Scuttlebutt Europe #3972

Brought to you by Seahorse magazine, Scuttlebutt Europe is a digest of sailing news and opinions, regatta results, new boat and gear information and letters from sailors -- with a European emphasis. Contributions welcome, send to

Anglo-Spanish Pair Fights French and Physics
We may be about to witness the closest finish in Transat Jacques Vabre history as the Anglo-Spanish duo of Phil Sharp and Pablo Santurde (Imerys Clean Energy) attempt to catch the two newer French boats in a three-horse race down the coast of Brazil.

Locked together for the last fortnight, the three boats are passing Recife on the coast of Brazil and Sharp and Santurde have managed to stem further losses to just nine miles in the last 24 hours. At 17:00 UTC, with 325 miles to the finish line in Salvador de Bahia, Imerys Clean Energy was 17.2 miles behind the leader Aina Enfance and Avenir, with second-placed V and B (Maxime Sorel / Antoine Carpentier), just 4.4 miles behind.

The three boats are all Manuard design, but the two French boats are version 3 of the Mach 40 design and Sharp's, version 2 and simply slower in the reaching wind angles they have had since the Doldrums. It may only be a half a knot, but over 24 hours that is heartbreaking.

Design physics has forced them into a tactical decision to head further offshore in the search for more wind, whilst the two front boats gybe closer to the coast (they are 12 miles from land). As the trade wind begins to swing behind them this evening, Imerys Clean Energy, should be able to hold its own. But until then perhaps their best hope is that the French boats will push too hard against each other.

"This contest won't be decided until the end," Aymeric Chappellier, the skipper of Aina Enfance and Avenir said. "Imerys Clean Energy is 15 miles behind now. Of course, nothing is impossible, especially as there are 350 miles to go, and it will still be complicated. There's still a long way to go. The goal is not to get into a match-race but to sail as well as possible."

Class 40 top five
1. Aina Enfance & Avenir, Aymeric Chappelier / Arthur Le Vaillant, FRA/FRA, 196 nm to finish
2. V and B, Maxime Sorel / Antoine Carpentier, FRA/FRA, +3.42 nm
3. Imerys Clean Energy, Phil Sharp / Pablo Santurde, GBR/ESP, +23.61 nm
4. Teamwork40, Bertrand Delesne / Justine Mettraux, FRA/SUI, +115.17 nm
5. Region Normadie Junior Senior, Olivier Cardin / Cedric Chateau, FRA/FRA, +130.31 nm

IMOCA arrivals:

Monday, November 20, 2017
6th Place
Tanguy de Lamotte and Samantha Davies (Britain), on Initiatives Cœur at 20:15:39 (UTC)
Race time: 15 days, 07 hours 40 minutes and 39 seconds

Tuesday, November 20, 2017
7th Place
Louis Burton and Servane Escoffier, on Bureau Vallee 2, at 04:37:58 (UTC)
Race time: 15 days, 16 hours 02 minutes and 58 seconds

8th Place
Isabelle Joschke (Germany) and Pierre Brasseur, on Generali, at 13:08:01 (UTC)
Race time: 16 days, 00 hours 33 minutes and 01 seconds

9th Place
Alan Roura (Switzerland) and Frederic Denis, on La Fabrique at 14:39:16 (UTC)
Race time: 16 days, 02 hours 04 minutes and 16 seconds

10th Place
Yoann Richomme and Pierre Lacaze on Vivo A Beira at 17:55:21 (UTC)
Race time: 16 days, 05 hours 20 minutes and 21 seconds

www.transatjacquesvabre.org

Record RORC fleet ready in Marina Lanzarote
The start of 4th edition of the RORC Transatlantic Race - the first leg of the Atlantic Anniversary Regatta - is just a few days away and crews from the record fleet are making their last preparations prior to the 3,000 mile race.

Twenty-two teams with sailors from all over the world have gathered in Arrecife's Marina Lanzarote, excited at the prospect of taking the challenge of racing across the Atlantic. For several of the young competitors in the race, this will be their first transatlantic crossing, but for others, like legendary Spanish six-times round the world circumnavigator and Volvo Ocean Race sailor, Guillermo Altadill, the RORC Transatlantic Race will bring the number of his Atlantic crossings to 19.

