Innehållsförteckning för January - February 2016 från Sailing World

I PULL THE THROTTLE BACK to neutral, point the bow into the wind, and glide to a near-stop. The 19-foot Fareast RIB 580 bobs in the steep chop kicked up by a 15-knot southerly blowing against the swift outgoing tide. Three hundred feet behind us, framed by the center span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, is the sunburst-orange G4 catamaran, aglow in the midday sunlight. I’m happy with our position. I’ve done this a thousand times. Set up and wait. The G4 will do a near-pass to leeward as the photographer does his magic. I have my left hand on the cold stainless-steel steering wheel and my right on the throttle, ready to engage if I need to bail. I look over my left shoulder and watch Walter Cooper reach…

ON JULY 1, 2015, having reached the pinnacle of offshore racing, 24 young sailors are hit with a harsh reality: Suddenly they are out of a job. As graduates of the Volvo Ocean Race’s under-30 requirement, they’re back in the pro-sailing unemployment line, standing alongside teammates and competitors way more qualified. But they’re millennials, and when has age ever stopped them from achieving their dreams? The Under 30s are part of the generation that has consistently said, “If the job isn’t there, I’m going to create it for myself.” And that’s exactly what these young Volvo veterans are doing. 1. ROKAS MILEVICIUS, 28 Rokas Milevicius found it challenging to come off the race and lose that sense of intensity when he moved back home to Lithuania: “The hardest part is…

FOR TWO DECADES, my go-to tool for measuring rig tension on dinghies and small keelboats has been the Loos PT-1 gauge. In all that time, I’ve never seen two gauges read the same, even when brand-new — and once a gauge has been tossed into a tool bag a few times, that variability increases. As a quick reference for my seat-of-the-pants approach to rig-tuning, that’s fine; for those of you looking for more accuracy, however, consider stepping up to the Spinlock Rig-Sense gauge. I took the Rig-Sense and its app to the Florida State Snipe Championship to test it out in the real-world conditions of a boat park. To get accurate settings when other sailors are constantly interrupting (“Hey, can I borrow your tape measure?”), using the gauge needs to…

THE SMILING, STUBBLE-FACED 35-year-old owner and co-skipper of the lime-green and chrome MOD70 trimaran Phaedo3 is still trembling with adrenaline hours after he and a small crew of crazies blitzed across the English Channel in 4 hours and 29 minutes. While crossing the 138-mile space between Cowes, England, and Dinard, France, they maintained a 28.7-knot average, pegging the speedo at 40.9 knots. It’s another passage record for Lloyd Thornburg, and the third his squad bags in one week. “This is the scariest thing I’ve done,” says Thornburg, the jovial American skipper. “I fly, skydive and drive fast cars, but all those other things are scary for a minute or a few minutes at a time. This boat shows you what you’re capable of after being miserable, and tired, and soaked…

EACH SPRING, my attention to trapezing is recaptured with two events: the J.J. Giltinan Regatta in Sydney, and the Princess Sofia Trophy in Mallorca, Spain. The J.J.s are the 18-footer world championships, and exemplify some of the tightest and wildest racing that skiff sailing has to offer, with every member of the crew trapezing. Quite simply, those regattas are a catalog of balancing successes and failures. Teams sailing at the highest level demonstrate smoothness, calmness and steadiness. They are “fighting” to maintain control of their bullish skiffs, but it doesn’t look like fighting; rather, it looks like balance and control. Spain’s Bay of Palma, on the other hand, is home to the Princess Sofia and the de facto spring training ground for Olympic hopefuls. It is to Olympic sailing what…

SENIOR OLYMPIC COACH Luther Carpenter, 53, from La Porte, Texas, has been training U.S. sailors since the Barcelona 1992 Olympics, where he successfully coached Julia Trotman to a bronze in the women’s singlehanded Europe dinghy. Since then, Carpenter has racked up an enviable record of four Olympic medals, including two more bronze medals (Courtenay Becker-Dey in the Europe dinghy at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, and the McKee brothers in the 49er at the Sydney 2000 Olympics) and Anna Tunnicliffe’s proud gold medal — the last Olympic gold won by a U.S. sailor — at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in the Laser Radial. Now he coaches Caleb Paine, 25, a talented but still maturing Finn sailor who is aiming to be medal-competitive at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Can you tell me…

AT THE 2007 LASER MASTERS Worlds in Roses, Spain, International Laser Class president Tracy Usher started discussions about creating a new sail that would last longer than the existing sail, designed by Hans Fogh more than 40 years earlier. The new sail, designated the “Mark II,” was not designed to be faster than the existing sail, but to offer similar performance, longer life and a better look. But how does the most popular class in the world design a new sail without making the old one obsolete? In November 2008, Laser Performance and Performance Sailcraft Japan went to Mike Lennon, formerly of Hyde Sails, with this very question Initially, Lennon considered a Mylar laminate, but when Mylar frequently flaps or luffs, it tends to shrink, harden and split. He considered…

