Sailing Anarchy

Moth UK National Championship 2019

After 11 races over the past weekend, Dylan Fletcher GBR, the SailGP and 49er helmsman, won the Moth UK National Champion title ahead of Brad Funk USA at equal points. On rank 3 followed Benou00eet Marie FRA. —– After a windy opening day (here the video), the 70 participants from 14 nations encountered moderate conditions. —– The ranking list and the video of the final day.

when the unthinkable becomes thinkable

I love this post as it helps bring a very real issue to the forefront of our community. I know all too well the dark reality of depression and where it can lead. I was so distraught over the end of a relationship that thoughts of suicide crept in and it took a serious effort to battle those and begin to put my mind back together. Who would ever imagine being so low that those sort of thoughts actually became imaginable? It’s real, and anyone who feels this way should immediately get the help to pull you through. It works. I am here to prove it. – ed.

In the UK Suicide is the biggest cause of death of men under 45 years of age.

Sadly I lost my best friend this way a few months ago. He loved his sailing having completed an ARC, Round Ireland and a Fastnet.

His Hamble One Design (Folkdancer 27) was all the boat he wanted, Beige, heavy but with lovely lines. In 2014 we trailered her to Jeremy Rogers yard in Lymington who lavished her with a new mast, sails, folding prop and some teak in the cockpit which only improved her looks.

We had some lovely weekends cruising the Solent, visiting the usual spots including Yarmouth, Cowes, Portsmouth and Bucklers Hard. We saw the AC world series from the anchorage and great nights in Lymington Haven Bar. Great memories which we now cherish.

Every year the boat entered Round the Island Race. We were glanced by a 50ft swan in 2016 with no damage luckily (we were on stb) and always hugged the needles close enough to make the owner sweat a little. Results improved steadily over the years and in 2018 we snook into 14th in IRC overall. The whole crew were delighted.

Due to the circumstances Spring Fever is now for sale. She is sailing off 0.824 and I think there is plenty of scope for optimisation to improve on the 2018 result. She needs a good home. Click here.

And Remember guys and gals talk or find some help if you feel down. Samaritans are open 24 hours a day. Call 116 123 or email [email protected] (UK) – Anarchist James.

we don’t get it

We’re not ones to discourage any type of racing, but we will likely never understand the attraction of the Golden Globe Race. 4ksb’s, gathering barnacles as they “race” around the world. It is more of a survival endeavor than a race, but given that they already have 22 paid entries for the next race in 2022, and have some decent traffic numbers, maybe we’re just out of touch. The truth is that there are a lot of kooks out there who are no doubt wired for such a thing.

Said Don McIntyre, the GGR founder: “What a fantastic solid result for a unique original adventure created by a small passionate management team with low budgets. It confirms the support and huge following the 2018 GGR achieved from ordinary people interested in a simple, back to basics human endeavor.

No fluff; just an honest, down-to-earth non-stop solo race around the world that media understand. We must also thank the passion of our French fans and our enthusiastic Host Port and logistics partner Les Sables d’Olonne, Ville and Agglomeration. The GGR family continues to grow, ensuring the 2022 edition will be an even bigger success.”

Traffic report here.

splendid

So we sailed a nice race last Saturday on A4 in the CRA Around the Coronado Island Race, winning class and ending up fifth overall. We spent the last few miles of the race sailing with DC’s stunning 47′ classic, Splendor (pictured above), having caught them after starting 20 mins behind them (staggered starts). It was remarkable to watch Dennis make that 33,000 beast go right along on a jib reach in 6 knots. There are very few sailors in the world who can do what he can still do.

So it was so humbling to get a call that Saturday night from DC, congratulating us on our win. He thought we had won overall as well, but alas, no. Regardless, there I was on the phone with DC, talking about some of the nuances of the races, observations of boats and their boat speed, and finally talking about what a beautiful day on the water that we all had.

Dennis and I have had an interesting relationship over the years, and it was so meaningful for me to get a congratulatory called from The Man, and a call that turned into our mutual appreciation for our sport.

I’ll never forget it. – ed.

sail on

Last week John Conser passed on in his sleep at home. He and Jeri were married for 59 years. John owned Windward Custom Sails for many years and was well known for designing and building the Conser 30 and Conser 47 Catamarans.

Not only was John a great sailmaker and boat builder, but more importantly he was one of the best people you could know. He was a wonderful friend and I will miss him greatly, the sailing community has lost another of the really good ones. – Harry Pattison. Discuss here.

what is it?

