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Brought to you by Boats.com Europe, Yachtworld.com Europe, 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 Nicky Souter Wins Buddy Melges Challenge The win for Nicky Souter, Nina Curtis and Olivia Price makes it back to back ISAF Grade 1 event victories for the crew following their gold medal at the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta in Weymouth last month. Souter and crew took on American sailor Sally Barkow in the semi-final with the Australians coming out on top three wins to nil to book a place in the final. The final was a trans-Tasman battle with Souter, Curtis and Price taking on the New Zealand crew of Samantha Osborne, Raynor Smeal and Susannah Pyatt with the Australians taking the regatta victory with a three to one win. In the petit-final, Barkow took on the Danish team helmed by Lotte Meldgaard Pedersen and defeted her to take the bronze medal. The conditions on Lake Michigan tested the crews throughout the week explains Olivia Price. 'It was a real light wind regatta but with incredibly choppy seas,' said Price. 'At times it was worse than the chop we sail in off the Sydney heads and tested everybody's skills, it was like sailing in a washing machine.' Final Results Event site: sailsheboygan.us/BMC_2010.php#news ISAF Women's Match Racing World Champonship - www.sailing.org/womensmatchworlds.php ISAF Women's Match Racing World Championship Run annually since 1999, this year's championship has attracted 20 teams from 14 nations. Powerhouse nations include France, United States and Denmark, but if a favorite had to be chosen, it would be Australia's Nicky Souter, sailing with Nina Curtis, Olivia Price and Laura Baldwin. Souter is the reigning world champion and also won back-to-back events recently including last month's Skandia Sail for Gold regatta in Weymouth, Great Britain and last week's Buddy Melges Challenge at the US Sailing Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Regardless of Souter's recent streak, more than a dozen of the teams competing in the championship have won major events. Claire Leroy won back-to-back ISAF Women's Match Racing World Championships in 2007 and 2008, as did American Sally Barkow before her in 2004 and 2005. Australian Katie Spithill has been top five in the championship the last three times and is poised to win her first world championship with top results this year. Not to be discounted is British star Lucy Macgregor, the current ISAF number one ranked women's match racer. She is third in the ISAF World Cup standings and is sailing with who many consider the top female match racing mind, Annie Lush. Certainly the most decorated sailors at the event will be Olympic gold medalists Anna Tunnicliffe of the U.S. and Sofia Bekatorou of Greece. Tunnicliffe, who is second in the ISAF World Cup rankings, dove head first into match racing shortly after her Olympic victory in 2008. Bekatorou was a 470 gold medalist in her native Greece in 2004 and has also been slowly climbing the rankings. Competitors List (with current ISAF ranking): USA - Sally Barkow (12) Outstanding Senior Structural Engineer? The successful candidate will lead a team and be responsible for delivering structural design projects from conceptual design, prototyping and testing through to workshop documentation and certification. A demonstrable ability to make astute and sound technical judgements based on first principles understanding, whilst working within a fast paced, highly challenging and highly stimulating team would be a distinct advantage. Limited information is at www.bladedynamics.com Please send a resume and covering letter to 50 Days To Go To The Start Of The Route Du Rhum
UniCredit is an Akilaria 40 designed by Marc Lombard, boat captain Paul Peggs has first-hand knowledge of all the boat systems having been closely involved in the preparation and as co skipper in the Shetland Round Britain race this summer.' These boats are exceptionally strongly built and lightning quick, we have changed the standing rigging to new stainless steel rods and fitted a new NKE hydraulic auto pilot ram, the charging system and the batteries are all new, what can go wrong?', he joked. Success in Solo racing is all about reliable equipment, the ocean finds every little weakness in preparation. Imagine charging along in the dark of the night, surfing down huge waves with the icy spray flying everywhere and the boat vibrating like an out of tune violin. Random waves sweep across the deck and wash through the cockpit, It is so noisy you can hardly think. The gyroscopic stabilised auto pilot is steering like an Olympic champion, so you make a quick trim of the sails to go even faster and then you leave the deck and go below, cold