Kimball Livingston's BLUE PLANET TIMES | Commentary and news about boats, sailing, the oceans and the marine environment

Pointing the Way for Sailing

By kimball | Published: March 13, 2010

Worry all you want about growing sailing.
I rest my faith in those who just have to sail.

A Harbor Cup start. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Today’s example: The Chapman University Sailing Team, which has showed very well in Harbor Cup racing—seven person teams in Catalina 37s—out of the Port of Los Angeles. The nub of it would be two seniors, Max Moosmann and Aaron Krugman, who decided four years ago, in their freshman year, to start a sailing team.

Then discovered it was hard.

Then made it happen.

As he faces graduation and a new phase of life, Moosmann reflects, “I’m a member of a fraternity, but there are only so many close friends you can have out of a hundred guys. The fact is, Aaron and I had a vision, but what has grown out of it is completely different from what we imagined. The sailing team is sort of a big family, and I can say with confidence that my friendships on the sailing team are the ones that will last a lifetime.”

The Chapman team. Photo by Kimball Livingston

The Chapman sailors have reveled in the Harbor Cup competition, which all the team members identified as a favorite event that gets them out of FJ’s and into a different form of racing. The three-day invitational, the only big-boat collegiate regatta on the West Coast, is a collaboration of the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Yacht Club, with the California Maritime Academy as the inviting school. It’s also part of a network of events that helps build relationships with the sailors from other teams. Liz Nihill, who turned 21 on Saturday, hails from Long Island, New York. She says, “I would never have seen as much of the West Coast if not for the sailing team, but this is the regatta I look forward to all year.”

Why argue with that assessment. We’ve had people sailing in t-shirts and shorts, and yes, I could see snow on distant mountains, and Catalina looking alluring over yonder to the west. The team from Maine Maritime Academy, winners two years in a row, sailed well enough on Saturday to move into the top four and are only three points out of first with two races remaining. Meanwhile, back home it’s rainy, windy, barely above freezing. Thanks for asking.

Cal Maritime in the mix. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Cal Maritime had a good day in Saturday’s five races, 1-2-6-2-1 in winds in the high teens (the academy is located in Vallejo, at the mouth of the Sacramento River, so these people sail a lot on windy San Francisco Bay) to take the lead from the Naval Academy team, which started strong on Friday with two firsts but dropped out of race six on Saturday (faced with a protest) and fell to fourth, probably out of contention. We probably have a three-boat contest for the final two races on Sunday, with Cal Maritime (24 points; helmsman John Gray), followed by USC (26 points; helmsman Chris Vetter) and Maine Maritime (27 points ; helmsman Matt Bourque). For the record, with a bit of a sea state running, Saturday’s races were sailed inside the breakwater to protect the Catalina 37s, which belong to the Long Beach Sailing Foundation—the same 37-footers that are used in the Congressional Cup, barely a week away. The Harbor Cup is only three years old, and LAYC has already brought it a long way, so yes, we’ll take care of the boats. Sunday’s forecast is downgrade, big time. Pray for enough breeze to race, unless you’re Cal Maritime and you can vamp it, baby, vamp.

HEY, LET’S START A SAILING TEAM

“At freshman orientation at Chapman, they said how it’s so easy to start a club, how the school is really good at starting new things,” Moosmann recalls.

So when his old friend Krugman called to say, “Let’s start a sailing team,” it was natural to say yes. The two had known each other since elementary school days. But they had yet to meet the Risk Management Office, or hear statements labeling sailing, “either a moderate or a high risk activity that has to go through risk management. There’s driving to and from campus, obviously activities taking place off campus, and with the sailing team there’s water involved, which is always a high risk because of the possibility of drowning.”

Yeah, this for example . . .

Warning, high risk. Photo by Kimball Livingston

After months of trying to go through proper channels, trying to do everything right, jumping through hoops and “submitting a 100-page constitution,” Moosmann says, “I was so frustrated that I called the president of the university directly and told him, ‘This is ridiculous. We’re trying to do something for the Chapman Community.’ The next day the athletic director—the guy who had pooh poohed everything up to that point—called and said, Hey, let’s start a sailing team.”

Leaving only organization, recruitment, fund raising, boat selection, maintenance, travel, and training.

Early donations (it helps to have family) made it possible for Max and Aaron to buy three FJ’s for $800. As Aaron says, “We scavenged parts off two of the boats and made the third one work.”

That was 2006. By 2007 they were officially a Chapman sporting club—along with la cross, they’re the only sport that competes against division one schools—and they’ve expanded with more boats, thirteen members, and a slot at the Scouts’ Sea Base in Newport Beach. Max says, “It’s a great place that gives us access to all the boats we need: FJ’s, 420s, and Shields.”

Max did the driving in 2010. Aaron held down the bow. Maybe they became slightly enraptured of one of the marks on Saturday, but hey, merde occurs, and there are two more races to climb up from fifth.

You can find the Chapman Sailing Team online at Chapman Sailing.

And by the way, Max, at 6′ 7″ how did you ever fit in an FJ?

LOOKING BACK

On Friday the Harbor Cup practice starts shared the waters off Point Fermin with Newport Harbor YC’s Islands Race fleet, outbound to round Catalina and San Clemente islands. There was Stark Raving Mad . . .

Bound for Catalina, in the distance. Photo by Kimball Livingston

And for something quite different, good ole Ragtime . . .

Ragtime with Point Fermin in the background. Photo by Kimball Livingston

And for something quite new, howzabout some very hard chines on an Antrim Class 40 named Yippee Kai Yay . . .

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Posted in Sailboat Racing | Tagged Harbor Cup, LAYC, Los Angeles Yacht Club | Leave a comment

Bringing Back American Classics

By kimball | Published: March 8, 2010

With classic American racing yachts, there’s more than one meaning to the phrase, bring’em back. Any wood boat that’s been out there a while will surely have been “brought back” one time or more through restoration procedures that we can reasonably hope are unreasonably fanatical.

There’s also: Bring’em back home.

Dorade, courtesy Sparkman & Stephens Association

For a while it seemed that all our classic raceboats were off to the Med. Lately, less so. I knew I had to write about this when I heard that Dorade is going up for sale today, and that’s an opportunity. Is there any other boat that so distills the history of American yacht racing in the 20th century?

My answer is, no.

And we know it was Edgar Cato who brought her home.

Dorade was ten years in the Med. She’s been four years now back in the USA with Cato, but first her new owner and his agents had to convince the Italian authorities that, yes, she’s more than 75 years old and an artifact to be sure, but not an Italian artifact, so let our boat go, please?

And they did. The boat was merely passing through Italy, anyway, outbound from the south of France for the USA, where her new owner would make her a fixture of classics events on the East Coast. Two years later, Joe Dockery purchased Sonny (S&S 1935; 53 feet) and returned that boat from the Med. Dorade and Sonny have been racing bow to bow pretty much ever since.

Skylark too came home from the Med.

But you have to love the little stories.

Such as, why is there an Anna, a newly-built 56-footer with the classic looks of Stormy Weather and a modern underbody? Why, son, it’s because when Sam Rowse tried to buy Dorade, and went to France to seal the deal on his accepted offer, the owner somehow got strange feelings and refused to sell. Rowse then commissioned S&S to design an homage to Stormy Weather, leaving Dorade still out there until Cato pried her loose.

Giving credit where credit is due: It was a European who years ago recognized the value of Dorade and gave the boat its first deep-down restoration after purchasing her in the USA. That would be Italy’s Giuseppe Gazzoni-Frascara, who had her lovingly rebuilt on the Tuscan coast by Cantierie Navale dell’ Argentario. That yard at the time had restored the Twelve Meter Nyala and would soon restore both Stormy Weather and Sonny.

