, corrected time 04 days, 12hr, 11min, 51sec; 2, Evolution Racing (Ray Roberts, NSW), Farr Cookson 50, 04:14:32:46; 3, Ichi Ban (Matt Allen, NSW), Jones Volvo 70, 04:16:27:22.
Sydney 38 One Design: 1, Swish, 04:00:16:54; 2, Next, 04:00:16:59; 3, Subzero Goat (Bruce Foye, NSW), 04:06:37:59.
ORCi (ORC International): 1, Two True (Andrew Saies, SA), Beneteau First 40, 04:04:18:41; 2, Swish (Steven Proud, NSW), Sydney 38, 04:04:53:02; 3, Patrice Six, (Tony Kirby) Jeppersen X-41, 04:05:38:07.
Performance handicap:
PHS 1: 1, Wasabi (Bruce McKay, NSW), Sayer 12m, 04:19:02:33; 2, Sailors with disAbilities (David Pescud, NSW), Lyons 54, 04:21:26:15; 3, Mahligai (Murray Owen/Jenny Kings, New Zealand), Sydney 46, 04:21:26:15.
PHS 2: 1, She (Peter Rodgers, NSW), Olsen 40; 2, Flying Fish Arctos (A.Fairclough, NSW), McIntyre 55, 04:13:41:02; 3, Namadgi (Canberra Ocean Racing Club, ACT), Bavaria 44, 04:16:12:30.
The 66th edition of the Rolex Sydney Hobart will start at 1300 AEDT on 26 December 2010. For more information and full results from the Rolex Sydney Hobart 2009 please visit the event website at www.rolexsydneyhobart.com
PORTSMOUTH, R.I. (January 6, 2010) – CST Composites International Moth World Champion Bora Gulari and Semaine Olympique Française Laser Radial Champion Anna Tunnicliffe were named US SAILING’s 2009 Rolex Yachtsman and Yachtswoman of the Year. A shortlist of 10 male and five female sailors – determined from nominations submitted by members of US SAILING – was evaluated by a panel of sailing journalists who selected these two sailors for the noteworthy distinction.
Established in 1961 by US SAILING and sponsored by Rolex Watch U.S.A. since 1980, the Rolex Yachtsman and Yachtswoman of the Year Awards recognize the outstanding on-the-water competitive achievement of an individual man and woman in the calendar year just concluded. The winners will be honored and presented with specially engraved Rolex timepieces during a luncheon on February 26, 2010, at the New York Yacht Club in Manhattan. Rolex Yachtsman of the Year – Bora Gulari (Detroit, Mich.) has been named US SAILING’s 2009 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, earning the coveted award with his very first appearance on the shortlist of nominees. Gulari had tough competition for the honor: all but one of the 10 male nominees, Gulari included, had won a world championship title. Ultimately, 10 of the 14 panel members gave Gulari their first-place vote, acknowledging his growth from square one in the Moth class two years ago to winner of the CST Composites International Moth World Championship in 2009 as nothing short of remarkable. Although many sailors compete for years in a class before making it to the elite level, Gulari won his first Moth world championship his second time out and became the first American in 33 years to claim the class’ world title. One of the panel members witnessed the first two days of competition at the worlds and attested to the high level of talent in the Moth class, while another panelist felt that the sport was witnessing a watershed moment in terms of the class taking off in the U.S. In existence since 1929, the Moth is a development class with a design rule that has remained basically unchanged, while the craft has gone from a home-built, flat-bottomed skiff to the current version incorporating hydrofoils on which the craft flies across the water.
‘I just do this because I love it, and I think this year was the start of great things to come for dinghy sailing in the U.S.,’ said Gulari. ‘With the addition of the foils, the Moths became easier to sail and a lot more rewarding . . . generating a level of excitement for sailing in some of the top sailors in the country that I have not seen before. I don’t think it will take people away from traditional dinghy classes, but the Moth is so fun that it's attracting people that have never had any interest in dinghies, and its bringing people back to dinghies who thought they were done getting wet.’
Gulari’s sensational year also included a win of the Harken McLube Moth Pacific Rim Championship along with second-place finishes at the Moth U.S. National Championship and U.S., Pacific Coast Championship. He was a member of the winning teams at the Audi Melges 20 Miami Winter Series Event No. 1, as well as the Muskegon Yacht Club One Design Regatta and Bayview Yacht Club North Channel Race, both in Melges 24s.
First-place finishes at the Sperry Top-Sider Detroit NOOD, the CYC Race to Macinac, Bayview Mackinac Race and the SuperMackinaw Race were aboard Phil O’Niel’sNatalie J.Gulari’s need for speed also saw him take a turn in the Viper 640, placing second out of 40 boats at the North American Championship . A native of Istanbul, Turkey, Gulari came to the U.S. as a toddler when his parents did their post-doctoral work at Stony Brook University on Long Island, before the family settled in Detroit when his father and mother took professorships at, respectively, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. Both parents were sailors and they introduced Gulari to windsurfing at age four, with his Dad giving him a golf umbrella to use when a suitable-size rig was not available.
It was not until he attended the University of Michigan, from which he graduated in 2001 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering, that he actually set foot in a dinghy. From his late start in dinghies during college Gulari went directly into the crew position in a 49er campaign taking aim at the 2004 Olympics. His team’s best performance was a victory at the class’ North American Championship in 2001. After Gulari’s unsuccessful bid to make the 2004 Olympic Team, he raced Melges 24s and considered going back to his windsurfing roots with an Olympic campaign in the RS:X when he read an article by Rohan Veal about the foiling Moth which led to his watching YouTube videos and reading blogs and articles on this new technology.
For a speed-obsessed sailor, the Moth seemed like the next logical choice, and Gulari put a deposit on a Moth having never seen the boat in person. Bringing things full circle, in September of 2009, Gulari set a new speed record – 30.31 knots in a Moth – breaking the previous speed record of 27.9 knots which had been held for almost three years.
‘It’s absolutely overwhelming,’ said Gulari about winning the award. ‘None of my accomplishments in 2009 would be even remotely possible without an amazing level of support from a huge group of people. My family, friends, boat owners, Bayview Yacht Club, my fellow Mothies all over the world, the sailing media, and a forward-looking Awards Panel -- this award recognizes all of you. So thank you!’
Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year – Anna Tunnicliffe (Plantation, Fla.) has been named US SAILING’s 2009 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year. She was nominated to the award’s shortlist for the fifth consecutive year, and, having won the award in 2008 as well, becomes the first woman in 27 years to win the award in back-to-back years, a feat previously accomplished by only four women in the award’s 48 year history: Jan O’Malley in 1969/70, Jane Pegel in 1971/72, Sally Lindsay Honey in 1973/74, and Betsy Alison in 1981/82. ‘It’s truly amazing to win this award again,’ said an ecstatic Tunnicliffe. ‘I could not have done half of my season without the help of my crew: Molly Vandemoer, Debbie Capozzi, Liz Bower and Alice Manard. I feel honored, lucky and fortunate to win. Being nominated is an achievement; winning is amazing!’
Since winning the Laser Radial Olympic Gold Medal at the 2008 Games in China, Tunnicliffe has proven her talent and versatility by excelling not only in the singlehanded dinghy but also in skippering several different one-design boats in both fleet and match racing.
She dominated the Laser Radial fleet during the 2009 ISAF Sailing World Cup series by winning gold at US SAILING’s Rolex MiamiOCR and Semaine Olympique Francaise in France, and bronze at Kieler Woche in Germany. She also won the Laser Radial Women’s North American Championship in Florida and finished third at the Laser Radial World Championship in Japan.
