Inhaltsverzeichnis für November - December 2015 in Sailing World

THE NEW YORK YACHT CLUB has an excellent thing going with its Invitational Cup. There is nothing like it today — amateur sailors racing for club and national pride. The regatta’s organization, hospitality and race management are exemplary. A few teams are always top-shelf and practiced; midfleet teams are quick but prone to shockers; and there are always a few that put in the honest effort only to drift to the back of the fleet every time. Regardless of where one stands after 11 races, the experience is the same: a week of intense, big-boat fleet racing in Newport, Rhode Island, in September, the primo sailing days in the sailing capital. Now six years and four editions complete, the Invitational is the club’s signature event. The guest list has 17…

THE 2015-2016 CLIPPER Race starting line is between Southend Pier, England, and an RNLI committee boat. The wind is swinging from the north to the west and back again every few minutes. Our course will take us east through the Princes Channel, past the Shivering Sands towers; east to Margate, keeping it to starboard; through the English Channel; and then south to Rio de Janeiro. It appears to be a simple course for the 22 crew on board ClipperTelemed+, though their route onto the boat was a little more complicated. They are alongside me because they chose to try a different routine from their 9-to-5 lives. They chose to depart from the simple route. The gun fires, and 12 Clipper 70s race across the line. Qingdao is the only team…

IN THE BILGE OF the Farr 40 Flash Gordon, metal water bottles are neatly packed together as the team heads out to the racecourse at the Rolex Farr 40 Worlds. The bottles were filled using nothing more than the dock hose and a portable carbon filter. The reason is simple: Eliminating single-use bottles on the raceboat, and replacing them with a hydration system, also cuts back on waste. Beyond the environmental benefits, these systems are portable, cheaper than buying pallets of water bottles, and make it easier for sailors to stay well-hydrated. PROCEDURE The water program aboard Flash Gordon began in 2012. Every morning, the team refills all of its bottles at the dock using a GE home filtration system that attaches directly to the dock hose. The team also…

IT’S BEEN ALMOST 10 years since I wrote about continuing obstructions in this column. Over that time the wording of the applicable rules has changed a lot, but the “game” that they imply at a shoreline in strong adverse current is essentially unchanged. In this column I apply today’s rules to the same incident that I discussed in March 2006. The diagram depicts an incident that is a fine example of the typical situation in which boats are involved with a continuing obstruction. Ann rounded the windward mark clear ahead of Bert. The next leg was a run in light air and strong adverse current. The boats were one-design keelboats that drew about 5 feet. The water depth gradually decreased as the boats neared shore. The bottom was sandy and…

WITH THE TRANSITION of the America’s Cup from monohulls to foiling catamarans, there’s a new pathway to sailing’s pinnacle event for young, high-performance sailors. It’s a steep and narrow switchback, however, given that most skills learned in dinghy or keelboat sailing don’t translate to foiling cats. So what’s a young wannabe professional foiler to do? Enter the Red Bull Foiling Generation. The program was created with the aim of softening transitional speed bumps to foil sailing, and its Austrian founders Roman Hagara and Hans-Peter Steinacher are recruiting youth sailors and introducing them to the thrill of foiling. With Olympic gold medals and countless world titles as credentials, Hagara and Steinacher simply want to give the youth “something else,” an alternative path to new forms of racing. They’re using the Flying…

IT’S 1987, AND STARS & STRIPES has upset Australia to win the America’s Cup in the waters off Fremantle, Australia. The American yacht is packed with 40 or more sailors and supporters for the triumphant return to the harbor. The scene is being broadcast live to the United States on a new sports network called ESPN. On the 12-Meter’s transom stands Thomas A. Whidden, the team’s tactician, proudly waving the ensign. It’s one of the greatest moments in sailing, and a milestone for the 38-yearold sailmaker who will become one of the sport’s most important figures. Describing Whidden’s career as remarkable is an understatement. He raced with eight America’s Cup campaigns (winning three) and helped build North Sails into the largest sailmaking company in the world. There are countless trophies…

MY FAMILY HAS a beach home in the San Juan Islands, north of Seattle, right on Fisherman Bay. Naturally we have a collection of small boats there, including a pair of 11-foot singlehanded Europe dinghies. I was at the house with my wife and kids recently and got itchy to go sailing, so I rigged one of the Europes and headed out on the water. At about 12 knots, conditions were nice but not thrilling. I was having a lazy downwind sail, getting pretty relaxed, trying to see how high to pull the daggerboard, when I caught view of another small sailboat down the bay. For some reason I headed straight for it. It turned out to be a new RS Aero, a very cool and modern singlehander, like a…

ON SEPT. 5, 2015, 33 Gulf Coast yacht club commodores assembled at Mississippi’s Bay-Waveland YC for a long-awaited vote, a decision that would effectively reshape the one-design nature of an entire region. On the table was a choice between two very similar sportboats, the Viper 640 and the VX One. Only one would be anointed the official boat of the Gulf Yachting Association’s interclub events. To only one of the two rival builders would come the spoils: new orders and a vast new territory. The Viper 640 won by a single vote, 17 to 16. Consisting of 39 member and affiliate yacht clubs spread from Houston to Sarasota, Florida, the GYA has held interclub one-design regattas, known collectively as Capdevielle Racing, since 1920. Member clubs are required to own at…

THERE ONCE WAS AN ERA when spinnakers burst with color: rainbow tri-radials, mismatched scraps from the loft floor, and cloth that was bright, bold and outstanding. For one reason or another, the sport went monochromatic: white boats, black sails, white kites. Ask a sailing photographer how dull that is. But we’re sensing a throwback with new grand-prix boats sporting vibrant paint jobs, slick graphics and — what’s that? Hued spinnakers? Color is a trend that’s carrying over into our gear too. 1. SPINLOCK WING AND FOIL First things first: The Spinlock Wing and Foil are not U.S. Coast Guard-approved PFDs. They’re 50-newton buoyancy aids that provide roughly 11 pounds of positive flotation. So while they’re not technically life jackets, they are so lightweight and comfortable you’ll forget you’re even wearing…

NOTHING DIRECTS mainstream media attention to sailing like a good accident. When Team Vestas Wind hit a reef in the Indian Ocean, the Volvo Ocean Race became a media darling. The visual of America’s Cup defender Oracle Racing’s AC72 self-destructing under the Golden Gate Bridge went viral overnight. It’s hard to beat a disaster story. But scripting such accidents is ill-advised, and not great press, either. For mainstream media, sailing also gets attention when it’s connected to another relatable experience — something rare, that involves preparation, risk and luck. We’re talking about setting and beating records. We can all relate to records: how many days you can resist your guilty pleasure, how much time you can shave off your commute, or how many wieners a guy can scarf down in…

AUSTIN AND GWEN Fragomen are happy owners. Their new custom 44-footer, Interlodge IV, won its first race four days after touching water for the first time. Then it won every major regatta that followed. Pretty good for a program that was simply an idea nine months earlier. How does a program go from concept to victory so quickly? It has a lot to do with how it was conceived and executed. IDENTIFYING A BUCKET LIST The first question when organizing any program is always, what’s on the bucket list? Usually, no one knows exactly, but this is the most important question. It’s far easier to create a winning boat if you know exactly what you want to do with it. Fortunately, Austin knew where he wanted to take a new…