Brought to you by Boats.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 La Charente-Maritime/Bahia Transat 6.50 - Erratic Weather A 44 mile gap separates the most northeast competitor Jorge Madden (636 - Samsara) and the most south Etienne David (679 - TeamWork). They are all trying to extricate themselves from the East/ Southeast flow punctuated with west/northwest swell from 1 to 1.5 meters. Three quarters of the fleet chose to be 240°, a group of troublemakers chose to head North/West. On the side of protos, Aymeric Chapellier (788 - La Tortue de l'Aquarium - La Rochelle) was the first to pull the helm. Aymeric left the fleet earlier in the day and is now sailing 261°, taking more West than his buddies. He is now 30th but his bet is a long term one. Same for Donatien Carme (606 - 606 cherche sponsor) that is a little less North. Monitor them... Same trend for production boats, with Jorge Madden, Kan Chuh (472 - Vmax), Bruno Simonnet (744 - El Nono), David Prono (728 - Esi Group), Susanne Beyer (745 - Penelope) and Tolga Pamir (737 - Yakamoz). But, we need leaders... Who are they? Renaud Chavarria (596 - Beziers Mediterranee) leads the production boats before Hugo Lavayssiere (527 - Ares and Co) and Pierre Brasseur (552 - Voile Ocean). Jorg Riechers (753 - Mare.de) leads the protos before Nicolas Boidevezi (719 -Defi GDE) - Ed. another Bertand design- and David Raison (747 - TeamWork Evolution). They all sail as a group at the speed of 3 to 4 knots and remain on the same path. Tuesday's weather : Bay of Biscay will be at the edge of high pressure on Europe continent gaining strength 1030 hPa in Germany. Light wind conditions in the edge of high pressure extending from Cape Finisterre to Madeira. Low 997 hPa located at north of Azores islands at 12h00 moving to north-east and located by 44°N and 22°W on Wednesday at 0h00. South-south-westerly storm system at west of the10°W. www.charentemaritime-bahia.transat650.net First Morning at Sea for the GOR Fleet Holding fifth place east of the main group of boats, Marco Nannini and Paul Peggs on Financial Crisis were leading the fleet momentarily: "The early part of the race was very tiring and frustrating, playing light winds bingo," reported Nannini on Monday morning. "Everyone was trying to get away from the island of Mallorca and into the offshore wind, all very close to each other, but sometimes sailing completely different angles," he explains. "We had a lucky break at some stage and overtook first BSL, then Campagne de France and Cessna Citation, technically taking the overall lead before grinding to a halt." Their time a the front of the fleet was short lived: "BSL and Phesheya from the back went off to the M25 motorway and found some wind and circled us like we were stuck in a central London traffic jam." Meanwhile, The New Zealand duo of Ross and Campbell Field continue to make the best speed on BSL, averaging 10.7 knots in around 14 knots of north-easterly breeze with Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron just over eight miles astern with Campagne de France in the 09:00 GMT Monday position poll. While the pack of five boats are separated by under 23 miles, the Dutch duo of Nico Budel and Ruud van Rijsewijk trail the fleet leader by 40 miles in a lighter band of breeze on Sec. Hayai. Although this early deficit for the team may be a setback, it is unlikely to dim the atmosphere on board as Budel celebrates his 72nd birthday today. Happy birthday Nico! -- Oliver Dewar EUROSAF Match Racing, European Youth Open Championship Today saw the conclusion of the first ever European Youth Open Match Racing Championship hosted by the Society Canottieri Marsala and generously supported by the Città di Marsala. Wind conditions on Saturday had made the race organisation somewhat challenging, with light winds resulting in one flight still remaining to be sailed from the round-robin series after two days of racing. The organising committee were keen to get this flight completed first thing on Sunday morning, but the day dawned with grey skies, rain and no wind. With high pressure meeting low pressure over Marsala, the conditions did not improve very quickly and while the sailors waited patiently on shore, the Race Officer, Piero Lo Giudice, sought the wind out on the water. Eventually a light wind of some 3-4 knots arrived from the south west and racing got underway shortly before 13.00. By the time the finals were sailed, the wind direction had changed to more north easterly and the speed increased to around 8-10 knots, making the sailing more interesting for those involved and more exciting to watch for spectators. In the final Valerio Galati (ITA) beat Joachim Aschenbrenner (DEN) 2:0 and in the Petit Final Mark Lees (GBR) beat Gorazd Rajar (SLO) 2:0, making Valerio Galati from Italy the EUROSAF Match Racing, European Youth Open Champion. Full results are available at www.eurosaf.org Dubarry Storm - Sailing Style In On The Street Dubarry Storm - the calm within the Storm. Gold Coast Australia Leads the Charge to Finish Line in Strong Breeze The Australian team logged the joint best 12-hour run of 116 miles with Singapore overnight putting them within 200 miles of the finish of the 3,300-mile race from Rio de Janeiro. De Lage Landen has also been making good progress as one of the four boats to post a triple digit 12-hour run. Skipper Stuart Jackson and his