Tunnicliffe’s success on the 2009 match racing circuit was also notable. She won the Detroit Cup in Ultimate 20s and was second at U.S. Women’s Match Racing Championship in St. Thomas sailed in IC 24s. Her medal haul also included bronze collected at the ISAF Nations Cup Grand Final in Brazil sailed in J/24s, and at Skandia Sail for Gold in England, sailing the Elliott 6 Metre, the equipment chosen for the debut of the new women’s match racing event at the 2012 Olympic Regatta.
In October, Tunnicliffe was fleet racing J/24s in Rochester, New York, where she won the Rolex International Women’s KeelboatChampionship. (It was during the 1997 running of this event that she first gained national prominence – at age 14 she was the youngest skipper in the fleet.) Less than a month later, the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) named Tunnicliffe its female 2009 ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year for accomplishments during the qualifying period of September, 2008, through August, 2009.
The 27-year-old Tunnicliffe, a native of England, grew up in Perrysburg, Ohio, sailing from the North Cape Yacht Club in Michigan. Her college sailing career at Old Dominion University (Norfolk, Va.), where she earned ICSA All-American honors three times (2003, ’04, ’05), was highlighted with being named the 2005 Quantum Female College Sailor of the Year.
Ranked number one in the world in the Laser Radial class since April of 2008, Tunnicliffe’s recent commitment to a match racing campaign in the Elliott 6 Metre focused on the 2012 Olympic Games shows the versatile sailor has no plans to slow down.
‘I’m so happy I can do this [sail] for a living,’ added Tunnicliffe. ‘I have more goals to reach in my sailing career, and starting this year [2010] with this award is amazing.’
About Rolex Watch U.S.A.
Since Rolex Watch U.S.A. first presented timepieces to America's Cup defenders in 1958, the company has consistently recognized and encouraged excellence in every important arena of competitive sailing, including US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics preparation, US SAILING championships, disabled sailing, offshore, one-design and women's events.
In 2010, Rolex will sponsor over 20 prestigious yachting events globally, including the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, Rolex Big Boat Series, Rolex Capri Sailing Week, Rolex Farr 40 World Championship, Rolex Fastnet Race, Rolex Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race and the New York Yacht Club Race Week presented by Rolex.
About US SAILING
The United States Sailing Association (US SAILING), the national governing body for sailing, provides leadership for the sport in the United States. Founded in 1897 and headquartered in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, US SAILING is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization.
US SAILING offers training and education programs for instructors and race officials, supports a wide range of sailing organizations and communities, issues offshore rating certificates, and provides administration and oversight of competitive sailing across the country, including National Championships and the US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics. For more information, please visit www.ussailing.org.
The Guy's Obsessed!
Make no mistake about it, Paul Hakes is a man obsessed, but in the nicest way, I assure you.
Paul is gripped by the obsession to produce the finest composite race boats on the planet and contrary to the belief that obsessed people are not so pleasant to be around, he smiles a lot and is very good company. This could be because in the past few years, his business, Hakes Marine, have produced many composite race yachts that are considered by people who know, to be among the finest examples of composite race yacht construction... yes... ‘on the planet!’
To spend an hour, in the quiet of a fine Wellington morning, studying the new Judel/Vrolijk designed Haspa Hamburg, moored alongside at Chaffers Marina, as I did recently, is to view workmanship that warms the heart. So many people go to work each day because they have to, but in some cases, people go to work because they also love what they do. The guys and gals at Hakes Marine, involved in creating Haspa Hamburg had to love what they do to make this 52 foot youth training yacht look so good, inside and out. It’s not ‘pretty’ in the classic yacht way, it’s a functional, fine looking race yacht from any angle, but the finish, from the clean interior, fixing of deck hardware, surface paintwork interior and exterior, is stunning! Almost too good to use!
But used, it most certainly will be! As I write this Haspa Hamburg, having sailed to Auckland during the past weekend, will be going through the process of packing and loading on to the ship that will deliver her to Hamburg, Germany and her owners, HamburgischerVerein Seefahrt (HVS), an historical and most esteemed yacht club in Hamburg. There, the yacht will be afforded an official christening.
This famous yacht club has made a priority among it’s many activities, of training young sailors in the rugged art of ocean sailing, as much to produce fine citizens as to produce fine sailors. The training includes crossings of the Atlantic Ocean, much Baltic Sea sailing and long-distance racing, such as the Round Great Britain race and the Trans Atlantic races. HVS have been doing this for more than one hundred years.
Historically, the program is not easy on the yachts and the bumping, grinding and even grounding of some yachts in the past, is accepted as part of the training process, although it IS preferred that it doesn’t happen! Hakes Marine have had this knowledge in mind during the construction of the current Hamburg. It is a ‘strong’ yacht!
But back to that man obsessed. There are now, enough Hakes Marine built quality race yachts in both hemisphere’s for it to be a little unusual if there isn’t one or two competing in any major ocean race or grand prix series, such as the Med Cup. In the latest Rolex Sydney Hobart race, Rob Hanna’s 52 foot IRC racer Shogun, placed second overall in IRC1 behind the 72 foot Ran, was originally built by Hakes Marine as a Judel/Vrolijk TP 52, for an American owner and bound for the MedCup as Glory.
When later purchased by an Australian sailor and businessman, Glory became Wot Now after undergoing a massive ‘beefing-up’ by Hakes Marine, to turn the TP52 into an IRC racer that could take what ever the Bass Strait might throw at her in the 2008 Sydney to Hobart classic.
Wot Now sailed her way to honors in the 2008 classic race. Now she is Shogun and again, in the 2009-2010 race, she shone with a very high placing.
Another Hakes Marine creation, Peter Millard and John Honan’s 30m Bakewell-White designed Lahana (ex Konica Minolta), was the third maxi to finish in the latest Rolex Sydney Hobart race. With many miles of sailing behind her, Lahana still looked a capable, competitive and well-built yacht.
And what’s on the program for that ‘obsessed’ guy we started talking about and his team of quality conscious constructors? Well, next month a 54 ft IRC racer for a European owner will be underway and there’s an inkling of more news on the ‘build’ program, but I can’t tell you about that yet!
And is the new build going to look as good as Haspa Hamburg? ‘You Bet’cha.’ Said Paul Hakes.
I tell you, the guy’s obsessed!
Jim Bolland
The Games Of Their Lives
As swimmer Marin Morrison and sailor Nick Scandone fought deadly diseases,
they mustered all their strength and courage to fulfill a final dream: To compete in the Beijing Paralympics
The Water delivered her. Always had, from darn near birth. Marin Morrison would get into the pool, and everything would just make sense. She'd move her arms and legs, and she'd be off, cutting through the water like a speedboat. Marin's parents, Matt and Nancy, chose her name mostly because Matt was raised in Marin County, Calif. But the symbolism wasn't lost on others: Marin, from the Latin ‘of the sea.’ Marin had the good fortune to grow up in Florida, where she could swim year-round. As the other kids in the pool perfected their cannonballs or played Marco Polo, she swam from one end to the other and back. At age six she joined a swim league. When it came time to race, she'd dive in, rocket down her lane, turn around and wait patiently to see who came in second.
Marin had a learning disability, which sometimes made school a struggle for her. But it also imbued her with a capacity for work. She'd spend an hour reading a few pages of a book if that's what it took to understand them. She brought that same sensibility to the pool, practicing and practicing, indifferent to the passage of time.
By the time Marin was in fifth grade, Matt had taken a job as an anchor for Fox Sports Net, and the family had moved to Atlanta. Training with the Swim Atlanta team, Marin was on her way to becoming a top national racer in the 100-yard freestyle and 100 backstroke. Once, in the fall of 2003, Swim Atlanta coach Chris Davis asked Marin, then 13, to race for 25 yards underwater against Amanda Weir, a 17-year-old hotshot. Deploying her superior dolphin kick, Marin won by more than a body length. Less than a year later, Weir would win two silver medals at the Athens Olympics.
