Host club Skerries Sailing Club are delighted to announce that there are now 105 entries for the upcoming GP14 World Championship taking place from the 14th to the 19th of August this year. That number is set to grow further as the event draws closer…
Pondering the future of Scuttlebutt
by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt Sailing News
The proverb ‘All Good Things Must Come To An End’ is rooted in the 14th century, and while I don’t know if they were talking about popsicles or the calm before the next battle, this 25th anniversary year of Scuttlebutt Sailing News has made me think.
What began as a lark in 1997 when the internet was young and fun, the publication now lives in the madness of what the modern internet.
I have been pondering the future of the publication. Do I sell it, and witness where it goes, or do I end it like Thelma & Louise? And then a letter like this arrives that keeps me on watch:
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As a former Snipe sailor and now steeped in catboats, I want to thank you for your publication of Scuttlebutt over the many years.
You have consistently been a reasonable and moderate voice in the inevitable controversies and issues. You have covered events of regional, national, and international significance with insight and photo journalism. You connect with the newer sailors and the more experienced, without condensation, but, instead, earnest effort toward inclusion.
Also, I appreciate your “Curmudgeon” insights at the end, many of which I have forwarded to friends and relatives for their relevance and insight. Your Scuttlebutt is probably the last thing I would ever cancel from my incoming email blogs.
Just wanted you to know how much I appreciate what you do and have done over the years. Please keep it up.
– Woody Norwood; Atlanta, GA and Beaufort, SC
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What the future holds is to be determined, but I remain immensely proud to guide the publication, and always hope it helps in some way to make this such a great sport. Sail on!
it’s rough out there
On Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued three sailors in the Strait of Juan de Fuca after two competing sailboats capsized in rough conditions. The boats were under way in a larger flotilla for the annual Race to Alaska, and they were transiting the easternmost stretch of the strait from Port Townsend to Victoria. A gale warning and small craft advisory were in effect, and organizers described the conditions as “between seasick and dangerous” before departure. Water temperature in the strait was in the range of 50 degrees F, as is typical for the time of year. Read on.
Bill Tripp’s first big win
For every notable yacht designer, there is that one boat which launches their career. For Bill Tripp Jr, whose life was cut short in 1971 at age 51 due to an automobile accident with a drunk driver, that boat was an innovative yawl which Donald Street recalls in this report:
In 1956 I sailed the Vineyard race on Katingo, a very nice centreboard yawl of about 50-feet that Bill had designed for Captain Vatis, a Greek ship owner.
At that point, Bill was no longer working for S&S but was trying make it as an independent designer, though his income was still largely from Red Hand paint that he represented in some fashion.
I can’t remember the entire crew but there was Captain Vatis as owner and skipper, Bill as navigator along with Arthur Knapp, Rod Oakes (an old friend who in our teen age years was a star boarder at our house in Port Washington on Manhasset Bay), myself, and a couple of others.
The race started in fog, and for navigation we relied on Dead Reckoning, using a Kenyon speed gauge that was not too accurate and didn’t record total miles. We had basic Direction Finding, but our distance sailed was a guesstimate, and while there was a sextant on board, with the fog there was no sun to use.
After leaving Long Island Sound, passing south of Fishers Island and Watch Hill, on an inshore leg as we tacked I saw Weekapaug Inn. I went below and asked Bill where his DR put us, and he showed us on the chart as being ten miles out which was not surprising considering fog and the navigation equipment available in those days.
Having spotted the Inn through the fog, I pointed out where we were along the Rhode Island shoreline, certain of our location as the Street family had spent summers on that beach since 1936 (and parts of the Street family still do).
