Innehållsförteckning för July - August 2016 från Sailing World

THE DAY’S ASSIGNMENT is easy: file a short video story from on board Oakcliff Sailing Center’s Tuesday night match-race drills. With marching orders in hand, the half-dozen students enrolled in Oakcliff’s immersive five-day “Onboard Reporter” course shuffle out of the classroom with anticipation, eager to apply what they’ve been taught by the bearded master, Amory Ross, a two-time veteran of the Volvo Ocean Race’s embedded-reporter program. On this day in late May, Ross stood before the class for nearly six hours, his vault of tips and tricks open for the students to raid. He’s dished out more than a decade’s worth of hard-earned advice on how and when to capture the fleeting moments of a sailboat race using photos, videos and words. Before heading off to the boats, the students…

ON A WEDNESDAY afternoon in the summer of 1973, Jon Grossman made plans to go sailing in his 505 with his longtime friend Marvin Zimmer man. The two friends harbored no small dreams. They weren’t going for a quick sail; they set out to cross Long Island Sound, a 44-mile round-trip adventure. “I was the crew, so I was hanging out on the trapeze with my feet up against the boat, stretched out,” says Zimmerman. “I could see this thin green line under the hull, which was just a little bit of water that was touching the hull. We were zipping along, and we would go bang, bang, bang, bang. There was enough wave action so we were just hopping along. It was really quite a riotous ride.” The 505…

I DIDN’T SAIL as a kid, and I was a simple cruiser when I sought out racing. The first guy to take a chance on me was Elliot Peterson, who had a Merit 28. After a few months of Wednesday nights in the Solomon Islands, I’d discovered my new passion. The only way to fuel it was to keep finding rides. I signed up for the 120-nautical-mile Down the Bay Race from Annapolis to Hampton, Virginia, aboard Trevor Harney’s Merit 25, Audrey. All the good sailors had looked at the forecast and decided against an upwind slog on a 25-footer in 25 knots, so there was room for me. Three of us began and finished the race in a driving rain, winning our class. With my first big win, my…

ALABAMA’S AUBURN University Sailing Club is a highly organized group of sailors. The distinction they make between the racing and recreational sides of the club is unique. The team sails out of the Dixie Sailing Club on Lake Martin, an hour from campus. The long drive forces the sailors to plan their practices and events carefully, as they typically spend most of the day out on the lake. “Over the past 20 years or so, we have welcomed the Auburn Sailing Club as collegiate members,” says Jim Simons, president of the Dixie Sailing Club Youth Program. “The AUSC participates in our club races, helps with work parties, and supports our youth program.” In the past two years, the AUSC has gone from not having a 420 fleet to owning eight…

In Olympic sailing, there’s a pretty good case history of favorites not performing well, and at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, my crew Magnus Liljedahl and I almost joined those ranks. We went into the Games as the anointed ones in the Star class, at least according to Sports Illustrated. We had won the Star World Championship a few months before the Games, so we were the logical choice. Growing up around Dennis Conner and working for him, I considered “no excuse to lose” part of the path to winning. I think this approach was one reason I never felt too much pressure on the course — that, and my ability to keep calm, never getting too excited or too down. However, there was still a lot at stake for…

It is with great pleasure that we at the Offshore Racing Congress present to you this new ORC Guidebook. You will find it informative and useful to learn about this system, which is used in more than 40 countries and 10,000 boats, making it the largest science-based rating system in the world. This publication is intended for all sailors, race managers, event organizers, measurers, media, and everyone else who has an interest in learning about how the ORC rating system brings competitive and fair racing to a wide variety of boat types, from small sportboats to enormous superyachts. Our four key features in achieving such success is through the use of science, transparency to all rules and policies and open to user input, flexible options in ratings and scoring, and…

ORC certificates are summaries of the measurement and rating details, and come in two forms: ORC Club and ORC International. The difference between the two is in the level of detail provided to the rating office: if the boat is fully measured, then an ORCi certificate may be issued. But if there are some measurements missing so that default values are used, then a Club certifi-cate is generated. The illustration shows an example of a Club certificate, which is on a single page with an optional second page, and can be translated into any language. This page contains all the rig and sail measurements available, accompanied by a proportional scaled boat drawing. Other measurement details and scoring options are listed in boxes on the page. On ORCi certificates the scaled…

