First Word from the Atlantic Cup

By admin | Published: May 12, 2012

Having sailed the Centennial Newport-Bermuda with Joe Harris aboard Gryphon Solo, I am naturally tuned in to the man’s prospects in the Atlantic Cup and a first leg now under way from Charleston to New York. Gryphon Solo was an Open 50, the same that Brad Van Liew sailed to win his first solo race around the world. Gryphon Solo 2 is a Class 40, a manifestation of an attempt to bring more European-style competition to this side of the Atlantic. It also represents, as Joe says, “unfinished business.” He never got the sponsorship for his own race around the world (and the Van Liew story proves all over again how hard these things are in the USA), but Joe is a fine seaman and a true competitor. Here is his account of getting out of Charleston:

The past 12 hours since the start of the 2012 Atlantic Cup have been fast and furious action. Leading up to the start, all the sailors were scrambling with last-minute shopping, fixing and making sure that everything that was needed was onboard and nothing extra that would add weight. The start was postponed a half hour so we started at 6:25 in front of the Maritime Center in Charleston. It was a reaching start on port tack with a fast outgoing tide and we were a little cautious as we did not want to be swept over early, and as a result we were a little late and a little low of a few of the boats, which put us in their bad air for the short first leg to the government turning mark. Icarus got a great start as did Bodacious Dream, and we were glad to see our fellow Americans performing well. Right after the first mark, we heard a loud crack and saw the mast come down on Forty Degrees, a huge bummer for the UK team. Hopefully no one was hurt.

After the first mark, we began to beat out the long entry channel, which involved at least 20 tacks, while dodging incoming and outgoing shipping traffic. I got to drive while Tristan trimmed the sheets and ground the winches, so he gets MVP of the start for a great effort. After clearing the rocky breakwater at the entrance to the channel, we hung a left towards Hatteras and were able to relax a little and munch on some sandwiches we had bought so we wouldn’t have to cook the first night. As darkness fell and the moon rose, we were in the leading back, but back about two miles from the leader Campagne de France, who sailed a flawless first part of the race. We put up our secret weapon Code Zero sail as the wind diminished to 9 knots and alternated hand steering and trimming, while looking furtively at the chart plotter that showed the positions of the other boats and looking for small gains or losses. We seemed to be going pretty well. Tristan crashed for 3 hours from 12 to 3, then I went down from 3 to 6 and we each felt much better after a little sleep. The sunrise was spectacular as the wind came forward out of the northeast, so we tacked on to port and are headed offshore to get into better breeze and get a little sea room before tacking back onto starboard to clear Cape Fear, about 30 miles away. Next up is Cape Lookout about 120 miles away and then Cape Hatteras about 190 miles out, so if the wind holds we are hoping to round Hatteras Sunday morning.

All is good aboard GS2, as we just charged up the batteries and re-stacked our sails and gear to help keep the boat level and going fast. It is very nice to be offshore again and we hope to sail hard and well today to make up some ground on the leading pack—Joe Harris

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“Great Parties,
Lots of Girls on the Beach”

By admin | Published: April 30, 2012

There’s more to it, I think, but that quote from reigning world champion Johnny Heineken is not a bad start for explaining why kites are hot.

Heineken continues to dominate the course-racing scene with a combination of raw speed and the tactical smarts developed out of growing up racing dinghies and skiffs. How long can the man stay on top? It’s a young sport. The first course racing championships were held on San Francisco Bay, where the game was developed, and the first Worlds was held in 2009.

On to the Olympics? I wouldn’t bet against it.

Here’s a look at the just-wrapped Professional Kite Racing Association event at Playa del Carmen, Mexico:

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Remembering Loss
Living with Sacrifice

By admin | Published: April 22, 2012

Does it say something about sailing or does it say something about journalism that even the New York Times had to look for an America’s Cup tie-in when it reported the tragic deaths of five amateur sailors aboard a keelboat rounding an island at the edge of the Continental Shelf, 27 miles from the nearest point of the planned 2013 America’s Cup course inside San Francisco Bay?

In the last week I have not had a single sailor-conversation that has not turned to the tragedy of losing five souls in the 2012 Farallons Race. For that matter, it came up with nonsailors as well. The first casualties in 105 years of the Farallons Race touched this community in a powerful way. We are haunted in our imaginings, and we are haunted by the images of the 38-foot Low Speed Chase on an unforgiving lee shore, surrounded by white water. Only the edges of that could be addressed in the lovely memorial on a lovely Saturday evening in Belvedere Cove, with flowers and wreaths spread across the waters and music in the air along with memories and sadness for five fellow sailors who loved what sailing truly is, a way of living that is much more than just “sailing.” We’re calling it a hundred boats on the water, and there was no counting those who shared from the shoreline.