This gave Bill a good point of departure to work out our approach to Vineyard Sound Lightship which we found by homing in on the DF and picking up the fog horn. We rounded the lightship, and headed back to Plum Gut south of Block Island, on a fast shy spinnaker reach. – Read on
America’s Cup: Join the Spy Game
Teams using spies armed with long lenses to get an insight into what design direction competitors are heading in, are a common sight. For the 37th America’s Cup, the spy game has been reinvented. Here’s your opportunity to be part of it…
SailGP visits Chicago for the first time
On June 18 and 19, nine national SailGP teams will race in excess of 60mph – on Lake Michigan in front of the Chicago skyline…
UK Moth Nationals – Hiscocks by a point
Simon Hiscocks took victory on the final day of the International Moth UK Nationals at WPNSA…
American Magic training in Pensacola
The City of Pensacola is welcoming New York Yacht Club American Magic back to the Port of Pensacola for training, marking the team’s third winter training on the Gulf Coast. PATRIOT, the team’s AC75 racing yacht, arrived in Pensacola after making the journey from New Zealand on June 11, 2022.
American Magic will spend the summer building out the team’s base in advance of winter training. The team will spend all winter in Pensacola training before relocating to Barcelona for the final push into the 37th America’s Cup…
Details: https://www.americascup.com/en/home
Source: NYYC American Magic media
Ready, set, R2AK
We’re back. 829 days since the world was cancelled by the murder sneeze, Race to Alaska (R2AK) Central is shaking off the cobwebs and getting back in the saddle for a long delayed year of engineless hard charging to Alaska. Thank god.
Deep in R2AK’s command bunker we’re Rip Van Winkling our way out of forced hibernation. Our beards are a little longer, jumpsuits a little tighter than they were when we hung them up back in 2019. While R2AK Central is trying to remember where all the light switches are, both streets of Port Townsend are a sea of boat trailers, foul weather geared pedestrians, and R2AK t-shirted tourists and volunteers.
The marinas and boat launches are bumper to bumper with pedal-driven and paddle-wheeled weirdo craft, the movie theater is filled with the R2AK documentary. This is definitely happening, three years and finally since the last one.
With three years to prep, you’d think that teams would be dialed in and disciplined, fire-drilled and dojo-honed, executing a plan three calendars in the making. You’d be wrong, at least a conceptual “half” of the time…
Sailing In the Dark? Let Cyclops Be Your Eyes…
The world’s elite offshore sailors have found an alternative to all those pre-race carrots you’ve been eating…
SDYC hosts 2022 Snipe Nationals
San Diego Yacht Club is proud to host the 2022 Snipe National Championship this summer, July 11-15, 2022. Four full days of racing in what promises to be tight competition in the Snipe Fleet will be paired with five days of on-land festivities…
SSL Gold Cup Qualifying Series Round 3 day 2
After unfavourable wind conditions forced abandonment of racing yesterday, Group 5 finally got underway today with three back-to-back races in an all-South American contest…
Artemis Technologies’ all-electric foiling prototype
UK-based Artemis Technologies, headed by Olympic champion and America’s Cup skipper Iain Percy, has launched its 100% electric, high-speed foiling workboat prototype on Belfast Lough…
Surfrider Foundation Europe joins Route du Rhum
As it is shaping up as an all time record edition the 2022 La Route du Rhum – Destination Guadeloupe 2022 will muster the biggest fleet ever with 138 participants…
AOSF enters the Ocean Globe Race challenge
The crew will be composed of Military Vets and First-Responders with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, who are given an opportunity to heal at sea, using research-based methods of learning to live with trauma through Adventure Therapy…
Leigh McMillan signs on for a third America’s Cup
Having grown up on the Isle of Wight, Leigh McMillan knows a few things about the America’s Cup and it was a very quick decision to re-sign with INEOS Britannia, for his third consecutive America’s Cup with the British Challenger…
SailGP has come of age
Bill Springer, Forbes.com, talks to Russell Coutts about how the adrenaline-fueled, environmentally conscious SailGP Racing League is coming of age at the next event of this season in Chicago.
When it comes to high-performance sailing, and high-profile high-performance sailing events, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and America’s Cup legend Russell Coutts have pretty much seen it all. Their Oracle Team USA syndicate came back from the brink of losing the America’s Cup to Emirates Team New Zealand (they were down 8 races-to-1) by winning 9 races in a row in historic fashion on San Francisco Bay in 2013.
