Zac Efron sails

Here is the recipe: get one movie celebrity, go sailing, and quickly there are paparazzi photos of the event splashed in all forms of non-sailing media. This seems to be a foolproof plan, and was recently demonstrated when Zac Efron went for a sail last week at Marina del Rey in Los Angeles to prepare for an upcoming movie role.

While it is unlikely that this occasion made much of a contribution to the 15,200,000 listings that Google has for him, this youthful star of the “High School Musical” franchise gave the sport a bit of a boost with over 50 websites picking up the story. For the astute observer of the photos, it was noticed that Zac’s day on the bay was in a Lido 14, and his instructor was none other than Olympic medalist Pease Glaser.

2009 ESPYs

MAUREEN MCKINNON-TUCKER NOMINATED FOR ESPY AWARD

For the best in movies, there are the Academy Awards. For the best in television, there are the Emmy Awards. Music has the Grammy Awards, and theatre has the Tony Awards.

For sports, there are the ESPYs.

Hosted by ESPN, the ESPYs gather top celebrities from sports and entertainment to commemorate the past year in sports by recognizing major sports achievements, reliving unforgettable moments and saluting the leading performers and performances. The 2009 show is on July 19th.

Among the 37 categories, 2008 Paralympic sailing gold medalist Maureen McKinnon-Tucker is one of the four nominees in the "Female Athlete with a Disability" category. There's not another sailor in any other category.

Maureen and teammate Nick Scandone overcame long odds to reach the Paralympic Games, let alone dominate the event. Nick lived with ALS just long enough to win the gold, while Maureen balanced her paralysis with training and attending to her 2 year old son’s battle with his brain tumor (he’s now 9 months post-treatment and currently cancer-free).

The recognition each nominee receives during the televised awards show is immense, but to see Maureen on the same stage as the elite athletes of the world would be epic. The winner in each category is determined by online voting.

Time for every sailor to support their sport in the easiest way possible…. GET OUT THE VOTE. Online voting is done here: http://promo.espn.go.com/espn/specialsection/espys2009/#/vote

Will promote for beer

This sounds like a good idea, if only to get people closer to the Scuttlebutt Brewing Company, which sits on the waterfront in Everett, WA:

It’s an ambitious project intended to serve boaters, reconnect Everett residents with the city’s waterfront and transform a former industrial area into a vibrant new neighborhood destination.

The $400 million Port Gardner Wharf project calls for a mix of condos, townhouses, office space, shops, restaurants, inns, a marine-related “Craftsmen District” and a network of walkways and other amenities in the city’s north marina area. -- Read on

TGIF

Hope your day is better than this firefighter...

Recipe for success

Here we go again, another brilliant example of the convergence of sailing with media-friendly entities. In early August, this UK event combines high profile boats and sailors, a well known company, charities, and celebrities:

The Artemis Challenge at Cowes Week has attracted a fleet of seven Open 60 boats, and more teams are expected to join the line up over the coming weeks. The race, run by Artemis Investment Management, is a 50 mile high speed sprint around the Isle of Wight for IMOCA 60s, with £10,000 ($16,300 US) donated to the charity of the winning skipper.

The skippers and their teams will be joined by a number of high profile celebrities for the event, which this year will also be an ideal warm up ahead of the Rolex Fastnet Race. The race has quickly become a popular event for skippers and the general public alike, and has bred a strong competition amongst the skippers to take first prize.

Of course it helps that Cowes Week is already a big stage, with over 1,000 boats competing and In excess of 100,000 spectators come to watch the sailing and enjoy the parties and live entertainment. Regardless, it is an inspired moment of opportunity grasped.

Go Scuttlebutt!

The Scuttlebutt e-newsletter was first launched in 1997, but it wasn’t until later in 2002 that we got around to launching a website. Soon thereafter we learned about the Scuttlebutt Brewing Company, and last summer got to sample some of their styles during a swing through their town of Everett, WA. Here’s a story about the brewery on the Three Sheets Northwest blog:

We like the beer at Everett-based Scuttlebutt Brewing Company — and apparently plenty of other people do too. The Brewer’s Association, a national industry organization, recently ranked Scuttlebutt sixth in the nation out of 928 brewpubs for the amount of beer sold last year. It also ranked third in Washington state. The company sold more than 3,900 barrels of its beer in 2008. That equates to 7,800 kegs or 121,000 gallons of beer—enough to cater about 4,000 weddings.

Go Scuttlebutt!