But we know there is no such thing as a permanently-restored wooden boat, and not every useful restoration is complete. Cato raced Dorade in New England in the summer of 2006 and decided it was time to do a bit of updating. But when his team opened the boat to work on it, they discovered deep-down issues. Cato received a call in the evening and had a quick reaction: “Donate it.”

Then slept on it.

Then called project manager Paul Buttrose and said, “There’s only one Dorade, and I’m only a custodian, so let’s restore the boat and do it right.”

The result is the iteration of Dorade that is now for sale in Portsmouth, Rhode Island for just south of a million dollars. Few are qualified, financially, to own this boat and fewer still are qualified.

DORADE NOW

In Seattle, Washington, former Dorade crewman Douglas Adkins got a bug up his tail about the subject, and his book, Dorade: The History of an Ocean Racing Yacht, is due in the fall from Parkside Press. Adkins has spoken to everyone he could find that has a connection to the boat. Of 85-year-old Edgar Cato he says, “Edgar is committed to authenticity. He wanted to know everything and anything that had been changed, and turn it back to how it was in 1931. Dorade had been delivered without a motor, so Edgar had that taken out, and now the boat sails with a tender.”

And for those too new to sailing (welcome, you’re going to love it here) to already know the Dorade story—how it launched the career of a young Olin Stephens and put Sparkman & Stephens on the road to becoming the linchpin design firm of its heyday and a continuing force—this is not the place to recount her historic 1931 transatlantic win, or the Fastnet win, or the 1938 Transpac win, but you get the idea that I’m talking about important stuff. There are many sources for more information, including the S&S company web site at sparkmanstephens.com.

The recent, deep-down work that Cato commissioned was done at Buzzards Bay Yacht Services. At their web site you can find photos of the work.

And if you think you’re qualified, you can find full details of purchase at Paul Buttrose Yachts. If not, it’s only because you’re in there early on Tuesday, ahead of the web editor. Well done.

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Posted in Cruising, Sailboat Racing | Tagged Dorade, Sparkman & Stephens, Stormy Weather | 1 Comment

We Came, We Sailed, Mexico Delivered

By kimball | Published: March 7, 2010

Peligroso, aka a training camp. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Regata Copa México is important because it is not. That is, whether it was the MEXORC series for big boats just completed or the J/24 racing soon to be under way on Bahia de Banderas, there is nothing here to re-chart the course of boat design or competitive technique. What we have instead is an example of just how fine sailing can be, for the sake of bringing family and friends together simply in the name of sailing, and I submit to you that this is good.

In Mexico there is no conversation about “Saving Sailing.” The 15 boats up from Acapulco are sailed by family teams. That’s the way they do it. And I keep hearing people around me remarking “world-class event” which is exactly what the organizers set out to achieve in the Edición Nextel Bicentenario.

And—I guess you had to be here to fully appreciate the accomplishment of Olympic Laser sailor Tania Elias, sailing her Laser from Cabo to the mainland as one component of Regata Copa México. To see the tired in her walk and the light in her eyes. Sure, it’s a silly stunt on the one hand, but she had escort, and despite the escort she packed her own food and water, “rested” only on the Laser, and completed a 65-hour journey—300 miles through the water—entirely on her own.

Tania Elias after 300 miles. Photo by Tania Fichtner

Think ambition, guts, and a sincere desire to attract attention and encourage people to come on down and train with her for the 2011 Pan Am Games on Bahia de Banderas. The standing, shouting ovation Tania Elias received in the MEXORC tent required no prompting.

The winning MEXORC entry, Flojito y Cooperando, wasn’t purchased because owner Bernardo Mincow was heavily into sailing, rather because he had family members addicted to the game. The boat is a Farr 40 that was raced in the class worlds on San Francisco Bay in 2004 and then sold into the Farr 40 diaspora (which may be coalescing in Acapulco; more on that later).

Lorenzo Berho’s Kernan 68, Peligroso—winner of the San Diego-Puerto Vallarta Race—did not figure in the MEXORC standings but continued as a platform for training promising young Mexican sailors for offshore competition, which was Berho’s goal when he bought the boat last year. And let’s slip it in here that the president of Mexico sails boats and has directed his Navy to buy boats and train enlisted (yes, enlisted) men to sail. Look beyond the headlines about the horrific “drug wars” (which are a consequence of stupid American laws, but let’s talk politics later) and Mexico is happening, baby.

Boats came in from the USA by way of the PV Race (SDYC RC guy Jim Thompson says, “We race down here to race some more”) where everybody had a fast and memorable ride, including Artie Means, navigating Alchemy, who snapped this quickie from out on a limb . . .

Alchemy cranking. Photo by Artie Means

Boats also were trailered down from Texas and California. J/24 competitor Mike Makami sounded typical and on target with his comment that, “It was a three-day tow from San Diego, quicker than getting to Key West, and I like it here better.” Kevin Hayes drove the Melges 32, Mojo, down from Houston, Texas and his take went: “The first two thirds were easier than I expected; the last third was harder. Mountain roads with no shoulder and no pull-outs, and trucks passing trucks on the curves.”

And there are all those crosses by the side of the road, but just the same I see a trend. J/24s had a successful world championship here recently, so their 50-plus entries are already “trained” to Bahia de Banderas and the environs of Puerto Vallarta.

Two years ago Ernesto Amtmann, the architect who launched MEXORC thirty-plus years ago, was called in to rescue an event that had lost its way. Two years ago he succeeded, then used the energy (and pesos) going into Mexico’s bicentennial year to build something even bigger this time.

President Felipe Calderón came to the regatta twice and made a speech once, not a bad ratio for a politician with two state governors by his side. Tourists are returning to Mexico after the H1N1 panic, important changes have been made to make life easier for people traveling with boats, and it is a no-brainer to see the next “place” as La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, tucked into the northeast corner of the bay. The anchorage is comfortable, and the dredge inside Marina Riviera Nayarit operated 24X7 through January to work the harbor deep enough (most of the time; not all of the time) for the likes of Alchemy, Pendragon VI, and Medicine Man. Only Akela moored out. La Cruz is still a fishing village, but no longer remote and rustic. That’s the good news and the bad news all in one package.

So in one tent we have the president of Mexico making speeches, and if we look over our shoulder, left or right, we see the preparations for BoatShow Latin America, March 11-15. Yachting is growing in Mexico. For people in the marine industry, there are opportunities here.

The kite racing took place down the road from La Cruz at Bucerias, with big names including Bruno Sroka and Sean Farley . . .

Kiting Bucerias. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Was it perfect? Well, a cloud cover (!) came in on Friday and Saturday and shut down the seabreeze. Apparently it’s true that no matter where you go in the world, it’s never like this. It also is true that winter, worldwide, just won’t let go. Past freestyle world champion Adam Koch won the kite racing title on a series abbreviated from twelve races to nine. Also in the minus column, in one race of MEXORC there was a miscommunication among race committee members (true compass course versus corrected) that led to a miscalculation of results under ORR, requiring a re-calculation. Most positions remained the same, but a few boats moved. And that, really, was the only flaw in this edition of what we will always call MEXORC, far cry though it be from the Mexican Ocean Racing Circuit of yore, and a circuit not hardly.

For the record, Class A, Alchemy, Class B, Flojito; Class C, Velocidad 2; Class D, Piet Hein.

Some people might think I boat-hopped this regatta, but the fact is I sailed the entire MEXORC on Quintessence with the family Saenz. In the image below we see just three Saenz—Becky, Eduardo, and Jemena—snapped as Eduardo nailed the start of Race One. The mast came down about six minutes later, so yes, I sailed the whole regatta . . .