And their 2017 Oracle Team USA squad was nearly swept when they lost the Cup to Emirates Team New Zealand (7-races-to-1) in Bermuda. But stories like these only scratch the surface of what these two passionate and powerful sailors have brought to the “sport of sailing” since Ellison started forming syndicates headed by Coutts to compete for the America’s Cup in the early 2000’s.
In fact, few have worked harder and invested more to turn the “sport of sailing”, that had been perceived to be a stereotypically slow and boring activity for eccentric billionaires, into a modern sport that has all the excitement, technology, sex appeal and drama (and sponsorship opportunities) of Formula 1 Grand Prix racing, than Ellison and Coutts…
The Honeys: Final hurrah aboard Illusion
Speaking with Sally and Stan Honey in the cabin of their Cal 40 Illusion, the conversation is as easy and breezy as the gorgeous day topsides in Portsmouth, R.I. The ocean-racing couple, who’ve racked up many victories racing from California to Hawaii, is preparing for the 52nd Newport Bermuda Race.
The Honeys, from Palo Alto, Calif., are well advanced in their preps. The crew is set: 1984 Olympic Gold medalist Carl Buchan (Seattle, Wash.), fellow Cal 40 owner Don Jesberg (Belvedere, Calif.) and the redoubtable Jonathan Livingston (Richmond, Calif.) are all experienced and legendary West Coast sailors in their own right.
The boat has been stripped of its cruising amenities: the dining table and floorboards are removed, the heavy anchor and chain are gone, and the heater has been disconnected and removed. The safety inspection has occurred…
Only two days to the 83rd Bol d’Or Mirabaud
This morning, the organizers of the 83rd Bol d’Or Mirabaud presented the final details of the world’s most important regatta held on a lake, which promises to be exceptional both on land and on the water…
a shot in the dark
AIS tracking partnership Global Fishing Watch has expanded its reach with what it believes to be the first ever publicly-available worldwide map of “undetected dark fleets” – vessels that do not broadcast AIS.
Using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites, coupled with machine learning algorithms, Global Fishing Watch has figured out how to automatically track vessels without the use of satellite AIS…
dock walk talk
Conrad Coleman takes you on a tour of the IMOCAs that will be sailing in the Vendée Arctique which starts this Sunday. Conrad will be sailing his boat, Imagine, a 2007 VPLP design The course leaves Les Sables, goes around Iceland(!), and then finishes back at Les Sables.
Clipper Race: Progress toward Bermuda
(June 8, 2022) – Following a smooth Le Mans start, the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race fleet is making decent progress, despite the ever-changing winds, through the Caribbean Sea during the first stage of Race 12: Go To Bermuda. WTC Logistics is currently head of the pack and racing toward the first Scoring Gate, located north of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Having played a Joker during this race, the WTC Logistics team will want to maintain their position, but with the GoToBermuda team not far behind and also playing their Joker, it’s all to play for.
The race to the first virtual mark was close, with the whole fleet racing within 5nm of each other, trying to keep good boat speed toward Jamaica. However, the last 24-36 hours has been slow for the fleet, with prevalent wind holes causing the yachts to distance from each other and shake up the rankings, as the teams each navigate the patches of wind and try to pick up some short-lived breeze…
Eight Bells: Hayden Goodrick
Professional sailor Hayden Goodrick, who had been living in Vail, Colorado with his young family, died after having chest pains during an event in Newport, Rhode Island. He was 38. A New Zealand-born sailor and father of two is being mourned all over the world after he died while competing.
Hayden’s early career started when his uncle gifted him lessons at the New Plymouth Yacht Club in New Zealand as a pre-teen. In 2000, Hayden left New Plymouth Boys High School and moved to Auckland, after being given the opportunity to sail in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. “I decided, if I wanted to have a decent crack at sailing, I would have to put everything into it,” he said in 2003.
