Racing Around the World - Virtually

As of this morning's sked, Atlantis 1 is in 10,765th place having gained about 400 places overnight. Not bad for a night's work. We're about 593 miles off the lead. Hard to figure out where we lost so much distance, but as the leaders hit lighter air as they approach the doldrums, maybe we can make up a little ground.

Son Peter, 11, in Atlantis 2 has the family lead. This morning, he was in 2,262nd, only 273 miles off the lead, and daughter Hannah's not too far behind him in Sol y Escopetas ("Sun and Guns" in Spanish - don't ask me). Not sure exactly where they are, but based on what we're looking at for breeze over the next 36 hours, I think Atlantis 1 is positioned to make a move.

OK, I'm addicted. Which isn't terribly surprising, given the number of other people who seem to be as well. There are 32,666 boats in the Volvo Ocean Race Game, and while I'm sure that quite a few players have multiple horses in the race, that's still a pretty impressive number of people who, like all of us, are spending an unhealthy amount of time in front of the screen. In fact, the timing of the start of the Volvo Ocean Race and the global economic meltdown may just be too much of a coincidence.

It's not too late to jump in, and it's better than fantasy football. Probably better than actually sailing around the world too - you can jibe and change spinnakers, and then go sleep in your warm, dry bed.

Sportsmanship at the C of C

Last week, I had the good fortune to sail in US Sailing's Championship of Champions. The event was ably hosted by Sayville YC on Long Island and sailed in Sunfish.

This post isn't really supposed to be about who won, but the fact is that the winner and the runner-up both sailed such a great regatta that their respective performances deserve mentioning. Doug Kaukeinen, the reigning Sunfish North American champion, and Mike Ingham, perpetual champion in one or another of the several one-designs he sails regularly, staged a duel that came down to the last lap of the 13th and final race. Mike led after the first lap, but Doug caught him at the gate, beat him in the race and won the event. The other reason this bears mentioning is that both of these guys sail out of the Rochester Canoe Club in Rochester, NY - pretty impressive for any club to put two guys in the top 2 places in this event, let alone a relatively unheralded one in upstate NY.

So congratulations are due to both Doug and Mike, but the main point here is that the event was notable not just for the collection of talent, but also for the high level of sportsmanship and camaraderie on display. From the very beginning, the atmosphere was low-key, collegial, and all about sharing. Sunfish expert Paul-Jon Patin from Starboard Passage ran a clinic for all the competitors on Wednesday afternoon, and there was a ton of idea sharing going on all the time. The Sunfish sailors in the crowd were very forthcoming with their rigging, tuning and boathandling techniques, and every time someone discovered something that seemed to work, he or she was very quick to tell everyone else about it. Jim Koehler from the Dinghy Shop was also around to impart his wisdom gained from many years of Sunfish sailing (and to dole out 5/16" mainsheets), and I benefitted greatly from his input.

In addition, each evening a "Rolex Round Table" was held at which the folks who did well each day shared their approach, and the ones who had struggled a bit could ask questions and seek advice. Many theories were bandied about at these sessions, and I'd guess they helped everyone move up the learning curve at a pretty good clip. Doug was clearly the best Sunfish sailor there, but I think even he would concur that by the end of the regatta, everyone was sailing the boats at a fairly high level.

On the water, the atmosphere of cooperation and sportsmanship continued. There were very few facials, and over the course of 13 races, not a single protest was filed. People were quick to do circles when in doubt, and no one really pushed it at any mark roundings that I saw. One collision almost occurred when two boats on opposite tacks were approaching each other upwind, and they both decided to duck.

Overall, I'd love to see all regattas should work this way. A naive opinion, I know, but one can hope, can't one?

Maureen McKinnon-Tucker Day

On Saturday, Marblehead turned out to pay tribute to our newest gold medalist, Maureen McKinnon-Tucker. Maureen and her skipper Nick Scandone have provided us with one of the most inspirational stories of the year, and Saturday's parade through downtown Marblehead ending at historic Fort Sewall was a fitting salute to the team.

Maureen rode in a sexy red Corvette provided by Hillcrest Chevrolet, and her daughter and her classmates from the Eveleth School carried the spinnaker with the American flag on it that Maureen and Nick used in the regatta. Parade organizer and bagpiper extraordinaire Julie Hahnke provided a march, Glover's Regiment followed with fife and drum, and the route was lined with fans waving little American flags.