Sailing a la Saenz. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Now Eduardo has donated Quintessence to the Navy, and he is thinking about replacing it with a Farr 40 and believing that a few people might follow along so that Club de Yates de Acapulco could end up with seven or eight of these 40-foot one designs. For ages, Acapulco has been the place that preserved the IOR fleet (Quintessence for example) and I should emphasize, this Farr 40 thing is not a done deal. I’m just saying . . .

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Posted in Sailboat Racing | Tagged Marina Riviera Nayarit, MEXORC, Regata Copa Mexico, Tania Elias | Leave a comment

Puddle Jump, Everyone?

By kimball | Published: March 6, 2010

Right in the middle of Regata Copa México comes a day of Puddle Jump seminars, a get-acquainted and get-educated opportunity for cruisers outbound into the Pacific. Most of their day was spent in the lounge at Marina Riviera Nayarit, in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle . . .

A day later, with the same Private Event sign still in place, the same room was locked down by Federales anticipating the return from the regatta racecourse of President Felipe Calderón. His departure got the attention of the press, la prensa . . .

Photo by Kimball Livingston

I’m thinking the last time a U.S. president visited a boat race would have been Kennedy at the America’s Cup.

The governors of Jalisco and Nayarit joined the president and announced a plan to streamline local life by moving the time zone that now divides what has become a metropolis, also by unifying the taxi system so that a driver can cross the state border (as they often must) and pick up where he drops off. These things matter, but not for much longer to those headed west.

Susan of Mulan, a Grand Soleil 39, modeled the Puddle Jump shirt, which has the names of all registered Puddle Jumpers . . .

Meanwhile, the Puddle Jump energy was amped up high . . .

Jack (Mulan), Niall (Totem), Sam (Mulan), Bryce and Austin (Capaz). Photo by KL

Siobhan at speed. She belongs to the Totem clan. Photo by KL

And of course, you don’t have to register for a Puddle Jump t-shirt to sail across the Pacific, but how many did? According to our official t-shirt designer, Ken Newell of SV-Trim, the number would be fifty-eight.

Trim is out of Southern California for their longest sail past Catalina. Newell says, “I’ve been working all my life to get the pennies together to do this.” Are you going all the way around? “That’s the plan.”

This just in: World champion freestyler Adam Koch won the kite racing conducted at Bucerias in a “no matter where you go in the world, it’s never like this” finale. That is, only nine of twelve scheduled races sailed. Next, we’ll wrap up the MEXORC component of Regata Copa México—the final race happens today—and then comes racing for fifty-plus J/24s. The J/24s kick off with practice racing on Monday.

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Cabo to Mainland on a Laser

By kimball | Published: March 4, 2010

Olympic Laser sailor Tania Elias Calles wants you to know that she sails every day in the best place in the world, so come on down and train with her in Mexico at Bahia de Banderas. That is, train on-site for the 2011 Pan Am Games. She’s so serious about this that she just sailed 65 hours from Cabo San Lucas to the mainland—in her Laser—to make the point. And, to set a record. To be numero uno.

Tania at the finish line. Photo by her friend Tania Fichtner

I’ll save you the math. Sixty-five hours is 2 days, 17 hours.

In a Laser, or should we say, on a Laser, because that’s how it is.

The crossing from Cabo to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle is 220 miles on the chart—more like 300 miles as she sailed it—and there were no guarantees this was going to come out right. It was never more true that the sea is so big, and the boat is so small. The next dream is an Olympic medal in 2012. After witnessing the drive and pluck she proved on this journey, we won’t count this woman out.

“I knew there would be a good wind leaving Cabo,” she says, “and it was quick. I was making 12 knots, and I did that for 14 hours straight. My escort boats could not keep up, and then, twelve hours out, my GPS went out but I knew the compass course I needed to steer. Actually, all my electronics quit working. I was tired, very tired, but I was in that area where the waters of the Sea of Cortez meet the Pacific. It was too rough to stop, and my light was out too, so I couldn’t even read the compass. I had to just pick out a star and focus, focus, focus on that frigging star.

“Eventually, I had to stop. I just had to. I put the sea anchor out over the bow, but I capsized twice, and that scared me a bit. I had four more hours of night, and I didn’t want to be wet. I guess I rested maybe twenty minutes.”

Fast-forward to morning, and we find Tania dried out, with both of her escort boats back in touch—and another two days to go. Did I mention, this was hard? Tania figures she slept less than two hours in her 65-hour crossing.

Meeting the press. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Tania’s boat had pouches on each side of the cockpit to hold bars and gels (“food I could eat even if it got wet”) and alongside the centerboard were six liters of water per side. A long hose made water accessible from nearly any part of the boat.

Day two was wearing, and near the Marias (islands) Tania hit a light spot where she “spent eleven hours with only three to five knots of wind.” That would be part of what made day three so hard. As in, down to one liter of water with fifty miles to go.

“The last day was the toughest,” she says. “I was dehydrated and I stopped eating because I just couldn’t take the bars anymore. I was falling asleep, and I wouldn’t realize I was asleep until the boat gybed and I would wake up aimed back at Cabo. I was in a waking dream, and I would be wondering why I was still on my boat and wet and tired. But then I saw the Mariettas, and I knew I was going to make it.”

The Mariettas are tiny rocks close to Punta de Mita, marking the entry to Bahia de Banderas and a warm welcome waiting at the dock at La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. I met Tania here last December, and she told me she was going to do this crazy thing. It gives me great pleasure now to report that it came out alright and to agree with her (as I mention from time to time) that Bahia de Banderas really is one of the best places in the world to sail a boat.

Tania arrived on Wednesday. We had our conversation on Thursday, shortly before her standing ovation at the MEXORC daily awards dinner. Her crossing has been an integral component, from the get-go, of the Nextel Regata Copa Mexico.

Meanwhile, MEXORC continues. Maybe eventually I’ll get that story too. Until then, check out Tania Elias Calles at eldesafio2012.org or listen to her tell part of the story by clicking TaniaElias.

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Two Sides of the Pacific

By kimball | Published: March 3, 2010

One view of the competition. Photo by Kimball Livingston

I wonder as I wander, hull-down on Bahia de Banderas, with whales working over yonder and sails filled with the mild, warm breeze that comes up like clockwork every day, why would anyone bother going to Key West?

(MEXORC is doing fine; glad you asked.)

I do not wonder, as I read accounts of something very different on the contra costa of the Pacific, that the round-the-world Clipper Race fleet is freezing early-on in the long voyage from Qingdao, China to San Francisco, California. Something like a year ago the Volvo racers doglegged north to Qingdao in the winter and came away from the experience with a reduced fleet. The Clipper fleet was also down by one when they made Qingdao, and crew members from the wrecked Cork are now distributed among the remaining nine boats, including the entry named California, which at last check was leading the way toward its namesake destination.

I am reminded that California is the only example of these 68-footers—this is a pay-to-play race with a pro skipper on each boat—that is not fully sponsored. Other parts of the world speak sailing sponsorship much better than the West Coast, and many other parts of the world are more accessible. San Francisco is not on the way to anywhere, unless you’re bound from Alaska to South America, or South America-Alaska. But the Clipper Ventures people, led by founder Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, really really really wanted a piece of the California market, and the leg they came up with is quite the adventure. Pete Rollason, skippering California, says, “It has been tough on the crew, adapting to the harsh temperatures after the luxuries of warm hotel rooms, especially being hit by ice-cold water every few minutes.”