HERE’S A CONFESSION: The most laborious assignment I have every year is selecting my Junior All-Stars. I’ve recognized a select few of our junior sailors for 15 years, and while there are literally hundreds of excellent youngsters who go unrecognized, those who make my final roster are truly outstanding. My All-Star list is more challenging every year because youth sailing is more competitive than ever. The bar is high in Optimist, junior and high-school sailing, and the result is that we have a generation of sailors trained by quality coaches. Their emergence coincides with an exciting highperformance era of our sport, and I’m confident we’ll be seeing more of them in the years ahead. Let’s start with Luke Arnone, 14, the talk of Mantoloking YC, on Barnegat Bay, New Jersey.…

BOTY 2016 There is no higher praise for a production boatbuilder than a Boat of the Year Award, for there is no other program like it. The assembly, assessment and test-sailing of new raceboat models in Annapolis, Maryland, every October is a colossal effort, one that’s founded on a simple goal: to recognize the industry’s best. You have to sail it to know it. It’s true that “best” is highly subjective, and that the sailing experience can vary greatly depending on wind conditions, rig tune, and the cut and quality of the demo sails. Yet there’s no denying that the best-prepared boats enter the contest with an upper hand, and historically, they come out on top. There were 14 entries this year, designs that would appeal to any one of…

THE RULES DEFINITELY get their most intense workout between the preparatory signal and the starting signal. Boats are close together, frequently changing course, and often those course changes are difficult to anticipate. Yet provided that the starting-line marks are in open water, as they usually are, the rules are simplified during that four-minute stretch by a statement that many readers overlook: the preamble to Section C of the Part 2 rules. Section C contains the rules that apply at marks and obstructions. Its preamble states, “Section C rules do not apply at a starting mark surrounded by navigable water or at its anchor line from the time boats are approaching them to start until they have passed them.” There are two ways in which that preamble significantly simplifies the rules…

LOUIS SINCLAIR, the 24-year-old bowman for Oracle Team USA, is a beast. He can dead-lift 400 pounds, vertical-jump 85 centimeters, has a VO2 max of 70 ml/kg/min., and has just 8 percent body fat . He’s “young, big, strong, fit,” say his teammates. He is the model modern AC sailor. “The ideal America’s Cup athlete would have the aerobic fitness of [cyclist] Chris Froome and the anaerobic fitness of [sprinter] Usain Bolt, in one person,” says Pete Cunningham, trainer for Artemis Racing. “That’s the challenge — finding an athlete who has both the endurance and the strength to be able to turn the handles and handle extreme loads.” In order to meet those standards, the sailors have both strength and cardiovascular training multiple times per week, on top of sailing…

LESSONS FROM THE PROTEST ROOM At a recent Farr 40 event, I went into the protest room regarding a decision on the question of whether two boats had reached the three-length zone or if it was a portstarboard situation in the open course. The decision wasn’t in our favor—a painful outcome and yet an opportunity to learn. Lesson 1. Be prepared with math. Any boat with a computer can yield info regarding boat positioning, speed, and wind speed. In my situation I had an eyewitness who was unbiased and reliable; yet my competition won the protest with math. I learned I need math to back up facts provided by a witness. Lesson 2. Don’t rely solely on the umpires. In the Farr 40 class, the umpires will blow a whistle…

EVEN IN THE moonless night, we can see the dark squall cloud approaching. We can also feel it: The air gets moist and dense, and the puffs pack more punch. Should we peel to the A4, or stick with the workhorse A2.5? There are only three of us on the deck of our J/125, and it’s the middle of the night. Our off-watch mates would appreciate us getting through this squall without an all-hands call. As watch leader, I make the call to ride it out. We shift the sail stack aft by moving one of the spinnakers from the front of the stack to the stern. The tension is palpable as the breeze starts creeping up — first 23 knots, then 25 knots, then 27. The boat is flying,…

SUSPECT THAT when the Etchells was conceived, hiking from skinny ropes was not part of the vision, which would explain why it’s pure agony to do so all day long. On a recent day I was crewing in a San Diego fleet event, and three long races were more than enough for my old bones. While putting the boat away, all I could think about was recovering in the club bar. I overheard the skipper docked alongside us question why a fourth race wasn’t held. The winds were good and there was still time left in the day. He’d flown in for the regatta, was a champion in the class, and had with him two well-paid crews. Maybe he figured their daily rate decreased with each race. I used to…