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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 Red Bull Extreme Sailing on Winning Form
The four Extreme 40 races were set in an 'open water' configuration today on the Bay of Angels to make the most of the conditions, but still close enough for the sunbathers basking on the beach to get a glimpse of these 40-foot catamarans as the Extreme Sailing Series makes it debut in Nice. Act 7 opens to the public on Friday through to Sunday which will see the fleet racing in 'stadium' format as close to the Promenade des Anglais as possible. Jean-Pierre Dick and his crew consisting of 2011 Solitaire du Figaro winner Jeremie Beyou as tactician, trimmer Billy Besson and bowman Arnaud Jarlegant called the right tactics and found boat speed when needed to score a 2nd, 3rd and 4th place finishing the end of day one in third place overall. The top boat of the day was Roman Hagara's Red Bull Extreme Sailing. Hagara and his crew of Hans Peter Steinacher, the returning Will Howden and bowman Craig Monk won three out of the four races – clearly on form in the light and challenging conditions, and top the leaderboard going into the second day Overall standings after 4 races (28.9.11) http://www.extremesailingseries.com Northern Sailors Have Nicely Negotiated the Chicane A great operation for Jorg that, in addition, to leading the rankings, is gradually coming back to the direct route over the hours. He brings in his wake most of the fleet that - more or less - shifted in the north to escape the sticky zone. Three prototypes are trying to get out of this lawless area along the coast of Asturias: Etienne David (679 - Team Work), Lucas Montagne (718 - Ong Conseil) and Guillaume Le Brec (667 - Occamat/ATD). All three flirting between the 11th and 27th ranks, but must quickly leave the weather nightmare if they do not want to suffer more in the rankings. Part of the fleet will cross the Cape Finisterre tonight ... Jorg at 12.00 was 68 miles of the Spanish foreland. The wind gradually blows by the South and Southwest swell will begin to be gradually felt, as they will sail toward west. Now the sky is cloudy and the fleet could even find a few showers. Prototypes boats ranking on the 28th at noon (French time) - 33 boats Series boats ranking on the 28th at noon (French time) - 46 boats Meteo forecast for Thursday: The anticyclone over Germany remains stationary. The low flows southeast remains in the Bay of Biscay. Depression at 991 hPa centered 6TU 48N/23W by widening sharply. It goes back to Iceland during the day. The active cold front associated with this depression is centered along the 6TU at 21 W. It progresses eastward deactivating. Friday OTU, it focuses by 35N/20W, 43N/15W, 50N11W. This situation generates a building in front of the flow of the south west of 9 ° W. The south west swell is growing. www.charentemaritime-bahia.transat650.net/en Out of the Mediterranean and into Light Winds Off Morocco Remaining in the Mediterranean, Nico Budel and Ruud van Rijsewijk are experiencing further problems on Sec. Hayai. Having severely damaged their A2 gennaker on Monday, the Dutch duo's brand new A6 disintegrated on Tuesday afternoon: "It's completely unreal!" commented Van Rijsewijk on Wednesday morning. "The sail's range is up to 35 knots and we were in no more than 18-23 knots of breeze," he explains. "There are two rips of three metres and four metres...this isn't what you expect from a new sail," adds the 56 year-old yachtsman. The duo has now reverted to an old sail made for the boat's previous crew of Boris Herrmann and Felix Oehme, double-handed winners of the 2008-09 GOR. "This will get us to the Strait of Gibraltar and we're working to repair the A2, but the A6 is destroyed," says van Rijsewijk. With their Trade Wind sail inventory depleted, Leg 1 is potentially looking very long for the Dutch duo. Meanwhile, the lead pack were reaching down the coast of Morocco early on Wednesday morning in easterly breeze with BSL and Cessna Citation around 18 miles offshore and Campagne de France in second place opting for a more westerly route, forcing the Fields to run downwind, head west, cover Mabire and Merron and avoid a windless bubble on the coast blocking their path as dawn broke. At 06:00 GMT Campagne de France took the lead and in third place Colman and Ramon were snared by the light winds with the speed dropping to below three knots for Cessna Citation. * It's definitely been an intense past 24 hours, getting through the Gibraltar straight was a wild ride, squeezing through at night with winds building to 35knots in choppy seas was like driving a jeep down a narrow mountain path at night with no brakes. Once on the other side we went south, we knew the wind was going to decrease progressively and due to the tiredeness we postponed some of the gear changes failing to make the most of the opportunity to pull back miles on the opposition, we wanted to gybe west but at the same time we are very conscious that we do not want too much separation between us and the rest, we want to stay with the pack, which has its advantages and disadvantages, it contains the risks as well as reduces the opportunities. Hopefully