This is not exactly “the season” in the North Pacific, and we speak of an ocean that is big enough to discourage casual transit. It’s not as though California sailors run a circuit with their Hong Kong and Singapore counterparts, the way boats rotate from Caribbean to Med.

Crews of 17 per boat.

5400 miles to go. ETA at the Golden Gate, 35 days.

It’s been a winter in the North Pacific. I hope spring arrives ahead of the fleet.

Thus we have San Francisco Bay lined up in spite of itself to host the Clipper fleet, and we have a MEXORC with 38 boats or so, fewer than it could happily accommodate. But—I’ve yet to track these guys down—Mojo was trailered down from Houston for this event. Texas popped the cherry, so to speak, returning to the question that opened this conversation. Now I must find out (and report, vs. Key West) how that was for them.

A long walk aboard Akela. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Meantime, life goes on around La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, headquarters for Regata Copa México and its big-boat component, MEXORC, where today was an off-day from racing, but Mexico’s Olympic Laser rep, Tania Elias, arrived (whipped) (WHIPPED!) from a solo, escorted-but-unassisted crossing from Cabo San Lucas in a Laser.

I’m supposed to talk to her on Thursday, if she wakes up, to get the straight details, so I’ll let it wait till then. But you have to admire the sheer pluck. Tania had proposed to do it unescorted, but cooler heads laid down the law.

Looking back to MEXORC’s pursuit race on Tuesday, I can share that the seabreeze came up (like clockwork) to 16 knots at the start and 19-20 at the weather mark. That was Peligroso in the crew shot up top.

I was Bill Turpin’s guest for the day aboard Akela, which just set the San Diego-Puerto Vallarta Race record and hit 31 knots in the doing. The deck for the pursuit race was plenty crewed-up, and it didn’t bother me to ride in back and play click-the-camera. But. Anybody who does a lot of photography on boats knows that the way to do it well is to shoot during practice sessions, when you’re free to move around, or from a small powerboat. Veterans know the exchange that goes, How did the shooting go? “Oh, you know. It was all assholes and elbows.”

Theme for a new coffee table book? Photo by Kimball Livingston

Akela is in contention for the MEXORC title, with racing continuing through Saturday. Also in the hunt is the TP 52, Flash, owned by Mark Jones and Mark Howe. Arriving at Las Caletas looked like this (have I mentioned in the last 24 hours that this is one of the best places in the world to sail?) . . .

Photo by Kimball Livingston

Crews panga’d ashore for the evening party and dinner. With no electric lights at all, and torches and candles lighting the trails, dinner looked like this and was as good as it looked . . .

Photo by Kimball Livingston

Two years ago I wrote, “MEXORC is back.”

It’s still back. True, they didn’t get quite the dredged depth promised at Marina Riviera Nayarit, but they got enough that only Akela is moored out, and being tucked into the northeast corner of Bahia de Banderas, La Cruz is, unlike Nuevo Vallarta, an OK place to be “outside.” Lots of cruisers are outside by choice. The downer in my tale is that John MacLaurin’s shiny-new, 69-foot Pendragon VI sat out the pursuit race, after dropping out of San Diego-Puerto Vallarta and then attempting a comeback. I figure MacLaurin, who is a consummate veteran of the custom-yacht game, will work through the issues in his new Davidson design. But for now, she just plain doesn’t float on her lines.

Considering how much good energy the man has put into the sport, and how few people have splashed a new custom raceboat in the last year, it’s not a good look.

P.S. Eduardo Saenz has donated Quintessence, dismasted in the opening race last Sunday, to the navy, the Marina-Armada, for a training vessel. See you in two years, Eduardo?

And as things go, I could not stay reliably online to accomplish this post from my (in other respects) high-end hotel, so I taxi’d down the way to the Vallarta Yacht Club, which has reliable internet access. And a junior program. As the day wound down, the sails caught the light thus . . .

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Posted in Sailboat Racing | Tagged Bahia de Banderas, Banderas Bay, Bill Turpin, Clipper Race, MEXORC, Pete Rollason, Regata Copa Mexico, yacht Akela | Leave a comment

MEXORC Opens with a BANG

By kimball | Published: February 28, 2010

Gather ’round and let’s review:

Rule 237B.2 You never want the mast to go but once you realize it’s going you want it gone baby gone.

Rule 237B.3 When you drive in to a regata in México and you’re passing Federale trucks with mounted machine guns, El Presidente, Felipe Calderón, really did show this time.

Rule 237B.4 When they tell you how helpful the Mexican Navy has been standing station at anchor for three days at Punta Mita to finish the San Diego-Puerto Vallarta fleet (because the yachties didn’t want to), and they tell you the Navy will be there for you if needed, don’t assume you won’t need.

Regata Copa México opened on Sunday out of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, on Bahia de Banderas, which I will say for the umpteenth time is one of the best places in the world to sail. The two-week regatta celebrates the country’s bicentennial and includes racing for J/24s, windsurfers and kites, along with (hey, baby) beach volleyball. But the backbone of the regatta is that it incorporates MEXORC, the region’s classic keelboat event that always tags into a race from the U.S.

John MacLaurin had his new Davidson 69, Pendragon VI, on the course—the one that dropped out of the PV Race and put into Cabo with rudder issues—but from my distant view I’d say they’re still teething and no surprise. It was a race to the race, just to be here, and MacLaurin has talented people on the case, but it was a pretty big ask. The sort of thing that, had it been a Transpac, you would have just hit the Off switch. The man has been a stalwart supporter of this event, and he wanted to be here with his new boat, not his old boat, and I reckon that’s pretty danged human.

I spent my day aboard Quintessence with the family Saenz, heirs to one of the great names in sailing, and I saw something.

I can’t say as how I saw the mast come down, only minutes after our braintrust of Eduardo Saenz and American sailmaker Bruce Cooper nailed the start, and nephew Fede acknowledged the congratulatory wave of el Presidente . . .

Fede feeling good. Photo © Kimball Livingston

But I heard that sucker crack, you better believe it, and as the deck leveled out I knew all too well what I was going to see when I looked. Or not see. Mast down. Blood on the deck was an open question, but there was none of that, so I can come back to broken masts later.

When I say that I saw something, what I saw resonates because I recently read Nicholas Hayes’ book, Saving Sailing, which is at heart an indictment of our society for separating the activities of the generations and sterilizing sport and losing the spirit of mentoring and sharing that has nurtured countless generations. But sport in Mexico is a family affair, whether it’s skiing (with a passion) or sailing (with a passion). The Saenz family has more history than most when it comes to sailing, but in making it a family affair they are more typical that exceptional. I counted eight family members aboard, plus one friend, one ringer, four paid hands, and a wandering scribbler who by the end of the day had fallen in love with their warmth, vitality and bounce-back.

In Mexico, they don’t talk about “saving sailing.” In fact, Presidente Calderón owns a boat—a Catalina—that he keeps in Acapulco, and he has his Navy buying sailboats for Naval bases because he wants the enlisted personnel to learn how to sail. He wants to take this vertical, in other words, beyond the elite that have been comfortably international and sailing for generations.

I saw tears on Sunday, I saw smiles in recovery, and you know it’s a hard day when there are hammers hammering on the foredeck and a call for “another hacksaw” and Becky, the wife of Eduardo Saenz, speaks of “two years of dreaming and planning” gone with the mast. And this was leg one of race one.

Hangin’ onto stuff. That’s the Mexican Navy standing by to starboard, and to port . . .

Submerged (but later rescued) the flags of the two countries . . .

It was “interesting” that even though this incident tested the meaning of tragedy for the Saenz family, these images don’t capture that. I didn’t take the picture of Robi crying; it felt invasive. Later, Becky told me, “Photograph everything. My children will remember this forever.” So she gets a flash drive with 479 files.

