LOCAL KNOWLEDGE - Have you ever jumped in the water with your sailing kit on, gotten into, or righted a life raft, set off flares, or used a fire extinguisher?  If not, and you race offshore (or just hang out in the bay), you should come and do the ISAF Survival At Sea course that we are conducting at SFYC.

The three, two-day sessions are scheduled for, June 2-3(full), 4-5, and 6-7.  They can only take 16 people per course; they are booking up fast.

You will receive a Safety at Sea certificate, valid for 5 years from ISAF and US Sailing.  Most offshore races, including Pac Cup, Fastnet, Sydney-Hobart, Newport-Bermuda, require that 30% of the crew and the skipper have this certificate.  The instructor is coming from the United Kingdom as an ISAF approved Sea Survival instructor, especially to teach you to be safer at sea. Cost for course is $220

Want to register or have questions? Please email amperrin@racingyachtmanagement.com

]]> http://www.xssailing.com/article/isaf-sea-survival-course/feed/ 0 http://www.xssailing.com/moving-pictures/ac-world-series-day-1-hightlights/ http://www.xssailing.com/moving-pictures/ac-world-series-day-1-hightlights/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 07:24:27 +0000 XS Editor http://www.xssailing.com/?p=5732

MOVING PICTURES – Here are some highlights from day 1 of the AC Worlds Series from Venice

AMERICAS CUP – Youth and experience won on the opening day at the America’s Cup World Series in Venice, Italy. Team Korea’s Nathan Outteridge, at 26 years old one of the youngest skippers in the fleet, won the first fleet race. Then, Loick Peyron, 52, rallied his team for a come-from-behind win in race two to top the day’s  leaderboard.

“Look at that! Beautiful weather in Venice, snow on the mountains, and Energy Team at the top of the mountain today,” said an effervescent Peyron following his win. “The team did a tremendous job as usual. We still made mistakes, but a few less mistakes than the others, which is how you win.”

As Peyron indicated, it was beautiful racing weather in Venice on Thursday. The sea breeze was in the 8 to 11 knot range, under crystal clear, sunny skies. Not surprisingly given the conditions, the local spectator fleet was out in force to enjoy the competition.
Overall AC World Series leader Jimmy Spithill and his ORACLE TEAM USA crew had a difficult day in the fleet racing Thursday, posting an 8-4 scoreline to sit in seventh place on the leaderboard. Dean Barker’s Emirates Team New Zealand, second in the overall Series, wasn’t able to take full advantage, underperforming their own high expectations in fourth place, just three points clear of Spithill MORE STORY

VOLVO OCEAN RACE – Local hero PUMA skipper Ken Read said winning the Leg 6 race to his home country was a dream come true as his team were officially crowned leg winners at a public prize giving ceremony at the Downtown Miami Race Village on Thursday.

“It really is a dream come true,’’ said Read. “We need to spread the wealth here in North America and get more people involved in sailing.
“We need to keep this momentum going, as a team. We need to keep riding this crest, and hopefully we can keep going the way we are.”

CAMPER with Emirates Team New Zealand and Groupama sailing team also shared in the champagne drenched celebrations, marking finishing second and third respectively in the in the 4,800 nautical mile race from Itajaí to Miami.

The winners of the coveted Inmarsat Media Crew Member Award and the DHL Shore Crew Award will be revealed tonight at the Leg 6 prize giving gala presented by Resorts World Miami. MORE STORY

MOVING PICTURES – 2012 470 World Championship
11-19 May 2012, Barcelona, Spain
Medium winds today with a lot of action and some significant changes in the leaderboards.
See the highlights here!

AT THE BAR- The Hammerhead

1 part Sailor Jerry (in shot glass) Beer of your choice
Glass: Shot glass & highball
Method: 1. Turn highball glass upside down and push a shot glass of Sailor Jerry up inside. 2. Turn the highball over carefully and the shot will sit in the bottom of the glass, upside down. 3. Gently fill the glass with beer until it covers the shot glass. 4. As you drink from the glass the Sailor Jerry will slowly be released into the beer!

AMERICAS CUP – Poor weather curtailed any thought of practice in Venice today. The morning dawned with wind approaching 30 knots, plummeting temperatures and heavy rain.
The winds eased and the sun made an appearance later in the day, but all the teams remained ashore.
I had a chance to speak to Emirates Team New Zealand’s Ray Davies, in a very cold tent at the team base this morning for a longer feature story to run next week. I asked him about some of his favourite days on the water, and he pointed out how much fun the AC45 is to sail and race: “Some of the days on the AC45 are just fantastic,” he said. “Even yesterday (during the training races), wind in that 9 to 11 knot range, it’s a full-on crew work battle, but everything is manageable, you’re not overpowered yet. That’s really nice racing.” MORE STORY

CLIPPER RACE – The crew members of the world’s longest yacht race are finding their sea legs again, as competition heats up in day two of Race 11 to New York.

“It is fast, exhilarating wet and slightly wild,” sums up Gold Coast Australia skipper Richard Hewson.

It’s been busy for all then 68-foot yacht entries currently at the south of Jamaica in the Caribbean Sea. Qingdao’s racing came to a brief halt, as a crew member attached by his safety line was washed overboard.

“It brought home to everyone the importance of the safety procedures we have to follow at all times, and showed the value of the Clipper Race training as the crew dealt with the situation perfectly.  Luckily for us the worst outcome of the situation was that he lost a shoe,” says skipper Ian Conchie.