our move to the west paid off, we'll have to wait the next position report to see if we've consolidated the 4th place. We have recovered from 56 miles behind the leader to 38, and only 14 behind the brand new Cessna Citation. Despites sailing an older heavier boat we hope a least to give them a stiff neck looking behind their backs... Last but not least, i'm told our cheeky "beer fund" at www.marconannini.com/help where people have been donating via Paypal has reached nearly a thousand pounds, that's amazing, massive thanks to all! -- Marco Nannini and Paul Peggs Marlow Ropes Release Free iPhone App. The Marlow Ropes App is the first comprehensive rope information app to be released for the iPhone. It's free and easy to use, wherever you may be. Overview The Marlow Ropes App consists of five tabs: 2. Technical. Understand your ropes with 3. Catalogues. The latest Marlow Catalogues in PDF format - Use the inbuilt interactive barcode reader to scan the QR barcodes found on Marlow's new point of sale chandlery racking to discover further information Login to the iTunes store and search Marlow Ropes to download your free copy of the App and start discovering everything it has to offer. Download the Marlow App here: Summer Conditions Prevail
This year there is a bumper fleet of Fifes including: the 23 metre class, Cambria; the gaff schooner Altair; the gaff cutters Moonbeam III and IV; the 19 metre class Mariquita; the International 15 metre class Mariska, Tuiga, and The Lady Anne; Marconi cutter Hallowe'en, the gaff cutter Nan of Fife built in 1896. Given that there is only an estimated 50 or so of Fife's designs still extant and racing, it's impressive to consider this collection racing in St Tropez this week. Another fine example of the Fife design is the International 15 Metre Class yachts. Fife designed eight of the 20 built, and of these three are racing this week (a fourth, the recently re-launched Hispania, withdrew shortly before the regatta started). Tomorrow at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez is the traditional Club 55 Cup, a match race this year between Mariquita and Altair with start at 12noon. Following that is the Centenary Trophy for yachts over 100 years old. Finally are the other Challenge Day match races set up between yachts, the list to be finalized tomorrow. Racing continues Friday for both Traditional and Modern classes. First warning signal is 1100 for the Moderns, 1200 for Traditional. www.societe-nautique-saint-tropez.fr Clipper Race 3: Rio De Janeiro to Cape Town The Australian team remains unbeaten after the first three races of the year-long series with their latest victory keeping them firmly at the top of the leader board. A while later Visit Finland scored a second podium finish seeing off the challenge from De Lage Landen. Olly Osborne and his crew crossed the finish line in Table Bay at 2022 local time (1822 UTC) last night. The team had been in a strong position for most of the race, in the latter stages seeing off stiff competition from the Dutch entry. De Lage Landen has scored their first podium finish in Clipper-11-12, finishing Race 3 in third place just over three hours behind Visit Finland yesterday. It is a remarkable achievement for the team led by Southampton-based skipper, Stuart Jackson, who only took command of the yacht in Rio de Janeiro just four days before the start of this race. The crew also picked up the maximum three bonus points at the Scoring Gate during the 3,300-mile race across the south Atlantic. The 68-foot ocean racing yacht crossed the finish line against the magnificent backdrop of Table Mountain at 2330 local time (2130 UTC) on Tuesday. The team had been in a strong position for most of the race, in the latter stages piling the pressure on second placed Visit Finland. Following the arrival of the first three boats yesterday, Singapore is expected to finish tonight at around midnight local time followed by Derry-Londonderry at 0200. New York and Qingdao are expected at approximately 0400 local tomorrow morning followed around one hour later by Welcome to Yorkshire. Estimated arrival times for Geraldton Western Australia and Edinburgh Inspiring Capital to be posted in due course. Positions at 0900 UTC, Wednesday 28 September 1. Gold Coast Australia, Finished at 10:56 UTC 27/09 Challenging but Serene in Croatia
Although on the surface the conditions looked serene, the low gradient fighting the sea breeze, made for very shifty tricky conditions and a race course where you really didn't want to split from your opponents. The only other team to finish the day with five wins was Vladimir Prosikhin's Team Nika (RUS) with Croatia's Tomislav Basic at the helm. When they stepped ashore they were pleased with their performance, suffering just one loss to ORACLE Racing, however the team were later docked 1.5 points for incidents with ORACLE Racing and Katusha. Two new professional skippers joined the RC44 Championship Tour in Croatia and faced their RC44 match race initiation. Italy's Paolo Cian stepped onto Peninsula Petroleum, calling the shots for owner John Bassadone. Cian is a man with match racing credentials that are too long to list, but his