"Teasing Machine arrived from Malta last week on a cargo ship after a demanding Rolex Middle Sea Race," commented Teasing Machine's Volvo Ocean Race winning tactician, Laurent Pages. "We didn't have any major failures in the race, but it has been very useful to check under the boat in Marina Lanzarote before that start of the RORC Transatlantic Race on Saturday. In the next 24-36 hours our container will be shipped from here to Grenada in the Caribbean, so we are concentrating on preparing that today. We will be going out testing the boat later today and for the final couple of days we will be focusing on the tactics and strategy for the race."

Later today, youth sailors from the Real Club Nautico de Arrecife and students from the Maritime College will come to meet competitors and have a chance to look around some of the yachts taking part; ranging from the smallest, JPK 1010, Jangada, being sailed by British duo Richard Palmer and Rupert Holmes, to one of the largest, 96ft (29m) Southern Wind 96, Sorceress.

rorctransatlantic.rorc.org
anniversary-regatta.com

The latest list of entries can be found at: rorctransatlantic.rorc.org/entries/

The Perfect Nautical Gift for all Seasons by Latitude Kinsale
Looking for that special gift that is nautical and unique?

The 3D chart is the perfect Christmas gift that is appreciated for a lifetime! It ticks all of the boxes: it's personal, bespoke, it's art with a difference and it's relevant.

As a shared gift amongst a group/crew or simply a treat for yourself!

Check out the website today, talk to Bobby Nash about your commission. www.latitudekinsale.com

Any chart any where in the world !

Solo round the world
After a little over 17 days at sea, François Gabart is still in the lead by about 1 and a half days in relation to the Thomas Coville's time, the current holder of the single-handed round the world record. The MACIF skipper hopes to pick up speed again this Tuesday evening, after being forced to sail south to reposition himself in front of a low-pressure area, which slowed him down slightly and meant that he has had to watch out for ice floes. He should round Cape Leeuwin between Thursday and Friday.

Although, after entering the Indian Ocean last Thursday, he had initially planned to position himself behind a low-pressure area and let himself be sucked along by it as far as Australia, François Gabart had to review his strategy at the end of the weekend, as the low-pressure area had not developed in the way he had hoped

Still located in a very southerly position (53°50) on Tuesday, the MACIF trimaran will sail south of the Kerguelen Islands, before heading a little further up in search of the wind he's expecting to meet and which was part of his initial strategy. "Icebergs have been detected quite close by, north east of Heard Island (a very small island located 50° south). As a precaution, I am sailing round by the north and the idea is to set a 70-80 course (East North East) in the 24 to 36 hours to come, which will bring us back towards the latitude of the Kerguelen Islands, 48-50° North," he explains. "We're going to try and go around to give ourselves a little margin. I hope that I'm not going to stay too long in this area, because it's a little tricky. It's nice to come here, but it's also nice to leave!"

Mapped track: www.macifcourseaularge.com/cartographie

www.macifcourseaularge.com

Safety at Sea Seminars
The Cruising Club of America's pre-race Safety at Sea seminar will be held again this year in Newport, RI on Saturday and Sunday, March 10th & 11th.

Registration is now open.

This training is required for 30% of all racing crew members for the Newport to Bermuda Race. See the website for more specific details of the requirements. The training is also excellent for cruisers and recommended for delivery crews returning boats from Bermuda!

Alternative seminars are offered throughout the country, and include the Storm Trysail's seminar on 19 May 2018, and the US Naval Academy seminar 24-25 March 2018. A full listing is available at the US Sailing website

Details on the Storm Trysail Club's seminar at SUNY campus at Bronx, NY: seminar.stormtrysailfoundation.org/20-about/9-test

Wight Vodka Best Yachting Bar Competition
In support of Sail Aid UK

Today's featured bar is a past winner (2014) of our annual competition: The King & Queen in Hamble.

Comments from patrons:

Great run selection, and lovely staff and management...

A Proper Pub. In some bars if you squint you won't know what country you're in. Not here. The roaring fire, the candles, the smell of beer battered fish and chips. No mistaking this lat / long as being in England...

Quaint little pub in a beautiful locstion. Staff were brillaint. Friendly, helpful and great service. Food was amazing. I'll stick my head up there and say it was the best bacon and brie sandwich in my life and up there in the top 3 sandwiches of any type in my 33 years!!! Will be going back again soon...

We'd like to hear from you about YOUR favorite yachtie bar. Remember, this year we have two awards... one for the Caribbean, and that award includes bars that are still closed after the hurricanes, and elsewhere, which does require an extant bar so we can all hope someday to patronise it and toast them.