Their home territory, Acapulco Yacht Club, preserves the greatest fleet of IOR boats still racing, Quintessence being one example. These boats are babied. All of them have professional maintenance, and they’re even drysailed. Acapulco Yacht Club has a new, heavy-duty lift that makes light work of the likes of Quintessence, a 1980’s Reichel-Pugh that was re-moded for what Acapulco sailors think of as the “heavy winds” of Bahia de Banderas. It’s generally very light in Acapulco, so 10-14 in Bahia de Banderas has its own dimension. Extra lead was added as internal ballast. Rival Wasabi added a 400-kilogram lead bulb. Plenty of racing remains, except for Quintessence.

There was a lot riding on this, and then there wasn’t. As dismasting-emergencies go, we had moderate breeze, moderate waves, and daylight. We even had a race committee volunteer who came aboard and more than pulled his weight figuring out the dis-engineering details.

But this minor incident in yachting will loom large in the history of the family Saenz, which is exactly what makes it important. Few of us are ever more than one turnbuckle away from failure . . .

Photo KL

Motoring home, daughter Jimena said, “It’s like having someone die, and you have to bring the body back.”

Did I mention, two years of dreaming and planning?
Now the boat is broken, far from home, meaning who knows how many tweaks to this other expectation or that. For starters, you don’t just ask the boys to motor down the coast.

But I saw something on that day. I saw a family rally as family.
Earlier in this missive, the word “tragedy” floated through, but of course this was not a tragedy. Without body parts flying, a broken mast is frightening. Disappointing, even tragic, perhaps, on a conversational scale but not as measured in the scales of the New Testament.

Instead, the end of the day looked like this, bittersweet . . .

Photo by KL

Thus, eventually, la familia Saenz et al were ready to record this image for the family history. Not their favorite moment. Not their perfect moment. But all theirs.

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Posted in Sailboat Racing | Tagged Banderas Bay, MEXORC, Regata Copa Mexico, Saenz | Leave a comment

Makings of a Champion

By kimball | Published: February 25, 2010

Bora in the air. Photo by Amory Ross

So Bora Gulari answers his mobile and he doesn’t mind that I called, but he says, “Can I call you back in five? I’ve got this bondo that’s ready to kick.”

The man is the ace in the hottest development class going. What do you expect?

On Friday noon, when Gulari received the official hardware of his Rolex Yachtsman of the Year title in a lunch (luncheon? how do these cityboys talk?) ceremony in the Model Room of the New York Yacht Club, the moment marked the culmination of a remarkable run for Gulari, and a remarkable run for the International Moth Class. (Now flip it over so you can read the time,
Bora.)

Is there a bigger success story in sailing than the Moth? I don’t think so. It’s been around for eight decades, but no one was talking about the Moth ten years ago. It was nearing extinction, with no great constituency ready to mourn the loss. Then the class lifted itself out of the water on foils. Today it is eye candy for all persuasions. Gulari says, “It’s incredible to be part of this.”

Photo by Thierry Martinez

At 33, the man is compulsive: “The coolest thing is that I get to race the stuff I build,” he says, meaning foils created in collaboration with the likes of designer/engineer Paul Bieker. “The scale is small enough that real people can afford to play around with carbon fiber, and we stay in the range of the low thousands. Probably the fastest guy out there is this Aussie, Dave Lister. He builds everything himself. He’s a garage builder—a tinkerer—and guys like him are the foundation; they keep the class going.”

You know, Bora, foils have been showing up on catamarans lately . . .

“I’ve looked at foils on catamarans; I think they will eventually need a pitch-control mechanism like we have. One thing to remember is that foils are wetted surface, and they increase drag. That’s probably why the foiler C-Cat did not succeed at the last Little America’s Cup. But you’re going to be seeing foils on more and different boats. Andrew MacDougal [see below] wants to put foils on a freighter.

“When you see a Moth rise up out of the water, it’s magical. If only I had fifty cents for every time I’ve heard OMG (!).

Photo by Meredith Block

Bora is a silver spooner from a brainiac family in Detroit, Michigan, which has helped his campaign tremendously, not that he didn’t do his time sleeping on floors in Australia to learn from the masters. It was the Aussies who pioneered the path to the foiling Moth, and no account of the class in our time is complete without a nod to Rohan Veal for bulldogging the development and success of the Bladerider brand Moth. It comes out of the box, and it works. That set a standard that was later matched by the Mach 2, the Andrew McDougall-designed, McConaghy-built (you know them for cant-keel 30-meter maxis) Moth in which Bora dominated the 2009 worlds. It comes out of the box, and it works. It will get you to mid-fleet or better. Then, if you want to go faster, you place an order for carbon fiber and you join the development game.

But, you probably want to make sure you’re using what you’ve got, pretty good, before you go tinkering with the foils.

Bora Gulari is a Libra, according to his Facebook page, which lists his interests as Sailing and Sleeping. Libra is an air sign, associated with extroverts, and its symbol is the balance. I wouldn’t exactly be shocked if these predictions vary from one source to another, but I did find this one horoscope page that seems to apply to a Rolex/US Sailing awards ceremony day. (Sounds like you might get lucky, Bora.)

Fri Feb 26: Have Fun

Today your Libra heart is ready to make social contacts a priority. It’s time to let your hair down and have some fun! Your mental health depends on finding a balance between work and play. A romantic evening may make all your hard work seem worth it.

JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM

Bora Gulari sailed the Olympic 49er for six years, then turned to the Moth because, “I wanted to go faster.”

His special, low-cost performance secret? “Atlas Fit latex gloves from the hardware store.”

If balancing above the water like that looks a bit too tippy-woogie for your taste, “I’m barely in control most of the time,” says the man. “I love it.” His on-again off-again home on the internet is wetandreckless.

Gratitude: “Rohan Veal had to do a lot of work, leading the charge for the foils. There was resistance. Everyone behind him is riding on his shoulders.”

It took 26 months of dogged determination (timeintheboattimeintheboattimeintheboattimeintheboat) from Bora’s first sail in a Moth to dominating the Worlds at the Columbia River Gorge in 2009.

Bora’s food for thought:
“Moths are something you could put in front of the public, and they would get it and they would love it. But if you put it into the Olympics, that would hurt the class.”

[Editor's note: The 505 class has been healthy and robust for more than half a century, in part because it has run like hell from every threat of Olympic entanglement and the dreaded four-year boom-and-bust cycle. I get what Bora is saying, but on the other hand, the Olympics would benefit from the foiler Moth, you betcha.]

HEY, LET’S BUILD A CLASS

It was a small cadre of Australians who developed working foils for the Moth dinghy and a method of combining automatic adjustments for the centerboard-mounted foil trim tabs with a skipper-controlled adjustment for the rudder-mounted foils. You can figure these guys swallowed a few gallons of salt water in the process of figuring out the ratios.

The Moth, meanwhile, did not have a significant presence in the USA. But this foiler thing got people going. Gulari was an early adopter. So was Charlie McKee, and it’s a game to go back and forth between them and watch how they each try to give the other credit for organizing the American revolution. That being, going from a country with no Moth class to speak of, to a dominant force.

Photo by Meredith Block

Bora says, “Right from day one, Charlie told me, ‘You’re going to teach us all you know, and we’re all going to get better.’

“Then I was burned. The first time out, I lost to Charlie. But the whole thing worked. And there was none of the animosity that I experienced in my Olympic quadrennial in the 49er, when we started out saying we were all going to work together, but it didn’t end up that way.”