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA teams have dominated the past 20 years of high school national fleetracing championships for the Mallory Trophy, but on a breezy May weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, it was the Knights of Clear Falls High School who caught the scholastic powerhouses by surprise. From deep in the heart of the Lone Star State emerged the first Texan team to win a high school sailing championship. As they stood on the podium with a 56-point win in hand, the sailors beamed. Sixteen-year-old Wiley Rogers and his 18-year-old crewmate, Hunter Skinner, took second in A division while the performances of their B-division teammates, Dane Byerly, Laura Masterson, Julia Sheaffer and Bailey Spatz, assured them the title. The Knights finished 16th of 20 teams the previous year in the same championship,…

WE AMERICANS are an argumentative bunch, but the one thing we tend to agree upon is the greatness of America. We love our country. We proudly fly Old Glory. We support our soldiers. And while we don’t always agree with our leadership, we do remain loyal to the soil. Our soil. Then there is American sport. If the team wears our colors, we’re loyal to them, too. Patriotism and athletics make a powerful concoction, and the Olympics provide a quadrennial opportunity to guzzle it. Yes, those of us following closely can question the International Olympic Committee governance and the integrity of certain host countries, but the measure of an Olympic experience is reinforced when meeting the elite athletes. Their skill, their commitment and their sacrifices are legit. There is no…

it’s 8:30 a.m. and I’m sitting at a table outside a Starbucks down the street from the US Sailing Center in Miami. With me are Annie Haeger and Briana Provancha. They’re one month out from their final qualifying regatta for the Rio Olympics. The pressure is on, but you’d never know it. They’ll be training today with the U.S. men’s team, but the session isn’t scheduled to start until 10. “That means it won’t actually begin until 10:30,” says Provancha. “Yeah,” chimes in Haeger with a playful laugh. “The boys are always late.” In a time of media-trained athletes with throwaway one-liners, the two women are surprisingly candid. “We tend to say things other people won’t,” says Provancha, the 26-year-old crew with jet-black hair and a pearly smile. “It’s the…

There are seven racecourses in Guanabara Bay. If the schedule isn’t adjusted for weather or pollution, every fleet will cycle through all racecourses, which Malcolm Page, chief marketing officer at World Sailing, says were intentionally spread throughout the bay and outside it to provide the most variance in conditions possible for competitors. PONTE Ponte is the most consistent course, windwise. “The bay opens up there to create more even current across the track as well,” says Page. The biggest challenge for organizers will be dealing with pollution. At the 2015 test event, the 470 classes were forced to sail elsewhere when Ponte was littered with floating debris. While cleanup efforts have been boosted dramatically since then, the Games will be the ultimate test of these improvements. PAO DE ACUCAR, AEROPORTO…

WHEN THE scoring system does not permit you to exclude or “throw out” your worst score, a DSQ becomes a significant penalty. For example, if you are averaging third place in an event with 12 entries, a DSQ adds 10 penalty points to your score. Scoring systems used by U.S. high school and college sailing do not permit discard races, which puts a priority on avoiding a scoring disaster. Two recent protests at a high school regional championship provide clear examples. The protestor in the first hearing handled his boat and his protest in a way that insured him against a DSQ. The first diagram shows what happened. Oscar and Inga rounded the windward mark close to each other. Then their courses diverged: Oscar played the right side of the…

RACEBOATS TODAY are obviously much faster than the displacement boats of the past, and as a result, downwind sail trim requires two quite different approaches: You can either tension the vang and run straight downwind, or twist the main and sail an S-shaped course. We’re all familiar with the first option, but the second is actually useful over a much wider range of situations. In a nutshell, the decision you make about which mode to use hinges on two factors: whether the conditions are static or dynamic, and the type of boat you’re sailing. Static conditions occur when the water is smooth and the velocity is consistent. In these conditions, tension the vang to create a mainsail shape that is uniform from top to bottom. You can do so because…

AT OVER 5,000 feet deep, Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world and the largest by volume, holding approximately 20 percent of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water, more than all the Great Lakes combined. The lake formed from a rift valley in the heart of Siberia 25 million years ago. Because of its isolation, life in Lake Baikal has evolved in amazing ways. Nearly 80 percent of the lake’s species are not found anywhere else on the planet, and perhaps that includes the hard-water sailors who travel great distances to race on the magical surface for Baikal Sailing Week. Proper ice sailing is best performed on smooth ice with consistent winds, conditions most often found along the so-called Ice Belt, between 40 and 50 degrees N. With its dry…