experience helped Peninsula Petroleum finish the day with three wins and two losses. The sole female professional skipper in the RC44 fleet is Ekaterina Skudina has joined the RUS 7 Sail Racing Team as the tactician for Croatia, taking time out of her Olympic campaign. Ekaterina has represented Russia at the past two Olympic Games in the Yngling. She is currently campaigning in the Elliot 6.5m for next year's London 2012 Olympics and is ranked number six in the world women's match race rankings. Thursday 28th September marks the start of the fleet racing phase of the Adris RC44 Cup. Four days of fleet racing kicks off at 11.30 CET. Follow the racing live via the interactive blog and live tracking Sail Faster And Smarter! Whether you race a one-design or big boat, at the top or bottom of your fleet, you'll find lots of valuable ideas in Speed & Smarts. In fact, when you consider the cost of other go-fast items you can buy, this newsletter gives you extremely good "bang for your buck." View a sample issue at www.speedandsmarts.com/BackIssues/SampleIssue Subscribe at www.speedandsmarts.com ISAF Annual Conference Meeting Papers Published Online The 2011 ISAF Annual Conference takes place in San Juan, Puerto Rico from 3-13 November and will bring together the ISAF Council, Committees and Commissions along with other leading figures from the sailing world to debate, discuss and decide upon the key issues in the sailing world. Over 200 Submissions - proposals to either change an existing ISAF policy or introduce a new policy in the sport - have been received from ISAF Member National Authorities (MNAs), ISAF Classes, Committee Chairmen and the Executive Committee covering many aspects of the sport. These will be debated alongside the other items addressed on each Committee's Agenda at the meetings in November. For ease, there are various options by which you can download papers - by a specific Committee, by Submission, by Agenda, by Supporting Paper - and the papers can be downloaded individually or as a bulk download, which is provided by a zip file download. The meeting papers are freely available for anyone to access. www.sailing.org/2011-conference.php#confpapers On the ISAF Meetings microsite at www.sailing.org/meetings you can find more details on the 2011 Annual Conference and General Assembly. There's also a simple guide to ISAF's decision-making process and a full database of past meeting papers. From The "Not Sailing But Very Cool" Files...
The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, spotted the monster star, which is called a yellow hypergiant. The star is located about 13,000 light-years away from Earth, but is the closest yellow hypergiant found to date. The new image, which ESO scientists dubbed the "Fried Egg Nebula" shows the central hypergiant star, officially known as IRAS 17163-3907, surrounded by a huge dusty double shell, making up the egg yolk and white. [See the photo and video of the "Fried Egg" nebula] The massive star is so large it has a width that is about 1,000 times larger than our sun. In fact, if the Fried Egg nebula were placed at the center of our solar system, the Earth would be positioned deep within the star itself. The orbit of the planet Jupiter would be just above the star's surface. But that's not all. The much larger neighboring nebula would engulf all the planets, dwarf planets, and even some comets that orbit way out beyond the orbit of Neptune. The new observations from the Very Large Telescope show that the Fried Egg Nebula also shines approximately 500,000 times brighter than the sun. The extreme activity of yellow hypergiants shows that the star will likely die an explosive death, potentially as one of the next supernova explosions to occur in our galaxy. Letters To The Editor - * From John Harwood-Bee: All Multihull enthusiasts should rally in support of the David Pitman and Roland Gaebler stance on the latest ludicrous decision by ISAF re the exclusion of the Tornado class. ( Scutt Europe 2437 & 2439) What political machinations prompt these decisions is beyond the comprehension of normal thinking sailors. In an age when multihull sailing is rapidly gaining greater support around the world, we already face the 2012 Olympics without one at all. That in itself is stupidity at it's worst. To now exclude, by Machiavellian means, the most exciting and appropriate class from the trials, leaves a bad taste in the mouth and an even worse odour under the nose. What we need is a 'whistle blower' inside ISAF to expose the vested interests and arrogance of some members. It would be a great shame if it was ever discovered that our representative body was as rotten to the core as those of the Olympics and World football. Featured Brokerage Launched in 2009, AMF Nikita is a highly specified J-122 with a full set of 3DL regatta sails from North Sails Italy. She is a high performance boat that performs well on the race course and comfortably accomodates six guests in three cabins. Brokerage through Nautor's Swan Italy & Monaco: www.yachtworld.com/swan-italy/ Complete listing details and seller contact information at uk.yachtworld.com The Last Word |
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