The names were read:

Mark Kasanin, Alexis Busch, Jordan Fromm, Elmer Morrissey, Alan Cahill

As if there might be a providence offering a gift, the evening came with none of the chill edge that often creeps late into San Francisco Bay, even along the sheltered Marin shores to the north. No, the evening was warm and calm. The San Francisco Fireboat Phoenix—itself one of the great “characters” of San Francisco Bay, and thank you, Phoenix—aimed its jets to the sky. Lilies drifted easily upon the waters, drifted in their own dream between light and dark, drifted, and then darkness fell.

It’s been a long week.

Getting It Right

Here’s a tip of the hat to Bay Area Multihull Association stalwart Bob Naber for parsing out the truth about casualties from sailboats in the Gulf of the Farallones and jumping on one news organization after another and calling them to account for inaccuracies.

I agree with Bob that I hate bodycount references, but I was a daily newsman in ’82 when a southerly buster surprised the Doublehanded Farallones Fleet—those were different times, and an updated weather report was broadcast at 0800 while starters were in sequence—and four lives were lost in the racing fleet. Boats returning from the islands in low visibility were swept north by a combination of current and storm (no GPS in those days), and many could not make efficient southing. No lives were lost on the island shore; everything happened on the return (and two non-racers perished aboard a cruising boat in the same storm).

There have been additional, isolated casualties, nothing on such a scale until now, and I reckon I’ve personally pulled a few stunts that came out all right more through luck than skill.

Anyone who sails the Gulf of the Farallones can identify. This is a demanding environment, and I observe the closeness felt now between the sailing community and the Coast Guard. You know their motto: You have to go out. You don’t have to come back. And the Coasties always go out.

As for the discussion of how such an accident might be prevented in the future, all suggestions focus on keeping boats far enough from the rocks that they don’t become eligible for bad luck, but certain ideas just won’t play out.

Station a committee boat out there? No way. It’s too rough, usually, and too nasty to ask anyone to take on that duty. And it would be too hard to either anchor or hold station, and it would be irresponsible to station our people off a lee shore.

Put a buoy out there to round? Nope. It’s a long rounding, so you would need more than one buoy, and they’d never stay in place. We have enough problems in the bay with YRA marks going walkabout. The Farallones are a harsh environment.

Create a series of (probably three, minimum two) GPS waypoints? This could work. Surely there is not one of the 31 finishers of the 2012 Farallons Race that did not have a GPS aboard, and it’s more common than not for crewmembers to have a GPS in a pocket. Probably, this is part of the long, coming conversation.

(Along with the conversation around whether to prefer a spelling of Farallones or Farallons. I prefer the former; I use the latter if that’s officially the name of a race, and we are speaking here of the Farallons Race, a long-established tradition when singlehanded and doublehanded races were begun late in the 20th century.)

I have no truck, meanwhile, with any talk of whether this race, or racing in the Gulf of the Farallones, has a future. This is our home. This is our patch of ocean. Those are our islands. And this race is a tradition begun by The San Francisco Yacht Club in 1907. It was the first ocean race ever sailed out of San Francisco Bay. It’s part of what makes us “us.” The race is not going away any more than the islands are.

Living with Sacrifice

The Low Speed Chase memorial was a right and a fitting thing, and yet, I am nagged by a contrast. Our country is still fighting the longest war in its history, and the suicide rate among veterans is a national scandal. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, it seems, receive more lip service than service.

But not everyone is ignoring our people. Wednesday through Friday of last week, our former Marine Ronnie Simpson—he was gravely wounded outside Fallujah, then lost, emotionally, for a time, but he self-rescued through sailing—shared the way of sail with five other veterans of fighting in the Middle East.

Ronnie, now a Transpac and solo Transpac vet, says of the three-day clinic at Team Hope for the Warriors, “We taught them how to sail at South Beach Harbor using Access class dinghies from the Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors. We went to a Giants game, took a sunset cruise on a schooner, and on Friday we participated in the South Beach Yacht Club beer can race. The list included a blind male, a paraplegic female, a man who is missing part of his skull (half of his body is paralyzed), and two individuals whose wounds are primarily psychological.

“I’m striving to keep this diverse, instead of merely accumulating as many wheel chairs or prosthetics as I can.”

This is intended to be only first such clinic for Hope for the Warriors.
Simpson’s own story was an inspiration at first hearing, and his story just keeps on building from there.

I thought you ought to know.

Racing to Tahiti

For the record: Beau Geste and Rage departed Point Fermin, California on Friday to race 3,700 miles to Tahiti, a course first run by the Transpacific Yacht Club in 1925. Before the start I spoke with the owner of Rage, Steve Rander, and came up with this for the TPYC web site:

People who like boats just naturally want to take a boat ride every now and then, so how about a 3,700-mile boat ride, Los Angeles to Tahiti?