Butthead, butthead, butthead

Lucky for this Scuttlebutt subscriber that their email filter protected them from the offensive language in Scuttlebutt 2870. This was the email that I received:

To: editor@sailingscuttlebutt.com
Subject: Microsoft Forefront Server Security Notification: An email was blocked due to inappropriate content
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:53:14 -0500

Your email did not reach its intended recipient(s) due to being blocked for containing inappropriate content.

The message sent with Subject, +ACI-Scuttlebutt 2870+ACI-, was flagged by the system automatically for containing the following inappropriate content:

KEYWORD+AD0- Profanity: buttheads

To remedy this, please remove the inappropriate content and resend it.

I wonder how many more emails like this I will receive if Scuttlebutt 2871 includes 'Butthead, butthead, butthead'.

Father's Day

This would have made an awesome Father's Day gift:

FuelKleen from Centek Industries catches drips and splashes from boat fuel filling nozzles. A patented medium instantly catches and binds to oil, gasoline and diesel fuel before they spill into the water and cause pollution - and increase the likelihood of fines or other penalties. Slips easily over any fuel pump nozzle, can be reused until it is fully saturated. MSRP is $US5.50.

Perhaps they have a model that works for males too.

TGIF

Expectations

For the 132 years that the New York Yacht Club held the America’s Cup, it was widely suspected that the first skipper that failed to defend would have his head mounted in the place where the trophy once rested. This theory failed the litmus test when Australia II defeated Dennis Conner's Liberty in 1983, but metaphorically speaking, was not that far off.

A recent news story conjured images of what may happen to the British Sailing Team if they fail to live up to expectations during the 2012 Olympics. For the last two Games, the Brits have out-medaled the closest team by nearly a 2 to 1 margin. Now with the Olympics coming to London, will the pressure to perform be a positive energy or a negative?

So what was the news story mentioned above? Nothing really, just how a construction project near the site for the sailing events unearthed an ancient burial pit containing 45 severed skulls together with a tangle of torsos, arms and legs. Of course, a similar result would not occur for those British sailors failing to Medal in 2012, but metaphorically speaking, may not be that far off.

Earth imagery

Blue Beauty - Photos by Astronaut Sunita Williams

Educational, relaxing, amazing, hopeful, magical...

Click the image to view this powerpoint presentation.

Professional sailing

At the editor’s desk of Scuttlebutt, there is no shortage of press releases announcing the launch of new events or professional teams, with many of them badly needing the early press to have any hope of meeting their stated goals. When Paul Cayard and Russell Coutts announced their plans for the World Sailing League in February 2007, the sailing media - including Scuttlebutt - all bit hard.

This week in Scuttlebutt 2866, Paul discussed the initial concept of the WSL, and why it failed to succeed. Taking a further look at the development of the professional sector of sailboat racing, Scott MacLeod, whose company Force 10 Marketing has owned and operated the World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) since 2003, shared his thoughts:

As for pro sailing, there are two areas in the sport for professionals to make a living: self-supporting commercial events and existing events within the sport that permit ISAF Group 3 (paid) crew. The question is: Can professional sailing be commercially viable without the support of a patron (billionaire, rich owner, etc)? Right now the answer is no for a number of reasons:

- Fragmented and confusing offering of opportunities to sponsors.
- The ROI doesn't match with the costs or prices being asked.
- The ROI measurement isn’t' real or the numbers are skewed.
- The governing body/ISAF provides no control over the structure.

As for self-supporting commercial events that do currently exist, I know the WMRT is in that category, and I think the iShares Cup is close but I don’t know how many of the boats are fully sponsored (commercially viable) or actually paid for by owners. This would all be moot if the America’s Cup had rolled on nicely out of Valencia as that event was a commercial home run.

Auckland to Tauranga Race

craig, you might like this video of the annual Auckland to Tauranga coastal race at Easter 2009, this year we had up to 49 knots in a typical NZ winter squall, so we clocked 22.9 knots in a 20 year old Murray Ross 35 footer, great fun! The smiles on the crews' faces in the first minute tell the story! Cheers, Brian Trubovich. (Unfortunately my non-waterproof video camera drowned before the end of the race).

TGIF

Have a great weekend!

