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Groupama 3 : navigation dans une mer formée
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Extreme sailing series Asia day 2

The inaugural Extreme Sailing Series Asia racing on day two in Victoria Harbour for saw the six Extreme 40s challenged in a shifty 4 – 12 knot wind, as they raced just metres from the shoreline on both sides of the harbour.


It was BT who controlled the fleet, taking a hatrick of wins to head up the top of the leaderboard with 50 points. Just two points off the pace was the European Series Champions, Oman Sail’s Masirah with 48 points and newcomers to the Extreme 40 fleet, Red Bull Extreme Sailing Team, lying in third with 33 points.

Tan Wearn Haw, who is racing onboard the home nation’s China Team, commented, 'This is the first time the Extreme 40s have arrived in Hong Kong and I feel very excited about that. We are going to Singapore soon and I feel this is a very good opportunity to show this new type of sailing to a new generation in Asia.'

The inaugural Extreme Sailing Series Asia is in Hong Kong to demonstrate the potential of bringing a full scale series, with public shoreside activities, to the region in 2010/2011. It builds on the success of the past three years of the European Series which this summer saw over 200,000 people turning out to watch the Extreme 40s as they raced in venues including Venice, Paris, Amsterdam and the home of British yachting Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

In the afternoon, 20 local children were given the chance of a lifetime when they had the chance to sail onboard three of the Extreme 40s in the fleet. A group of six children stepped onboard Rumbo Almería, skippered by double Olympic Gold Medallist, Shirley Robertson. 'That was brilliant fun,' said Callum Gregor, aged 10. 'The racing has been really exciting to watch and before today, I thought I wanted to be a 49er sailor but now after seeing these boats, I want to skipper an Extreme 40 just like Shirley!' The children spent an hour racing around the harbour and sailed the boats themselves, taking the helm and the winches. 'It’s great to give the young kids the chance to sail with us – I think some of them will be challenging us in the near future!' said Shirley.

Sunday will see the six Extreme 40s take part in the prestigious Around the Island Race, when a fleet of over 200 sail boats will race around Hong Kong Island. The Extreme 40s are anticipated to complete a fast circumnavigation, possibly even taking line honours and will start at 0940. The current record in the ‘all multihulls’ class is held by Atmosphere, when it completed the circuit in two hours, 44 minutes and 37 seconds in 2005.

Races

Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Points

BT 4 5 5 3 5 6 6 6 4 6 - - - - - - - - - 50

Oman Sail Masirah 6 3 4 5 6 5 5 4 6 4 - - - - - - - - - 48

Red Bull Extreme Sailing Team 2 6 2 2 3 3 4 5 1 5 - - - - - - - - - 33

The Wave - Muscat 3 DSQ 6 6 2 4 DNF 1 5 3 - - - - - - - - - 30

China Team 1 4 3 4 4 2 3 3 2 1 - - - - - - - - - 27

Rumbo Almeria 5 DNF DNS DNS DNS DNS 1 2 3 2 - - - - - - - - - 14



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Tom Ehman, Golden Gate Yacht Club spokesman

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Thursday, November 19, 2009


Statement from Tom Ehman, Golden Gate Yacht Club spokesman

[Source: BMW Oracle] The New York Supreme Court has moved the 33rd America’s Cup match another significant step closer to be being sailed under the normal, fair rules of sailing.

Justice Shirley Kornreich has adopted the unanimous recommendations made by the Expert Panel which took testimony from both Golden Gate Yacht Club and the defending Société Nautique de Geneve in New York on November 7, 2009.

“This is victory for fair rules and common sense,” said Tom Ehman, GGYC spokesperson. “Once again SNG’s attempts to bias the rules in their favor have been rejected.”

The court’s ruling that both yachts must be measured with all ballast aboard, including moveable ballast, blocks Alinghi’s attempt to circumvent the 90ft Length on Load Waterline (LWL) limit imposed by the America’s Cup Deed of Gift.

It was because of SNG’s refusal to put an International Jury in place to determine some of the sporting and technical issues that the Court called for its own Expert Panel of former America’s Cup jurors.

David Tillett (AUS), Graham McKenzie (NZL) and Bryan Willis (GBR) were “well qualified and independent,” the Court said in today’s ruling.

The Court also put a time limit on this vital matter of jury appointment, ordering that if is not settled by December 4th, 2009 the Court will ask the Expert Panel to re-convene.

“All we have ever asked is that the America’s Cup be raced under the normal rules and procedures that nearly every sailor in the world competes under,” added Ehman. “Yet again SNG has had to be reminded that the America’s Cup is not the Alinghi Cup.”eComTechnology Credit Card Processing
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• Court rules Spain safe for America's Cup race (sports.espn.go.com)

Alrighty now back to Valencia

US court backs America's Cup in ValenciaNovember 20, 2009 - 10:14AM


AFP
A New York court on Thursday backed the staging of the next America's Cup in the Spanish port of Valencia in February, but doubt still remains over the venue for the duel between defender Alinghi and US challenger Oracle.