wet and scared, to sleep for ten minutes! Welcome to solo ocean racing. -- Jerry Freeman Full article at marconannini.com ISAF World Match Race Rankings The World Match Racing Tour is in full swing, the 2009-10 ISAF Sailing World Cup has finished and the ISAF Women's Match Racing Worlds is right on the horizon and for the northern hemisphere the summer season has seen numerous national championships taking place. There is no change at the top of the open rankings as Adam Minoprio (NZL) who has held the position for over a year maintains his lead. Minoprio's most recent win was the thrilling final of the Danish Open when he came back from a 2-0 down deficit to defeat his good friend Torvar Mirsky (AUS). Ben Ainslie (GBR) maintains his position at #2 while fellow Brit and previous #1 ranked helm, Ian Williams returns to the top five at #5. Jostling for position further down the top ten and Mathieu Richard (FRA), the current World Match Racing Tour leader, moves up to #3 after picking up a win at St Mortiz, making way for Richard is Torvar Mirsky. Women's Rankings With the ISAF Women's Match Racing World Championship just five days away, Renee Groeneveld (NED) leaps to the top of the women's rankings for a career best. She now leads long time #1 skipper Claire Leroy (FRA) by 73 points whilst the toppling previous #1 skipper Lucy MacGregor down to #3 but just one point behind Leroy. The defending women's world champion, Nicky Souter from Australia has sent a clear signal with her regatta preparation - two ISAF Grade 1 wins at Skandia Sail for Gold and the Buddy Melges Challenge, help Souter and her team move up four places to #4. All eyes now turn to New York where the ISAF Women's Match Racing World Championships gets underway on 20 September. This next release of the ISAF World Match Race Rankings will be on 27 October 2010. Top ten open rankings: 1. Adam Minoprio, NZL Top ten women's rankings: Tornado European Championships
The race team gave the sailors 3 races packed with action, there were over 20 capsizes during the day but with no breakages. ITA President and World Champion Roland Gaebler commented on the racing saying "This really is the best of Lake Garda, rodeo sailing with the famous Ora winds. It was one of the hardest racing days for me from over the past 10 years." The Greek team of Iordanis Paschalidis and Konstantinos Trigonis have taken an early lead with three wins from three races. They are followed by the mixed team of Roland and Nahid Gaebler who are six points behind. The results represent the wind conditions with over half of the fleet not starting the third and final race of the day. Yesterday's video can be found here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK-oWg318TI ITA Facebook page - www.facebook.com/tornadoclass Camet Introduces The Women’s Wahine Sailing Shorts In Slate Grey For more information on these shorts, please go to www.camet.com US Sailing To Draft Multihull Rule For 34th America's Cup To ensure that no team would have an unfair advantage by creating the rule, US SAILING was approached by the BMW ORACLE Racing Team to provide oversight of the rule drafting process. Pete Melvin, a two-time A Class catamaran world champion, has independently drafted a rule for the race. The final AC72 rule, including details on measurement instructions, materials used, wing definitions, scantlings, and other requirements, will be specified by September 30, 2010. "In the upcoming weeks, the team at Morrelli and Melvin will be polishing the rule and coming up with details," said offshore director of US SAILING, Dan Nowlan. "US SAILING is really proud to be part of this effort and supporting them, and the 34th America's Cup. It's going to be interesting, so stay tuned." Learn more about how and why US SAILING became involved with this process from US SAILING's Dan Nowlan. For announcement highlights from Monday's press conference visit the America's Cup web site: www.americascup.com Overall Victories Are Still Open in Both Medcup Series
The fifth and final regatta of the 2010 Audi MedCup Circuit starts in less than one week's time on the waters off Cagliari, Sardinia's flourishing historic capital city. For the climax to this season the usual regatta schedule is advanced by one day. So the official practice race for the 52's is on Monday 20th September, with the final tussle for points starting on Tuesday 21st. The last 52 Coastal Race of the season is scheduled for Thursday 23 rd. The 42's start one day later with their official practice race and both series finish up for the season on Saturday 25th September, when the Audi MedCup Circuit champions of 2010 will be announced. Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL) lead into the final regatta of the season with a lead of 46.5 points. Of course that lead is very tenable, but the 2009 champions have lead all the way through the season after winning the opening regatta in Cascais in Portugal. With only a seven point lead in the GP42 overall standings, Madrid-Caser Seguros (ESP) cannot rest easy and will have to watch their backs on the final home stretch towards the finish, especially after Murcia proved that no lead is safe in this class. Two tie-breaks were needed to determine the podium finishers there, with AIRISSENTIAL (ITA) and Peninsula Petroleum (GBR) having their best regattas to date, and defending champions Islas Canarias Puerto Calero (ESP) suffering some bad luck to set them back several points away from the lead. The Audi MedCup Public Village will open on Saturday, from 1100 to 2100h, with free access to the pontoons for all the visitors. Letters To The Editor - * From Tom Hayhoe: Appealing to Flintstone or Facebook generation? Forget it. The prospect of match racing multi-hulls with wing sails is about as exciting as watching paint dry. The best thing about the announcement is that we have to wait only until 2013 for the lessons to be learned and work to begin on rules for a match racing friendly monohull for AC35. * From Jim Champ, re: David Fuller's statement that "No NASCAR executive I know would have put their name to today's event." But is NASCAR a good model for a genuinely international event? Isn't it just a tad parochial? I don't claim to any expertise at this stuff at all and indeed haven't bothered watching the presentation, but aren't BMW and Oracle both companies with a little more international presence? Is it possible that they have found that genuinely worldwide audiences need slightly different handling? * From Euan Ross: After the first flush of mainly positive reaction to the new AC format, it was salutary to listen to Grant Dalton's intelligent and typically measured response in a recent interview on TVNZ. It'll be interesting to see who can actually front up for this - the commitment in terms of finance, box-ticking and compulsory participation is huge, given the timescale concerned. Outstanding project management will be the first priority. In terms of moving the game on - well something had to be done, but did it have to be quite so antagonistic to existing interests and institutions - not just in the mono-hull establishment (which admittedly need a good boot up the backside from time to time) but also in relation to the long established, but perpetually vulnerable, community who seek to race big multi-hulls? The AC 72 goes head-to-head with the new MOD 70 trimaran, which occupies a similar performance envelope, and the plans for that circuit, which includes both oceanic and round the cans events is well advanced. The stop-gap AC45 goes head-to-head with the successful eXtreme 40, but will lack numbers and the all-important fleet racing format that spectators prefer. Only the use of wing-sails differentiates a format niche. And is that even a good idea? The ballsy upper-end wind limit of 33kts (top end of Force 7) at 6 metres means that potentially these boats could be sailing with Force 8 at the masthead; and yet wing sails (in terms of current and immediate technology) just aren't up to that. Look to the fraught history of managing big wings ashore and afloat: in particular, consider the just completed 'Little AC' and the surprising capsize of Aethon - reportedly due to "turbulence left by a passing freighter" (that looked to be a mile away). Then there is the perpetual problem for multi-hulls of managing longitudinal stability in broken water, exacerbated with heavy wing rigs. So that top end wind limit is just PR. The additional self conferred 'world titles' on offer - 'America's Cup World Champion' (not the winner of the America's Cup!) and the mooted 'Junior America's Cup' (oxymoron?) don't make any sense at all and looks like yet another gratuitous move to muscle in on the existing healthy diversity of grand prix sailing. So let's see who will in fact signs up for this new travelling circus. Certainly the colourful, low-budget campaigns and two boats teams (which provided a career pathway for aspiring AC sailors) are gone, at least for this cycle. Dalton envisages just a handful of entries, and only a minority of these prospects look to have the right stuff. If Alinghi doesn't enter, only TNZ seem to be a threat to the holders. Featured Brokerage This Rob Shaw designed race boat built by Tony Dalbeth Marine presents as new. It is a full on race boat and would make a great syndicate boat. Brokerage through All Boat Brokerage Ltd.: www.yachtworld.com/allboat/ Complete listing details and seller contact information at The Last Word |
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