HAD A RARE FREE Saturday, so I dropped a hint to my friend Carl about an upcoming 505 race on Puget Sound, which he’d normally sail with his wife, Carol. Lo and behold, he invited me to helm for him. When the day arrived, it was perfect for late October — sunny, wind 8 to 13 from the north, with a bit of chop. There was a good fleet, and I was a little nervous, considering I had not sailed a 505 in 20 years. It was one of my first boats when I was 16 years old, growing up with my brothers on these very waters off Shilshole. We left the dock early and tuned. Everything seemed pretty good, and we had a good start in the first race.…

TODAY’S HIGH-PERFORMANCE boats are a rigger’s dream, with hundreds of options for customization and speed-improving tweaks. In a new series on sailingworld.com, pro sailor Erik Shampain is sharing small gear improvements that make a big difference. An Easier Outhaul The last thing you want when the wind comes up is for your mainsail to get overpowered and the purchase system to become so cumbersome that your crew can’t pull it on. Don’t underestimate the importance of a smoothrunning, low-stretch outhaul; when the breeze is up, you’ll be thankful for this tweak. For the gross part of the outhaul purchase, start with low-stretch rope, such as New England Ropes’ HTS90 or STS-HSR. A low-stretch, easy-to-hold line, such as FSE Robline’s Racing Sheet Pro, works well for this part. Minimizing the last…

In the sixth race of the 2016 Finn European Championship, Caleb Paine rounded the weather mark close astern of Zach Railey, the last remaining obstacle on Paine’s six-year march to Rio. All he had to do was stay close on the last two legs to take a 10-point lead into the final races. On the line was the sole American Finn berth, and in the escalating pressure of the moment, doubt crept into Paine’s psyche: Was he good enough? The race result itself didn’t matter because neither of them was doing particularly well in the regatta. Where they stood relative to each other in the final results was what counted. Paine was sailing for his first Olympic appearance, and Railey, the 2008 Finn silver medalist, was back in the men’s…

IN A SMALL GATED COMMUNITY in Clearwater, Florida, it’s easy to pick out the sailor’s house. Boat trailers obstruct the tree-lined street out front, and the disassembled pontoons of at least two Nacra 17s consume the narrow driveway. Inside, wetsuits hang from the ceiling rafters, drying. Bora Gulari, barefoot with coffee in hand, squints into early-morning rays from the front porch of the bungalow. He sports the deep tan of a waterman, and his mop of black curls hangs over his eyes. Pushing up the sleeves on a worn-out gray hoodie bearing the American flag and “GULARI” across the back, he shakes my hand and asks me for a ride to the local Publix to pick up laundry detergent. Gulari is one half of the newborn Nacra 17 pairing on…

A FEW YEARS AGO I had to take an online driver’s ed course to erase a speeding ticket. As I researched the options, one class caught my eye. It was labeled “comedy driving school.” It covered the same material, but it was done in a humorous way. I took that class and found that it was actually fun. The experience left me wondering if I could get my high school sailors to remember the most important lessons that I’ve used and written about in the same way, through a sort of comedy sailing school, so I came up with a few sayings that I now make the Point Loma High School team, in San Diego, repeat aloud as a group. Whenever we do so, it makes some people laugh and…

IT’S THE ULTIMATE BUMMER. The starting gun sounds. You’re in the front row and looking good. Then there’s another horn, the X flag and, after an excruciating wait, you hear your sail number on the VHF. You’re OCS, and you can kiss a good result goodbye. Don’t give up. An OCS is a hurdle for sure, but you’ve still got the whole race in front of you, not to mention whatever is left of the regatta. Take a deep breath, and keep these tips in mind. 1) Stick to the game plan. So many times the frustration of being OCS causes teams to completely abandon the prestart game plan. Here’s a perfect example: You’re OCS at the leeward end of the line, you clear yourself by jibing around the pin,…

THE TWO MOST COMMON ORC CERTIFICATES - ORC Club and ORC International – use the same VPP engine to generate the ratings, but have different levels of measurement input for their accuracy. For ORCi, its simple: everything must be measured before a Rating office will issue a certificate, and the services of a certified measurer are required to get these measurements. The result is a certificate with accurate ratings and which is good for all ORC racing worldwide at any level. ORC Club is intended for local and regional-level races because the rating accuracy is only as high as the measurement input used to generate the certificate. Anyone can apply for an ORC Club certificate online at www.orc.org/clubcertificate and use the best information they have available from a variety of…