Boats Deserve Worthy Names >> Scuttlebutt Sailing News:

a-solitary-sea-rover:

The poet in me absolutely agrees with Damian Christie’s editorial here, boats named for sponsors in major events seem dull and unromantic compared to some of the more poetic names their predecessors had. At the same time, however, I realize that those poetically-named-boats were typically backed by single wealthy individuals in a time when participation in sailing was even more restricted than it is today, and that in the corporate era many people from comparatively humbler backgrounds have been able to participate in these events by recruiting such sponsors with the caveat that they name their boats after them. 

Perhaps typical teams with brand names that are themselves poetic-sounding, such as Artemis and Luna Rossa, and two-part names that are half-brand, half-original, like Kilcullen Voyager-Team Ireland and Sun Hung Kai Scallywag, are the best compromises possible at present.

It’s a gross disappointment that the names of boats in global events like the Volvo Ocean Race and the America’s Cup – even down to a domestic regatta like the Superfoiler series in Australia – are little more than unmemorable, unflattering billboards for their sponsors.

I thought I was relatively familiar with the VOR teams in this edition but if you asked me to rattle them off on my fingers, the only one I could automatically name is Scallywag for the joint Hong Kong/Australian entry – and that’s not even its official name! In fact, I quite like Scallywag as a name for a boat – it’s certainly better than Sun Hung Kai team!

In the Superfoiler series, we have unedifying names like Euroflex, IDTech and Kleenmaid, which are mere sponsor names. Considering Euroflex has a ‘dream trio’ of Australian superstars – Glenn Ashby, Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen – flying on the foiler, you’d think a combination like that would be worthy of a more dynamic name!

The same is true of the America’s Cup in recent times (with a few notable exceptions, eg Alinghi, Luna Rossa, Artemis). Most people would know the 2017 Cup winner as Team New Zealand – but the boat’s actual name was Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand).

Interesting side note: The boat that actually won the last edition of the Volvo was the only one with a proper name. Ian Walker’s Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing was the team that won, and in the video coverage they always called the boat that, but in fact the boat was named Azzam (Arabic for “Determination”), the same as the Volvo 70 Ian raced in the 2011-12 edition of the race.

The Volvo 70 Azzam was destroyed in a fire in 2015, but the Volvo 65 formerly known as Azzam is still racing: She’s now Scallywag. 🙂

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/171956544831.

The winner and still champion.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/2w7X23F.

anonsally
asked “I, for one, would be interested to hear at least a little more about…”

By request. :-) But after a cut so those uninterested in my personal take on Leg 6 of the Volvo Ocean Race can sail on by.

This is the leg from Brazil to Newport, Rhode Island. They should be finishing early in the morning on Thursday, after a leg that’s been a pretty straightforward affair. No major injuries, no big storms.

Here’s 16 days of racing condensed into 30 seconds:

The size of the little boats gives you a sense of the scale of the tracker; big boats mean they’re all close together (within a few miles of each other). At maximum separation the trailing boat (SCA) was about 70 miles behind the leader, though they’ve since closed the gap to about 40 miles as the fleet sails into lighter winds off the East Coast.

SCA hung close to the leaders for a long time, and were actually the first boat across the equator. They had a bad couple of days as the fleet entered the floating weed of the Sargasso Sea, though; my guess is that their weed-clearing procedures (doing big S-curves, heeling the boat to windward, backing down, or jumping over the side to clear the weeds by hand) were less polished than those of the leading boats. And generally, they still seem to exhibit the same tendency to ease off the throttle somewhere around the end of the second week of the leg.

Discussing why this happens is a favorite topic among the obsessives at Sailing Anarchy. For the team’s biggest fans it’s an article of faith that they’ve been cruelly shafted by the International Jury that denied them the right to replace their Fractional Code Zero (one of their more important downwind sails) after destroying it on Leg 5. My take on that is yeah, it’s probably hurt them some, but 1) not as much as their most-ardent supporters believe; the repaired FR0 doesn’t appear to be that slow, and 2) taking care of the sails was always going to be a key factor the teams would compete on, given the limited-spares rule used for this edition of the race in order to hold costs down for the sponsors.

More significant, I think, is the team’s general lack of experience at this sort of racing. They’ve closed that gap a lot relative to the other teams, but there’s still a gap.