Once the parade arrived at Fort Sewall, state and local politicians read proclamations where every sentence started with "Whereas...", and a representative from the Marblehead Board of Selectmen proclaimed September 20th as "Maureen McKinnon-Tucker Day" - not a bad thing. I had been asked to speak about my mother's involvement in putting disabled sailing on the map as a paralympic sport, and Katie Kelly from US Sailing presented Maureen with an Olympic flag signed by all of the members of the Olympic and Paralympic sailing teams.

We also acknowledged Marblehead's other Paralympic representative Tim Angle. Tim sailed with Rick Doerr in the Sonar, and unfortunately, despite being highly touted for gold, the team came away with an 8th place finish.

Chowder and ice cream were thoughtfully provided by several local Marblehead businesses, and the ceremony came to a fitting close with Marblehead's Glover's Regiment giving Maureen a 9-gun salute followed by the playing of the national anthem on fife and drum. The paraders then retired to the Landing for some well-deserved refreshment, and the celebration continued well into the afternoon.

Where Was The Navy Born?

Atlantis HQ is located in Marblehead, MA, and it’s where we all live. When I drive into town, it says right there on the “Welcome to Marblehead” sign: “Birthplace of the American Navy”.

Now, my parents taught me not to believe everything I read, but given Marblehead’s heritage as a seafaring town, is there really a reason to question this assertion? Apparently there is, as evidenced by an ad we ran in Scuttlebutt two weeks ago in which we referred to Marblehead as the place the Navy was born. We received many responses from the Scuttlebutt audience, some gently correcting our misperception and others more stridently making a case for other towns and cities including Philadelphia, Whitehall, NY, Portsmouth, NH and our neighbor Beverly, MA. The facts surrounding the case are not totally clear, but at the end of the day, it would seem to us that Marblehead’s claim to the title is solid. Here’s what we think we know:

The spring and summer of 1775 marked the beginning of the American Revolution, and it essentially began with the Seige of Boston. Continental militia forces surrounded Boston and cut off the British forces occupying the town from escape to or support from the surrounding countryside. The Battles of Lexington & Concord and Bunker Hill took place as the British made attempts to break out of Boston, but to their surprise, the Continental forces were too strong and too well-organized. They couldn’t do anything to cut off the British from the sea, however, and this allowed the occupiers to hold out for as long as they could receive supplies and material via ship.

George Washington, who’d arrived in July to take command of what had become the Continental Army, came to the conclusion that harassing British supply vessels entering Boston harbor could accomplish two objectives: tormenting the enemy and supplying his own troops. So on September 5, 1775, he asked Marblehead merchant Col. John Glover and members of his Marblehead Regiment to take his sloop Hannah to sea to “cruise against the enemy” and to seize “such Vessels as may be found on the High seas or elsewhere, bound inward and outward to or from Boston in the Service of the ministerial Army". Glover and his Marblehead militia were one of Washington’s favorite units, and they later distinguished themselves as the 14^th Continental Regiment for, among other things, ferrying the army across the Delaware River in December 1776 for the surprise attack on the British at Trenton.

The Royal Navy squadron on the Boston Station at that time had some pretty serious firepower in it, so expectations for the Hannah, a 43-footer with no real armament to speak of (4 guns) nor an experienced fighting crew, can’t have been too high. In fact, you could argue that it was a ridiculous proposition to send her out there at all, and the initial foray ended somewhat ignominiously when the Hannah crossed paths with the HMS Lively. The Lively was a 20-gun sloop-of-war with a full complement of battle-tested seamen, and she’d been part of the North American Squadron for many years. Being Marbleheaders, however, one thing the crew of the Hannah could do well was sail, and they were fortunately able to elude their pursuers by setting everything they had and nipping into Gloucester harbor before the Lively could catch them.

It’s reported that Hannah captured the British sloop Unity two days later, but that would prove to be the only bright spot in the ship’s short career as America’s first warship. A month after getting started, she was run aground in Beverly, and despite being saved from capture by a bunch of citizens with guns, she was removed from service.

We are certain that strong cases can be made for other cities and towns as the Navy’s cradle. There is no question that the Hannah spent a significant amount of time in Beverly, and Philadelphia’s claim is, one assumes, based on the fact that it’s where the Continental Congress voted to authorize the construction of the famous six frigates and that’s where the USS United States, the first one launched, was built.