Goodrick, nicknamed “83”, had a drive for the sport that saw him chase his dream all over the globe, taking part in the America’s Cup, as a key member of BMW Oracle in 2007, and founding the US One Sailing team, driving it to success in 2013, and was beloved figure in the sport.
His mother, Denise Goodrick, said she’d need a whole day to sum up her son’s achievements. “Hayden was somebody who lived a lifetime in 38 years,” Denise said. While Hayden was known for his sailing, he had done so much else in the decades he spent overseas, and was renowned by so many organizations and people…
International 6mR teams ready for World Championship
The International Six Metre 2022 World Championship opens on the waters of the Pontevedra estuary in Galicia, at the northwest corner of Spain, from the 10 to 18 June…
2022 ILCA 7 Masters Worlds – Podiums after final day racing
The final two races were completed Tuesday at the 2022 ILCA 7 Masters World Championship in Riviera Nayarit, Nueveo Vallarta, Mexico…
britannia waives the rules
My colleague Shanghai Sailor is offended that anyone should have the temerity to describe the British monarchy as “antiquated and irrelevant”. Perhaps he’s been singing God Save the Queen so loudly he’s become deaf to both history and reality.
Like all hereditary monarchies, the House of Windsor (whose real surname was Battenberg) is an inbred collection of entitled spongers who’ve lived luxuriously off the public purse and their largely stolen private wealth. They are a high-end form of showbiz. In the UK they are the nation’s primary tourist attraction. They have no actual authority over anything other than their own pampered lives.
The whole notion of a hereditary monarchy is ridiculous. Installing someone as Head of State purely on the basis of who their parents happened to be is as nonsensical as accepting a hereditary brain surgeon…
America’s Cup: Swiss name sailing and design teams
Fourteen sailors have been selected to join the Alinghi Red Bull Racing crew and represent the Société Nautique de Genève during the 37th America’s Cup…
Rules Committee for 37th America’s Cup
The Rules Committee for the 37th America’s Cup has been announced with a trio of highly qualified members who will be in charge of maintaining the rules and regulations in relation to all AC37 race yachts. They are Stan Honey (USA), Mark Ellis (UK) and Marc Wintermantel (SUI).
According to the Protocol of the 37th America’s Cup the role of the Rules Committee is to be exclusively responsible for the interpretation of the AC75 and AC40 Class Rules and their rulings are final.
The Rules Committee is also responsible for the determination of whether or not any yacht constitutes a Surrogate Yacht, based on information provided by the Measurement Committee; and to resolve any other matter for which it is given jurisdiction under the Protocol and/or the Class Rules…
Sustainability: Focus of Bermuda Race
The 2022 Bermuda Race Organizing Committee has made sustainability a focal point of the biennial race. The past three editions of the 635-nautical mile race (2014, ’16 and ’18) have been recognized by Sailors for the Sea as “clean” regattas, culminating with a Gold classification for the 2018 race for its effort to minimize the impact on the environment.
This year race organizers hope to achieve Platinum-level status, the highest level, and have laid out objectives to eliminate single-use plastic, maximize recycling and reuse, encourage thoughtful provisioning, and promote the use of environmentally friendly boat and dish-cleaning solvents that lack harsh chemicals, among a long list of suggestions…
British 12sqM Sharpie Nationals at Wells
The Jubilee weekend provided the best available tides for the championships, unfortunately the wind and weather gods disagreed. Friday provided the best conditions overhead, but the freshening NE breeze made sea conditions increasingly difficult…
DIY: Veneer
Part of the remodeling of the chart table area on my 45ft schooner Britannia involved making a new section of floorboarding or, to use its proper nautical term, cabin sole. The floor beneath was just rough plywood, unlike the remainder of the boat, which was beautiful teak with white-wood strips. It was perhaps just as well, because in order to reposition the electrical distribution board I had to cut this floor out completely to re-route the wires underneath.