Helluva paint job! Guess here.

homage

We love the revival of, at the very least, the One Ton moniker. Here’s what One Ton means nows.

2 girls, 7 cups

A temporary shortage of hard-stand space at the Noakes Boatyard in Sydney, Australia, lead to this curious coupling of boats whose designs are more than 100 years apart.

The girl on top is Revolver, a 38-foot fast day-sailor designed by owner Bruce Ritchie. Built by Noakes in carbon-sheathed plywood, she was launched in 2015 and has returned to the yard for some TLC.

Below, and looking rather tired and emotional, is the classic 1913 William Fife sloop Morna. Re-named Kurrewa IV for a period, this 65-foot yacht had seven line-honours wins in the Sydney-Hobart race. She is slated for a full restoration once some ownership issues have been resolved. – Anarchist David.

prostrate for the prostate

It’s day 58 of my round UK trip. I’ve just completed the longest open water crossing I’ve done so far from Port St Mary Isle of Man to Holyhead in Wales. The last few days have been a real highlight of this trip. Not least because it’s not rained as much. I’m now aiming to be on the South Coast within 10 days. Weather dependent of course. Picture below was taken by Jen Kneale Coxswain of the Lifeboat in Port St Mary. Isle of Man. Thanks to everyone who has donated to this very worthwhile cause.

Back story:
I am embarking on an exciting but seriously challenging and dangerous mission – I am sailing round the UK in a 13ft open Laser for PROSTATE CANCER UK because we men all have one and it takes balls to talk.

I will sail around the UK mainland in a 13ft one-man laser dinghy THE WRONG WAY ROUND. Although fascinating and fun this epic voyage is throwing up some huge challenges, bringing a wide host of emotions from fear, passion and frustration and a lot of anxiety!! It’s thoroughly testing my faith in everything. But to get a diagnosis of cancer is MUCH, much more frightening – now that’s a real battle and I want to try and do what I can to help those affected win their personal battle, by raising money for much-needed research and funding. So thank you too for being part of this fantastic journey with me.

I started at Eastbourne Pier in East Sussex on 17th July 2019 at 12noon, and I plan to land back there sometime in September having traversed around the coast of Kent, London, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincs, Yorshire, Tyne & Wear, The Borders, Berwickshire, Aberdeenshire, Caithness and all the way back down the other side via the Western Isles of Scotland, Cumbria, Lancs, Merseyside, Wales, Somerset, Devon and so on all the way back to my home town of Eastbourne.

I’m sailing a 1970 beaten up Laser that I paid £50 for a few years back. It’s been re-modeled in lumpy grey and orange paint with an orange tip on its “027” sail. I’ve slightly modified the rear with a hatch to allow me to store my tent and food, but essentially its just a bog standard old laser.

Please Like my StickDaringRoundUK Page on FaceBook to keep up with photos and videos as I continue. I’ve met some of the kindest people ever on this trip and it’s restoring my faith in humanity.

tartan ten anarchy

We love this kinda stuff. Of course it’s from our Fabulous Forums…

So next week my college team and I are going off to Chicago to race T10’s against other Midwestern colleges.

I’ve thumbed through the North, Doyle Boston and Sobstad tuning guides and they seem to point in similar directions as far as rig setup and trim goes, and a lot of the advice is pretty intuitive. We were assigned an LS-10, which is the newer boat with the coachroof and some layout changes on deck and inside.

1. Are there any special tuning considerations for the LS-10 that wouldn’t be true for the T-10?

2. Any preseason prep (Fairing, Longboarding, Sanding/Antifoul, New Sails) would have to already have been done by the owner, is there anything we can do to increase performance before leaving the dock?

3. For the main trimmer, how much of the trim is done with the traveler versus the sheet? The guides talk about keeping the aft third of the top batten parallel to the boom and the telltale stalling about 50% of the time, and that it’s more crucial to induce twist coming out of tacks to promote flow adhesion on the keel-obviously keeping a dialogue with the driver, is that just slowly pulling the car to windward as the boat flattens out or is there some sheet play? Downwind, is it just playing out mainsheet until the sail hits the spreaders or is there more finesse?

4. Weight placement downwind-I assume that the goal is to keep weight out of the cockpit unless it’s nuking, does the T-10 do better with a little windward or a little leeward heel? Better to soak or to try and keep boatspeed up? It’s a pretty tiny kite…

5. Any tips to get a crew that has never sailed big boats together before; and most of whom have only sailed Opti/420/Laser/FJ or some very “Cruisy” PHRF boats up to speed quickly?

