Rod Davis
Back to the Candy Store
Newport, Rhode Island, has an indescribable, almost mystical feel about it. An America’s Cup history spanning J boats to 12 Metres, mansions with their expansive lawns running down to the water’s edge and hundreds of boats of every description on the water all make you feel like you have dropped into some kind of a time warp. Far away from a decade-long recession in the US, the government bailouts of Europe and the social media revolution, Newport holds onto its values of a bygone era. The people of Newport embrace all things yachting because it’s a fun thing to do. For those reasons and more: Newport, Rhode Island is the ‘real’ home of the America’s Cup.
My first major regatta in Newport was back when sails were white and clean. Clean as in no advertising cluttering the picture. America’s Cups, Olympic trials and several world championships later, the magic of the place just grew and grew. So, when the AC45s raced there last month, it was great to be back. They say you can never go back, so the worry was that the Newport I remembered would not resemble the one of today. On top of that, the new crop of America’s Cup sailors might not comprehend the bigger picture. By and large, the 2012 Cup teams’ earliest memories of the America’s Cup are from Fremantle in 1987. That’s not a fault, it’s just that Newport’s history in the America’s Cup does not affect them in any real way. Not that they realise right now. But like art, if you understand it, and place importance upon it, history has meaning.
A handful of people still in the game who did live through those days thus appreciate and value the history. By no coincidence, among those still at the cutting edge of the America’s Cup are Iain Murray, CEO and regatta director at ACRM, Paul Cayard and Laurent Esquier, respectively CEO and head of operations at Artemis Racing, Grant Simmer, general manager of Oracle Racing, Tom Schnackenberg, Artemis design and performance manager... and me (we don’t have titles at ETNZ!).
The changes in the game from the 1970s and 80s are so vast that it’s a waste of time to compare the two eras. It would be like comparing the 1987 All Blacks rugby team to the 2012 team. Don’t try, it was a different world and a different time.
Back in the 1980s the crews were in their 20s and were not paid. No wives and no kids. And very little experience for that matter. Truth is we spent a lot of time on the edge of mayhem. And loving it. Just soaking it up and making the most of the occasion, with passion and dedication.
Today the average age of the ETNZ sailing team is 40, all have families and the America’s Cup is full-time work. The passion and dedication are still there, in abundance, and so is the pressure of the professional world, along with a budget at least 35 times the size. The total budget of a 1983 America’s Cup campaign would not run a 2013 campaign for a month!
One thing both generations have in common is the seemingly endless hours of work. Some things change, some things never will! One ‘thing that never will’ seems to be the love affair that Newport has with all things yachting and its traditions. I thought it was just me, but the newbies to Newport, the Dean Barkers, James Spithills and Sir Russell Coutts, were all blown away by the ambiance of Narragansett Bay and the surrounding town. How could you not be?
In Newport every boat out there is gleaming, from the varnish work to the bottom paint. The fact that most of the boats had only recently been put in the water after a long winter break – one that obviously included a bit of a tart-up – ensured we saw them at their best. And we saw lots of them. So many that on the weekend we had to suspend our starting practice with Artemis because it just got too dangerous. Day sailors, racers, new boats, old boats – particularly old boats – all enjoying being on the water. Nowhere else in the world can you see classic 12 Metres like Weatherly, Intrepid, Nefertiti and American Eagles out racing every day. You could feel the pride that each and every owner had in their boat. No dungers that have been neglected for years.
Tradition... something that oozes from the timbers as you walk out along the long wharf that leads to the Ida Louis Yacht Club, a steady stream of boats sailing by lit up by the last shards of the setting sun. Suddenly the room goes quiet and everyone stands. That caught me flat-footed for a moment. Best follow suit… put my drink down, stand up and quietly wait for what happens next. Ahh… yes, I remember now, the lowering of the American flag at sunset. It’s an institution.
Given all the yachting history, tradition, pride and enthusiasm Newport has for sailboat racing, it did seem a little inequitable that a fantastically dedicated public were asked to pay $10 to gain admission to the AC village and watch the racing up close (they still came in their thousands) while in San Francisco admission will be free. Time will tell if the San Francisco public hold the Cup in the same regard as Rhode Islanders.
Which brings up an interesting topic. Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big ocean? Would the America’s Cup be better off in a place that it can dominate and be the centre of attention, or in a place where it has to compete for the public’s attention with baseball, football, basketball and all the professional sports and arts? Look back to where the AC has had a real impact upon a city, Fremantle, Auckland, Valencia – all places where the Cup was the king of the town, the talking point on every street corner.
By contrast San Diego was a dud (like that firecracker that you light, turn and sprint from, waiting for the big bang… but nothing but the soft fizz of a fuse) as far as the Cup was concerned. Came and went without the average man knowing or even caring. Not a criticism, just something to keep in mind.
In fact, Newport came close to being the venue of the 2013 America’s Cup, or so Oracle claim. Most of the locals believe it was more like sabre rattling aimed to get San Francisco off the mark. Regardless, everyone at this last America’s Cup World Series regatta fell in love with the setting.
Newport has to be in the top five places in the world for sailing. Let’s not argue on the best place and just agree it is in the top five. Long may the karma last!
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Rules are there to be broken
A couple of years back we saw how Rick Cavallaro was sailing directly downwind significantly faster than windspeed. Now he has achieved it again... but the other way
It all started out so innocently. I was asked by a friend whether a sailboat could tack downwind fast enough to beat a free-floating balloon to a point directly downwind. We both knew a sailboat could sail faster than the wind, but this was a new one on me. I drew up a quick vector analysis (page 41) and concluded that it should be theoretically possible. This struck me as surprising, and potentially the basis of a good brain-teaser.