As you're writing about your favorite, have a thought, and some money, for our brethren in the marine industry in the Caribbean. Contribute to Sail Aid UK to help them back up on their feet.

www.sailaiduk.com

Nominations open until Thursday 14th December:
scuttlebutteurope.com/sailors-bars

Volvo Ocean Race A3
Click on image to enlarge.

What are those yellow sails on the Volvo Ocean Race boats? North Sails CEO, Dan Neri, explains what's so unique about the Volvo Ocean 65 A3

The Volvo Ocean 65 A3 is unique because it is shaped like an Asymmetric Spinnaker, built like an upwind sail and furls like a genoa. The sail structure is 3Di Force, the lightest application of the 3Di composite sail product line.

The yellow hue of the Force sails comes from the combination of UltraPE filaments (which are translucent, white) and Aramid filaments (which are gold). To keep the weight as low as possible, the A3 sails have very little branding so they show their true colors. All of the other sails in the Volvo Ocean Race 65 inventory are fully branded which masks the color of the sail structure.

All 3Di sails, including 3Di Force sails, are made on North Sails proprietary, full scale adjustable molds. However, a careful look at the photos will reveal a number of seams in the Force sails. The seams are required because these sails have very high camber ratios (remember, they are essentially spinnakers) and our molds are engineered for camber ratios found on upwind sails.*

*A good question is, "Why don't you make deeper molds to allow one piece downwind sails?" The answer has more to do with real estate than engineering or economics. Our 3Di molds position the sail structure in space. The mold space has X,Y and Z dimensions. The tools we use to construct the sail structure on the mold hang from a gantry which is positioned over the mold. The gantry has to fit inside the building. Our current molds have a Z-throw limited by the height of the gantry (if the mold is adjusted to a camber exceeding the Z-limit, the gantry tools will crash into it). The gantries just clear the roof. To get more Z-throw we either have to raise the roof or lower the floor. Both of those options are ruled out by nature and government. The floor of the factory cannot be lowered because in the high desert of Nevada, the water table is just below the surface of the ground. If we dig down, we will make a swimming pool. The height of the factory building is restricted by local zoning ordinances because we are located adjacent to an airport. If we built higher, the local glider pilots might have trouble clearing our roof!

Full article at: northsails.com

WASZP Australian Championship to hit Sorrento
The first ever WASZP Australian Championships are set to hit Sorrento Sailing Couta Boat club with a bang! The inaugural event will be conducted over the Australia Day long weekend from the 25 - 28 January 2018.

Sorrento on the tip of the beautiful Mornington Peninsula is a watersports mecca and the perfect place for this progressive class to conduct its first major event in Australia.

With around 500 boats shipped worldwide, 70 of which are in Australia, expectations are high for a good fleet. Unlike many 'traditional' classes the WASZP provides an environment that is user friendly for everyone. WASZP encourages everyone to come along no matter what level they are at with sailing/foiling.

Sorrento has already set in motion a fantastic program for the event, with both on-water and off-water events catered for. There will be the 'WASZP Nest', a place where competitors, family and friends can chill out, play some table tennis, beach volleyball and generally enjoy the vibe and beach culture lifestyle the WASZP encourages.

One of the key features of this event, is it will be conducted as an on-call event. The WASZP will race at the time of day that the conditions are premium, competitors will be notified the night before and a schedule of events for the day will be planned around the best conditions possible. This will allow less down time waiting for the right weather and more time enjoying the hospitality around sailing in world class waters and conditions.

In-keeping with the WASZP ethos the class will be hosting a number of different events throughout the series. Slalom, GPS and Marathon racing will all play a part in the event to complement the Championship Racing. These events will be scored separately meaning we will have our very first WASZP Slalom Champion of Australia to go along with our first WASZP Australian Champion.

sscbc.com.au/waszp2018/

It is not too late get a boat for the Nationals with a container special price of $AUD16,200 inc GST there is no better time to get involved. -- Jonny Fullerton on behalf of the WASZP class

Contact:

Pensacola Yacht Club to host 2018 Optimist U.S. Nationals
Pensacola, Florida: The United States Optimist Dinghy Association (USODA) has selected Pensacola Yacht Club (PYC) to host their 2018 Optimist Nationals. This will be a week-long sailing spectacular on Pensacola Bay showcasing the nation's best International Optimist Dinghy sailors 8 to 15 years old.

The event is really three championships - the overall Optimist National Championship, the Optimist Girls National Championship and the Optimist Team Race National Championship. There will be Green Fleet coaching and racing for beginners, too.

Racing is scheduled for July 15-22, 2018. Practice racing will be offered the week before and with PYC's US Sailing Junior Olympic sailing festival earlier in July.