Jump on in!

ain’t nothin’ but a g thing

GC32 – grand prix foiling cat racing
Driven on by the last three America’s Cups, development in sail boat design has taken some of its biggest steps forward over the past decade. Leading the charge have been foiling multihulls where America’s Cup technology, to make these boats fly, has now filtered down to the mainstream.

Back in 2013 the GC32 cat was born with the aim of bringing state-of-the-art America’s Cup-style foiling catamaran racing to regular racing sailors. The boat was conceived by Laurent Lenne and Australian catamaran specialist Andrew McPherson and designed by Martin Fischer who is currently design co-ordinator for Luna Rossa. Read on.

slick

As day 1 of the Volvo Noble Marine RS300 Nationals dawned the sailors were greeted with a grey and drizzly Porthpean. Looking out onto the water the wind appeared gentle and the sea flat.

Fortunately by the time we started racing the drizzle had subsided and as the boats reached the sailing area we were greeted with some nice waves to play on and a steady F3-4. Results.

omg

There is just something not quite right with what we can see of this brand new IMOCA,  but we just don’t know what it is. Maybe the funky paint job? Hell, what do we know, the thing will prolly win…

What it is, is the DMG MORI Global One Japanese effort for the 2020 Vendee Globe.

cruising anarchy

Anarchist QBF posted this in our Fabulous Forums brought to you by Marlow Ropes.

Steve and Linda Dashew have been sailing and working as a team for more than 50 years: racing, initially, and cruising for the past four decades. This is the first of multiple posts and starts leading up to their 20’ Shark catamaran, to their D-Class Beowulf catamarans (Steve at the helm with Linda on the wire), to their 78-foot ketch, Beowulf.

This is a fascinating and in-depth read from a very talented couple. Enjoy.

critiquing

From our Fab Forums. I watched a bit of the  Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, and Anarchist Ziggy is not wrong.  As for Tucker – Mr. banality is a tool, and always has been. 

I just watched a little bit of the day three video on YouTube and have a couple of observations and wanted to hear other peoples’ opinions

•  Both the video and audio quality as well as the professionalism of the presentation completely sucked. The presenters not knowing which boats had onboard cameras, which way the tide was going when they mention it as an advantage, and general amateur quality of the commentary. Greenie should be banned from public consumption and Tucker has had much better showings
• The commentators mentioned in one race that the wind was between 14 and 16 knots which the video seemed to confirm.  My question then is why do all boats have main and jib reefed? Is an IC37 unsailable or dangerous to life and limb fully canvassed?
•  Is there something in the class rules or perhaps the rules for this particular regatta that says that all boats must race in the same configuration?  My experience in other one design classes is that proper sail selection for the conditions as part of the game. J24 big jib vs little jib as an example although admittedly dated.
• The tracker at times not even close to video or commentary regarding boat positions to each other or the course. Jump in and discuss.

yet another fire

A fire at Wickford Shipyard in Rhode Island early Tuesday morning destroyed the building housing George W Zachorne Jr and Sons, a builder of wooden sailboats since the 1980s, as well as Coastal Ironworks.

“Every boat with a wooden mast around here was built there,” Scott Duckworth, who himself had two boats launched from the shop about two weeks ago, told the Providence Journal. “There are very few people left in the state who still work [wooden antique boats] like that and do it true to the craft.”

In addition to the building, at least three boats were destroyed and several others damaged. Read on, thanks to IBI

where’d ya go?

Where has your boat, or any boat, taken you? When you stepped onto the boat, alone, with friends, or with family, where did you go?

And what experiences did it bring?  Jump in the thread.

how nice

The NGO TRAFFIC has released a study identifying the world’s top 20 shark and ray catchers and traders, who collectively account for some 80 percent of the global reported catch.

Commercial and artisanal vessels from Indonesia, Spain, India, Mexico and the U.S. topped the list of catchers between 2007 and 2017, with a combined total of 333,952 tons caught on average each year. Indonesia was the top global shark catcher with a mean catch of 110,737 tons per year. The Atlantic Ocean accounted for 80 percent of recent catches.

west coast, bitches

Three races were held yesterday at the NYYC Invitational Cup in Newport, RI, and the dominating leader is the San Diego YC , 17 points ahead of a group of 5 teams from AUS, JPN, CAN, IRL and ITA within 5 points. —– The results and the event website. Racing can be followed live over a race tracker.

um….

