Innehållsförteckning för September - October 2016 från Sailing World

WE’RE SITTING ON THE GRASS, a dozen or so middle-aged sailors encircling Marc Jacobi, a four-time Laser Olympic campaigner, whose role today is a combination of New Age sage, counselor and promoter. At his back are the double-axle wheels of a box trailer wrapped in flashy images of a dinghy sailor veiled in spray. Before Jacobi are 17 white Aero dinghies, nestled in dollies. We, a ragtag bunch of mainly Laser converts, have convened for the first official RS Aero sailing clinic in Rhode Island. Jacobi addresses the unfamiliar group by first inviting each of us to offer a brief personal background. It feels like a therapy session. There’s Derek, a devout Laser sailor from Rhode Island and a prolific blogger of the Laser lifestyle. He ordered his Aero in…

IN IMOCA 60 RACING, singlehanded sailors often rely on their autopilots to drive, and in the Vendée Globe, they can be the singlehander’s best friend or worst enemy. “The pilot needs to drive the boat reliably through a full range of conditions,” says naval architect Jesse Naimark-Rowse, electronics engineer for Osprey Technical, which outfits Vendée Globe contenders such as Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss. “On a grand-prix boat, the instruments measure heel, trim, pitch and roll rates, and have very fast GPS and compasses on top of your standard wind and boatspeed [instrumentation]. This information is calculated to allow the autopilot to steer while surfing and respond to whatever else is influencing the [boat’s] behavior.” There are many capable autopilots on the market for recreational racers, but B&G and NKE dominate…

THE OBSESSION WITH detail that defines the America’s Cup has intensified in the past two years with the development of the foiling crafts that will soon be revealed by the challenger and defenders. Designers and engineers assure us there will be no magic bullet, but there will still be plenty of magic in the technology that will allow teams to foil from prestart to finish. To accomplish such sustained flight, each team has been pressing its technical partners to explore every imaginable advantage, particularly in the foils. For Oracle Team USA, aerospace giant Airbus has brought more to the table than its supercomputers and engineers; it’s brought precision. “We have up to 100,000 lines of code to program the [foil] control systems,” says Ian Burns, OTUSA’s director of performance, explaining…

THERE’S ONLY SO much your gut, or even a coach’s eagle eye, can tell you when it comes to assessing relative speed. Even if you can judge that one of two (presumably) identical one-design boats is the “winner” after a few minutes of straight-line sailing, how do you tell what variables contributed to the difference? These are the issues always on the mind of Mike Marshall, North Sails’ resident telemetry-testing geek. Over the past year, he’s been refining a testing system that doesn’t have the supercomputers the America’s Cup guys get to crunch the numbers with. When Marshall shows up for a session, everything he needs is right there in his portable Pelican case. For each of the two sailboats in the test, there’s a GPS unit (with 1.5-meter accuracy)…

GOING INTO THE 2016 College Sailing Nationals, there were three teams to beat: the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Georgetown University and Yale University. In 2015, Yale swept all three events: the Sperry Women’s National S emifinal and Final Championship, the Laser Performance Team Race National Championship, and the Gill Coed National Championship. Coast Guard and Georgetown came into this year’s regatta with strong season performances, putting the pressure not only on Yale but on every other team that made the trip to San Diego for 11 days of racing between the three events. Yale won the Team Race Championship for the fourth year in a row and was third in the Coed Championship. The Bulldogs will be returning with their entire team minus one crew, Charlotte Belling, next year. It’s…

WHEN I TURNED 21, I dropped out of college, moved to Ohio, and went to work for Greg Fisher at Shore Sails. What he got was an employee. What I got was an invaluable education, one that I’ve relied on ever since. It was the mid-1980s, and Fisher was the model sailing-industry professional. He excelled on the racecourse but was even better onshore. He was highly personable and a tireless giver. He was a road warrior, driving throughout the winter giving seminars, and at regattas he helped his competitors, customers or not. Most were his customers anyway, because his sails were fast and he was a reputable guy. As a career sailmaker for 12 years, I was also a pro sailor, and I emulated Fisher. It was one hell of…