‘Marin had all the tools,’ says Davis. ‘Speed. Desire. Coachability. And she could kick [like] Natalie Coughlin. We're pretty much talking unlimited potential.’
Marin's bedroom doubled as a repository for trophies and ribbons. She was in eighth grade when the college recruiting letters started filling the family mailbox. With her textbook streamlines and uncommonly smooth technique, says Davis, ‘there's no doubt in my mind she would have been at the 2008 Olympic Trials.’
For all her success, though, Marin never developed a true passion for competition. It drove her dad nuts. ‘I'd say, 'I can't tell if you won or lost—how come you don't have more fire?'’ says Matt, who played baseball at UCLA. ‘Marin would shrug. If she did well by her own standards, that was enough.’
Friendly but reserved—sometimes she lamented that she wasn't part of the popular crowd—Marin walked the halls of Collins Hill High in Suwanee, Ga., giving no hint that she was one of the best athletes in the school. As a freshman, in 2005, she clocked school-record times of 52.86 in the 100-yard free and 1:01.45 in the 100 back, and she was a favorite to win the Georgia state Class AAAAA championship in the 100 freestyle. With a few weeks left in the season, though, she complained of searing headaches. At the state meet she finished third in the 100 free and 12th in the 100 back, and at a Swim Atlanta event afterward she vomited on the pool deck. Another time she said she had double vision. She felt sick even after entering the water.
She was disappointed by her performance in the state meet but not crushed. She'd done her best, especially considering that she was sick. She figured that she'd rest, swim over the summer and then win everything as a sophomore.
The water delivered him. Always had, from darn near birth. Nick Scandone was a conventional Southern California kid. Growing up in comfort in Orange County in the '70s and '80s, he liked beaches, bikes and baseball. Given his slight physical build, any ambitions of being an athlete perished early. But they were revived when, at age nine, he ventured into the Balboa Yacht Club in Corona Del Mar. His mom, an assertive travel-agency owner, presented him with a choice in the months before fourth grade: ‘Summer school or sailing school.’ The decision was easy. At Balboa he met Mike Pinckney, an older instructor Nick wanted to emulate. And he discovered the joys of climbing into an eight-foot Sabot dinghy and slicing through the water.
It was a simple craft made of fiberglass and sporting a single sail. But maneuvering a boat wherever he pleased fed something inside Nick. He liked relying on his intuition to gauge the wind, the tide, the currents. He liked taking calculated risks, tacking to an area no one else in the fleet had thought to go. And the rhythms of sailing fit his measured personality. ‘In other sports you might get jacked up and rely on adrenaline for those bursts,’ says Vince Scandone, Nick's older brother. ‘Sailing is the opposite: You need to be patient and calm and methodical. That was Nick.’
Before long he was winning every race he entered. Not that he told anyone. Apart from being a profoundly happy kid, he was profoundly modest, preferring to talk about girls or surfing or the Angels baseball team than about his feats in a motorless boat. He had his land persona and his water persona, his land friends and his water friends, and he took pains to keep them separate.
Nick went to college at UC Irvine. It was a fine school. It was near home. It was near the beach. Above all, it had a sailing program. By the time he graduated, in 1990, he had been an All-America and a member of a national championship team. Though sinewy-strong from pulling all those ropes, Nick still wasn't physically imposing, maybe 5'8", 150 pounds. It was his superior sailing cortex that won him so many races. Time and again he'd sense something no one else sensed—an incoming breeze, a subtle change in the current—and act. Before anyone else caught on, Nick was leading by 15 lengths.
He was a favorite to make the U.S. sailing team in the two-man 470 Class for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. But then he smudged the line between cool and careless. He bickered with his crew. A few weeks before the trials he went surfing and was knocked off his board by a giant wave. He came away unscathed, but his behavior bespoke something other than a full commitment to sailing. He finished second in the trials and missed the spot on the team. For the first time anyone could remember, Nick wasn't smiling.
He was 26 and so disappointed in himself that he took a break from competitive sailing. He got jobs selling pizza ovens and then advertisements for a sailing publication. The work paid the bills but didn't exactly rouse his passion. He married but was divorced within a couple of years.
Eventually he began competing again. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but his life got better. He began racing on weekends and discovered that his sixth sense in a boat hadn't deserted him. He volunteered to coach a group of female sailors his mom's age who called themselves the Briny Bunch. At Balboa he met a blonde Midwestern transplant, Mary Kate Stoffregen, and took her sailing on their first date. Two years later they got married. For their honeymoon they sailed around the British Virgin Islands.
Not long after that Nick began experiencing back pain. It was annoying, ‘a pain in the ass even though it's in my back,’ he'd joke. Then it really started to hurt. He assumed it was either bad genes—his mom had needed back and neck surgery—or the unfortunate legacy of spending countless hours sitting in a little boat. He went to a chiropractor, figuring he'd need his spine realigned if he wanted to return to elite racing.
The emotions came in a torrent. That blurry vision Marin Morrison had been experiencing? A couple of weeks after the state meet she visited an eye doctor, who took one look and sternly told her parents, ‘Take this girl to the emergency room right now and call a neurologist.’ A tumor the size of a plum was discovered in Marin's brain. She was horrified, but a surgeon excavated the mass and, after a biopsy, indicated that it was benign. Barely a week later Marin was back in the water.
Confident that it had all been just an awful scare, Matt Morrison relocated to Seattle, where he'd landed a job as the Mariners' pre- and post-game television host. He found a house in the suburbs and figured he'd move the family up from Georgia before the next school year. Marin spent most of the summer of 2005 in the pool in Atlanta. In a Gwinnett County meet she and three of her friends broke county summer league records for the 200-meter medley relay and 200 free relay.
Toward the end of the summer Marin complained again of blurry vision. An MRI showed that the tumor not only had returned but also was growing aggressively, wreathing itself around healthy tissue in the left temporal lobe of Marin's brain. There was no choice but to operate again.
The surgery took place in August 2005. It was exceptionally risky, the family was warned in advance. When Marin came out of the operating room, her parents squeezed her fingers. No response. Doctors performed a tickle test. Nothing. A nerve had been damaged, and the right side of her body was paralyzed. She also had expressive aphasia with speech apraxia: She would have clear thoughts, but when she tried to articulate them, her words would be garbled.
Worse still, the tumor was malignant: anaplastic ganglioglioma. She would have to undergo radiation therapy, but it would only delay the inevitable. A few days earlier Marin had been an elite swimmer with Olympic ambitions. Now she was partly paralyzed, unable to communicate clearly, and she would be lucky simply to live until the next Olympics, three years away.
Her parents and two younger siblings tried to hold it together. Marin was angry, scared, crushed and, at the same time, hopeful and weirdly energized. She struggled with speech but, as stubborn and determined as ever, quickly found a way to get her words out. Her first sentence: ‘Can I still swim?’
The emotions came in a torrent. Nick Scandone was in his mid-30s, happily married, sailing when he could, surfing and wakeboarding when he couldn't. He was home one Friday night in the summer of 2002 when his doctor called to discuss his nagging back pain. ‘Um,’ the doctor said, ‘do you know who Lou Gehrig was?’
‘Sure, a baseball player,’ said Nick. ‘Why?’
‘Do you know what Lou Gehrig's disease is?’
The doctor explained that Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is a neurodegenerative condition that affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. In many cases it does not harm cognitive functions, but it invariably sends the body into a steady, irreversible decline. The brain loses its ability to initiate and control muscle movement; the patient gradually becomes paralyzed and, finally, unable to breathe. There is no cure for ALS; Nick had as few as 18 months to live.