Promoting the sport

“We need to more people in the sport.” This statement has probably been made as many times as there have been questions on how we can grow the sport. Up in San Francisco, they have hit on a theme I have long championed, that is the convergence of sailing with media-friendly entities. Here is their event announcement:

“The first ever Celebrity Media Regatta will be held on Sunday, June 14th, in conjunction with the Giants-A’s baseball game, with the sailing event held next to AT&T Park in McCovey Cove. Local broadcast personalities will join local sailors for a parade and fun races to benefit BAADS (Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors). The event is organized by Marine Media Alliance, hosted by South Beach YC, presented by Summer Sailstice, instruction by Spinnaker Sailing, boats lent by the Catalina 34, J/105 and J/120 fleets, with assistance from lots of volunteers including norcalsailing.com, and contributions by Sail California and J/World.”

Holding the event during this cross-town rivalry, at a site where home runs over right field may hit one of the boats, crewing the boats with celebrities that will attract local television and print media, doing it for a worthy cause, and supported by numerous groups that will benefit from the publicity… win, win, win. This is a pretty damn good way to promote the sport!

Darwin nominee?

When 21-year-old Zebulon Tryon and 18-year-old Chris Reuter planned to sail their newly purchased 27-foot boat the 288 miles from Catalina Island to Monterey, CA, they did so with little sailing experience but with the promise of communicating daily to family. They left last Friday, and after failing to check in as promised, their family called the Coast Guard on Sunday to initiate a search.

The Coast Guard had an airplane and two helicopters searching by sunrise on Monday, soon finding the duo and later issuing them three citations in Port San Luis where they must now stay until they get those citations corrected. "They just didn't have the right radios or equipment on board. Their cell phones had died and couldn't be charged so they just didn't have contact with anyone," Petty officer Cory Mendall of the Coast Guard said.

The two sailors were cited for not having a personal flotation device, not having a sound producing device, and not having a visual distress signal.

Scuttlebutt question… is there anything else you would want to cite them for? Perhaps a Darwin Award?


Story source: http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?S=10495611&nav=menu544_1

Youth Coaching

It would be hard to imagine competing in a regatta and winning 7 out of 12 races… particularly a major championship. It would even harder to imagine having that score line and not winning the event too. However, that was how the U.S. Optimist Team Trials went for Bradley Adam, finishing 8th in an event used to qualify which Optimist sailors would be sent to major events around the world during the current season.

Inconsistency plagued his event (5-1-1-26-1-30-1-1-25-1-40-1), but Bradley receives high marks for improving from 43rd the year before. As Bradley notes, “My Dad runs a bunch of Opti clinics throughout the year and he has provided much of my coaching since day one. We started sailing each weekend from the first weekend in March through team trials. It is a small group of 8-10 sailors who are really good and help push one another to the limits. Sometimes my sister Grace and I would go sailing after school without a coach for a few hours. I go to a lot of Opti regattas without a coach and this helps in our preparation. Neither Grace or I had a coach at Team Trials.”

While it was revealing to learn that Bradley did not have a coach at the Team Trials, it was even more revealing to learn what some of the coaches were doing. When asked about what happened in some of the races he didn’t win, Bradley remarked, “Wind Shifts!!! I was on the wrong side of them. I found it a little bit discouraging that some kids had coaches upwind and radioed back to the starting line what the breeze was doing at the windward mark."

What…coaches at the top of the course providing weather information back to the starting area? Scuttlebutt eagerly awaits comments as to the prevalence of this practice at the youth level, AND if anything is being done to manage it.

Source: North Sails interview with Bradley Adam

Laser jibes

The Laser Training Center (LTC) in Cabarete, Dominican Republic has fast become the preferred destination for dedicated Laser sailors to hone their craft. From those that have been to LTC, they provide glowing reports of the consistent winds plus quality equipment and coaching. But is there more that meets the eye? The release of LTC’s ‘Advanced Laser Boat Handling' DVD has the Laser class and sailing community concerned about what is being taught in this Central America sailing site.

The question being asked on online forums: Are these sailors (US and Canadian Champions, among others) so good, or are they violating the rules of propulsion in light winds (aka, cheating)? Taking on the challenge of reviewing the DVD was Jos M Spijkerman (NED), an ISAF International Judge/Umpire, and author of the popular rules blog, Racing Rules of Sailing, and current ISAF Rule 42 specialist Sofia Truchanowicz (POL).

After Spijkerman showed a scene of light wind jibes from the DVD to Truchanowicz, she informed him that the jibing technique taught on the DVD was within the current interpretation of Rule 42 and that the maneuver was legal. According to Mr. Spijkerman, she did add that it was on the very border. If after jibing the boat would have been heeled to windward, creating propulsion in the form of a stroke of a paddle, it would be yellow flagged.

So there you have it… the line in the sand has not been crossed, and the rules have kept the lions in their cages.