So at this point let’s give the floor to Charlie McKee. I reckon that most of you know the name and the reputation. Here’s Charlie, not talking but writing out what he has to say:

“Bora’s accomplishment was much more than winning a World Championship. He not only got himself to the top of this very competitive class, but dragged the rest of the U.S. along with him.
This is a transformative point for the sport, and the Moth is right at the leading edge. The U.S. had not had a world champion in the Moth, or even been close, for 30 years. Without Bora’s efforts the fledgling U.S. fleet would have been left behind. Despite his clear skill and experience level over the rest of a talented U.S. group, he taught everyone how to set up and sail the boats at a higher level. He knew that we needed a strong fleet to push him harder. His efforts not only resulted in the first U.S. win in over 30 years but also placed four Americans in the top ten at the Worlds, an achievement that was startling to the rest of our world. (Eighteen months previously we had no competitive fleet.)

“The level of talent in the class that he conquered is remarkable. Bora dueled Nathan Outteridge to win the title, and many consider Nathan the top small boat sailor in the world right now. Bora crushed former world champions and Moth class stalwarts such as Rohan Veal, Simon Payne, Andrew MacDougall, and Scott Babbage. Other notable names that he beat included Morgan Larson, Kevin Hall, Brad Funk, Dalton Bergan (and all 3 McKee brothers). The depth of the fleet was such that many of these couldn’t even finish in the top 10. As an Olympic medalist and seven-time world champion in various classes, I can truly say this was one of the toughest regattas I ever competed in.”

Thank you, Charlie, ’nuff said.

Photo by Meredith Block

That name, Bora Gulari. It wouldn’t sound so unusual if you lived in Istanbul, where he was born. His parents, sailors both, came to the U.S. when Bora was a toddler to pursue post-doctoral studies, eventually settling in Detroit. Bora was introduced to windsurfing at age four but didn’t get into a dinghy until he arrived at the University of Michigan to pursue his degree in aerospace engineering. His high point in 49ers was crewing a win at the 2001 North Americans. Now, in addition to being the reigning Moth world champion—the 2010 worlds are coming right up, in Dubai beginning March 5—he holds the Moth class speed record of 30.31 knots.

Ever gone 30 knots under sail?

Congratulations also are in order, of course, to US Sailing’s Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, who is also the Rolex World Sailor of the Year, Anna Tunnicliffe. Anna, you left my heart in my throat in the medals race at Qingdao, but you pulled it out (my heart, and your gold medal) with some very gutsy moves, and your new discipline, match racing, clearly agrees with you.

Tunnicliffe, who was born in the UK, is the first woman in 27 years to be awarded the US title in back to back years. Her most recent special accomplishment was winning the Rolex International Women’s Keelboat Championship last fall.

As for me, I appreciate my invitation to the Rolex event, but from El Camino del Mar, San Francisco to West 44th Street, Manhattan, is a long trip for lunch, even if it’s probably a luncheon. The sport has been fortunate with Rolex as a longtime sponsor, so—Anna and Bora—forget about the storm that’s hammering the streets, and enjoy that fabulous setting—Kimball

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Posted in Sailboat Racing | Tagged bora gulari, Moth, Moth class, Rolex | 1 Comment

An Eco Stunt That Matters

By kimball | Published: February 23, 2010

I was relieved to come away from visiting Plastiki with the sense that, yeah, this can come out OK. It might even be important.

Photo by Kimball Livingston

Most people have heard something of Plastiki by now. Being heir to a name like Rothschild confers an automatic celebrity and resources, and it’s not just any old eco stunt that David de Rothschild has in mind. The up-front premise of Plastiki is that single-use plastic is evil and that sailing a 60-foot catamaran across the Pacific—with 68 percent of the boat’s buoyancy derived from a matrix of 12,500 recycled plastic bottles—will dramatize that message and capture hearts and minds.

It would make engineering sense to skin those bottles over, but then we lose the ready-made visual.

Each bottle is packed with a dry-ice charge for rigidity. Photo by Kimball Livingston

Now, if you stop at this point, especially if you remember that the boat was supposed to have sailed out through the Golden Gate a year ago, you could easily add, “hoo boy.” Rothschild, who has trekked the Arctic and Antarctic and made environmentalism his career, does not profess to be a sailor and claims to get seasick in a bathtub and admits that his mother doesn’t like the Plastiki idea at all. Surely there are other ways for a 30-year-old to spread the eco gospel? But when you hear the man out, there’s more going on. What began as an attention-getting stunt for a good cause evolved into . . .

A NEW WAY TO BUILD

What first seemed a roadblock—there was simply no way to engineer a boat out of fully-recycled post-consumer materials, as envisioned—turned out to be an opportunity. Answers came slowly, but they came. When you look at the boat that resulted, Rothschild claims, you’re looking at something you’ve never seen before: Boat construction using a thermoplastic, srPET. The “sr” stands for self-reinforced in the big name, self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate, a composite in which the matrix component is reinforced with fibers spun from the same polymer.

Rothschild says, “Self-reinforced plastics have been around since the 1980s, but nobody’s taken them out of the laboratory for this kind of use. There are no resins in this boat. The parts are heat-welded together, or in some cases they’re joined with a glue made from sugar cane and cashews.”

He doesn’t wait for the raised eyebrow.

“High Modulus was one of our consultants on the glue. Nobody was breathing toxins while we built Plastiki.”

The boat’s skipper, Jo Royle, drives the point home: “This entire boat could be tossed into a chipper and recycled.”

Their hope is very simple. They’re hoping this is revolutionary.

“There is no point being anti-plastic,” Rothschild says. “What we have to do is eliminate dumb uses of plastic. Thirty-eight billion plastic bottles went into landfill last year.”

So will srPET replace fiberglass? That’s what the man has in mind. Me, I’m a reporter. In an article that the technically-minded will want to check out, project manager Matthew Grey is quoted by Composites World to the effect that srPET has 75 percent of the strength of fiberglass at half the weight. Plastiki was vacuum-bagged and heat-cured, and the boat has evolved quite a bit since this rendering was created . . .

As for the Pacific voyage, Royle’s résumé includes skippering an Open 60 for Pindar. She brings ample experience to the enterprise and her own longtime passion for environmental causes. We spoke in the boat’s cozy cabin, designed by Architecture for Humanity volunteers as “the ultimate off-grid house,” egg-shaped as a form of biomimicry.

At 6 feet 4 inches, Rothschild is too tall to stand fully upright in his own boat, but he’s OK with that, and his skipper has probably had her share of people who failed to see through her soft blond looks to a capable strength. Early on, Plastiki announced an ambitious route through the islands of the Pacific, but Royle has tempered those expectations. “We have an offshore-capable boat,” she says. “The challenge will be maneuverability. We’ll probably make 100 miles a day, but we don’t point efficiently above 90 degrees, so we’re not advertising a route.”

South is the logical direction, if they leave soon—it’s off season in the Pacific—and they do hope to leave soon. Then hang a right at Baja, probably. It won’t be wrong to stay coastal for some proof-of-concept mileage before striking out across the Pacific. Plastiki, if you haven’t got it already, is a reference to Kontiki, Thor Heyerdal’s raft expedition undertaken in 1947. This will be a first sea voyage for de Rothschild’s small furry friend, Smudge.

Plastiki has a tiller and a Monitor wind vane. The 57-foot main mast and 37-foot mizzen started as irrigation pipes made from 98 percent recycled aluminum. The sails are made from recycled PET.

WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

Plastiki carries a propane stove and a pressure cooker (“A pressure cooker is very important at sea,” Royle says) and a hanging hydroponic garden from Inka Biospheric Systems that will support 90 plants. According to Inka: “Our ‘rotating cylinder garden’ was developed to grow as many plants as possible on a small footprint and still expose all the plants to sunlight. The garden is clamped onto the mizzen, and the cylinder is enclosed in a clear covering of srPet to create a greenhouse effect. The top was designed to capture rain water to help replenish the reservoir. The garden will grow chards, kale, spinach, bok choy, mustard greens and other leafy greens. The message is that you can grow food without soil, without land space and with very little water. For the billions of people who are experiencing ‘hydraulic poverty’ and food insecurity from depleted soils, this is a way to produce clean safe food. In third world applications these gardens can be built from coconut fibers, bamboo, hemp fibers, grasses, etc.”

Plastiki carries its own water for a crew of six or eight, plus an emergency hand-pump watermaker. A larger desalinator was considered and rejected, Royle says, “because it wasn’t energy efficient.” The boat’s solar panels are good for 600 watts, and a recumbent exercycle is rigged to produce 7 amps.

My question: Why aren’t all exercise machines in all gyms designed to generate power for the grid while they’re being pumped, pedaled and pushed?

There is more about Plastiki and crew at plastiki.com (though the web site is buggy) and at David de Rothschild’s other web site, Adventure Ecology. In our conversation I was struck by Jo Royle’s comments about being motivated by “seeing accumulated debris on remote beaches in Antarctica and South Georgia” and remembering almost identical words from Ellen MacArthur as she turned her focus from round-the-world competition to environmental awareness—after seeing debris on beaches in Antarctica and South Georgia—”because it’s just too important not to.”

Jo Royle, David de Rothschild, and Plastiki. Photo by Kimball livingston

Plastiki is berthing in Sausalito until departure, but the boat was built in San Francisco at Pier 31, in space made available at the behest of the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, and it occurs to me that someone else of late has approached the mayor with a need for waterfront space. I hope that he will be as successful, though there is quite a contrast in the mission, as Jo Royle points out (while underestimating the dollar figure; go higher, Jo, much higher) in her comment about a recent radio interview —

“A fun half hour hosted by KQED public radio; funny how our slot got cut in half so they could spend the other half hour talking to Larry Ellison about the America’s Cup – $100 million for 2 races. Obviously as a keen sailor I love to see the development of technology that results from the Cup, but on the other hand . . .”

SUCCESSFUL SO FAR, EH?

I’ve avoided writing about youth playing the “youngest circumnavigator” game because it’s not a trend I want to see continued until the odds catch up with somebody’s kid. Which doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally check in to see how the kids are doing.

Jessica Watson was braggish about her day at 40 South with shorts, sunshine, a book, and footie steering. © jessicawatson.com.au/

Jessica Watson (born : May 18, 1993) has been at sea four months out of Australia, and she has now cleared both capes. With Africa’s Cape of Good Hope over the horizon to her left and fading, and even with a lot of sailing ahead, her S&S 34, Ella’s Pink Lady, and the crew you see here, can smell the barn. Considering what you get in most teenagers’ journals, I can’t hold back a nod of approval at this —

“I’d like to say that I’m not doing this to prove a point, but that wouldn’t be completely true. For almost 6 years my family lived on our motor boat at different marinas on the east coast of Australia. When you live on the water, it’s an unwritten law that when another boat is pulling in, you give a hand and take their lines. But being a ‘little girl’ meant that more often than not, my offer of help would be completely ignored, while the line was passed to the grown man next to me. I found this incredibly frustrating as I knew that I was just as capable as anyone else. I hated being judged by somebody’s expectations.

“So yes, I want the world to know exactly what ‘little girls’ are capable of!”

LEFT TURN AT CABO

San Diego Yacht Club’s Puerto Vallarta Race fleet has cleared the Baja peninsula and is crossing to mainland Mexico and a finish line at Punta Mita. That final leg after Cabo is about 300 miles, but as we see in the iboat track from mid-Tuesday afternoon, the leaders are well along. I point it out because most of these boats will stay for the Regata Copa México, which kicks off with a 25-mile Governor’s Cup race on Sunday, and because one facet of Mexico’s bicentennial festival is a Guiness Book of Records attempt by Laser Olympic rep Tania Elias to sail those 300 miles in a Laser. With escort, of course. There’s been plenty of breeze for the PV entries, and both Akela and Peligroso still have a shot at a record. But folks, while you’re doing those last few hundred miles, imagine sailing Cabo to Vallarta on a Laser.

PARKED AT CABO

John MacLaurin’s team raced to the race—to get his spanking new, late-delivered Davidson 69, Pendragon VI, to the start line of the PV race. Unfortunately, they dropped out with “a boat issue” at Cabo. (Craig Leweck advises that it’s cavitation in the twin rudders.) We hope it’s a problem than can be resolved before the Governor’s Cup race. MacLaurin has been a stalwart supporter of MEXORC through the years, and MEXORC is the backbone of the Regata Copa México, expanded to include J/24 competition, kite racing and stunting, an Opti regatta, and beach volleyball. I’m for the beach volleyball, myself. Pendragon VI looked great leaving San Diego . . .

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Posted in Cruising, Environment, Sailboat Racing | Leave a comment

America’s Cup in America

By kimball | Published: February 21, 2010

What just happened in Valencia wasn’t an America’s Cup as we used to know it, or want to see it again. It was a rescue mission, something of a raid. A successful raid. Leading to this happy moment at City Hall, San Francisco.

Reception at City Hall. Photo by Gilles Martin-Raget/BOR

Having registered with the Pessimist Party as soon as people started taking positions on the likelihood of an America’s Cup match on San Francisco Bay, I have one question.

Mind if I flipflop on that?

There was a love fest Saturday at City Hall. Mayor Gavin Newsom handed BMW Oracle Racing team owner Larry Ellison the key to the city. Ellison gave the Mayor a team jacket which he promptly put on his back. And both made a lot of noise about finding a way to make this thing happen.

“We will do whatever it takes,” Newsom said, “because of the magnitude of the opportunity.”

“We don’t need taxpayer support,” Ellison said. “We need access to waterfront land. The 2007 match brought 680 million Euros to the economy in Valencia. That’s almost a billion U.S., and this should be even bigger.”

That was said in the context of a weekend in which the America’s Cup was presented to the membership of the winning Golden Gate Yacht Club on Friday night, then to the city on Saturday, and then taken on tour, beginning with San Diego, on Sunday.

And I’m pretty sure I heard Ellison, Russell Coutts, and Jimmy Spithill talking about bringing the big trimaran, USA 17, to San Francisco Bay. I could begin to warm up to the phrase that bugged me in Valencia, Bring it on.

Ellison learned to sail on San Francisco Bay in a Lido 14 (Like the one shown here). That’s enough to settle a man’s mind, but our deep-pockets software guy also sees what others see: the bay as a natural amphitheater; the backgrounds that are a cameraman’s dream. From his ultra-modern, occasionally-visited city house on an über-block of Pacific Heights real estate, Ellison can take in the entire vista. And there’s more, Ellison said: “It’s important that the wind on San Francisco Bay turns on at one o’clock every day in the summer.”

Yep, that San Francisco seabreeze counts because, when you’re selling TV time, you have to deliver. My crazy friends will sit up all night if a race is delayed, or they’ll set an alarm to shake them out in an hour, and then again in another hour. But my crazy friends are only a tiny segment of the market that sponsors are trying to reach.
And there’s more/more. In terms of timing, racing on San Francisco Bay serves the globe pretty well. Not perfectly, because that is impossible. But a 1 p.m. start time, PDT, corresponds to 9 p.m. in London, 10 p.m. in Rome, and midnight in Muscat, Oman (for my money the most likely challenger from the Arab world, based upon their efforts with a round-the-world catamaran). Looking elsewhere, our 1 p.m. start would find our Kiwi friends sniffing the coffee at 8 a.m., though it would be a bit more challenging for the Aussies: 6 a.m. in Sydney; 4 a.m. in Perth. But have we ever had finer allies? They’ll show. Hong Kong—and I get the idea that Ellison is keen to take pre-match competition to Hong Kong—would also go at 4 a.m.