His feelings pin-balled from fear, to shock to, denial to sadness. He and Mary Kate had been trying to conceive a child but decided to stop; they didn't want to have a kid who would grow up without a father. Nick led a sports-oriented life and had a taut, defined physique, including a mean six-pack, to show for it. Before long he wouldn't have the strength to brush his teeth. But ultimately he tapped his inner sailor and turned pragmatic. ‘I'm here, he told Mary Kate, ‘so let's make the most of it.’ They agreed that since time was at a premium, he might as well do what gave him the most pleasure. With his wife's blessing, he quit his job and bought a new boat.
The sports background helped, that was for sure. Marin Morrison's rehab from partial paralysis would have been hard even if she weren't fighting brain cancer. But she applied the same resolve and dedication that she'd showed in the pool. ‘She had an athlete's fortitude, a toughness that said, 'I'm not just going to sit around and hope,' says Matt.
In the fall of 2005, while Matt worked in Seattle, Nancy and Marin stayed at the Atlanta Ronald McDonald House. Between rehab sessions Marin had radiation treatments to kill what remnants of the cancer the doctors could find. The younger Morrison children Camie and Michael, stayed with neighbors in Atlanta. ‘Looking back, it was a crazy, stressful time,’ says Nancy, a personal trainer. ‘But when you're in it, what choice do you have? You go on.’
In November, Nancy and the kids moved to Seattle, and Marin saw a team of pediatric oncologists at the Children's Hospital. The doctors scanned the MRIs and called Marin and her parents for a summit. ‘There's nothing we can do; nothing will stem the growth of this cancer,’ they said flatly. ‘Get your affairs in order, and enjoy your last few months together.’
Marin turned to her parents, who were in tears. ‘Don't believe 'em,’ she said in her halting speech. ‘I'll keep fighting.’
Says Nancy, ‘You saw the way she handled it and you thought, How can I do anything but keep my strength and courage up?’
Marin, now 15, fought the tumor with any weapon she could find. Holistic medicine. A macrobiotic diet. Exercise. Prayer. She swallowed as many as 100 pills a day. She read alternately from the Bible and from the canon of Lance Armstrong. She forced herself to swig puna noni juice, a supposedly healing concoction from Hawaii. She entered a clinical trial sponsored by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. It's hard to know where to apportion the credit, but for more than a year the tumor shrank.
And there was the water. The right side of her body might have been paralyzed, but in her natural habitat Marin retrieved a one-armed training drill from her healthier days and improvised a stroke that resembled rowing with one oar. Using her left arm and leg, she piloted her body up and down the pool. Even cosmetically she was more comfortable in the water. On land she sometimes felt self-conscious wearing a knit hat to conceal the scars on her head. In the pool, well, everyone wore a swim cap.
Marin was enrolled in a homebound academic program at nearby Eastlake High, and she joined the school's swim team. Because of her speech she couldn't communicate with her team-mates as well as she'd have liked, but she was thrilled to be part of a team again. She competed on the jayvee and occasionally on the varsity.
Kiko Van Zandt, a rehab nurse at the Children's Hospital, moonlighted as coach of the Seattle Shadow Seals, a local team for disabled swimmers. At Van Zandt's prodding, Marin entered a race in Michigan at the end of 2006. Swimmers were put into 10 classes, based on the severity of their disability; as an S5 (in the middle range of functional ability), Marin set two national records. Van Zandt told her that with those times she could qualify for the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, which would follow the Summer Olympics.
About a year earlier, the Make-A-Wish Foundation had contacted Marin to ask if there was something special she'd like to do in her final months. After much prodding she said she'd like to travel: ‘Go to Beijing.’
‘Great,’ the representative said. ‘Maybe we can get tickets for the Olympics....’
‘Not to watch,’ Marin explained. ‘To compete as a swimmer for the U.S.A.’
But doctors hadn't given her long to live, so in April 2006 the foundation sent the entire Morrison family on a Mediterranean cruise—two weeks in the Greek Isles, Italy and Egypt—with a final stop in Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Afterward, Marin kept swimming, hell-bent on competing in Beijing. In April 2008 she made it to the Paralympic Trials in Minneapolis. Her times had slipped in lockstep with her health. Sometimes she'd swim a few laps, leave the pool to vomit from dizziness and then return. Still, she was able to qualify in the S5 category in the 50 back stroke. Once in, she was allowed to choose additional events, and she opted for the 50 free and the 100 free.
‘You know how they say, 'Athletes will themselves'’ says Matt. ‘Marin's qualifying was all will.’
The sports background helped, that was for sure. Even as ALS launched its ground campaign—starting with his feet and working its way up his body—Nick Scandone kept his sailor's mentality. He treated his predicament as if he were on the water. He was the boat's skipper. Just as he couldn't control the weather or the strength of the wind, he couldn't control this cruel disease. But, in the same way that a sailor reacted to the elements, he would adjust to his body's changing condition as best he could and keep moving forward.
Nick took Mary Kate and other friends out for cruises. He continued to tutor the Briny Bunch. And he resumed racing. In the summer of 2005 he entered the 2.4-Meter World Championship, a regatta in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Italy, that was open to disabled as well as able-bodied sailors. His legs were too weak for him to use crutches, so with great reluctance he'd recently started using a wheelchair. But in the water, sitting in a one-man boat that was basically a miniature version of an America's Cup craft, he was on equal footing with other sailors. Competing against the best yachtsmen in the world, Nick won the 88-boat regatta. He was named U.S. Sailing's Rolex Yachtsman of the Year. ‘Luckily Nick picked one sport where being disabled didn't stop you from competing,’ says Mary Kate. ‘When Nick sailed, he was free.’
Someone told Nick about the Paralympic Games. They were three years away, but if he was still able to sail, he'd qualify for sure, maybe even win a medal. ‘Right then,’ says his brother Vince, ‘it was all about getting to Beijing. He had something to look forward to.’ Every month he'd lose more weight. Every month his body betrayed him a little more. But day after day he'd go out on the boat, often with one of his first teachers, Pinckney, who volunteered to spearhead Nick's campaign. When other boaters at the club offered sympathy, Nick recoiled. ‘ALS is keeping me alive,’ he would say. ‘A Love of Sailing.’
In Paralympic sailing athletes are rated on a scale of 1 to 7, based on mobility. Provided he stayed alive, Nick surely would be a 1 or a 2, the most disabled, by the summer of 2008. That meant he'd be eligible to race in a SKUD 18, a two-person keelboat, paired with a disabled female sailor. He found a partner in Maureen McKinnon-Tucker, an irrepressible mother of two from Massachusetts. In 1995 she had accompanied her husband, an accomplished yachtsman, to a regatta. She had fallen down a sea wall and broken her back, and ever since then she'd been obliged to use a wheelchair.
Nick was the skipper, devising the tactics and determining the route; Maureen was the crew, hoisting and trimming the sails. As they worked to qualify for the Paralympics, however, life kept threatening to capsize them. In December 2007 Nick's mother died of breast cancer, and in January 2008 his sister died of lung disease. That same January, at a Miami regatta, Nick and Maureen were getting ready for a day of practice when Maureen's cellphone chirped. Back in Massachusetts, her two-year-old son, Trent, had been feeling ill. It turned out to be brain cancer.
Maureen agonized over what to do, but she knew this much: It was too late for Nick to replace her. If she decided against competing, he would be ineligible. ‘Some people say, 'I live to sail,' but in Nick's case he literally lived to sail,’ she says. ‘I wasn't going to [deprive him] of his main reason to live.’