We get the world of Press Release notices, we just don’t much care to publish them. If you like them, head over to dickhead’s site, there isn’t a PR that he won’t publish. So we laughed especially hard at this one. FFS, if you are going to invoke a major sponsor’s name, at least get the name of the team right…

As I’m sure you know, the America’s Cup is just about 18 months away and Helly Hansen is proud to sponsor the America’s Magic boat – the boat of one of the competition’s top race teams. We would love to offer you a very exclusive opportunity to get up close and personal with the boat and its crew.

n2deep?

We aren’t smart enough to even understand the translated pages from the Tour de Bretagne, but this is one hell of a shot! Title inspiration by – you guessed it – N2deep.

is there anything better?

Wall to wall sunshine, sparkling clear waters and steady trade winds, the conditions alone have long been among the major attractions to racing in the Caribbean. Add to this the region’s legendary reputation for outstanding parties, lay days, music and general fun ashore and it’s easy to see why the Caribbean regatta circuit has been a key part of so many people’s sailing season, for so many years.

But like many regattas around the world, even the most enticing events in this sailing paradise have previously struggled to maintain their momentum. The reasons for the change have been widespread and complex, but at the heart of the issue is the way that competitors themselves have changed how they work and play. Increasing day to day demands of work puts sailors under more pressure to play closer to home. Put simply, habits and holidays have changed. Read on.

newport airshow part II

Well, it certainly looks good here!

paired up

A former winner of the Transat Jacques Vabre, Frenchman Pascal Bidégorry, will pair up with American offshore sailor Charlie Enright as co-skippers on board 11th Hour Racing for the upcoming 2019 Transat Jacques Vabre, a two-handed race across the Atlantic that starts October 27 in Le Havre, France.

yawn

World Sailing’s Council confirms Laser as Paris 2024 Men’s and Women’s One Person Dinghy. More.

bottoms up

From our Fabulous Forums, brought to you by Marlow Ropes.

What’s your go-to cocktail, and how do you make it?  Not beer, not booze-in-soda, not straight whisky.  I need to add a new drink to my lineup.

My current hockey team lineup of cocktails features a medium dry martini with olives and less floral gin, a proper fresh made whisky sour, the Negroni / Boulevardier, the Sidecar, and the Old Fashioned, an underrated and sophisticated flavor that hits it out of the park if you use the right whisky and Luxardo cherries, and both orange and Angostura bitters.

But my fave is the daquiri.  Not the treacly bullshit frozen Sno Cone of a cold headache-inducing Slushee that low end chain restaurants popularized, but the honest-to-God, reputable, probably-has-been-in-a-church-once-in-its-life foster stepbrother of grog.

3 ounces white rum
1.5 ounces fresh squeezed lime juice
1 ounce (plus a couple drops) of simple syrup, store bought is okay it’s better homemade Demerara sugar syrup.

Pour ingredients onto ice in a cocktail shaker, shake vigorously for about 5 seconds, serve promptly in a martini glass.  If guests are coming over you can fancy the glass up with sugar on the rim, and a slice of lime and or orange for garnish.

What do you got?

hey dad, what’s with the colored sails?

Well son, that’s what spinnakers used to look like back in the day…

information society

Think data analysis and it’s hard not to conjure up images of earnest technical studies with spreadsheets full of numbers and detailed conclusions. Yet for some, like the instrument manufacturer Sailmon, data analysis is a new route to bring more fun into sailing and it is this that is at the heart of their recently launched free app.

At its most fundamental level the Sailmon app allows any user to see basic sailing data based around the GPS functions available on their smartphone. Whether you are racing or cruising on anything from a superyacht to a dinghy, trips can be logged, replayed and shared. Read on.

sail on

We failed to mention the passing of builder/sailor/designer Mark Lindsay, but here is a comment from designer Bob Perry:

Sorry to read this morning of the death of Mark Lindsay. Mark worked for Dick Carter at the time I was there. He was a lot of fun, high energy. He had a unique drafting style involving a lot of free hand lines. It was very effective.

Magazine articles of Carter designs would say “from the drawing board of Dick Carter” despite the fact that Dick did no drawing at all.. Mark cut one of these quotes out of the magazine and taped it to the edge of his drawing board. It read, “The drawing board of Dick Carter”. Dick must have seen it but said nothing.

Discuss.