With the clock winding down to the start, 1 pm Friday from Point Fermin, Rage skipper Steve Rander was sounding nonchalant. “We’re just sitting around trying to think of anything we’ve forgotten,” he said. “I’ve done 23 Transpac crossings, all between the West Coast and Hawaii. Now it’s time for something different.” And if that something different, all the way to French Polynesia, turns out to be a race with only two boats entered? “You have to commit a long way ahead,” Rander said. With a veteran crew of longtime friends and family (“no rock stars”) the argument comes down to doing it now, regardless, “because if not, we’ll be too old.”

And, when he committed, there was the prospect of five or six entries. So how does he feel now? “It’s still a race. We’re racing every boat that ever sailed to Tahiti.”
That makes it quite a few boats. The Transpacific Yacht Club staged its first race to Tahiti in 1925. Four boats started from San Francisco Bay, led by the redoubtable L.A. Norris, whose 107-foot schooner, Mariner, made Papeete in 20 days.

Rage, a 70-footer designed by Tom Wylie, has a shot at the Overton Memorial Trophy if it can win the crossing on corrected time. Built at Rander’s Schooner Creek Boatworks in Portland, Oregon, she’s been a campaigner since 1993, but Rander and family cruise the boat as well as race. And who wouldn’t like to sail to Tahiti?
To that question, you won’t find any doubters among the crew of Rage’s opposition, the mighty Beau Geste out of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Owner Karl Kwok is a longtime member of the Transpacific Yacht Club, and he has been on a tour of the great American and Caribbean races with his twin-ruddered 80-footer. Kwok’s target is the elapsed time record of 11 days, 10 hours set in 2008 by Doug Baker’s Magnitude 80, and however that comes out, racing to Tahiti is the most interesting way possible to get the boat a bit closer to home.

Posted in People & Profiles, Sailboat Racing, Sailboats, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The Low Speed Chase Memorial

By admin | Published: April 20, 2012

Here is an updated timetable for Saturday’s memorial to the crew lost aboard
Low Speed Chase:

The event has shifted into BELVEDERE COVE AND RACCOON STRAITS

A detailed link is HERE

All participating boats are asked to turn on running lights
All participants shall wear Personal Floatation Devices

Schedule:
1845 Gather to the southeast of Elephant Rock
1900 – 1930
Tiburon Fire Boat with the USCG will lead procession using their spinning lights; boats should carefully fall in line behind. Boats will proceed in line following the FD boat between Victory and the Protector, Farallones, and may drop flowers and wreaths. Bagpipes will commence from the Protector Farallones just inside the southeast boundary of Belvedere Cove.

Participating boats please hold station in the area to the southeast of San Francisco Yacht Club race committee boat Victory.

19:30 8 Bells Sound Off from Victory
19:35 1 Minute of Silence
19:36 Danny Boy
19:40 5 Shots of Shotgun from Victory
19:45 Amazing Grace
19:50 Tiburon Fireboat will blast fire cannon
19:50 Eternal Father (Naval Hymn)
20:00 Boats are asked to blow Horns
Service concludes in memoriam:

Mark Kasanin, Alexis Busch, Jordan Fromm, Elmer Morrissey, Alan Cahill

Official communications over VHF 68.
Individual communications and questions, VHF 69.

AND here’s a tip of the hat to Bay Area Multihull Association stalwart Bob Naber for parsing out the truth about casualties from sailboats in the Gulf of the Farallones and jumping on one news organization after another and calling them to account for inaccuracies.

I agree with Bob that I hate bodycount references, but I was a daily newsman in ’82 when a southerly buster surprised the Doublehanded Farallones Fleet—those were different times, and an updated weather report was broadcast at 0800 while the fleet was in sequence—with the loss of four lives in the racing fleet. Boats returning from the islands in low visibility were swept north by a combination of current and storm (no gps), and many could not make efficient southing. No lives were lost on the island shore; everything happened on the return (and two non-racers perished aboard a cruising boat in the same storm).

There have been additional, isolated casualties, nothing on such a scale until now, and I reckon I’ve personally pulled a few stunts that came out all right more through luck than skill.

Anyone who sails the Gulf of the Farallones can identify. This is a demanding environment, and I observe the closeness felt now between the sailing community and the Coast Guard. You know their motto: You have to go out. You don’t have to come back. And the Coasties always go out.

Facebook surfaced a discussion of how such an accident might be prevented in the future, and all suggestions focused on keeping boats far enough from the rocks that they don’t become eligible for bad luck.

Station a committee boat out there? No way. It’s too rough, usually, and too nasty to ask anyone to take on that duty. And it would be too hard to either anchor or hold station, and it would be irresponsible to station our people off a lee shore.

