According to IBI, German boatbuilder Bavaria Yachts is having payment difficulties and is facing bankruptcy. According to the German Press Agency, the boatbuilder filed for bankruptcy before the District Court Würzburg at the end of last week.
An official statement is due from Bavaria on Monday. IBI will report as soon as it knows more.
Almost every raceboat of any size built in the past two decades has been fitted with a carbon spar, as have many larger cruiser/racers and every large sailing yacht of any type over 20m. The advantages in safety and performance are just too great to ignore, and composite spar manufacturing has been refined to a remarkable level of reliability that exceeds even where alloy was at its peak a quarter of a century ago.
Hall Spars have been a pioneer in this field for almost four decades. The company has produced countless championship-winning spars, with a clear commitment to continuous development to remain at the cutting edge of a competitive field, where not only is light weight important, but strength and reliability are crucial. This is especially true for spars supplied for series-built production boats where efficiencies in production timing and cost are also important parameters. Read on.
From Waterlust: We’ve got a new initiative we’re pretty stoked about. Basically we’re going to do an ocean trash cleanup each month and make a video about various subjects that surround the marine debris issue.
We’re hoping to dig into stuff like how to sort and dispose of the crap you find, what items are the biggest offenders, and how to lead legislative change instead of just “hashtag activism.” In short…we actually want to see change instead of just raising awareness. Word – ed.
Longtime racer and New York Times Sailing Correspondent Chris Museler continues to lead the ‘big media’ in providing real journalism about the sport we love for millions of real people, and for the better part of a month he’s been working on a story about safety, death, and the Volvo Ocean Race.
It finally ran in today’s Times, and we print a short excerpt below. Photo of Fish from Facebook, credit Jeremy LeCaudey/Volvo Ocean Race.
Libby Greenhalgh was wedged into the navigator’s seat below decks on the Sun Hung Kai-Scallywag when the helmsman shouted repeatedly, “Man overboard”…
The helmsman hit the red man-overboard button at the wheel, which records the boat’s GPS location. But in those frantic moments, the button was not depressed for the compulsory four seconds it takes to record the spot.
Greenhalgh instinctually locked in the boat’s coordinates — 1,400 nautical miles west of Cape Horn in the Southern Ocean — into her navigation software, which shows the boat’s track on a digital chart. That was roughly the position where the crew’s safety officer, John Fisher, 47, was knocked over the side of the boat.
Rapidly calculating in her head how Fisher would drift in the frothy, cold peaks of the waves, Greenhalgh drew a search pattern on her screen. Fisher was miles behind by the time the boat was under control and pounding back upwind into the waves.
Greenhalgh directed the crew, shouting into the intercom. Four and a half hours later, with no sign of Fisher or the inflatable buoy and life ring the crew deployed, she radioed Race Control in Alicante, Spain, that they were suspending their search.
UFO dinghy creator Dave Clark puts the boat through her paces while training for the little foiler’s first run at the Charleston Fort 2 Battery Race this Saturday. Clark will be on site starting today – if you want a test drive on a UFO on her short Southern road trip, give them a shout pronto. If you just want to race against ’em with your quick ride, register for the race.
But if you just want to see the UFO in her first-ever live appearance, you’ll either need to show up at James Island Yacht Club from Friday on, or just watch Sailing Anarchy’s Facebook page. This Saturday, Mr. Clean will be returning to his social media desk – for one day only – to commentate on the event he helped to launch with foiling firecracker Tim Fitzgerald – who is now training to learn to fly jets for the US Air Force. Foiling just wasn’t fast enough?
With a race record that’s something like 6 minutes long, this is the fastest sailing race in the world. Don’t blink.
We loathe Ryan Zinke. A gun loving, right-wing douchebag who along with criminal Scott Pruitt, is trying to gut our national parks and environmental protections that keep their oil and coal buddies from raping our precious lands. But even an anti-american prick like him can very rarely do the right thing once in a blue moon. But we would not be surprised even slightly if there is some hidden agenda here. These people do not have your best interests at heart and cannot ever really be trusted to do the right thing…
US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke yesterday signed two secretarial orders that would increase access to public lands. One order directs different parts of the agency to create plans within 90 days that focus on expanding recreational opportunities on public waterways and lands. The order also mandates that one full-time employee will be responsible to oversee recreational opportunities.
“I have made it abundantly clear that we are going to refocus on Interior’s long-standing but recently forgotten recreation mission,” said Zinke in a statement. “The Department must continue to create opportunities to increase access for these pursuits.”
The NMMA said prioritizing recreational access to public waters will “help grow outdoor recreation” to ensure that it remains “central” to the American lifestyle. Outdoor recreation accounts for 2% of US GDP, and growing faster than the US economy as a whole. NMMA president Thom Dammrich said his association and the Recreation Roundtable, comprised of different outdoor-focused industries, stands behind the Department of Interior’s new recreational priorities. Thanks to IBI News.
As a great fan of your site, I am proud to show you the first pictures of my new boat in the water.
This is a one-off Judel/Vrolijk 36, specially designed and build for the Offshore Sailing Worlds which will be held in the Netherlands coming summer. We will compete in Class C. We kept the project secret, so for a lot of people our boat is quite a mystery. It does it exists!
Coming weekend we will have our first race. It would be very nice If you can post a picture of our boat on your site. The Offshore Sailing Worlds in the Netherlands will be spectacular with a limited 65 boats on the starting line in Class C. As far as I know there are at least 3 new one-off builds specially for this event.
Under tow since Sunday, the Maxi Banque Populaire AT the port of Casablanca. Said the team:
This morning we returned to the place using a crane. Now is the opportunity to take stock of the damage, we see that many parts of the central hull bridge around the damaged mast, and on the bridge floats and arm fairings; a portion of the cap has been washed away.
We have already taken the lead to organize the repairs of the trimaran, examine different solutions to equip it with a mast and boom. The clear objective is to return the boat in the water before the end of the summer and allow Armel prepare in good conditions to arise from the Route du Rhum in Saint-Malo. “
Who is the best sailor in the world? This is something that can be determined subjectively, as happens annually in the Rolex World Sailor of the Year awards. But would it ever be possible to calculate this mathematically? Obviously there are inherent problems in a sport as diverse as sailing.
How can you compare the achievements of an Olympic gold medallist with the helm or one of the crew who won the America’s Cup, Volvo Ocean Race, Vendée Globe, Moth Worlds, 52 Super Series, Melges 32 Worlds or the Solitaire du Figaro? This is not just like trying to compare apples and pears, but apples with watermelons, grapefruit or gooseberries.
Making the most concerted and sophisticated effort to date towards this goal is the Star Sailors League. The pinnacle event in their often misunderstood circuit that aims to determine not the best Star sailor, but the best star of sailing, is the Star Sailors League Finals. For the past five years this event has been held in December in Nassau. Here there are indeed many veterans of the Star Class; however, they also happen to be among the best sailors in the world.
Among last December’s line-up were three Volvo Ocean Race winning skippers: Paul Cayard and Torben Grael, both Star veterans, and Franck Cammas, who is not. In addition, there were five Olympic gold medallists and between the 25 skippers and 25 crew competing there were a total of 47 world championship titles in Olympic classes alone (the high score going to Robert Scheidt with 12 world titles to his name).
Longtime racer and New York Times Sailing Correspondent Chris Museler continues to lead the ‘big media’ in providing real journalism about the sport we love for millions of real people, and for the better part of a month he’s been working on a story about safety, death, and the Volvo Ocean Race. 