team are now 92 miles behind Gold Coast Australia after clawing their way up the leader board. On Welcome to Yorkshire, skipper Rupert Dean and his team have secured the bonus point for the Ocean Sprint between 5 degrees west and 2 degrees east. Yesterday Welcome to Yorkshire declared a provisional time of 32 hours and ten minutes, the fastest to date. Edinburgh Inspiring Capital has declared their time at 46 hours and 46 minutes this morning. Olly Osborne and his team on Visit Finland have opted to go into Stealth Mode as they close in on the finish. The ten boats will be berthed in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront until the start of Race 4 to Geraldton in Western Australia. Gold Coast Australia is expected to finish not before 1000 local tomorrow, and further estimated arrival times will be posted in due course. Positions at 0900 UTC, Monday 26 September Let The Sailors Be Sailors and We Might Get More Fans He asked for forgiveness for the language he was about to use and then proceeded to enthuse about the race that saw him come 3rd, having had to use all his skill to stay upright. It was a very different persona to the one that sometimes turns up for press conferences, that seems guarded, and almost glum. Not always - Coutts joked in Plymouth that a collision with Dean Barker was not a 'love tap' - that he was trying to sink the Kiwis to have a chance of winning, providing one of the very few moments of levity in an otherwise forgettable set of press conferences. Off the record and on the QT, the man who has just converted his Facebook profile into a 'page' with circa 5000 friends, is someone that one could become a fan of. Elsewhere in the America's Cup fleet, there are other sailors who are engaging as individuals, but as soon as they put on the gear and have a camera stuck in their face, shut down and revert to the scripts they have had drummed into them by media training, with a few exceptions - like ORACLE Racing's Simon Tienpont . The America's Cup World Series has made a rod for it's own back by vowing to engage a new audience using the Internet and social media. Wowing an audience with capsizes and chaos is not the same thing as creating fans. Despite a large social media team, ACEA is still in a 'broadcast' mindset rather than engagement mode. In Plymouth, ORACLE Racing signed a few posters, which will hopefully end up on the bedroom walls of kids who want to be America's Cup sailors and not flogged off on Ebay as collectibles - simple and effective, but old-school. Using the technology is not enough. David Fuller's full article at www.yachtracing.biz Team Wright Match Gets a Gold Cup Wildcard Entry Team Wight Match have been racing together for less then 12 months, during which time they have successfully managed to rise up the world rankings. The team is currently ranked 131, and is one of the highest ranked teams in the world counting only four events. Based in Cowes, Isle of Wight the team is made up of young and aspiring professional sailors that are training hard both on and off the water to ensure their continued rise up the match race rankings. The switch to match racing is a change of tack for the team's Skipper, Sam Pearson, who can more regularly be seen competing onboard TP52's and Farr 45's or racing offshore with a Class 40 racing team, with which he recently completed the Transatlantic Race 2011, so there will be no lack of seamanship! The team, who are currently self-funding their way around Europe competing in as many match racing events as possible, are currently in search of a sponsor to make sure they can attend as many events as possible. After the Gold Cup, Team Wight Match have a busy period ahead of them, competing in numerous European events including the Master Espana Match Race, Bayona, Spain and the RYA National Match Race Finals, London. From Sail-World.com: teamwightmatch.wordpress.com Camet Code Zip Performance Shirt For more information please see Running the Rhumblines Like most children they have left the class room environment to spend the break from school doing what the like best and in the case for the Lorenz siblings it has meant spending two weeks away from sailing of Airlie Beach to visit Yeppoon for the Yachting Queensland youth training camp. Both Klaus and Eva are members of the Yachting Australia accredited program and are no strangers to testing the skill on the open waters of Rosslyn Bay. While they renewed their friendships with other Yachting Queensland Youth Development team members their personal focus was on improving their skills under the guidance of Australian high performance coach Adrian Finglas and YQ's Ben Callard. This opportunity allowed Klaus and his crew mate Ollie Annear to gain important sail-fast techniques as the face the new sailing season in the highly competitive 420 Olympic training class. Klaus a self taught sailor who has spent endless hours of mid-week training and weekend racing on Pioneer Bay to achieve a career best Bronze Medal result in the 2011 Australian Optimist championship earlier this year will be presented with a supreme challenge to master the 420 with his school mate Ollie Annear. Last week the gained some important sail-fast tips from a former Australian 420 champion Adrian Finglas who also coached Lisa Charlson and Sarah Roberts Thomson to win the Women's World championship in South Africa. However