M Squared

SA (or should it be SI) posted a picture of Christophe Bouvet on Sirma in the 1600 mile Cap Istanbul 2008 . The brief post mentioned the challenging conditions facing the single-handed sailors. The Figaro Beneteau class (sweet boats) typically has interesting races with a large number of boats for single-handed ocean racing. The Cap Istanbul has... had 29. That was until this weekend. Fortunately, the 29th competitor will follow the other sailors to the finish... just not on his boat. The internet is great for sailors in general . It's especially nice in the off season and when you live in an area or country where the mainstream media thinks covering bicycle racing is an exotic sport... So, I click on the link to the Cap Istanbul and load the race viewer . It's the beginning of the 330nm, second leg from Cagliari, Sardinia to Marzamemi, Sicily. Not long into it, many boats (whose track is traced out by the viewer) dramatically change directions. Well, this is strange. Everyt...

Olin James Stephens II (April 13, 1908 – September 13, 2008) photo from sailing.org His first published design, a Six , appeared in the January 1928 Yachting with these comments by the young designer: “In any design the most important factors of speed seem to be long sailing lines and large sail area, with moderate displacement and small wetted surface. Then comes beauty, by which is meant clean, fair, pleasing lines. Though per se beauty is not a factor of speed, the easiest boats to look at seem the easiest to drive.” [from sail-world.com: Olin Stephens dead at 100 years old ] It's the "pleasing lines" of Olin Stephens J boats and those inspired by them that drew me to sailing when I was young. A legend passed away this weekend.

The EYC , Harvest Regatta was entirely a local fleet affair this year. Although the competition was familiar, the weekend provided plenty of good racing. Rounding the final leeward mark of one race in fourth we managed a second place finish by staying in more breeze than a couple boats in front of us. The finishes all weekend were pretty close. Although we didn't have as much wind as last year , 10 to 18+ was plenty... and too much for some! We usually like these conditions but our old Genoa required more repair tape after day one. The carnage was mostly on Sunday. One poor Lido lost their mast before the start of the first race. Before the day was over, the remaining Lidos agreed to retire. In the Santana 20 fleet, several boats changed to blades for the last race. We're typically among the last boats to make such a sail change but I agreed with the call once I saw that some of the repair tape was AWOL. The jib is almost brand new. The wind continued to build and the ji...