Put a buoy out there to round? Nope. It’s a long rounding, so you would need more than one buoy, and they’d never stay in place. We have enough problems in the bay with YRA marks going walkabout.

Create a series of (probably three, minimum two) GPS waypoints? This could work. Surely there is not one of the 31 finishers of the 2012 Farallons Race that did not have a GPS aboard, and it’s more common than not for crewmembers to have a GPS in a pocket. Probably, this is part of the long, coming conversation.

I have no truck, however, with any talk of whether this race, or racing in the Gulf of the Farallones (my preferred spelling), has a future. This is our home. This is our patch of ocean. Those are our islands. And this race is a tradition begun by The San Francisco Yacht Club in 1907. It was the first ocean race ever sailed out of San Francisco Bay. It’s part of what makes us “us.” The race is not going away any more than the islands are—Kimball

Posted in Cruising, Cruising Under Sail, Sailboat Racing, Sailboats | 1 Comment

The Farallones

By admin | Published: April 16, 2012

As cruel a lee shore as exists on the planet.

Low Speed Chase comes to an end in the Farallones Race, a fully-crewed contest that had been run without loss of life since 1907.

Photo posted on Facebook by Will Paxton; provenance not identified

.

.

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A Boundary Every 90 Seconds

By admin | Published: March 22, 2012

© Sander van der Borch/Artemis Racing
.
Nonstop
EMERGENCY

That’s the prospect for Louis Vuitton Cup racing and then the America’s Cup, as the competitors imagine it, and that would include Artemis Racing skipper Terry Hutchinson. If I could summarize what the man had to say, on the phone from the Artemis base in Valencia, it would go:

It’s not what you got, it’s what you can use.

Terry posed the question, “How do we maximize the talents of Juan K and the rest of the design team but keep things reasonable when you’re going to be running into a boundary every 90 seconds?”

That’s a heap of tacks and a heap of gybes. I think I heard Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton somewhere estimating 60+. I think I heard Terry estimating 40+. Either way, it’s more than I have fingers and toes, and they’re each going to come up mighty fast. How fast can you say, “Hurdles in hurdling?”

“The challenge will be to build speed well out of a tack or a gybe. Or build speed out of a bottom-mark rounding and get into upwind mode. The boats will be going upwind at 20 knots and dropping to 6-7 knots in a tack,” Hutchinson said. “The team that can solve those problems will probably be the successful team.”

While maintaining approximate verticality, of course.

Meanwhile, as the first team to trial a full-scale wing for an AC72, Sweden’s Challenger of Record sailors have gone their own way, mounting the wing on a modified ORMA 60 tri. “It’s awesome to be out first,” Hutchinson said. “This thing is on a scale that I don’t think anyone fully thought through.”

© Sander van der Borch/Artemis Racing

The team is sailing as much as possible, but:

“For every hour on the water, there are 3-4 hours of work ashore. We’re being as methodical as we can, to understand the structural side. Data collection is not to be taken lightly, and gaining experience with the wing before we launch the 72-footer as close as possible to July 1 [the earliest allowed-date] reduces what we have to think about when we go AC72 sailing. This also is an opportunity to start working as a full team, to show ourselves where we’re exposed.

“We’re out here in a moderate breeze going two to three times windspeed,” Hutchinson said, “I put myself on San Francisco Bay in a lot more wind and I just imagine where that’s going to go.”

Artemis plans to launch in July in Valencia, while Oracle Racing will launch on San Francisco Bay. In each case, that’s a matter of logistics. Oracing Racing is home on SF Bay. Many of the individuals of Artemis Racing are at home there too, but the team has been based in Valencia, and everything’s working there so far. Given a regular diet of big wind on San Francisco Bay, Hutchinson said, “It would be risky to sail on San Francisco Bay straightaway. We need to be fully ready to put the boat on the racecourse when we get there.”

The Artemis Racing wing is presumably unique, not in being a three-element wing—we’re expecting all the AC72 wings to have three elements, unlike the two-element AC45s—but unique in having 38 hydraulic cylinders controlling the wing components, actuated by a CAN-bus, with hydraulic pressure maintained by nonstop grinding. We took a close look at it HERE.

Wings open the door to so many new ways of doing things, and I just had to ask, since a three-element wing can be used to generate more power than a two-element wing (that’s useful when you want power), can it also be used to depower more effectively than a two-element wing? That capability might be useful, for example, on a day when San Francisco Bay is in full cry. Terry’s answer was not exactly technical, but it was intriguing: “Yep. When you depower the control elements, to a degree you can add stability to the boat by going the wrong way.”