This year, in a change from previous years, the overall Opti National Championship will lead the schedule on July 15-16-17-18. The Optimist Girls National Championship will be July 19 and the Optimist Team Nationals will wrap up the action July 20-21-22. Prizes will be awarded after each event. Registration is Saturday July 14th.

Participants are urged to make hotel or rental reservations early because this is 'high season' in Pensacola and the very popular "Blue Angles" summer airshow at the beach is Saturday July14th. Make reservations through www.VisitPensacola.com

Regatta information will be on www.usoda.org and on www.usoda2018optinationals.com

Ainslie's LandRover BAR on the new boat...
The concept drawings for the new 75 foot monohull that will contest the 36th America's Cup in 2021 have been announced by the Defender, Emirates Team New Zealand. Sticking with high performance innovation expected of the America's Cup, the new class will be a foiling monohull on two large canting T-foils and a single T-foil rudder lifting the boat into the air.

Team Principal and Skipper, Ben Ainslie welcomed the early announcement, "The Defender, Emirates Team New Zealand and the Challenger of Record, Luna Rossa have delivered a truly high-performance boat that will make the next America's Cup an incredible sporting and technical challenge.

"We look forward to the opportunity to consult with the Defender and Challenger of Record ahead of the final class rule being announced at the end of March. We can't wait to start tackling the design and engineering challenges in this new class.

"What we do know is that we're going to be foiling again, and that in the right conditions, this boat will be as quick as or quicker than the ACC foiling catamarans raced in the last Cup. The sport has gained a lot of new fans and this boat, delivered with a global circuit and high-quality free-to-air broadcast TV will cement their interest in the America's Cup and build on a very strong base."

Land Rover BAR's new CEO, Grant Simmer, was in Portsmouth for the announcement and commented, "This new class is a real challenge for our design and sailing team. It's also a great opportunity. A new class of boat means a blank sheet of paper, and while we can use much of what was learned in AC35 about systems, foils and the associated design and engineering, there's also a great opportunity to take a jump ahead if we get the conceptual approach right from the start. This is a very exciting time for the team."

landroverbar.com

Letters To The Editor -
Letters are limited to 350 words. No personal attacks are permitted. We do require your name but your email address will not be published without your permission.

* From Tim Quinlan:

At first I thought it was April Fool's Day and then, looking outside I remembered it was a rainy November day in England.

"Their goals have been to design a class that will be challenging and demanding to sail, rewarding the top level of skill for the crews; this concept could become the future of racing and even cruising mono hulls beyond the America's Cup."

As a US president was heard to say "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard".

I am only guessing but to get these mono hulls to do what they need to do is not going to be easy? To suggest you might want to go cruising offshore in one - a bit like using a Formula One car in your everyday commute without having to dodge the flotsam and jetsam that lurks beneath the waves.

Great to see that the Americas cup is once again going to be an interesting, hard fought contest

Featured Brokerage
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See listing details in Seahorse's RaceboatsOnly

Contact
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Tel: +86 - 21 - 67 28 59 77
Fax: +86 - 21 - 67 28 59 76

www.fareastyachts.com

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K36 - Samurai

The K36-SAMURAI is an all carbon light-weight high performance boat suitable for both inshore around-the-buoys and offshore long distance races. ACT, SDK structures and Pauger carbon have teamed up. 5 boats has been sold.

See listing details in Seahorse's RaceboatsOnly

Contact
+81 (0) 46 884 4141
+81 (0) 46 884 4142

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2014 Swan 60-910 'Thor'. 3,250,000 EUR. Located in California, USA.

‘Thor’ was launched in November 2014 and is ready for racing or cruising. Currently lying in California, she is available for immediate delivery.

See listing details in Seahorse's RaceboatsOnly

Contact
Nautor's Swan Brokerage - Lorenzo Bortolotti

Tel. +377 97 97 95 07
nautorswanbrokerage.com

See the RaceboatsOnly.com collection at seahorsemagazine.com/brokerage/

Back on Monday
Your humble narrator will be travelling Wednesday to celebrate the USA's socially sanctioned gluttony festival of Thanksgiving on Thursday, followed by pie for breakfast and long naps on Friday.

I have much to be thankful for, I can't do it in just one day...

Best wishes to you and yours!

The Last Word
The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself. -- Jane Addams

Editorial and letter submissions to

Advertising inquiries to Graeme Beeson: or see www.scuttlebutteurope.com/advertise.html