Spring Has Sprung?

As we look out the windows of our offices at the Marblehead Trading Company boatyard, it looks like a classic spring in Marblehead. In other words, some activity, but mostly still buttoned up pretty tight.

Spring here is typically non-existent – we go straight from winter to summer – which seems to be part of what makes Marblehead sailors a different breed. Not only do you need to deal with a broad range of conditions on the water, but if you want to get your boat in before July, you better buck up and figure out how start working on your pre-launch checklist in the snow.

It’s still ski season, but down on Long Island Sound, they’re gearing up for the first regatta of the season, and the water temperature is probably already where it won’t get to here until June (if we’re lucky). It can be 80 degrees here, but as soon as you get a hint of a seabreeze, you can watch the temperature plummet before your eyes. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived where there’s a wind-chill factor in May.

This is the crucible from which our performance sailing gear is formed, and it’s where we make sure it works. Here, we design the gear we think New England sailors need: rugged and versatile gear built out of high-tech fabrics that keep you comfortable and let you function at a high-level no matter what Mother Nature’s cooking up for you.

2007 was the first year of "the new Atlantis", and the reception was fantastic. People seemed to like that we're thinking differently about sailing gear, and they seemed to like the direction we went. For 2008, we’ve made some improvements to the things that were already working well, and we added a few new pieces that our customers and our dealers suggested. It’s not a broad line, but we don’t think you’ll find many gaps. If you do, tell us where you think they are and we’ll take that into consideration in our product development process.

Our "Discover" brand idea is built around the concept that no matter what we all like to do on or around the water, our gear can make the experience better. Whether it's racing sailboats, spending an evening at anchor in a quiet cove, chasing stripers in a center-console or just kicking around the waterfront, we want our customers to enjoy the time they spend around the water, and we want to help them do it.

We'd love to hear about what you do in your Atlantis gear, and if you send us pictures, we'll put them in the gallery on our website. Its always fun to see pictures of people having fun.

White Rats

At the Etchells Midwinters in Miami, PRO Dave Brennan decided to try something new, and in the process may have changed sailboat racing as we know it.

The Etchells class has been around since the early 70’s, and at age 35+, it is arguably the hottest one-design keelboat in the world. Many of the biggest names in the sport sail them now along with a strong and committed group of class stalwarts who’ve been sailing them for years. The Jaguar Cup, an annual series consisting of four events sailed in Miami and capped off by the Midwinter Championship, now draws 90 boats from all over the world. And this isn’t just any 90 boats – it’s a deep 90 – and while the racing is off-the-charts good, the unfortunate by-product is that even after a 2.2 mile first beat, everyone gets to the windward mark at the same time. I mean EVERYONE.

The Etchells is a very pretty boat, and it’s a joy to sail. There are very few designs that are quite as pointy, however, or as unresponsive when the helm is hard over, which makes these “en masse” mark roundings particularly scary. So the Biscayne Bay race management team decided to try something new: two windward marks. And why not? Given the fact that the leeward gate has become de rigeur at pretty much every event that I’ve sailed in over the past 10 years, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for someone to take a shot at the windward gate. Paul Elvstrom incorporated it into his innovative “triple racing” format, but to my knowledge, it hasn’t been tried in a high-profile fleet race yet.

So despite some whingeing from the peanut gallery, Dave told us his plan on Thursday evening at the competitors’ briefing: We would have two marks approximately 10 boat lengths apart that would be rounded from the inside out – with no offset marks (which would turn out to be the fly in the proverbial ointment). Our team did quite a bit of thinking about the tactics and rules situations that rounding the right-hand mark to starboard might create – things like:

· The spinnaker would be hooked up on the wrong side – we would need to figure out how to add a windward set to our repertoire.

· Bearing away on port into the teeth of a lineup of starboard tackers on the layline to the right-hand mark while trying to do a windward set would be challenging to say the least.

· Should our choice of windward marks be dictated by traffic, by which mark is further downwind or by which side of the run we wanted to play?

· In a port rounding, the boat coming in on the layline and tacking has few rights – in a starboard rounding, the boat coming in on the layline and tacking is in total control.

So our assessment was that the addition of a second mark would significantly open thing up and create new opportunities to gain (and lose) ground, but we would need to rethink our spinnaker packing and setting routine. Given the likelihood that there would be a line of starboard tack boats that would make it difficult to bear away to a run or roll right into a jibe set, we would need to run the spinnaker forward and set it off the bow. For this, we went back to the old “Soling roll” technique of rolling the chute into a bundle, and we set it up with the sheets and halyard led between the mast and the shrouds so that it could be easily run forward by the forward hand like a running back with a football while the middleman (me) shifted forward to the halyard for the hoist.