For nearly a year, accompanied by the U.S. Paralympic sailing coach, Betsy Alison, Maureen shuttled between Massachusetts and California. Two other Paralympic sailors, Scott Whitman and Julia Dorsett, flew to California so Nick and Maureen would have training partners. At the Balboa Yacht Club, more than a few jaws would drop when members saw a cluster of wheelchairs on the dock and two boats carving up the water. ‘What can you do?’ says Maureen. ‘Life happens, and you try to kick its ass.’
As warned, Nick declined steadily. By the summer of 2008 he weighed less than 100 pounds and had lost all function in his legs and more than half in his arms. Nick's friends laughed when NBC aired maudlin vignettes about Olympic athletes who'd overcome adversity. ‘There was some gymnast who struggled because her friend's aunt stubbed her toe—give me a break!’ says Maureen. ‘What about Nick Scandone, who's struggling just to stay alive?’
Asked that summer how he was holding up, Nick always had the same response: ‘I can last to Beijing.’
Just getting to China was a challenge. After Marin earned a spot on the U.S. Paralympic team, her health took a drastic turn for the worse; in hopes of stopping intracranial bleeding, doctors in Seattle performed a fourth surgery on her on May 2, 2008, and discovered that the cancer was ruthlessly attacking her brain stem. She spent six weeks in Children's Hospital, often in incapacitating pain. By now she was confined full time to a wheelchair and wore an eye patch to help her keep her equilibrium.
Marin was too sick to fly to Beijing with the U.S. Paralympic delegation, so the family traveled to China on its own. The team provided airfare for Marin and Nancy (who went as her daughter's care assistant), but Matt had to buy tickets for himself and the other two kids. The Morrisons were already buried in medical bills, but this wasn't the time to economize. ‘This was her dream,’ says Nancy. ‘How were we not going to be there for that?’
Matt's and Nancy's families helped out financially, and their church held a fund-raiser. The goodwill rippled out from there in concentric circles. Other Seattle churches held silent auctions and benefit dinners. Former neighbors in Georgia started a foundation, Wave of Courage, to help pay the Morrisons' medical bills and support other young disabled athletes. Seattle neighbors the Morrisons had barely had time to meet knocked on the door asking what they could do. Anonymous donations appeared in the mailbox. The U.S. Olympic Committee put up the family at the Beijing Hilton when it was clear that Marin was too ill to stay in the athletes' village. ‘My religious faith was shaken to the core, and I'm still reassessing my relationship with God,’ says Matt, ‘but my belief in humans is out of this world. People are awesome.’
Which pretty much echoed the sentiments of Team Scandone. Like Marin, Nick relied on friends but also on the kindness of strangers. The Briny Bunch held a benefit for their former coach. As word of Nick's campaign spread, first through the club and then around the yachting community, the donations poured in. Equipment. Practice boats. Air miles so Nick could fly first class. One anonymous donor wrote a check for $5,000. The young sons of family friends filled coffee cans with change. ‘Remember, with ALS, your body goes but your mind stays sharp,’ says Vince. ‘Nick felt so much pressure not to let these people down.’
In late August, Nick, Vince and Mike Pinckney flew from Southern California to Denver and then to Colorado Springs, where they met the rest of the Paralympic delegation. The team flew to San Francisco, then to Beijing and finally to Qingdao, the port city where the sailing event would be held. It was a gruelling odyssey for Vince and Mike. For Nick, easily fatigued and prone to injury given how little muscle and fatty tissue padded his brittle bones, it was something resembling hell. ‘You just knew how much pain he had to be in,’ says Vince. ‘When you asked him, he'd say, 'I'm fine. How about you?'’
The first official Paralympic Games were held in Rome in 1960, the same year as the Summer Olympics. Roughly 400 participants, all disabled by spinal injuries, competed in eight sports. Since then the Paralympics (sometimes mistaken for the Special Olympics) have grown exponentially. Befitting its motto, Spirit in Motion, the movement is now open to athletes beset by a variety of physical and visual impairments. The 2008 Paralympics drew nearly 4,000 athletes from 146 countries, who converged on Beijing to compete in 19 events.
The games were officially consecrated on Sept. 6, when the Paralympic flame was lit by torchbearer Hou Bin, a Chinese high jumper missing his left leg, who pulled himself and his wheelchair up to the cauldron by a series of ropes. The Olympics had ended two weeks earlier, but the Paralympics were anything but an afterthought. For the citizens of Beijing, they were especially significant. At the Olympics most of the tickets had been disbursed to corporations, national delegations, foreign tourists and other moneyed types. The Paralympics marked the first time the average Chinese citizen could set foot inside the gleaming Bird's Nest and Water Cube. The events crackled with energy, and the stands were filled to near capacity, echoing the vibe of the ‘real’ Olympics but with a far more democratic overtone.
When Marin emerged for her race she was jolted by the crowd. Those thousands of strangers, going nuts. Matt wheeled her out and gently transferred her from the chair to the deck for her first event.
She was racing in the 100-meter freestyle, but she swam on her back because that made her less dizzy. With Matt at poolside and Nancy and Kiko Van Zandt shrieking from the stands, the race went off. One by one the competitors, all of them swimming the crawl, made it to the finish. Except Marin. On her back in lane 7, she struggled through the water. ‘Honestly,’ says Van Zandt, ‘I was just praying for her to finish.’
The crowd's roar thickened. This mass of strangers on the other side of the world didn't know Marin's back story. They didn't know that a few years earlier she could cover 100 meters in barely 58 seconds. They didn't know that, were it not for some poison at the cellular level, she might well have swum this same event two weeks earlier in the Olympics.
All they knew was what they saw: an 18-year-old girl flailing in lane 7 but determined to finish. They yelled and screamed and some even banged cowbells. The fans cheered louder and waved their countries' flags harder. She finally touched the wall in a time of who-the-hell-cares. By then the applause level in the Water Cube rivalled anything Michael Phelps had heard there.
‘It was like Marin's wedding day,’ Nancy recalls. ‘Everything you could hope for.’ Matt helped Marin out of the pool. Behind a red, white and blue eye patch, she smiled. ‘You did it!’ gushed Matt.
‘I did it?’ she asked, dizzy and confused. Then she looked around, heard the noise and soaked it up. ‘I did it.’
In Qingdao, Nick and Mike spent several days getting the SKUD 18 boat in order. As Nick's condition continued to worsen, Mike made new tweaks and adjustments. He modified the steering system and installed a voice box so Nick wouldn't have to expend much energy to speak. Maureen arrived with her daughter and husband in tow; her son, his cancer in remission, stayed home. Worrying that Nick might tire, Maureen and Mike kept in-water preparations to a minimum.
While most other Paralympic athletes toured China and reveled in the experience, Nick headed to his hotel room. Vince Scandone helped feed his brother, kept him hydrated and was careful not to let him shake anyone's hand for fear of germs. Then Mary Kate arrived to help as well. ‘We were about one thing and one thing only: helping Nick conserve energy,’ she says. ‘That was it.’
On the first day of racing, Vince wheeled Nick to the dock, transferred him out of his chair and gently placed him in his skipper's seat. It was hot, but the wind was only 3.5 knots. With Nick seated in the stern and Maureen toward the bow, their boat won three of the first four races. As soon as the races were over, Nick was sent directly to the hotel to rest. He forced himself to eat, often using a feeding tube, and mostly slept.
Nick's body was spent—buttoning a shirt took the upper limit of his strength—but mentally he was as sharp as ever. And he still knew the water, anticipating currents and seeing opportunities that eluded everyone else. As Maureen worked with him, their boat won two more races. By the last day it was mathematically impossible for them to lose. ‘You don't have to race,’ the coaches told him. He waved them off.