We first explored this topic more than a year ago, without resolving whether we were talking about just spoiling some of the heeling moment, or actually “lifting” the whole structure —it works in theory—to weather.

Heh. Nobody has more fun than us. The wing—

© Sander van der Borch/Artemis Racing

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A View of Peskin Point

By admin | Published: February 27, 2012

You know how, sometimes, you’d rather be wrong?

I seem to remember writing, “If” lead negotiator Stephen Barclay and his America’s Cup cohorts were a trifle naïve regarding San Francisco politics when they first blew into town, trumpeting the splendors to come, an 11th hour lawsuit filed last week by former President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and still-local chairman of the Democratic Party Aaron Peskin should complete their education. This is a blood sport, and you don’t have to be certifiably sane to play.

I remain on-message. The America’s Cup is going to be fine.

Unfortunately, if you also care about the San Francisco waterfront, then the news is less so good.

Today came the announcement that negotiations between the America’s Cup Event Authority and the City/Port of San Francisco have taken a new turn. Forget about a business deal that would have re-habbed crumbling piers using Larry Ellison’s money, with rent credits as a primary means of long-haul reimbursement.

Piers 30-32, the poster children for what still needs fixing on the Embarcadero, are now to be known as Peskin Point. Looks good in the pic, but if (when) it finishes crumbling into rubble, in this decade, it will be a point all right, a point walled-off to humans, reaching uselessly into San Francisco Bay.

Photo courtesy Bob Naber

Team bases move all the way south to Pier 80, at the foot of Cezar Chavez Street, where Oracle Racing has been headquartered since 2011. At the Mayor’s press conference, Event Authority lead negotiator Stephen Barclay referred to Pier 80 as “always the contingency plan.” Other plans remain in place for an America’s Cup Village on the Cruise-Ship-Terminal-to-be Piers 27/29. “I don’t think we can fit all the teams at Pier 80,” Barclay said. “We’ll have to look at putting some of them on 27/29.”

Hearty congratulations to those who thought that Mr. Ellison, because he is rich, should just give the Port a makeover. We look forward to your ideas on how to get the job done now.

Understand, I’m not believing that the Peskin lawsuit was the deal-killer here. (Aaron, we love you, but you’re just not, that, relevant. But I’ll grant you, your “Waterfront Watch” lawsuit was a perfect example of what goes wrong in The City That Used To Know How.)

BUT WAIT!

There is hope. The Mayor referred to the reconstruction of 30-32 as not happening “at this time.” So all we have to do is hope that Oracle Racing wins America’s Cup 34, and the Cup stays in San Francisco, and Larry still wants a deal on piers that nobody else will touch.

What could be more straightforward or simple?

The America’s Cup, meanwhile, will be fine. The Spanish team, GreenCom, will build at least one AC72, giving us, at minimum, two pairs of Challengers on the water, plus Oracle Racing’s pair of Defenders. Until June 1, it’s still possible that another team or two will take the next step up.

Judging by the ACWS calendar published in the Port’s press release below, ACWS has scrubbed its attempt to add an event in New York to the 2012 sked. Or perhaps that is still background.

The release notes that the neighborhood around Pier 80 stands to benefit tremendously. I’m good with that, but I can’t help noticing that the America’s Cup has now moved to Dogpatch.

The release begins by quoting San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee:

“This consolidated venue plan, with the teams at Pier 80, will ensure we are ready for races this year and in 2013 and brings new investment and improvements to our City’s Southern waterfront.”

“We want to thank the Mayor, his staff and the City of San Francisco for their incredible support and efforts working with us to make our collective goal of a remarkable race a reality. We believe that these changes will further the progress towards our collective goal while maintaining major investments in City Infrastructure,” said America’s Cup Event Authority Board Member Stephen Barclay. “We look forward to continuing our work with the Mayor and the City and delivering all the benefits this race will bring.”

The additional development at Pier 80 in Dogpatch and the Bayview will mean millions of dollars in improvements and job opportunities in one of the City’s most underserved areas. The infrastructure improvements and
long-term development rights associated with the Event Authority’s
investments, originally proposed for team bases at Piers 30-32, will now no longer be necessary for races in 2012 and 2013.

The America’s Cup World Series races will be held in San Francisco from
August 11 – 19 and August 27 – September 2, 2012. The Louis Vuitton Cup, the America’s Cup Challenger Series, will be held in San Francisco from July 4 – September 1, 2013 and the America’s Cup Finals will be held September 7 – 22, 2013.

Posted in Destinations, Sailboat Racing, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Peskin Point

By admin | Published: February 26, 2012

“If” lead negotiator Stephen Barclay and his America’s Cup cohorts were a trifle naïve regarding San Francisco politics when they first blew into town, trumpeting the splendors to come, an 11th hour lawsuit filed last week by former President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and still-local chairman of the Democratic Party Aaron Peskin should complete their education. This is a blood sport, and you don’t have to be certifiably sane to play.