But what about the “fly in the ointment” that I mentioned earlier? Along with leeward gates, offset marks have also become the norm, and with good reason. When a starboard tack boat bears away around the windward mark into a line of port tack boats sailing upwind, very bad things can happen - and the offset mark does a reasonably good job of preventing these bad things. But with a windward gate, would you still need offset marks? Would setting two windward marks AND two offset marks be too much for a single mark boat crew to handle? The BBYC race management team determined that the windward gate would obviate the need for offset marks – and this was the one and only mistake they made. When a boat that’s going downwind on starboard jibe and heeling to windward passes to leeward of a boat that’s going upwind on port tack, masts can come very close together, and on the very first rounding, aside from a number of incredibly close calls, Bruce Burton got his mast taken down.

For the second race, out came the offset marks, and after that, it was relatively smooth sailing. A windward gate doesn’t thin the herd as much as a single weather mark does, and one of the interesting side effects is that everyone gets to the leeward gate at the same time. There were some hair-raising pileups there, but most people are used to leeward gates by now, and good judgement seemed to carry the day.

Overall, I think the experiment was a success. Two windward marks are probably better than one as it keeps the fleet closer and creates more opportunities to pass boats – good if you’re behind. The downside is that you apparently still need offset marks which will strain the resources (and the backs) of many race management teams. Not so bad in Biscayne Bay dropping marks in 20 feet of water – a daunting prospect in places where the water’s pretty deep. There are those who’ve argued that a 90-boat fleet may not have been the best place to try this out, but I’d like to see other clubs follow Dave Brennan’s example and give it a shot.

Who knows? Ten years from now, we may not be able to remember what it was like to sail in races with only one windward mark.

Smoke On The Water?

Brrrrr!

If you live in Canada, this probably doesn't seem like a big deal, but we're not exactly used to waking up to 5 degrees Fahrenheit here. Cars don't start, water pipes freeze, the dog has no interest in going outside, and for whatever weird reason, the harbor starts smoking (I'm sure there's a simple meteorological explanation for it, so if you know what it is, please tell us).

When this happens, we start thinking about the next chance we have to go sail somewhere warm, and the good news is ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS UNTIL KEY WEST! Run by our next door neighbor Peter Craig and his Premiere Racing team, Acura Key West Race Week has become the premiere sailing event in North America. 261 entries and counting including 60 non-US boats (a new record according to Peter, and not terribly surprising given the current state of the US dollar), this fleet includes all the names you've followed in the sailing press and around the race track over the years (except Mr. Coutts, who probably has a full plate right now).

Go for the sailing, go for the parties or just go to get warm. It's a chance to see old friends from around the country, meet some new ones, experience some incredibly competitive racing with world-class race management and enjoy the climate and atmosphere on this funky little island at the south end of America. If you want to go but don't have a ride, check out the Scuttlebutt Crew Board at http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/calendar/eventdescription.asp?ID=5344. Looks like there are a couple of boats still looking for crew.

And as much as we tend to complain about the cold, and wonder why we chose to live in a place where it can get so cold that the harbor smokes, here's a little something to give you some perspective. You think you're tough? Try doing this for a living...

Where The Action Is

As we continue to read about the latest twists and turns in the America's Cup saga and the uproar over which classes were selected for the next Olympics, it's easy to start to feel a bit jaded about the direction in which our sport seems to be headed. But if you want to get your head back in the game and reaffirm your positive attitude toward sailing, I'd suggest a visit to Coconut Grove, FL to sail in the Etchells Jaguar Series.

My family's been very heavily involved in the Etchells class, almost from it's infancy (our first boat was hull #16 when it was almost new), and I recall the early days when they were trying to get a Midwinter regatta going. J-24s, Lightnings, Snipes, etc. all had pretty well-attended Midwinters in Florida, but the first couple of Etchells Midwinters were very low-key affairs with only a handful of boats. Now? Different story.

73 boats showed up last weekend for the first of the four events of the Jaguar Series hosted by Biscayne Bay Yacht Club, and it wasn't just any 73 boats. The list of participants read like a Who's Who of sailing including world champions Jud Smith, Dirk Kneulman, Vince Brun, Andy Beadsworth, Bill Mauk and Bruce Burton (that's 6 Etchells world champions showing up for a weekend regatta) as well as a deep, deep fleet of longtime Etchells hotshots like Peter Duncan and Scott Piper and very talented class newcomers like John Kolius and Tom Lihan. Even the coaches were world-class with Morgan Reeser, Ed Adams and Moose McClintock watching the races and offering pointers to their clients.