I naturally wanted any new floor to match the boat’s existing sole and scoured the web and any sources of teak flooring with whitewood strips to match the existing floor pattern. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate the exact pattern anywhere. Britannia’s strips are 3/8in wide, and the nearest I could find were 1/4in wide and also spaced differently. I thought using a different pattern would look like a “botched job” and chose not to settle…
11th Hour Racing Team arrive in Newport, RI
The new IMOCA race boat Malama arrived in its home port of Newport, Rhode Island, this evening at sundown following a successful 10 day transatlantic training run from Concarneau, France…
2022 Supernova Nationals Runners & Riders
With just under a month to go until the Supernova National Championship, it is time to analyse the fleet and see who might be in the running to take the crown (odds are just for fun!)…
ILCA 7 Masters Worlds in Mexico day 5
Two races were completed today at the 2022 ILCA 7 Masters World Championship in Riviera Nayarit, Nueveo Vallarta, Mexico. The racing kicked off in about 8–10 knots, and the breeze picked up a little for the second race to 11–13 knots…
Seven GP Zero boats for RORC IRC Nationals
The Royal Ocean Racing Club’s RORC IRC National Championships will be the setting for Round Two of the new IRC Racing Class Grand Prix Zero (GP Zero) series. Seven ballistic speed machines are expected from the GP Zero Class…
Abandoned Infiniti52 found and recovered
The Infiniti52 Tulikettu, which was abandoned and believed to be lost at sea in mid-April, has been found and safely returned to shore…
Global Solo Challenge – Do you qualify?
There must be thousands of sailors worldwide who dream of sailing around the world, non-stop and alone. Just you and your boat overcoming the elements and achieving one of the pinnacles of yachting aspiration…
The little boat that could
All it took was a year of elbow grease and a little bit of TLC for Alex Simanis to get his newly restored Pt Bonita 27, Pell Mell, back into the water and titled a winner. The smallest boat on the course for the duration of the 2022 California Offshore Race Week (CORW) has proved that it is heart and skill that gets you first overall, not size.
The week-long journey down the California coast is broken into separate races: Spinnaker Cup (San Francisco to Monterey, 86 miles), Coastal Cup (Monterey to Santa Barbara, 204 miles), SoCal 300 (Santa Barbara to San Diego, 245 miles): June 2-4. Skippers and crews are encouraged to participate in the entirety of the CORW, but have the option to opt into any of the individual legs. In 2016, the SoCal 300 synced up with the Spinnaker Cup and the Coastal Cup, resulting in the California Offshore Race Week.
Simanis’ Pell Mell is the official winner of not just the SoCal 300, but the overall series winner of CORW. Originally built in the mid 80’s, the Point Bonita 27′ Pell Mell was designed to be more of a cruiser, with inspiration from the Dogpatch 26, without the hard chines below the waterline. Her ample room below decks makes things more comfortable for distance-racing. Simanis found the boat languishing in Poulsbo in the Pacific Northwest West, and spent an entire year bringing her into her potential, and this past October, she returned to the water and began collecting trophies…
Giorgio Armani Superyacht Regatta overall
The Giorgio Armani Superyacht Regatta concluded with a win in the day’s racing and overall victory for the Wallycento Magic Carpet Cubed, owned by YCCS member Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones, assisted as always on tactics by Jochen Schuemann…
Race to Alaska: the anti-yacht race
Doug Kennedy has spent decades sailing the globe. He’s navigated Scandinavian waters like a viking, and once crossed the Atlantic from the coast of Morocco to the Caribbean over a three-week journey.
A trip north along British Columbia’s coast should, in theory, be easy for him. In practice, it will be anything but for Kennedy and a group of Nelson sailors looking to make history, if they can finish the journey that is. “It’s as challenging a place to sail as anywhere in the world,” says Kennedy.
The Kootenay Pedalwheelers, a team of six including Kennedy, Jay Blackmore, Mike Bowick, Roger Hassol, Todd Kettner and Mike Sagal, are set to compete in the 2022 Race to Alaska beginning June 13. The event is a 1,200-kilometer endurance race from Port Townsend, Wash., to Ketchikan, Alaska. The 38 teams taking part are bound by two rules: no motors and no outside help…
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