The Supreme Court of the State of New York reached its decision after experts advised that the event can be "safely managed" at the site in mid-winter, when weather conditions can be unpredictable, according to a copy of the ruling.

Both Alinghi and Oracle have stated they are ready to hold their best-of-three multihull showdown in February in Valencia, where the Swiss team won the last edition of yachting's most prestigious event in 2007.

However, it was still uncertain whether the 33rd America's Cup can go ahead there as planned, or will instead take place in the Gulf emirate of Ras al-Khaimah.

Ras al-Khaimah was Alinghi's original choice for the event, but the New York court declared the venue invalid, a decision which Alinghi has appealed.

"It's Valencia in February unless the separate appeal over Ras al-Khaimah is successful," an Oracle spokesman told AFP.

The court on Thursday also ruled in Oracle's favour on a number of technical issues.

"This is a victory for fair rules and common sense," Tom Ehman, spokesman for Oracle representative, the Golden Gate Yacht Club, said in a statement.

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Swiss better hope they can get their boat out of Persian Gulf

Swiss better hope they can get their boat out of Persian Gulf


By ERIC SHARP

FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
How’s this as a nightmare scenario for Team Alinghi, Switzerland’s entry in the 2010 America’s Cup, which is supposed to start Feb. 8?
Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammad al-Qassimi, the ruler of Ras Al Khaimah, selling tourists rides on his private yacht, a 115-foot catamaran formerly called Alinghi that he seized from the Swiss team as compensation for the $120 million he blew building a marina for an America’s Cup that was promised to his country but moved to Valencia, Spain?
That possibility came to mind after Cory Friedman, a lawyer-sailor from New York City, wrote a fascinating analysis on the Scuttlebutt Web site about the continuing fight by Alinghi’s sponsor, the Societe Nautique de Geneve, to hold the cup in Ras al Khaimah despite telling a court that it would race a 113-foot American trimaran off Valencia, Spain.
The New York State Supreme Court ruled recently that Alinghi could stage the event at Valencia, site of the last cup in 2007, or at any suitable venue in the southern hemisphere, which Ras al Khaimah is not.
The Swiss said OK, Valencia it is. But the echoes of that utterance hadn’t faded away when Alinghi announced it would continue its appeal to get Ras al Khaimah reinstated.

Why the backpedaling? As Friedman wrote, “What SNG did not seem to expect was that hell hath no fury like an Emirate scorned. It seemed that there was the little matter ... of the $120 million that RAK invested, based upon SNG’s representations that the match would be held there. Apparently, the Sheik of RAK cannot take a joke, as one of the (Persian) Gulf media published a report that RAK was ‘considering its options.’ That is U.S. lawyer speak for ‘we are not taking this lying down.’
“Being an absolute monarchy with no rule of law at all other than the Sheik’s whim tends to broaden the ‘options’ when the guy who done RAK wrong and plans on moving on to a new Spanish lover happens to have a very expensive racing catamaran and lots of other goodies parked in RAK’s garage -- and the Sheik has the only key to the garage,” Friedman wrote.
Meanwhile, Oracle-BMW continues to refine its big tri off San Diego with its new hard-wing sail, which is bigger than the wing of the largest Airbus jetliner and reportedly has driven the boat more than three times faster than the wind speed.
It’s my heartfelt desire that, despite court battles and potential international intrigue, we’ll eventually see a match between the two wildest, fastest and cutting-edge racing yachts the world has ever seen, a race that finally will validate the foresight of Nathaniel Herreshoff.
In 1876, Herreshoff entered a 33-foot catamaran called Amaryllis in a New York Yacht Club Centennial Regatta and scared the crap out of the yachting establishment by winning going away.
The radical boat, the first of its kind in the United States, was amazingly advanced with touches like ball-and-socket joints at the end of the crossbeams that let the twin hulls ride the waves independently.
After Herreshoff won the race for yachts under 36 feet, the anonymous writer who covered the event for the New York World wrote presciently, “It behooves the owners of the large schooners” that competed for the America’s Cup “to take counsel together, lest somebody should build an Amaryllis a hundred feet long and convert their crafts into useless lumber.”

The writer was suggesting that the owners of the big yachts should embrace new ideas and technology like Herreshoff’s boat. But that’s not the way establishments normally react when their noses are tweaked. Instead, the New York Yacht Club and other major clubs banned multihull boats from their events.

Something similar happened in cycling a half-century later when a second-class rider, Francois Faure, showed up for races in Europe with a recumbent bicycle on which the rider sat in a reclining position.

Faure soon was hammering first-class pros in major races and set world speed records for the kilometer, mile and one hour. Predictably, the International Cycling Union followed the line of the sailing establishment and wrote new rules that banned recumbents from its events.

