America's Cup; What! Already!

I haven't been paying the America's Cup too much attention, other than the disasters, the pitchpole of Oracle and the recent tragic breakup of Artemis. This week I came to realize the challenger trials start tomorrow, Sunday July 7, so I'll add my two cents in before the series starts. (I'm a terrible prognosticator, I remember telling a friend of mine back in ancient history - 1987- that no one would want to go to Western Australia to challenge for the America's Cup; I think they ended up with around 10 to 12 different challenging syndicates in Western Australia.)

Though I applauded Oracle's decision to go with the catamaran (one can see here, my previous posts about the America's Cup), I now think the AC72 is too big, too powerful, too fast, too scary, and too expensive.

It seems the AC72 in the America's Cup may be in a Catch 22. On one hand, if the boats and crews can handle the conditions, we may have what I call the "human flying squirrel" phenomena; we'll watch the videos once or twice, say "Those guys are crazy" and move on. On the other hand, given the small field competing, if we have two catastrophic failures we may not have enough catamarans left to race the cup. (I also think the race track is much too small for the speeds of these beasts.)

But as I said, with the America's Cup my opinion is usually wrong. I hope it is. I would like to see some great racing in very unique racing machines.

A very good video of Team Oracle; interviews, AC72's in action (and in pieces) :

"We essentially sail in a hurricane all day....."

America's Cup (No Second Place) from RAPIDLIGHT on Vimeo.

Capsize Medley; A Sabre and a Topper

It's been some time since I posted on one of my favorite topics, small boat sailors capsizing.

In the first one, an Australian Sabre dinghy sailor was gybing to get back to the line before the start, spun out, and capsized to windward (the worst kind to rescue from). Said sailor performs stellar rescue with the added benefit he ends up on the right gybe heading back to the start line. Smiles all around.



In this second one, a junior sailor on a Topper (must be England) either collides with the coach boat, or the coach boat collides with him/her, net result, a rollover to leeward. Again, a TOH to this junior on a very speedy recovery.

Header Photo: Idem Class, St. Regis Lake

The Idem class dates back to 1899 - 1900 and is one of two surviving North American classes we can trace back to the Seawanhaka rating rule, (a waterline rule) that was popular before 1900. The Idem was designed by Clinton Crane as a one-design racer for the moneyed New York set that summered in the Adirondack Lakes, particularly St. Regis Lake. It is unique that the original fleet of twelve remains intact and racing (with the exception of the one that has been given to the Adirondack Museum, but the rest are serviceable). The class is to remain a "period" class (unlike the English Thames A-Raters of the same time frame) including a requirement that only cotton sails can be used. The fellow on the back deck is the mainsheet trimmer and from the photo's it doesn't look like he has a lot of mechanical advantage (i.e. multiple blocks) to ease his job with that huge mainsail. A true piece of Americana yachting history.

I have done another, November, 2014 post on the Idem.

Music for Fridays: Roots, Carly Rae Jepsen, Jimmy Fallon, "Call Me Maybe"

I used to have a regular music video post, every week or so called "Music for Fridays", now long discontinued as I found most of my blog readers couldn't care less about my musical tastes. Well, time to resurrect it, at least for this Friday.

A goofball jam session, using a bunch of kindergarten musical instruments featuring Jimmy Fallon and the Roots, who have done more to showcase what's out there in contemporary music than anyone else in the last ten years. Oh yeah, Carly Rae Jepsen is featured with her mega-pop song "Call Me Maybe". I can see myself in the background just humming as loud as I can on a kazoo! (I'm doing it now in my head.) Smiles all around, including mine whenever I watch this video.

OD-OY Review - The Blue Jay

Back in the 1960's, a period I consider the apex of dinghy sailing in the U.S. (some might say this is old guy nostalgia but, in the 1960's, there were more people sailing and racing dinghies, more dinghy classes, and more home built dinghy fleets than at any time since), the magazine One Design and Offshore Yachtsman (OD-OY for short, the precursor to today's Sailing World) published a very well done dinghy class directory in it's January issue. As a teenager, besotted with sailing, I used to pore over this issue very closely as each class review included (and there were a lot of classes featured) dimensions, a photo, and a short blurb.

I have scanned some of these individual class reviews thanks to Elliott Oldak, long time Star class racer, who still had some old issues of OD-OY in his library. All of the classes I've picked out can be built out of plywood. The first one is of the Sparkman and Stephen's 13' Blue Jay daysailor which was the junior trainer on Long Island Sound for many years but today, as a racing class, has been supplanted by the modern nexus of the Opti and Club 420.

From OD-OY:

There are a couple of Blue Jays that show up for the Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival; one young family in particular that seems to be always out sailing around the St. Michael's harbor. If you are shopping around for a stable daysailor that you could singlehand, or sail with an adult, or sail with your kids in a nice deep cockpit, and of small enough size so it is easy to manhandle on shore, you can't do much better than a Blue Jay.

I did help build a Blue Jay as an older teenager. After moving to Youngstown, Ohio we joined Berlin YC, but I also joined a nominal Sea Scout troop led by top notch Pymatuning Lightning sailor, Dr. Chuck Maltbie (I say nominal Sea Scout troop because we had no uniforms, no scheduled meetings, no formal command structure). Chuck decided a good project for this Sea Scout troop would be to build a Blue Jay (probably thought that we would all end up as Lighting sailors down the road). I don't remember much about the build other than the Blue Jay took a lot of wood screws, which had to be filled before painting (a nice canary yellow, same as Doc Maltbie's Lightning). The Blue Jay was finished (I think Doc worked on the boat 10 hours to every Sea Scout's 1 hour - the only way it was going to get on the water in any reasonable amount of time), a nice sailing dinghy, but my young head at that time was into faster racing dinghies such as the Fireball.

A photo of one of the Blue Jays at the 2012 Mid-Atlantic Small Craft Festival.

Update on June 29, 2013: Looks like the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has one for sale out of it's donation pile; 1853 BLUE JAY SAILBOAT-wood-13’6”-5.17” beam- $550

Tempo Scow whooping it up!

I have posted about the three South African Jack Koper designed scows and below is a video of two German gents having a grand old time reaching along in the Jack Koper Tempo scow. The first thirty seconds of the video is relaxed and then a grand breeze filters down the lake, sending them into giddy hyperspace. As I have said before, I am monolingual and don't have a clue what they're saying as they bomb along. It would be fun to sail on a Tempo.

I'll have more to say about Jack Koper's smallest scow, the Dabchick in a later post.



A more recent post on the Tempo scow.

Romain Berard; On his own

Romain Berard, Earwigoagin's erstwhile European correspondent, has started up his own blog, Dinghy 12 Pieds International (now also featured on my blogroll). This is a good thing. While I've tried to balance small boat coverage on my blog, there is no doubt I retain an Anglo slant. Romain will do a much better job in covering French traditional classes and French sailing history and he is writing posts in both French and English (so you don't have to cut and paste in Google Translate). Highly recommended you check his blog out on a weekly basis.