as Klaus, Ollie and Eva understand their career results are purely determined from making the right decisions on the race course and those skills are progressively refined with the time they are prepared to spend on training. "Ollie and I are good mates and understand what is needed to become competitive". Klaus said. Later this year their skill and boat speed will be measured on the result from the Australian championship on the unfamiliar and open water course on Brisbane's Deception Bay. Meanwhile the new young and enthusiastic 420 Whitsunday Sailing Club team have a little over three months to be race ready. As expected their busy schedule will included mid-week after school training sessions on Pioneer Bay while Klaus will also remained involved with the WSC Optimist sailing team as the their 'new leader' Eva Lorenz heads into the National championship with the prospect of being the only Lorenz on the list of entries. However like her older brother the talented 12 year old promises to continue a climb up the National rankings. -- Ian Grant Sir Peter Blake Trophy for the Volvo Ocean Race Legends 2011 "I am truly delighted that Peter should be honoured in this way and I shall be thrilled to present it to the deserving winner of the Volvo Ocean Race Legends Regatta." Lady Blake. The 33.5 cm hallmarked silver trophy will be presented to the overall winner by Legends Ambassador Lady Blake as a tribute to her late husband, Sir Peter Blake, who competed in the first five Whitbread Races (the forerunner to the Volvo Ocean Race) and won all five legs of the 1989-90 edition aboard Steinlager 2. In addition to the Sir Peter Blake Trophy, on both race days special trophies and awards will be presented including a memorial naval ceremonial sword trophy in honour of Ian Bailey-Wilmot's long and valuable involvement with the race. Commander Ian Bailey-Willmot was co-skipper of the Royal Naval Sailing Association's Nicholson 55 Adventure on the Auckland to Rio leg of the Whitbread in 1977-78. When he left the Navy, the Whitbread became Ian's life and much of the development of the race thereafter was due to his drive and entrepreneurial spirit. He was a member of the Race Committee for the fourth race and became Race Director in 1989. He was CEO and Race Director from 1991 to 1998 and finally Chairman of the Race Committee in 2001and 2002. Ian died on February 10, 2009, aged 68. During his time in charge he increased both the length of the race and the number of legs, helped exploit the race's media potential and varied the arrival ports. He also oversaw the abandonment of the traditional handicapping system introducing instead a new class of boat, the Whitbread 60, latterly the Volvo Ocean 60. The memorial naval ceremonial sword was originally presented to Ian as commanding officer of the fast patrol boat Brave Swordsman by Wilkinson's Sword as a mark of its affiliation with the ship at the end of Ian's tenure. A Month to go Till The Launch of Edmond De Rothschild Group Over the coming weeks, the MOD SA teams will proceed with the positioning of the deck hardware (winches, blocks, sheaves...), the installation of the electric and electronic circuit, the hydraulics and the mechanics aboard the boat, not to mention the essential attaching and tensioning of the trampolines which link the hulls together. Finally, the trimaran will be equipped with all her different appendages (float rudders, daggerboards and foils). A month's sea trials will follow to commission the one-design. From 6 to 8 October 2011, the first competition of the Multi One Design will take place in La Trinite-sur-Mer, south-west Brittany.The score won't count towards the Multi One Championship, but the class' first three trimarans and their crews will be able to size each other up during the three days of racing, where there will be alternate Races and shorter Speed runs. As they await the arrival of the MOD No.4, the Gitana Team will be part of the action aboard one of the flagships of Baron Benjamin de Rothschild's fleet, Gitana 11. Spanning 77 feet, compared with the 70 that make up the MODs, Gitana 11 is very similar to the one-designs. For this Breton meeting, Sebastien Josse has put together a crew of experienced sailors. He'll be accompanied by Thomas Rouxel, David Boileau, Olivier Douillard, Antoine Koch, Florent Chastel, Jean-Baptiste Levaillant and Christophe Espagnon. -- Translated by Kate Jennings Featured Brokerage Alacrity (formally Bird) is a modern high performance racing/cruising trimaran from the board of well-known multihull designer Dick Newick. She was expertly built by Lone Star Multihulls of Brownsville, TX, USA under the close supervision of her original owner, a composite design expert who undertook a conversion from the originally designed WEST System® construction to state of the art composite construction utilizing Core-Cell® foam, carbon fiber, glass, and epoxy resin. Every component was weighed and core/skin laminate samples were tested for strength. Construction was completed at the design weight and the yacht has proven to be extremely fast and rugged. The original owner won several ocean races by large margins. Brokerage through Multihull World: www.yachtworld.com/multihullworld/ Complete listing details and seller contact information at uk.yachtworld.com The Last Word |
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