Throughout the fleet sail changes are back on the agenda, with the Clipper Race crew getting back into the routine of rough ocean racing, enduring up to 20 knots of wind. Drama continued elsewhere, with Singapore’s Yankee 1 ending up in the sea and crew working hard to recover the sail. Similarly on Derry-Londonderry skipper Mark Light describes his unlucky day starting with a Yankee 1 headsail making a break for freedom and ending with a bowl of cereal being thrown of him! MORE STORY

MOVING PICTURES – 2012 470 World Championship 11-19 May 2012, Barcelona, Spain
2 races today with really tricky weather and light to medium winds. The top are too close. See the full action here!

MOVING PICTURES – Andres Soriano gives us a behind the scenes peak at what it’s like to be the Media Crew Member (MCM) on-board Sanya Lan.

NEWS WITH AN ACCENT – This full edition from DesTop News takes you from South Carolina to St Barth visiting Croatia and Thailand along the way. For this week’s agenda: Star Worlds – France. Top of the Gulf Regatta – Thailand. Solo Concarneau — France. Transat AG2R — St Barth. ITV Gildas Morvan Skipper Cercle Vert. 49er Worlds — Croatia.  ITV Nathan Outteridge World Champion. Atlantic Cup — Charleston USA

MOVING PICTURES – At the skippers’ press conference on Tuesday in Venice, the sailors were shown, for the first time, the newly commissioned AC World Series Trophy. The topic of conversation was the parity of the fleet, and how difficult it would be to post a consistent scoreline in the racing this week.

COOL BOAT DESIGNS – Here is the new TNT 34 trimaran doing 13 knots with ease.

MOVING PICTURES – 2012 470 World Championship 11-19 May 2012, Barcelona, Spain
Today concluded the qualification series with the fleets now split. See the highlights of the races of the day above

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR - This is a promotional video put together for West Marine Rigging’s 2012 First Annual Laserpalooza!  The event takes place June 2nd at West Marine Alameda, California from 11am-3pm. It’s Free to show up! Bring your new or old Laser and the Pro’s at West Marine Rigging will help you fix it up and get her dialed for the Summer Season! RSVP Ryan Nelson at West Marine Rigging 510-421-2914

CLIPPER RACE – Following their transit through the famous Panama Canal last week, the international Clipper 11-12 Round the World Yacht Race fleet is now back at sea, starting Race 11 from Panama to New York at 2330 UTC last night.

Ahead lies around 2,100 miles starting with four days of hard upwind sailing before breaking out of the Caribbean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean. Like in previous races, in Race 11 there is a Scoring Gate and the first three teams through gets awarded vital additional points. There is also an Ocean Sprint further on in the Race.

“A textbook Le Mans start in the burning embers of a perfect Caribbean sunset was how we started our race to New York,” says Singapore skipper Ben Bowley in his 0600 report to the Race Office.

The Race Committee appointed Richard Hewson  from Gold Coast Australia as lead skipper for the Le Mans start around 60 miles off shore. For this type of start, all ten yachts line up on a bearing, sailing a specific course.  After the start, yachts must maintain their course for ten minutes before changing their sail plan.

The fleet remains packed together with only few miles separating them. While Welcome to Yorkshire managed to hoist and fully power up the Yankee 1 and staysail in 1 minute 37 seconds, Qingdao suffered from a winch jam at the wrong moment.

Both Australian entries had a tussle with Geraldton Western Australia currently ahead of Gold Coast Australia. The top three are currently Dutch entry De Lage Landen, Northern Irish Derry-Londonderry with Geraldton Western Australia in third place.

Despite nearly 35,000 miles raced at sea, the fleet is ready for another challenge ahead. Derry-Londonderry skipper Mark Light explains, “It is now great to finally be out on the ocean and racing again, feeling the freedom that only sailing can offer. We are now heading at pace, towards a fantastic race finish some 2,000 miles away in New York City.”

Click here for the individual skipper reports.

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSER – . By Elliott / Pattison Sailmakers

Whether you race or cruise having a good set of functioning instruments on your boat is essential. While most any instruments will give you good basic information such as your compass heading and apparent wind data there is much more they can do. I have the opportunity to sail on a lot of different boats with quite a few different instrument systems, and on boats that use their instruments well, and those that don’t. MORE STORY

MOVING PICTURES – 2012 470 World Championship
11-19 May 2012, Barcelona, Spain
Ideal weather conditions today with 3 races in all fleets. See the full highlights here!

SPEED SAILING – The NY-Lizard Point record is fallen through. Giovanni and his team have been encompassed in the high pressure area. It is then impossible for Maserati to cross the line at Lizard Point within 1.12am on Wednesday 16th May (Mari Cha IV’s record is 6 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes, 39 seconds).

Giovanni explains: “This morning we were only 30 miles faraway from the north-westerly wind that would have allow us to avoid the high pressure area. We were sailing at 12 knots and only 5 knots more would have been enough to make it. Unfortunately, the high pressure moved faster than us, the barometer didn’t go down and the wind relentlessly started decreasing. The North Atlantic record falls through and we have to wait for the southerly wind. It’s a pity, a great opportunity missed in an instant but as usual we were in Neptune’s hands and we couldn’t do better. We showed that Maserati can break Mari Cha IV’s record, it only needs a better weather situation, more settled and steady than the one we faced”.

MOVING PICTURES – The Nacra 17 is specially developed for one purpose only: the elite athlete sailors of the world! Being fitted out with curved dagger boards and carbon mast, this is the best way to represent multihull sailing 2.0! The curved dagger boards create lift and reduce drag up and downwind. They make crew weight less significant and are enhancing close racing. Media coverage will benefit from the close and exciting racing. Sailing as a sport at the Olympic Games will benefit as we all would like to keep it in.