Whitehall’s claim is based on the fact that it was where Philip Schuyler had a fleet of 16 schooners and gunboats built in 1776 which Benedict Arnold used in the Battle of Valcour Island. The British thought they could end the Revolution by gaining control of the Hudson River Valley and linking Canada with British-occupied New York City, thereby cutting rebellious New England off from the rest of the colonies. In order to accomplish this goal, the Brits needed to neutralize the American strongholds at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the only way to get there from the St. Lawrence River Valley was via Lake Champlain.

The Brits brought 30 ships to the party vs. Benedict Arnold’s 16, and while the battle resulted in a British victory, it slowed them down enough to delay the planned assault on Ticonderoga and Crown Point until the following year. This delay gave the Americans much-needed time to gather a larger and better-supported force which would eventually defeat the British at Saratoga in 1777. Saratoga represented the first real American military victory, and is largely thought to be the tipping point that brought France into the war on the American side.

All great stories, and they give each town a strong case to make on their respective behalves. But, while Hannah going to sea may not have had quite the impact on the formation of the young republic that Benedict Arnold’s fleet or Philly’s United States did, she was the first American warship sent to sea by George Washington. With all due respect to those other places, there can only be one “birthplace”, and Marblehead is it.

Welcome to America!

My 11 year old son and I got up at 5AM today to welcome Giovanni Soldini to Marblehead.

The Italian sailing hero has been leading the Class 40 contingent of the 2008 Artemis Transat pretty much the entire way from the start in Plymouth to the finish in Marblehead, and after about 17 days of sailing, we wanted to be the first humans he saw. It was a picture perfect morning (if a bit on the chilly side), and the fresh northwester set him up for a straight shot closehauled on starboard to the finish line at the MH1 bell.

The Class 40 is not as imposing a sight as an Open 60, the last of which had finished the previous evening, but it's still pretty compelling to see a sailor approaching the end of what is surely an epic journey by any standard - crossing the ocean alone in a relatively small boat. In fact, it's kind of a shame that there are no Americans in the race, as it would be a pretty amazing homecoming. New England blue water sailing legend Rich Wilson, a participant in the last Transat 4 years ago in his Open 50, and a guy with several ocean crossings to his credit, probably felt pretty good when he saw that Boston skyline after a couple of weeks at sea.

We also had the good fortune to meet a couple of the Open 60 competitors last night. British solo sailor Dee Caffari, having finished that afternoon, looked ready to go out on the town - hard to believe considering the fact that she'd battled a 25 knot headwind for the final couple of hundred miles. And Yannick Bestaven, fresh from his 7th place finish, was looking forward to heading up the St. Lawrence River for the start of the Quebec-St. Malo Race starting July 10th. He loves ocean sailing, and it seems that he can't get enough of this stuff. He's already qualified for the Vendee Globe, the solo non-stop lap around the world in Open 60s starting in November that all of these sailors are preparing for, so he could just sail straight home, but he'd rather race, and Quebec-St. Malo is a cool event. The first 300 - 400 mile stretch takes place in the St. Lawrence River, and the race passes the tiny French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon on or around Bastille Day - and according to Yannick, the party spills off the shores and out to the passing boats.

Never what you'd call particularly popular in the past, solo distance racing seems to be catching on in a pretty big way. These folks are national heroes in some European countries, but until recently, very few people were nuts enough to actually want to go way offshore alone. And while it still hasn't really caught on in the US, the combination of technology and momentum has attracted a steadily increasing number of world-class sailors to this unique aspect of the sport. The Vendee Globe currently boasts 31 entries including the winner of the Transat, Loick Peyron in Gitana 80 (pictured here) and Vincent Riou in PRB, the guy who was winning until he chopped a shark in half with his keel to the detriment of both the shark and his boat which he subsequently abandoned. Ten years ago, you couldn't find 31 people who'd want to do this race with full crew, and the sight of 31 boats charging off the starting line at high speed in France should be something to behold. To be sure, the Bay of Biscay, which boasts some of the nastiest conditions in the world, will probably send a few victims limping home within the first week, but the prospect of a good-sized fleet racing around the planet should be good fun.

Maybe it will even spark some interest in long-distance solo sailing in the US. Though he sails alone, Rich Wilson wants some company.

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.