As it happens, I should have known that ice-boats and land yachts have been routinely managing downwind VMG (velocity made good) much faster than windspeed for some time as, more recently, have an increasing number of high-performance sailboats.
Nevertheless, I got to thinking how I could fashion this as a good brain-teaser. If I could think of a way to make this principle work on a vehicle that goes directly downwind that should prove sufficiently brain bending.
First I imagined a high-performance sailboat on a broad reach with downwind VMG faster than the wind. But instead of gybing back and forth, I imagined it on a cylindrical planet following a continuous helical path along the axis of that imaginary planet. Then I imagined an identical boat directly opposed to the first one (page 40); the sails now form the blades of a propeller that is going directly downwind faster than the wind. The trick, of course, is that neither propeller blade is going directly downwind, but tie them together and they form a propeller whose centre of mass is going directly downwind.
Good enough in concept, but hardly a practical answer – and frankly a little too easy to believe. I had to think of a way to reduce this to a vehicle that someone could imagine building. It’s easy enough to imagine placing a propeller on a coarsely threaded rod to follow that same path; given the right propeller pitch, thread pitch and sufficiently high efficiency, this would go directly downwind faster than the wind (with the wind blowing along the threaded rod). But still not quite the answer to the puzzle I was trying to pose.
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Australia makes its move
Andy Rice reports on an outstanding Olympic Regatta
Of course we always knew Ben Ainslie was going to win, didn’t we! Maybe that’s why Ben made it so hard on himself, just to prove us wrong. When I interviewed Ben soon after his dominant victory at the Finn Gold Cup in Falmouth earlier in the year, he made it clear just how much that presumption of dominance by others irritated him: ‘Sometimes it can be a bit frustrating – the expectation that I should win.
‘There are even people who I think should know a lot better, very experienced sailors who’ve been around the Olympic world for a long time. They come out with crazy statements like, “Oh, you don’t even need to train, just turn up and you’re going to win.” I know, and I think most good sailors know, that you have to put a huge amount of effort into all these campaigns. ‘And, as usual, the harder you work the luckier you seem to be…’
Of course he’s right and, as Ainslie reluctantly acknowledges, he has rarely made it easy at the Olympics. Every one of his previous four Olympiads has demanded a struggle of Olympian proportions, not least that notorious match race in Sydney against the nemesis of his early career in the Laser, Robert Scheidt. So when he opened his account at London 2012 with two second places, things weren’t running to the usual script. It was actually a very good opening day. OK, the Dane Jonas Hoegh- Christensen (son of North director and offshore champion Jens) had scored two bullets, but that couldn’t last, could it?
Ben had just got past his opening day without a shocker. This would be a walk in the park. Instead, the wheels fell off the Ainslie wagon on day two while Christensen turned in another blistering performance. In fact, after six races Ben hadn’t managed to beat the Dane in a single one.
Now it was reaching ‘situation critical’. Then came that mark rounding… Dutch sailor Pieter-Jan Postma rounded the leeward mark in the lead, looked back and was convinced he saw Ben in second scrape the mark. A few lengths further back, Hoegh-Christensen added his cries to Postma’s; now it was two against one. Ainslie felt compelled to take a penalty turn.
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October 2012
FEATURES
SuperSeries – It can be done!
ROB WEILAND and his team have worked hard to produce a satisfactory way to allow existing and brand new 52-footers to compete equally
Australia makes its move
ANDY RICE was paying close attention as the Aussies took the top nation slot at London 2012
Opening the presents
Cup designer MIKE DRUMMOND watched with IVOR WILKINS as New Zealand’s first AC72 began testing
Rules are there to be broken
RICK CAVALLARO likes nothing better than turning the status quo firmly on its head… especially when famous scientists are involved
Staying on top of our game
Hugo Boss race programme director STEWART HOSFORD highlights the fundamental changes going on in sponsorship and proposes ways for sailing to take advantage of the opportunities
REGULARS
Commodore’s letter
MIKE GREVILLE
Editorial
ANDREW HURST
Update
San Francisco in now very much ‘for real’, says TERRY HUTCHINSON, the next Global Ocean Race is firmly a ‘go’, says JOSH HALL, and BLUE ROBINSON talks ‘relief’ with BEN AINSLIE
World news
And another world record for the force that is FRANCIS JOYON, first WallyCento sighting, weight saving with FRANCK CAMMAS, AC72 watching with MIKE DRUMMOND, Volvo Race reflections with CHRIS NICHOLSON, a third daggerboard goes into the Wild Oats… and the USA takes it squarely on the chin. DOBBS DAVIS, IVOR WILKINS, PATRICE CARPENTIER, BLUE ROBINSON, CARLOS PICH, ROB MUNDLE
Rod Davis
There’s still nowhere quite like Newport RI
ORC column
And a victim of their own success…
From the top
And Marlow Ropes have launched their own clever and affordable top-down furling cable solution
RORC news – Duty of care
Ker 40s to the fore yet again (and this time it is in the light). EDDIE WARDEN OWEN
Design – No small task
VINCENT LAURIOT PREVOST and YANN PENFORNIS discuss the wholesale rebuild of what was once a humble Orma 60 trimaran
Seahorse build table – All carbon, all business
BRUCE BECA is finishing off two of the latest fast trimarans from designer IAN FARRIER
Seahorse regatta calendar
Sailor of the Month
They were almost rivals on the water as well…