‘We all knew,’ recalls Mary Kate, ‘this was going to be the last time he'd go on the water.’
His final race doubled as a victory lap. The boat was covered with red, white and blue decals, U.S. flags and banners and burgees from the various yacht clubs that had helped make it all possible. Next to him in the boat Nick had placed a photo of his late mother; Maureen kept a lock of her son's hair in her life jacket. ‘It's been such a long road,’ he said afterward. ‘It's emotionally overwhelming for me to finally realize my goal.’
He'd won the gold medal in sailing. Maybe it wasn't quite as he'd imagined it in those boyhood renderings, but it was just as sweet.
When Nick returned to the U.S., he was feted as a conquering hero. At John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, Calif., he was met by supporters chanting, "U-S-A! U-S-A!" But both he and Marin were worsening by the day. The cancer had spread through Marin's brain, and by November she was sleeping as many as 22 hours a day. Nick, weighing less than 90 pounds, continued to use the breathing machine he had been on for a while and, unlike Marin, had to turn down an invitation to the White House. Having achieved their goals of getting to Beijing, they set more modest benchmarks. Get to Thanksgiving. Get to Christmas. Get to the New Year.
They never met and might not even have been aware of each other. One was an 18-year-old woman, the other a 42-year-old man. One was a swimmer, the other a sailor. Their relatives have never met, either. Still, when they recall Marin or Nick, the stories ring with the same themes. They talk about the financial toll of terminal illness—even with the blessing of health insurance. About how, even in the bleakest times, their faith in humanity was affirmed. About how the ‘Olympic Spirit,’ is no fiction. But most of all they talk about how a love of water can make someone unsinkable.
Marin Morrison died on Jan. 2, 2009.
So did Nick Scandone.
UK Halsey Sails Talk
'Whiskey Jack' Knows When To Hold Them And When To Fold 'Em
The Hong Kong-based J/109 WHISKEY JACK finished second in the IRC division of the 2009 China Cup International Regatta sailed last month. The following report came from her owner Nick Southward.
'The third China Cup International Regatta, held at Longcheer Yacht Club at Daya Bay in Shenzhen, China, is China’s only international sailing regatta. Teams from all over the world come to participate, in either chartered Beneteau 40.7’s, or IRC racing yachts from Asia. China is new to the art of organizing regattas, so their style may not have been to everyone’s taste. However, if you just wanted to go and sail for four days in good weather, flat water and decent breeze then this was the place to be in late October. We took our J/109 WHISKEY JACK up for the regatta, which consisted of a 32-mile passage race from Hong Kong to Shenzhen on Day 1 and six windward leeward races spread over the remaining three days.
'UK-Halsey Hong Kong’s Barry Hayes has referred to the J/109 as an IRC speed demon, but having a speed demon is one thing; doing everything right to make it win is another.... Fortunately, Barry was with us and we were finally able to prove just what a demon she is.
'The boat was sailing higher and faster than the main opposition, some extremely competitive and well sailed A35’s, and we finally managed to nail them and the rest of the IRC racing fleet. We won Sunday’s racing with a 1-1-2 and went into the final day tied for 1st place with one of the A35’s. Conditions on the final day were 25 knots of wind and a short steep chop. We made the decision to play it safe and didn’t push the boat too hard and that earned us second place for the regatta. The price of first for the A35 RED KITE was some blown kites so we renamed her Dead Kite!'
In the 30-boat Beneteau 40.7 one-design class, the team from South Africa sailing SHERATON TEAM won by 10 points. She was helmed by former SHOSHOLOZA America’s Cup skipper Mark Sadler. Teams from 13 different countries on five continents participated in this division. All 30 boats sailed with UK-Halsey Tape-Drive sails.
Beneteau 40.7 Class Results:
1st Sheraton, South Africa, 6 pts. 2nd Yachtfinders Global,New Zealand, 16 pts. 3rd Simpson Marine, Hong Kong, 17 pts. 4th China Boating, China, 18 pts. 5th Team GBR, 27 pts.
Get More For Your Dollar With 'Platinum-Drive'
Above, 'Celaritas' with her vertical batten mainsail and below,'Nepenthe' with her new sails.
Sails can be expensive, so durability is key to getting your money’s worth. The corollary that cheap sails are not durable is just as true. Just ask Larry Rouen, the owner of the Dawn 41 NEPENTHE.
He ordered sails in 1997, just before two of his teenagers were getting ready to go off to college. He said that he needed sails that would last eight years – the time it would take the two to graduate, since tuition would trump boat expenses. And Larry wanted his sails to not only stay in one piece for eight years, he wanted them to be fast as well since he races every Thursday night in the summer. UK-Halsey sold Platinum-Drive sails to Nepenthe, which are Tape-Drive sails made with a Spectra laminate. Well, eight years came and passed, and his son and daughter entered and graduated from different universities while his sails kept on performing. And the sails kept going and going, like the pink Energizer bunny.
Prestigious French Offshore Trophy Won By UK-Halsey Customer
At the 2009 Paris Boat Show, UK-Halsey France’s most long-standing customer, Jean-Claude Bertrand, owner of Archambault 35 TCHIN-TCHIN, was awarded the Black Wing Trophy.
The French Offshore Racing Association (UNCL) awards this trophy every year to single out a remarkable racing season. Jean-Claude Bertrand’s name is engraved on the base of the trophy following a long list of world-famous professional ocean racers, such as: Loic Peyron, Frank Cammas, Ellen MacArthur, Michel Desjoyaux, Olivier de Kersauson, Jean-louis Etienne, Christophe Auguin, Isabelle Autissier, Alain Gautier, Eric Tabarly, and many other famous French sailors.
Pictured above is Jean-Claude Bertrand holding the Black Wing trophy with is wife France looking on. The names on the trophy are truly world-class.
IRC Season Champions
UK-Halsey was the exclusive sailmaker for the three boats that took the top IRC championship trophies on Long Island Sound. The biggest IRC fleet in the USA is on The Sound. Tom Carroll’s J/133 SIRENSONG (pictured above) won the Caper Trophy which is awarded by the Yacht Racing Association to the IRC season champion. Second and third were won by two Express 37s that use full UK-Halsey inventories: Adam Loory’sSOULMATES and Richard du Moulin’s LORA ANN.
'I believe that UK has been the key to optimizing the IRC rating of SIRENSONG over the past four racing seasons,' said Carroll.
'Their intricate knowledge of the details of the IRC rules and their experience in helping other racers maximize the speed of their boats is why we chose UK in order to gain a competitive advantage. We also like the initiative UK takes to stay ahead of their competitors in providing us with sails designed to make SIRENSONG go fast. They think about it before the others do, and by the time the others are copying us we are already on to UK's next ideas to keep us ahead of the fleet.'
LORA ANN won the new Oak Cliff Cup awarded by Sound Sailing, the LIS IRC owner’s association. The Oak Cliff Cup is awarded to the boat with the best three regattas out of a possible six events. Once again, SOULMATES was second.
'Sail Hotel' Opens In Oslo
UK-Halsey Norway has moved to a new loft where sails of any size can be serviced. The loft is 30 meters long by eight meters wide and is located five minutes by car from the center of Oslo.
UK-Halsey Norway new loft will offer more extensive service options such as sail washing. Washing service includes a thorough inspection, new telltales and winter storage in a climate controlled 'sail hotel.' Along with new sails, the loft sells Harken, Selden and Wichard equipment as well as cordage.