What the heck. The Cup travels better than I do, as we see here, and the way I remember it, when the Cup was raced in Australia, little old ladies across America were sitting up to all hours watching tiny dots on their television screens, and they didn’t know tack from gybe. Ellison also talks about improving the technology of virtual reporting, to make the game more comprehensible—”You have to be able to tell who’s in front”—and I suspect that, being Mr. Oracle, he can bring the right resources to bear.

Ellison also promises “independent management,” and my colleagues and I will be keen to see just what that means. With the role of Defender comes a heavy responsibility. Even more so, considering what the sailing world has been through since July, 2007.

Back in the day, when they got along, Ellison and ex-Defender Ernesto Bertarelli mutually consented to what the Swiss named “Acts,” a series of events in Cup-class boats at key ports around the world. I don’t know who thought of it first, but thank you, Mr. Bertarelli. It worked, and as BOR CEO Russell Coutts noted, whether an event is in the UK or New Zealand, it makes the challenging team more visible and more viable. I guarantee you, there will be more such events, but they won’t be called Acts. And even though I see the difficulty of doing eliminations on the road—it would force teams to re-mode for different venues—I am surprised to hear Ellison proposing that we build a Cup village on the shores of San Francisco Bay.

He is suggesting exactly that, so I have to adjust my narrative.

I can do that.

(I just did.)

WHERE DO WE BUILD CUP CITY?

Newsom spoke of six potential locales for Cup City, each with issues.
In the East Bay, the city of Alameda has considerable resources in a former Navy base, now closed. But, Ellison said, “It’s a long tow from there to the sailing area. What would be ideal is to make it attractive to the teams and the fans both and keep it close, either in San Francisco itself or at Treasure Island. ”

Treasure Island being a spot of landfill between San Francisco and Oakland, created in the 1930s for the Golden Gate International Exposition. Eco-conscious San Francisco in this generation has the unenviable job of figuring what to do with a former Navy property that may or may not be uncontaminated, gets a lot of fog and wind, is accessible only by crossing half of the Bay Bridge (or going by boat) and might be under water before the end of the century. There’s a vision to turn it into the ultimate green community, but—

For now, it’s waterfront real estate on the California coast. Meaning, it’s great real estate.

Also, the formerly-important port of San Francisco has dead-zone piers in need of an infusion of vision and capital.

Hello?

I say again, no taxpayer money is asked.

John Kostecki, the Bay Area native who called tactics (and the Race Two layline) said, “It would be terrible to let this slip away.”

Homeboy John Kostecki with Jimmy Spithill and Mayor Gavin Newsom. Photo by Gilles Martin-Raget/BOR

Ellison imagines as many as sixteen teams looking to build bases on the shores of San Francisco Bay. There also remains the choice of a platform for racing, and there is no way around the fact that the multihulls of AC 33 were compelling. “The boats were exciting,” Jimmy Spithill said, “not just for the sailors. The man in the street will stop and watch those boats. But either way [with multihulls or monohulls] we can make the next match exciting.”

Ellison’s public statements have favored monohulls, and he says that he wants input from possible challengers, where the collective experience will surely lean toward monohulls.

Russell Coutts noted, “The best sailors adapt.” I figure this is as unsettled as it sounds.

FASCINATIN’ RHYTHM

Mike Drummond, design coordinator for BOR, tells me that the sheeting load went from 20 tons with the soft-sail main to 2 tons with the wing.
I believe that equals 10 percent?

This America’s Cup should have flood-down impact, not trickle-down, for wing-based sailors in the C-Class cats, for example, and I look forward to seeing someone greenlight an ocean-going multihull based upon the Harbor Wing project still in-development in Honolulu. But we have to wonder, would the BOR team install the wing to sail on San Francisco Bay? The Harbor Wing design is self-feathering, at least in theory, based upon vertical divisions. USA-17 has nine divisions in the aft section of its wing, but the forward section is unitary, all 223 feet of it, which means that the wing cannot be “turned off.” In Valencia a crew of C-Class catamaran guys “sailed” the boat all night at its mooring. With the America’s Cup rescued and new plans afoot, the humor would soak out of that exercise in a hurry. But we’d have to see it at least once, right? Rising higher than the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge and racing across the bay at speeds usually reserved for skiffs and kites.

USA 17. Photo by Guilain Grenier/BOR

Meanwhile, I figure nobody’s happier today than Troy Sears, whose schooner America replica is carrying the America’s Cup across the waters of San Diego Bay to the San Diego Yacht Club, a Cup trustee. Troy was my Protector driver in Valencia, and thanks to Troy I was one of a very few people privileged to see start, rounding, and finish with my own eyes. At the price of a few bumps.

There’s rain today in California, and if Ernesto Bertarelli wants to gloat about that, so be it. Having accepted his hospitality on more than one occasion, I wish I had a different story to tell, but the man has devolved into a strange case, going on and on with his claim that the American court system was rigged against him (actually, he gets it in by implication, and if you try to pin him down he pulls out the snake oil and says, “I didn’t say that, you said that.” As in declaring to the Tribune de Genève, “I will not engage in polemics about the fairness or otherwise of American judges.”

Oh, no. We’re above all that. But this is a nice spot to add a photograph of the America’s Cup being loaded onto a plane to begin its flight to the USA . . .

Leaving VLC. Photo by Gilles Martin-Raget/BOR

And when I use the word “rescue,” let’s not forget what we were rescued from . . .

Photographic evidence by Kimball Livingston

Bertarelli was once regarded as a hero in the sailing world, and this is a great fall. The 33rd defense was inept at every step, from the won’t-fly protocol of July, 2007 to the bullheaded conviction that Alinghi couldn’t lose in court to refusing to compromise to showing up in Valencia with a boat that didn’t even measure in. Unless sinking the transom with water ballast fits your notion of normal measuring procedures.

Fortunately, from his owner-as-helmsman prestart penalties in both races to trailing by 15:28 in Race One and 5:26 in Race Two—after leading both races for a while—Alinghi failed so abjectly on the water that we don’t have to revisit measurement issues, or really care where the sails were made. And if the SNG representatives on the race committee boat are to be censured by ISAF for their behavior prior to Race Two, that will only prove to Bertarelli’s mind that the galaxy is ruled by an Anglo Saxon plot.

Eventually, even the Swiss reporters will stop showing up for press conferences like the one Bertarelli held this week in Geneva, where he tried to draw an equivalence between his invented-and-managed challenger of 2007, CNEV, and seeing a few members of the new Challenger of Record team, Circolo Nautico di Roma, wearing BMW Oracle Racing jackets. Quell horreur!

To Ellison’s announcement that America’s Cup 34 will have independent management, with independent race committee, umpires, and judges, Bertarelli says, “Je n’accepte pas tous ces mensonges; I do not accept these lies.” And then, “How can we trust these people to hold the next Cup?”

Well.

Once upon a time there was a very rich man who lived surrounded by people who told him things he wanted to hear.

He saw the world as he wanted to see it.

He imagined a world, then believed in the world as he imagined it.

Everything was fine for a while, then it all came crashing down.

I speak, of course, of Elvis.

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Posted in Environment, Sailboat Racing | 18 Comments

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