I remain on-message, however. Relax. The America’s Cup is going to be fine.
Unless it’s the San Francisco waterfront you care about. Then you might worry. There’s still no Plan B.

One day ahead of the deadline for challenging the environmental review approved by the Board of Supervisors and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, after the Mayor’s team, the Port and the Event Authority had spent a year working through agency after agency (Photo © Robin Schwartz)
after agency, Peskin filed on behalf of a mysterious outfit called Waterfront Watch.

Google Waterfront Watch and you reach a site that says, basically, Peskin ain’t us and we ain’t Peskin; “Google has failed you”.

Peskin’s complaint, Waterfront Watch vs. San Francisco Port Commission et al, alleges “procedural and substantive violations” in the process of developing and achieving approvals of the environmental impact report. Over 100 persons or entities are named in the suit, including even, ahem, Alinghi.

Hey, Ernesto, you’re out of the game, but, somehow, it’s your fault!

To enrich the irony, all the challenging teams have representatives in town right now taking meetings and looking for accommodations for hundreds of team members. Remember the financial windfall angle?

The fact is, AC34 is a complicated deal, with Barclay remaining “optimistic” about reaching an agreement with the city. There are lots of moving parts, and Joe Public (little old me) is never going to sort the intricacies of compensating the America’s Cup Event Authority for huge dollar outlays—to restore rotting piers—via one leaseback mechanism or another. My city representatives have been on the case for more than a year, working on a deal that comes to something around $111 million. That money comes from the Event Authority (software alchemist Larry Ellison being the enabler in the background) to redevelop needy segments of the Embarcadero that have no other suitor. These are piers that have been available for years, but every other developer who studied them turned and ran. Quoting a source I will leave anonymous, “If development on the Port were so lucrative, I assume the Port would already be fully developed, and we would not be able to host such a spectacular event.”

As a San Francisco taxpayer, I don’t want the city to give away the store. Thank you to those who are looking out for my interests—including striking a deal. Here we have a well-capitalized partner eager to invest according to the lend-lease model that succeeded in restoring the Ferry Building and creating the no-longer-controversial (!) ballpark.

What if you were to ring +1 510 747-4701 and ask for Marie Gilmore, Mayor of Alameda. Ask if the city of Alameda might be willing to host a few America’s Cup boats. What if you were to ring +1 510 412-2070 and ask for Gayle McLaughlin, Mayor of Richmond. Ask her if Kersey’s 2010 renderings of a Cup Village on the Richmond waterfront are still good to go.

With the breeze, the backdrops, the amphitheater, San Francisco remains key to Oracle Racing CEO Russell Coutts’ vision of transforming America’s Cup competition. The America’s Cup is not leaving.

So what’s going to happen?

Mostly likely, the City and the Event Authority will finalize a viable deal, and the Board of Supervisors will approve it 9-2 or 8-3 in their meeting on Tuesday, February 28, Room 250, San Francisco City Hall. Six votes will be enough. Most likely, a means will be found to pull the shades and get an answer to the question, OK Aaron, what do you really want? and the Cup will go forward as-envisioned on the Embarcadero of San Francisco. This is what should happen, and probably will.

I’m betting the effect of “Waterfront Watch” will prove as ephemeral as its existence.

But time is running out. What should have been a one-year construction project (remember jobs?) is now a nine-month project, and this can’t be strung out indefinitely for the sake of one politico who’s trying desperately to attract a constituency to lead.

So, the doomsday scenario:

If the deal fails, then, most likely, the Cup does not go to Richmond, does not go to Alameda, and does not leave San Francisco. There is ample space at Pier 80, foot of Cezar Chavez Street, to host the teams for America’s Cup 34. The Oracle Racing base is already in full gear at Pier 80, and that will be the base site for America’s Cup World Series racing coming to the Bay in either August or September. (Those dates are in flux, depending upon whether or not a second East Coast event is added to the 2012 calendar.) Either way, existing plans for a tent-city America’s Cup Village on the Marina Green and Crissy Field will go forward in 2012 and 2013. But as for the Embarcadero, suddenly the 2013 locus would no longer be within walking distance of Pier 39 and other tourist hotspots. Suddenly, many of the small businesses that have been expecting an upturn will be dimming the lights.

Cancel the order for pedicabs; invest in tacowagons.

Pity.

You are invited to join me in the newly-forming Committee for Perpetual Stagnation. We will have a small fund-raising arm, but we won’t be hitting your pocketbook hard. Our efforts will be limited to keeping an eye on Piers 30-32 until they complete their transmogrification into a pile of rubble, and then we will post a sign:

WELCOME TO PESKIN POINT.

