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!

Proper Yachting

"Who's the winner? Yachting's the winner! Yachting's always the winner!" With these words, Donald Tofias, owner of the two W-Class 76-foot "Spirit of Tradition" sloops, rallies the troops before going sailing.

Against a backdrop of the World Financial Center skyscrapers, the boats tied up to the dock in North Cove look relatively small. There's Black Watch, a beautiful 68' Sparkman & Stephens yawl built in 1938, the two replica New York sandbaggers, Bull & Bear, the replica Baltimore Clipper Pride of Baltimore, and of course, the two W-Class yachts, White Wings and Wild Horses. This somewhat random collection of boats and sailors are here for the first annual New York Classic Week regatta, organized by Mike Fortenbaugh and his team at the Manhattan Yacht Club.


People who've sailed in or watched classic yacht events in the US know that that the two W-Class yachts generally travel as a matched set. Designed by Joel White and built in Maine in 1998, the boats were conceived as the "starter set" for what Mr. Tofias hopes to build into a one-design class. As such, they are the marketing platform for the W-Class, and Donald likes to add twists to spice up the inevitable match race between the two boats. For this event, Donald and Wayne George, owner of nautical store FL Woods in Marblehead and the Marblehead Greens apparel brand, came up with the concept of a match race between Marblehead and Newport with the stakes being nothing less than the title of "Sailing Capital of the World".

This battle for global supremacy, billed as Marblehead Greens ("Marblehead yachties sail because they can afford to") vs. Brenton Reds ("Newport yachties sail because they need the work"), would prove to be the centerpiece of the event. I got the nod as the skipper of the Marblehead team, so I recruited a ragtag collection of outstanding sailors from the Marblehead area and showed up on the dock at North Cove on Thursday morning.

Manhattan Yacht Club runs a fleet of J-24s out of North Cove, but the clubhouse is on a barge called the Honorable William Wallace that's permanently moored out by Ellis Island and accessible via launch. This is the platform from which the races are run, and Thursday found the fleet gathered there for the first race, titled the "Introduction to the Harbor Race".

Quite an introduction it was, too. Government marks were designated as turning marks, and New York has way more than their fair share of them. Bell buoys in New York Harbor are like lobster pots in Maine - I don't know how all the commercial traffic gets around in there without running over them. There's also a ton of current in the harbor, and you do whatever you have to do to avoid the East River which actually flows along the east side of the harbor at 2-4 knots.

Race 1 went to the Marblehead Greens on White Wings, while Race 2, the Skyline Race, went to the Newport team on Wild Horses. Both races featured good boathandling, close action with lead changes, and some drama at the turning marks (a little too much drama for White Wings at the final leeward mark in Race 2 when the spinnaker wouldn't come down). So it was all even going into the deciding race, the Statue of Liberty Race.

Aboard White Wings, we thought the wind would shift to the right at some point. Unfortunately for us, that point came right at the starting gun and we'd elected to start to leeward and ahead of Wild Horses. They immediately lifted off our hip in a 25-degree righty with pressure, and we spent the next three legs just trying to keep it close enough so that we'd be in a position to attack if they made a mistake. Fortunately, Wild Horses opted to try to carry the spinnaker on a leg that was too tight, and with a spectacular gybe into a Mexican takedown, we were able to grab the inside and slip past into the lead.

With a long and torturous run up current to the finish at the entrance to North Cove, the Wild Horses crew worked hard to catch us, and they gained quite a bit of ground when we were forced to gybe out into the current in the Hudson. At the finish line, however, it was White Wings by a length or two, while "yachting" definitely had a great three days, the winner was the Marblehead Greens. What else would you call it when you get to spend three days with your friends sailing a beautiful boat on one of the greatest harbors in the world?

The Prettiest Girl at the Dance

If you've ever seen something that was so pretty and so perfectly designed that it took your breath away, you'll know what I mean when I say "I'm in love with the W-Class boats".

These 76-foot sloops are the brainchildren of Boston real estate developer Donald Tofias. Designed by renowned classic yacht designer Joel White and built in Maine, they are absolutely breathtaking to look at, and a thrill to sail.

The two boats, Wild Horses and White Wings (both owned by Mr. Tofias), are typically together wherever they are. We were fortunate to be invited to go sailing on White Wings two weeks ago in Nantucket, and the fascinating thing about sailing the two together is that it's like looking in a mirror while you're sailing. While you're getting a sense of how the boat feels as it's riding the waves (REALLY nice!), you can see what you'd look like to other boats (also, REALLY nice!).

Mr. Tofias and his W-Class boats are active participants in the classic yacht racing circuit which includes regattas in Maine, Newport, Nantucket, New York, the Caribbean and the Med. If you're in the area when one of these events is taking place, and you'd like to go for a spin, let us know. Donald is very welcoming, and if he has room on the boat, he'd probably take you along.

From October 3-7, Mike Fortenbaugh and the Manhattan Yacht Club will be hosting the Panerai New York Classic Week for classic yachts as well as "Spirit of Tradition" yachts like the W-Class boats. Donald has invited us to sail one of the boats, and we're itching to get out there and see what it's like to race a beauty. New York harbor should be interesting as well with it's strange currents, and we're told that North Cove spokes-sailor Dennis Conner might make an appearance. Classic yacht racing has become near and dear to Dennis' heart as he's been doing the Med circuit on his 1925 Q-Class sloop Cotton Blossom II.

We're told that this is a "Med-style" regatta. Not sure why that is, but if our impression of regattas in the Med is right, then it sounds good. Downtown Manhattan is a happening place, and Mt. Gay is hosting a cocktail party each evening. Fortunately, the start isn't until noon each day which should allow adequate recovery time for the crews that decide to take advantage of the fact that bars in NY are open until 4 AM.

If you're in the NY area, stop by and say hello. If you have your deck shoes with you, you just might get recruited. If we don't see you, we'll let you know how it goes.