UK-Halsey Norway Tvetenveien 164 0671 Oslo Norway Contact Mehmet Taylan Tel: +47 2241 0011 Fax: +47 2241 0012 E-Mail: norway@ukhalsey.com
UK-Halsey Dominates J/80's In North America
As you might already know, UK-Halsey has been a leader in J/80 sails in the USA. This year has been a banner year for UK-Halsey
New York’s Kerry Klingler, who has been designing, making and racing J/80s for over 10 years. 2009 started off with John Storck winning Key West Race Week. John’s speed was second to none. He consistently sailed the same speed and higher than the competition. The key difference was the addition of a new jib, which was developed the previous fall. The goal of the sail was simple: provide the lowest-stretch sail available, add as much durability as possible, and make it with a fast shape that performs in all conditions. After winning Key West convincingly, great results continued to flood in. Here is a summary of the 2009 season:
Key West Race Week:John Storck1st , Brian Robinson3rd San Diego NOOD:Rusty Nelson 1st, Curt Johnson 3rd St. Petersburg NOOD:Jeff Bodkin 1st Charleston Race Week: Kerry Klingler 1st, Al Minella 2nd Annapolis NOOD: Chris Johnson 1st, Jon Morris 2nd, Chris Chadwick 3rd Eastport YC, One Design Classic: Kerry Klingler 1st, Brian Robinson 2nd Shoe Regatta, Lakewood YC: Uzi Ozeri 1st, Al Poindexter 3rd Block Island Race Week:John Storck 1st Red Grant Regatta: Brian Robinson 1st Buzzards Bay Regatta: Kerry Klingler 1st, Chip Johns 2nd J/Jamboree: Kerry Klingler 1st, Les Beckwith 2nd, Chip Johns 3rd, 4,5,6,8,10 all UK-Halsey customers Texas NOOD: Al Poindexter 2nd, Steve Hammerman 4th North American Championships: Kerry Klingler 1st, Eric Storck 5th That’s 12 regatta victories won by seven different sailors. The highlight of the season was the 2009 North American Championship. The best of the best came to Texas to give it their all in a fight for the championship. Six past North American Champions joined the fleet of 27 boats in what proved to be almost perfect conditions on Galveston Bay.
Two of the top five boats used UK-Halsey sails. It should be noted that when Kerry won the 2009 NA’s, he was using sails that were a full season old.
TOP PHOTO is John Storck’sRUMOR at Key West in 2009. RIGHT is Kerry Klingler’s LIFTED winning the third race at the 2009 North Americans.
The UK-Halsey loft in Flensburg, Germany. locked in winters snowy grip. You know thay are dreaming about escaping to warm summer breezes!
Cruising Club Of America Awards
Adventurous Use Of The Sea Rewarded The Cruising Club of America has selected Maurice and Sophie Conti to receive its 2009 Rod Stephens Trophy for their rescue of the crew of the 10m ketch Timella on October 12, 2008 - Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, its prestigious Blue Water Medal, without date, for a lifetime devoted to the advancement of sailing, sail training and youth development and on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his singlehanded, non-stop circumnavigation of the world - and Lin and Larry Pardey, its prestigious 2009 Far Horizons Award in recognition of their lifetime of cruising and voyaging and Annie Hill and Trevor Robertson, its prestigious 2009 Blue Water Medal in recognition of a life of cruising and voyaging that best exemplifies the objects and goals of the CCA.
Lin and Larry Pardey were married on October 31, 1968 in Newport Beach, Calif., and on that same day they launched Seraffyn, a Lyle Hess designed cutter they built themselves. Seraffyn was 24 feet 7 inches LOA (length overall) with an 8-foot 11-inch beam, and the boat had no engine. They began their trip eastward through the Panama Canal and then crossed on to Europe. For 11 years they cruised the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas and then headed south through the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and on to Japan. From there, they traveled to Canada and south back to Newport Beach for a total circumnavigation of 47,000 miles. Fifteen years to the date, October 31, 1983, they launched another Hess design, Taleisin, which was 29-feet 6-inches, with a 10-foot 9-inch beam, and 17,800 lbs. displacement. Similar to their previous boat, this vessel has no engine. They sailed westward from California through the Pacific to New Zealand. With time they continued westward to South Africa, Brazil, Ireland, the British Isles, Norway, and then to the East Coast U.S. They then voyaged south to Argentina and rounded Cape Horn westbound and crossed their outbound track which completed their circumnavigation in 2003.
After spending three seasons exploring the Pacific Northwest, they eventually sailed west across the Pacific to New Zealand to finish their third circumnavigation. All told the trip equaled 80,000 miles.
Larry Pardey was born in 1939 in Victoria, Canada and his first boat at age 9 was an Indian dug out canoe. His first cruising boat was a self-restored, 20-foot Colin Archer cutter. To date he has logged more than 205,000 sea miles.
Lin Pardey was born in 1944 in Detroit, Michigan and later raised in Los Angeles County. As a young child, her early sailing was in a 14-foot Old Town sloop. Lin has logged more than 198,000 sea miles.
Together, the couple has shared their sailing and cruising experiences with sailors around the world by writing 10 books that range from Storm Tactics Handbook to Cost Conscious Cruiser. Lin and Larry have also published a number of popular videos and DVDs, and their co-authored articles have appeared in numerous yachting publications worldwide.
For the record: The Pardeys hold the record for the smallest boat to have circumnavigated contrary to the prevailing winds around all the great southern capes. They are the only couple to have circumnavigated both east-about and west-about on boats they built themselves, using traditional means of navigation and having no engine or sponsorship.
Sir Robin Knox-Johnston
Born March 17, 1939 in Putney, London, Knox-Johnston went to school at Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire. He served as an officer cadet in the British Merchant Navy in 1957 and later gained his Masters Certificate in 1965. Between sea voyages in Bombay he built Suhaili, a 32-foot 5-inch LOA (length overall) India teak ketch of the Colin Archer type and sailed her to England.
With Suhaili he entered the 1968 race for the Sunday Times Golden Globe Trophy for the first person to circumnavigate the world nonstop and singlehanded. Suhaili was the only boat to finish the race, completing the 30,123 mile course in 312 days. Robin Knox-Johnston donated his £5,000 prize to the widow of his competitor Donald Crowhurst, who was lost at sea during the race.
In 1988 Suhailistarted in the OSTAR Race across the Atlantic, but had to retire after 800 miles due to leaking seams. In 1989, after re-caulking, she set off across the Atlantic following Columbus’s route using only an Astrolabe for navigation. Arriving in San Salvador after 3,000 miles, they were only off 8 miles in latitude and 22 miles in longitude. On the return voyage in November of the same year, a large storm knocked them down four times and they lost both masts. Under jury rig they sailed 1,400 miles to the Azores.
In 1990 Suhaili sailed north of the Arctic Circle to Greenland’s east coast so that a small team might attempt to climb a virgin peak. In 1992 Knox-Johnston was invited to become President of the Sail Training Association, a youth development organization which operated two topsail schooners. He also organized annual tall ship races and, before he retired from the post in 2001, £11 million had been raised to replace the two schooners with two larger brigs.
Since winning the Golden Globe Trophy in 1969 Robin Knox-Johnston has participated in seven quadrennial double-handed Round Britain races. He skippered Condor to line honors in two legs of the 1977/08 Whitbread Race, co-skippered Enza New Zealand with the late Sir Peter Blake in 1994 to take the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest circumnavigation of the world, and completed the Velux5Oceans solo around the world race in 4th position in 2006/07 at the age of 68.
In 1995, Knox-Johnston was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and retained the honorary title ‘Sir’. Notably, he has been named the 1994 ISAF World Sailor of the Year, the United Kingdom’s Yachtsman of the Year three times, and in 2007 he was inducted into the inaugural ISAF Hall of Fame. He has served as a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum and is currently President of the Little Ship Club and Chairman of Clipper Ventures.