BREAKFAST AND HYDRATION: Trimmers have important decisions to make before the race even starts that can determine the outcome of the day. I know how important the first meal of the day is. Never skip it. Hydration is also critical. WEATHER UPDATE: As trimmer, I help choose the sails for the day. For this reason, weather forecasts are vital to my prerace routine. Plus, I can be better organized. I try not to rely on a single weather prediction. Even if the team has paid for a professional weather forecast, be open to other sources as well. Use the Internet, the race committee, a local sailor or, in the case of bigger boats, your own navigator, who will often have a “hedge” that differs from the professional forecast. SAIL LIST:…

EVERY FOUR YEARS, on New Year’s Day of the year following the Olympic regatta, revised racing rules published by World Sailing take effect. This is the first of a series of articles covering important changes for 2017. I’ll start by discussing what’s new in Part 2, the rules that apply when boats meet. Most of the changes in the Part 2 rules are intended to simplify or clarify a rule and will not result in major game changes. We start with two subtle changes that make Rule 21, Exoneration, easier to remember and fairer in many common situations. The rule was moved from Section C, “At Marks and Obstructions,” to Section D, “Other Rules,” and the words “under a rule of Section C” were deleted from it. NEW RULE 21:…

WHILE MUCH OF THE Vendée Globe’s prerace hype has been focused on the lateral foils, there have been four years of tandem development in what is arguably the most important equipment on the boats — the sails. The sail inventory is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the race, says North Sails sail designer Gautier Sergent, for inside the quiver lies each skipper’s round-the-world strategy. “The sail inventory is ultimately influenced by the skipper’s experience and how they handle the transitions,” says Sergent. “Some prefer to go around the high-pressure systems, and some go through them. Some guys want to go fast in the Southern Ocean, for example, and believe that is where they will make the most gains, while others prefer to get to the bottom of…

COLLIN ALEXANDER, the 18-year-old watch captain aboard the Tripp 41 High Noon, is on the helm. On deck beside him is Will McKeige, same in age and role, who is trimming the main and code zero. They’re in the midst of a tussle with Farr 72 Maximizer, vying for line honors in the 2016 Newport Bermuda Race. The Junior Big Boat Sailing Team, from American YC (Rye, New York), had passed the Farr 72, now ahead of them, hours before. Then the wind shifted, and Maximizer was able to power-reach ahead. “They led us by a few miles for most of the night,” says McKeige. “And then the wind died and came around at 5 knots at a perfect angle for our code zero. Collin and I knew we had…

WHAT STARTED AS a project to profile a selection of athletes from US Sailing Team Sperry quickly took on a life of its own as the production team behind the feature-length documentary, Uncharted Waters, began to learn the stories behind their subjects. “As we followed the athletes through their last year of training and competition leading up to the trials, we worked closely with Sunbrella to illustrate the emotions and passions of the sailors,” says producer Dana Haydock. “The most compelling story lines were the ones we didn’t plan for but [which] made for a very interesting ending to the stories.” Uncharted Waters captures the personalities of the 11 profiled sailors and the drama surrounding selection to Team USA. The rivalry between Caleb Paine and Zach Railey, both vying for…

WAVES OF CHANGE • OCEANS OF OPPORTUNITIES NSPS is Back and Coming to Austin Registration is Open The National Sailing Program Symposium (NSPS) will be hosted by the Sheraton Austin Hotel on February 16-18, 2017. The premier event for sailing education in the U.S. will focus on building better leaders in sailing education, growing access, and creating new pathways for sailors. NSPS welcomes program directors, instructors, volunteers and industry representatives to share and learn best practices about maintaining and improving sailing programs. “NSPS totally rejuvenates our entire staff and gets us excited about the upcoming season. It gives us new ideas to adjust or add to our current programs.” - Jen Guimaraes, Lake Champlain Community Sailing “You have people who are at the beginning of their career and taking their…