Because of that kind of thinking, Herreshoff, America’s most renowned yacht designer, and other brilliant, inventive people who designed sailboats and bicycles could no longer work on technological breakthroughs like multihulls and recumbents because the people they depended for their livings would no longer buy them.

It took nearly another 100 years before catamarans earned grudging acceptance from the sailing establishment, when Hobie Alter, a California surfboard shaper, designed a 14-footer that could be launched from a beach.

Hobie’s cat was relatively cheap, tough as nails, very fast and a lot of fun. The Hobie 14 and its bigger Hobie siblings were bought by the tens of thousands by young sailors who didn’t give a darn about yacht clubs and held their regattas right off public beaches.

You have to wonder what sailboats and bicycles would be like today if we had enjoyed the benefit of 75-100 years of development by the top designers and racers, instead of a century of refining orthodoxy.

We’re fortunate that automobile and aircraft designers didn’t need to kowtow to the kind of international mandarins who control yachting and cycling but were rewarded for building faster and more efficient models (although the Royal Air Force rejected the first jet engine, invented by an Englishman.)
Otherwise, we’d still be clinging to the exposed wings of biplanes and driving on solid tires.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Côte d’Azur

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

CREAM HAS RISEN TO THE TOP


Nice, France (November 17, 2009) - With the completion of the round robin

portion of the Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice Côte d’Azur, the top four of the

eight competing teams will now advance to the semi-final round. Team New

Zealand and skipper Dean Barker were the best team in the rounds robin with a

9-1 record, and have selected Synergy Russia Sailing Team to race in the semi

final round.

On their performance, Barker observes, “We’re a consistent team because we’ve

been together so long as a group. That helps us through the tough times.” The

Kiwis, however, picked the hottest team at the regatta. Synergy, led by Polish

skipper Karol Jablonski, enters the match on a five-race winning streak and

has polished its game since starting the regatta at 0-3. Today’s anticipated

final found robin match between Team New Zealand and Synergy was cancelled due

to insufficient wind.

The second semi final match has TeamOrigin from Great Britain racing Azzurra

of Italy. Azzurra skipper Francesco Bruni led his crew to a 1 minute defeat of

Ben Ainslie and TeamOrigin in the first round. Wednesday is an off day with

the semifinals to begin on Thursday. The first team to gain two points in

their semi final match will advance to the finals. Racing concludes on Nov.

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Clipper Race 3 Awards in Cape Town

Addressing the crews directly, Sir Robin asked, “Do you realise now, you’ve crossed the Atlantic twice? Back in the forties people who crossed the Atlantic were treated as heroes. You’ve done it and most of you have done it twice. That is a major achievement! If you think the average sailor in Britain probably doesn’t sail 3,000 miles in a year – look at the miles you’ve already put under your keels. I hope you’ve had some really great adventures along the way; I hope you’ve done things you’re going to remember and I hope you’ve met people you’re going to stay friends with the rest of your life. That’s what sailing’s about.


“Well done – it is a great achievement. I congratulate you all. Lots more to come of course – but you’re getting pretty hardened now, salt getting into your veins. You’ll see it through! Good luck on the next leg.”
And so, down to the handing out of the prizes. First, though, there was a special award to present and it was met by huge cheers when the skipper of California was called to the stage to collect the Merit Award for Outstanding Seamanship from Alderman Felicity Purchase.

“You sailed the last 1,100 miles under emergency steering and then I heard you had problems with the winds we’ve had over the last few days so you really deserve this,” she told Cape Town resident, Pete Rollason.

Pete had a few words for the audience, and for his crew. “Thank you to all the other crews for all your support. I know we’ve had a tough time over the last couple of legs – your emails and everything else has been wonderful,” he said. “Sir Robin was saying about heroes crossing the Atlantic; these guys are heroes (pointing to his crew). Thank you.”

Round the world crew member Arthur Bowers received the Mayor of Cape Town’s Team Spirit Award on behalf of the crew of Hull & Humber for their successful recovery of him when he was washed into the South Atlantic during the race from Rio de Janeiro.

In traditional reverse order, the crews of third placed Uniquely Singapore and second placed Team Finland were called up on stage to collect their pennants before the winners of Race 3, Cork, Ireland, took to the podium to celebrate their victory.

Skipper of the Irish entry, Richie Fearon, said, “I think for everyone that was out there it was great sailing, good racing and great winds and we all enjoyed it. All credit to my guys – I could not wish for a better crew. They got us here in first place, which is brilliant. Out there, they kept the boat going and kept the boat going quick - it was absolutely fabulous. Guys, fair play, this is your victory, nothing to do with me.”

Never able to resist a quip, Richie had a message for the other skippers: “If you just keep the same positions for the rest of the race, we’ll be happy!”

Today in Cape Town the winds have picked up again to a steady gale force 8, which may well put paid to some of the yachts joining the regular Wednesday evening twilight sailing at the club.

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