The prestigious Blue Water Medal was inaugurated by the Cruising Club of America in 1923 to reward meritorious seamanship and adventure upon the sea displayed by amateur sailors of all nationalities that might otherwise go unrecognized. Blue Water Medalists have included such luminaries of the sailing world as Rod Stephens, Eric and Susan Hiscock,Sir Francis Chichester, Eric Tabarly, Pete Goss, Rich Wilson, Minoru Saito and Bernard Moitessier.
In 1940 it was awarded to the British Yachtsmen at Dunkerque who helped in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in June 1940.
The Medal itself was designed by Arthur Sturgis Hildebrand, a member of the Cruising Club of America, who was one of the crew of the yacht Leiv Eiriksson, lost in the Arctic with all hands in September of 1924.
Blue Water Medal awardees – without date (all award years are approximate)
Circa 2000 – Cloud Nine, Rodger B. Swanson (USA) 160,000 miles of remarkable cruising, two circumnavigations via Antarctica
Circa 1978 – Humphrey D. E. Barton (GBR) A lifetime of cruising, racing, 20 or more Atlantic crossings, founder of the Ocean Cruising Club
Circa 1961 – Seacrest, Dr. Paul Sheldon (USA) Extended cruises in Newfoundland, Labrador
Circa 1959 – Vito Dumas (ARG) Global Circumnavigation 1942-1943 and other singlehanded voyages
Circa 1956 – Carleton Mitchell (USA) Meritorious ocean passages, sterling seamanship and advancement of the sport by counsel and example
Circa 1937 – Igdasil, Roger S. Strout (USA) Circumnavigation 1934-1937
Circa 1932*– Jolie Brise, Robert Somerset (GBR) Award for a remarkable feat of seamanship, the rescue of 10 crew off burning schooner Adriana, in the 1932 Bermuda race
*(no actual date appears in the CCA Yearbook)
Maurice and Sophie Conti.
The Contis and their two small children were aboard their Catana 471 cruising catamaran Ocealys about 60 miles from Suva, Fiji, when near midnight they heard a mayday call on their VHF radio. Some 12 nautical miles away, the ketch Timella had struck a submerged reef and had begun taking on water. The yacht’s three crew, New Zealander Ali Timms and Australians Cameron Slagle and Liz Schoch, needed urgent help. By radio Maurice contacted Rescue Coordination Center New Zealand and the New Zealand High Commission in Suva about rescue options. There were few options; search and rescue vessels were many hours away. Then another radio call came from the stricken yacht, 'We’ve gone down mate….We are getting in the dinghy.' Ocealys responded, 'Roger that Timella… We are coming to you.'
On board Ocealys, the Contis began heading to Timella’s last given position, braving rough seas and strong winds. Just as the sun was coming up they reach the reef. Ocealys circled the reef looking for signs of life. They decided to circle again and saw something in the middle of the reef despite the heavy swell. It was the partially sunken dinghy.
Maurice, a trained rescue diver, donned a wet suit and with a radio, flares and other equipment, managed to launch the dinghy in rough seas with Sophie’s help. He found a relatively calm spot to cross the coral on the outer reef. Inside the lagoon he spotted the wreck of the ketch and her haggard crew hanging on to their partly deflated dinghy. He got them aboard in less than two minutes, and to ease the tension he said 'Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Maurice and I will be rescuing you today.'
Sophie was able to hold Ocealys in position in the swells, and the exhausted crew were able to get aboard. From there they were taken to Robinson Crusoe Island Resort a few hours away.
The New Zealand High Commission recommended Maurice and Sophie Conti for heroism awards and in November 2009, they traveled to London to receive theUnited Nation’s International Maritime Organization Award for Exceptional Bravery at Sea. They are seen after that presentation, in the photo, above,right.
Annie Hill and Trevor Robertson
In 1997 Robertson built Iron Bark, a 35-foot steel gaff cutter in Queensland, Australia. In 1998 he single-handed it from New Zealand around Cape Horn to the Antarctic Peninsula where he wintered over, frozen in at Alice Creek, Wiencke Island. On January 4, 2000, Iron Bark broke out of the ice and after cruising for a few weeks in the Antarctic Peninsula Robertson departed for the Falkland Islands and then sailed directly to Trinidad.
Annie Hill joined Iron Bark in 2002 and together they sailed from Trinidad to Labrador, Canada before returning to Baddeck, Nova Scotia. After returning to the U.K. in 2003 and later sailing to Tobago and then Trinidad, they readied Iron Bark for another trip north in 2004. From the U.S. Virgin Islands they passaged to Halifax and loaded provisions for 500 days. On July 1 they departed and sailed north up the Greenland coast looking for suitable winter quarters. They chose Nako Island, at 72 degrees 40 North. On November 5 Iron Bark was frozen in and by June 8, 2005 they had broken free. After a few weeks they departed for Trinidad. It is believed that Iron Bark is the first vessel to winter unsupported in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
In February 2006 they left for New Zealand via the Panama Canal. With stops in the Galapagos Islands and many Pacific islands, they arrived in New Zealand on November 9 after sailing 10,500 miles.
Annie Hill left England in 1975 on her first Atlantic crossing in a 28-foot Wharram designed catamaran. She has made 17 Atlantic crossings! Her cruising has included Europe, the Caribbean, South America, South Africa, Labrador, Newfoundland, Greenland, and she has also circumnavigated South Georgia. All told, she has sailed approximately 165,000 miles.
Trevor Robertson’s cruising also started in 1975 when he did an 8,000 mile cruise in a 34-foot wooden sloop from Western Australia to South Africa. Navigation was by plastic sextant and lead line. He has sailed from Australia to the Caribbean via the Suez Canal in a 30-foot fiberglass sloop with no electronics. In 1989 he returned to Australia via the Panama Canal and New Zealand, a trip of 19,000 miles singlehanded. In total, Trevor Robertson has logged 140,500 miles.
From 2007 to 2009 the couple spent time cruising in New Zealand, Tasmania and Queensland, Australia. In November 2009, Trevor departed from Nelson, New Zealand solo aboard Iron Bark bound for Chile.
John P. Rousmaniere
The Richard S. Nye Trophy has bee awarded to John P. Rousmaniere, who has brought distinction to the Cruising Club of America as a sailor, writer, and historian. He is best known as a prolific author, and his books such as Desirable and Undesirable Characteristics of Offshore Yachts, The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, Fastnet Force 10, A Berth to Bermuda, and many others have been a source of information and inspiration to sailors around the world. He has also served the sport of sailing as a moderator at Safety at Sea Seminars, as a lecturer, and researcher on man overboard recovery techniques.
The trophies will be presented to the recipients, on March 5, 2010 by CCA Commodore Sheila McCurdy (Middletown, R.I.) during the club’s annual Awards Dinner at the New York Yacht Club, in New York.
About the Cruising Club of America
The Cruising Club of America is dedicated to offshore cruising, voyaging and the 'adventurous use of the sea' through efforts to improve seamanship, the design of seaworthy yachts, safe yachting procedures and environmental awareness. Now in its 89th year, the club has 10 stations throughout the U.S., Canada and Bermuda, with approximately 1200 members who are qualified by their experience in offshore passage making. In even-numbered years, the CCA organizes the Newport to Bermuda Race in conjunction with the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. It also sponsors several Safety at Sea seminars and hosts a series of 'Suddenly Alone' seminars for the cruising couple.
I hope you enjoyed our first edition for 2010. I wish you happy and successful times ahead in a year full of good sailing, profitable business and above all good health
Jim Bolland
January 28 2010
A Brush with Sail is published by Ocean Heritage Partnership, Wellington, New Zealand. Email: jim@abrushwithsail.com or phone: +64 4 566 1383.