With a maximum weight limit of 638 lbs. (and the need to be as close to that as you can get), many Etchells are being sailed with 4 instead of the standard 3 crew. I had the good fortune to sail with the SoCal duo of Bruce Golison and Steve Flam, two outstanding sailors who are an absolute pleasure to ride with. The icing on the cake was that we needed an extra 100 lbs. , so I got to bring my 13-year-old daughter Hannah. While she spends most of her time sailing Optis, she has ridden with me in keelboats before, and she's pretty comfortable in the environment. I think she's still processing it all, but my guess is that this is one event that Hannah won't soon forget.

Biscayne Bay Yacht Club's Race Committee did a terrific job getting off five great races (although their job was made somewhat easier by the fact that the wind blew from exactly the same direction for 48 hours). They communicated openly with the fleet, telling us exactly what they were thinking, when they were getting ready to start, what the course was, and counting down to the signals so that everyone's stopwatch was spot on. Nobody won more than one race, although Bill Hardesty from San Diego did manage to put together 2 races in the top 2 to win by a point over Marblehead homeboy (and Atlantis test pilot) Jud Smith.

Sunday afternoon, the fleet scattered among the four top-flight shore bases in the Grove, Shake-A-Leg Sailing Center, Biscayne Bay Yacht Club, Coral Reef Yacht Club and the US Sailing Center, to get hauled and stashed in the parking lots until the next regatta on January 5th and 6th.

This is what sailboat racing should always be like: great boats, terrific sailors (both kids and adults) and a world-class event with plenty of sun and wind. Next time you start to wonder whether sailing's headed in a good direction, call Dirk Kneulman at Ontario Yachts and ask him to build you an Etchells. There are a couple hundred Etchells sailors in Miami who will tell you that none of the rest of that stuff really matters as long as they can keep doing their thing.

Nice Boat!

Pictured at the right is the prettiest lobster boat we've ever seen. She is the Sea Hooker, a working lobster boat owned by Jay Sahagian, proprietor of Marblehead seafood mainstay The Barnacle.

Next up is the new Numbers, an IRC 66-footer designed by Rolf Vrolijk, built by Eric Goetz and owned by longtime Marblehead resident (currently of Boston and Newport) Dan Meyers. According to Dan, his new boat is like nothing he's ever driven before - and he's driven quite a few (this one's #6 in the series). The boat's shakedown event, the IRC East Coast Championship, resulted in a narrow last-race loss to John Kilroy and his very well-sailed Samba Pa Ti (TP 52), and we expect nothing but great things from Dan and his new hot rod.

While we've not yet geared Jay up, we have outfitted Dan and his team with custom gear. They report that the stuff works better than advertised, and we think they look pretty good.

Big Wind

Bottom's falling out of the barometer, and the offshore buoy data shows gusts above 50 knots. Look's like Noel's coming by for a visit this afternoon.

All in all, we'd rather be in Annapolis right now where Dan Meyers and his crew of Alinghi guys are hanging tough at the IRC East Coasts in Annapolis as they work out the kinks in his new IRC 66-footer Numbers. This is the boat's first event, and we're particularly interested in how they're doing as they are sporting a full line of Atlantis gear. So regardless of how they fare, at least they'll be dry and comfortable.

Based on the buoy readings from Annapolis, it looks like they dodged a bullet as the 50-60 knot gusts they got there were very early this morning. They're racing now, and based on the satellite imagery, it looks like the sun's about to come out there.

Not here though. Noel's closing in on New England, and here at AWG HQ, the noise level is steadily increasing. Yesterday saw the frenzy of boat extraction that typically precedes the first northeaster of the fall. Though this year wasn't quite as crazy as usual as it arrived so late in the season that most boats were already out.

Here's the view of the town docks with ramps up from our office in the boatyard:

After this one, the hatches will be well and truly battened down here, and we'll start looking forward to spending a bit of time on the slopes in between Florida regattas. The Etchells winter circuit kicks off the 2nd weekend in December, right around the same time as the Palm Beach Race, and the big one, Peter Craig's Key West Race Week, starts January 14th. Hope we see everyone there.

Cars with surfboards on top are starting to show up at Devereaux Beach to take advantage of the killer point break that starts up when the wind's out of the northeast. We're gonna go do a little spectating.

AWG out.

Sashimi

Even a bad day at the office turns out OK when it ends this way (not that we ever have those here!).

Our AWG Test Pilot program bore unexpected fruit yesterday when alpha fish-catcher Jock Danforth popped in around 5:00 with a pile of tuna that less than 18 hours earlier had been swimming around minding it's own business out on Stellwagen Bank. First time we'd seen him not wearing his Microburst in awhile, but we were willing to let it slide in return for a couple of pounds of sushi grade.

Thanks Jock!