.

Posted in Destinations, Sailboat Racing, Sailboats | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Ocean Film Festival:
Evening of Sailing

By admin | Published: February 23, 2012

A San Francisco treat since 2004, the Ocean Film Festival is growing in new directions, and you should know.

Will it go international come 2013? Don’t bet against it, and meanwhile there is a pre-event on Friday, February 24 at the Aquarium of the Bay to launch their first Evening of Sailing with three shorts and two, um, mediums.

Nancy Ogden’s Madstreak is the feature of the evening. It’s the story of Clay Burkhalter’s Mini-Transat race, and you’ve probably read about that venture in the sailing media, but the film is aimed to please your nonsailing friends as well. Think 89 solo sailors, and for Burkhalter, a 23-day Atlantic crossing in a boat not much bigger than a shoebox.

If you’re into thrills, there’s Franklin Tulloch’s Skiff 18 with high-octane footage from San Francisco Bay, Italy and Australia. Tulloch says, “Considered by many as the fastest monohull sailboats in the world, the 18 ft Skiff has been a mainstay on Sydney Harbour starting in the early 1900′s. These days however, the 18s have grown into super fast, ultra light weight carbon fiber sailing machines, somtimes reaching speeds of 35+ knots.

“Covering 3 continents over a 4 year period, the film introduces you to the extraordinary beauty, dedicated crews and unmatched skills shown in the true formula one of the sailing world.”

PRODUCER-DIRECTORS ON-SITE

Franklin Tulloch is one of three filmmakers who will be on hand for post-screening interviews.

Add Roji Oyama with a short outtake from a work in progress, Our Blue Canoe. The film follows the Pacific Voyagers, the fleet of traditional sailing craft from the Pacific Islands who passed through San Francisco Bay last year.

(Right now they’re en route from Cabo San Lucas to the Galapagos)

They say this about themselves and the project: “Far more than an environmental story, this is a human story, told by the people who are contending with the effects of a changing planet in very real ways. As we voyage with them across this vast continent of water, we find they are not only reclaiming their heritage as the finest of sailors, but also the finest of stewards. Drawing on the lessons of their past to propel us all forward, these navigators are charting a bold new course, steering us all toward a sustainable future on earth—Our Blue Canoe.”

Add Vince Casalaina, who has put a huge effort into filming Snipe class sailing for his upcoming Serious Sailing, Serious Fun. Vince puts it this way: “The documentary showcases the Snipe Class, but really speaks about all those people who compete in one-design dinghies. As best I know, this is the only professional documentary that has been done on a one-design dinghy class in the recent past. Several were attempted around the Star class centenary [2011] but none of them succeeded in getting seed funding, let alone completion money.”

If you have a bone to pick, here’s your chance: I’ll be introducing the films and interviewing the directors on Friday night, so bring your rotten tomatoes, each wrapped in a $20 bill . . .

What you need to know, the official version:

Indulge in wine and appetizers in the main lobby of the Aquarium of the Bay’s Bay Theater on PIER 39 at 6 p.m. The film festivities will begin with a special introduction by Kimball Livingston, Editor-at-Large of Sail Magazine, blogger of Blue Planet Times and author of Sailing the Bay and continue with five independent films highlighting nautical feats from around the world. Following the screenings, stay to mix and mingle with sailing enthusiasts and select film directors.

Event: An Evening of Sailing Films
Date and Time: February 24, 2012, 6 p.m.
Location: Bay Theater, Pier 39 Beach Street at Embarcadero
Tickets: Purchase tickets online here
For more information visit Aquarium of the Bay.

The official drumroll:

Since its launch in 2004, SFOFF has attracted thousands of audiences of all ages, from around the world, including film enthusiasts, water sports fans, educators, and environmental supporters. It was the first event of its kind in North America, inspired by the well-established ocean festival in Toulon, France that continues to drawing large audiences for more than 40 years. In 2011, the festival presented over 50 films, from 11 different countries and featured post film Q&A sessions with visiting filmmakers, special panel discussions with content experts, and the Fifth Annual Free Student Education Program.

The festival is dedicated to using film as a medium to increase public awareness of the environmental, social and cultural importance of marine ecosystems and foster a spirit of ocean stewardship.

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Posted in Cruising Under Sail, Destinations, People & Profiles, Sailboat Racing, Sailboats | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

SF-AC Negotiations:
Exclusive Pictures

By admin | Published: February 22, 2012

Okay, we hope it’s not quite that . . .

Even as negotiations continued between the city fathers of San Francisco and the America’s Cup Event Authority, with Stephen Barclay as the lead, Oracle Racing held a media day on Tuesday—I suspect the sailing team would rather have had the time for other business—and my takeaway was a comment from Russell Coutts that he knows of a fourth challenger who has begun work on an AC72 catamaran for the 2013 America’s Cup match.