Hardware bonding can dramatically improve the side-load carrying capability of fasteners, especially when a counter bore is incorporated at the top of the pre-drilled hole. Wood has relatively low side grain compression strength. When a screw is side-loaded, it often crushes the relatively weak wood. For hardware that will stay put, create space for an epoxy annulus by countersinking the pilot hole to remove the wood surrounding the top of the screw. The epoxy handles the point-loading of the screw much more effectively. The epoxy spreads the side load exerted on the screw into more of the surrounding area so the wood is not damaged in the process.…

As of mid-July, 30 boats were registered for the 2016-17 Vendée Globe. With six of those boats outfitted with foils, the race will be a showdown between innovation and tried-and-true methods of circumnavigation. In theory, the L-shaped foils provide an advantage in certain conditions, such as a 10 percent speed bump in reaching wind conditions of over 15 knots. The foils bear enough force to counter leeway and increased righting moment. Armel Le Cléac’h says the IMOCAs with foils could sail up to 5 percent faster on average over the entire around-the-world course. The teams will seek fronts that allow the boats to sail at angles of 85 to 125 degrees, in the “sweet spot.” “You can be sure that the navigation software will guide the boats to where they…

THERE ARE IMPORTANT LESSONS to be learned when fleet stalwarts give back to the class they love. At the 2016 505 North Americans, winner Riley Gibbs and tail-ender Kevin Maguire both had eager but very different mentors. The talented 19-year-old Gibbs tapped into the enormous vault of 505 know-how that is Howie Hamlin. Not surprisingly, Hamlin, with crew Jeff Nelson, and Gibbs finished only three points apart to take second and first, respectively, with the student nipping the mentor in the 10-race series, sailed in spectacular conditions on Bellingham Bay. At the other end of the fleet, new 505 racer Kevin Maguire lucked out with Paul Von Grey as mentor. Maguire bought the 505 thinking it might be a comfortable daysailer for him and his wife. “That shows how naive…

I WAS RACING in the Swiftsure Classic, a 130-mile race from Victoria, British Columbia, up the Straits of Juan de Fuca and back. I learned — or, relearned — the value of consolidation during that race. We had a great start and started sailing the rhumb line. We could have set the code zero and maintained a course close to rhumb, but instead we set the spinnaker, forcing us to sail 20 degrees low. At first this seemed OK, but it became clear there was more wind offshore and less where we were. Our great start was all for nothing as the fleet sailed around us by staying close or above the rhumb line. Lesson No. 1: Early in the race, do not split with your fleet unless you are…

I COULD SEE AN UGLY situation developing as the majority of the race’s 138 entries, big and small, converged on the finish line, roughly 75 yards long, while fighting adverse current in a dying breeze. What followed was the most chaotic, heart-wrenching calamity I’ve ever experienced in 60 years of racing. In a 20-minute timespan, there were numerous collisions, boisterous verbal exchanges, and damage to more than a few boats and sails. On board the 12-Meter Courageous, we were in the thick of it. The race took place on the first day of the New York YC’s Annual Regatta, presented by Rolex. The course was a simple counterclockwise rounding of Conanicut Island, known around town as the classic “roundthe-island” race. Earlier in the day, 20 classes had started at five-minute…

WHILE TECHNOLOGICAL developments usually “trickle down” from bigger boats to smaller boats, advances in technique usually trend in the other direction. That’s the case with blow-through jibes. Imagine if you told your Melges 32 team that you had a great new idea for jibing in a breeze that began with turning the boat down really fast and then backing the spinnaker on the windward side of the boat. They’d wonder how long you’d stayed at the bar the night before. On the other hand, if you told your team that this is how 49ers jibe, and it’s really fast, they might be willing to give it a try. That’s exactly what has happened with blow-through jibes, and they’ve become the go-to jibe for modern, high-performance keelboats. The reason this technique…

A BIG PART OF MAINTAINING a lead is knowing your position in the event at all times, not just after you finish but during the race as well: If you are here, what does that mean? Or what do you have to do now, during this part of the race, to make the points more advantageous to you? The deeper into a regatta you are, the more important it is to know where you stand. Understanding the points after you finish won’t help much. By then, it’s a done deal. Once you know what the points are telling you, you can plan your race strategy accordingly; you’ll know when to sail conservatively or not, as well as which boats to cover, what kind of cover to use, and how to…