Ultimately, I think responsibility for the team’s failure to do better must be laid at the feet of skipper Sam Davies. Just as I felt skipper Chris Nicholson of Vestas Wind got off without being held properly accountable for the error that put that team on the reef, SCA’s skipper bears ultimate responsibility. She has to. That’s just how it works. She’s the final backstop, with a non-delegable duty to manage the overall operation of the boat. If they slow down relative to the other boats sometime around their third week at sea (which has happened on every leg), it’s up to Sam to figure out why and fix it. That it keeps happening makes it her fault, by definition.

I think what’s going on is that under the pressure of being at sea for that long, there’s an inevitable tendency to ease up and go into “cruising mode”. The skipper needs to counteract that by keeping up the pressure on the crew. But for Sam that’s doubly hard to do, because 1) her own previous racing experience has mostly been single-handed, where the emphasis is on conserving energy and not pushing too hard, and 2) her personality makes her an upbeat consensus-builder who tries to put a positive spin on every setback.

There have been hints of others on board who have chafed at her tendency to slip into this mode. But they’re not in charge.

Anyway, with the remaining three legs (especially the last two) being the shortest of the race, I think there’s a good chance for the team to get some better finishes before the end. I’m looking forward to seeing if they can do that.

At the front of the fleet, Dongfeng has continued to show their speed. ADOR is right behind them, though. At this point, given the point deficit they picked up when their mast broke on Leg 5, Dongfeng needs ADOR to give them some help by screwing up or having a gear failure in order to put some boats between them. There’s a lot of racing left, but with every mile it looks more and more like ADOR’s race to lose.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1OZ2Xge.

It’s a shame that of all the Volvo teams, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing is the one that releases the least amount of video from the boat. Matt Knighton, the OBR, shoots and uploads great material. But fans only get to see little bits of it when the central VOR media operation incorporates it into their own videos. This is one of the better ones of those.

It’s especially disappointing because ADOR is leading and in a strong position to win the whole thing going into the start of leg 6 on Sunday.

Anyway, I’m officially swearing off whining about it. This is the last time! If I do it again please send me anon hate telling me to knock it off. Thanks.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1NFHmZy.

Azzam rounding Cape Horn, March 30, 2015. Source.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1ISKD1A.

Phil Harmer at the helm of Azzam off East Cape, New Zealand, March 19, 2015. Source.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1Oh6Zxy.

Someone got helicopter shots as the fleet was leaving East Cape. Ian Walker was quoted on the official ADOR twitter saying, “Hard reaching in 25-30kts, very wet on deck,fleet spread N-S”.

It could well be that this is the last we’ll see of the boats in terms of not-taken-by-them photography until after they’ve rounded Cape Horn. But for those onboard it’s just the beginning.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1FCxkCt.

yanthiebya:

Ai

Offshore sailboat racing at times is stressful, exhausting, boring, and uncomfortable.

But it has its compensations.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1AaQl9q.

“If you were to explain how to play cricket to me in 10 seconds, how would you do it?”

Skipper Ian Walker of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. As of February 19, 2015, Walker’s team is in second place in the 38,000-mile Volvo Ocean Race.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/19DLaIF.

After hearing Genny Tulloch mention Dongfeng sailing lower and faster in the on-board interview with Martin Strömberg today, I wondered if you could see it on the tracker. Since the leaders were all basically in a drag race today along the northern limit of the ice zone, it makes for a nice speed test.

And boy, was she right. The gif above shows Dongfeng closing rapidly on ADOR throughout the afternoon. Both boats were surfing at high speed on port gybe. At the beginning of the animation, 1238 UTC, Dongfeng was 28.2 miles from race-leader ADOR. Nine hours later, at the end of the clip, they’ve closed to 12.9 miles. That’s huge.

I think it’s unlikely that anyone on ADOR could see Dongfeng behind them, so they would have been unaware of the Chinese boat closing. The first they would have known about it would have been the 1915 sched.

I think the racing on ADOR probably got a lot more serious at that point. Because the gains pretty much stopped.

It would have been interesting to know who was at the helm and who was trimming on each boat throughout the afternoon, and whether either boat made any sail changes.

This race is very much not over.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/13pS4hy.