Good.

We’ve downsized from the total of nine or ten AC72s that were thrown out as pie in the sky soon after the big trimaran won the America’s Cup, and we’re even downsizing (most probably) from the six challengers that more sober observers were guesstimating at the same time. But a fourth AC72 team in 2013 would be bigger than add-one. It would mean three pairs of raceboats on the water at a time, two pairs of challengers in the Louis Vuitton Cup plus the Defender’s two boats in what will be not exactly a Defender’s Trials. But it will be a trial all right to be prepared to keep the Cup in the USA.

Compared to Valencia in 2007 where there were teams that wouldn’t have held up in the regular run of Grand Prix competition, 2013 promises to kick off with an instant Final Four. And a long Final Four season they will have of it. It’s unlikely that a fourth challenging team (GreenCom?) would prove as strong as Artemis, Emirates Team New Zealand or Luna Rossa, but it is even more unlikely that anything less than a battle-hardened tough case will emerge to contest the America’s Cup match in September, 2013.

Is it good news if we don’t have more challengers? Of course not. At the gateway to the Orient we should have Korea and China. In a multihull format we should have France. But could a China-brand team of Western sailors actually transform itself into a team of Chinese sailors between now and 2013? Of these three countries, only a French team would be likely to apply meaningful pressure in the Challenger eliminations.

To my surprise, the downsizing of expectations took six days to hit the local press, counting from the meeting of the Budget and Finance Subcommittee of the SF Supervisors last Wednesday.

Pity the bloke on the street who thinks that this is news you can use, but, in the San Francisco Examiner we find Supervisor John Avalos fretting over the “disappointing turnout for a November event in San Diego.” Dude, it was November, and it was San Diego. That town ignored the racing even when it had the Cup. I could explain at least some of the reasons why in both instances, but you have to buy the beers and be prepared for a long sit.

In the same piece we have Aaron “oops, lost my political base” Peskin declaring to the San Francisco public that, “There’s no history of sailing regattas being a mass spectator sport in San Francisco or the world.” So let’s play a little game. Where’s Aaron?

Not in that picture, shot casually during the Louis Vuitton races in Valencia, Spain and easily duplicated by aiming the camera in any direction on any day from mid-calendar forward. Or before that in Auckland, New Zealand. Or in Fremantle, Australia. Never in San Diego, no. Not San Diego. So, Aaron, I’ll be happy—if you ever regain a political constituency—to explain at least some of the reasons why, but you have to buy the beers and be prepared for a long sit.

There’s probably another meeting today, Wednesday, for the city to present its proposals. Meanwhile, it is impossible for the bloke on the street, or me, to put a valuation on the matters at issue. Conspicuously, that is ACEA’s recently-surfaced desire for an after-regatta lease on Pier 29, the public space pier joined to the Cruise Terminal to-be.

Both sides have made occasional doomsday predictions about how the city could lose the Cup, and the Cup could lose the city.

But I don’t see it.

It would be possible to run a viable America’s Cup event from Pier 80, at the foot of Cesar Chavez. That’s the present Oracle Racing base, and it will be the primary base for racing this August and/or September when the one design AC45 fleet comes to town on the last leg of its 2012 tour. Retreating from the touted tourist-friendly, locals-friendly, renovation-desperately-needed downtown locations to remote Pier 80 would be a pity all around. But the city of San Francisco would lose more than the event.


THE ORACLE RACING MEDIA TOUR

The hulls for Oracle Racing’s first AC72 (but not the wing) are being built in the team’s gigantic shed at Pier 80. They let us go in, through this door . . .

though without cameras, on the argument that digitized photos could be fed into software that would analyze them down to the nth degree on behalf of the enemy. Inside, I gazed deeply into a half-mold for an AC72 hull. I studied. I pondered. I can tell you (but don’t tell anyone else or I’ll have to kill you) that it’s skinnier in front than in back.

Sitting nearby, not in a secured zone, was this thingamajig that is not unlike a catamaran hull . . .

Which I suppose, but do not know, falls into a category not unlike the L-turn daggerboards with the little bullets on bottom that both Oracle Racing tri’s were carrying in their demonstration sail (AC45s race with one-design straight daggerboards but can test-sail other configurations). I figure, if they liked them, they wouldn’t be showing them to us.

As originally pitched, Oracle Racing CEO Russell Coutts was going to have been aboard the restored FDR Presidential Yacht Potomac to mingle with the press as we watched the catamarans sail. Something tells me his priorities shifted as negotiations with the city took their most recent turn. Let’s just remember this basic rule:

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