ALL AMERICAN OFFSHORE TEAM

The All American Offshore Team is focused on offshore sailing. I can spend more time speaking about sailing offshore having done a fair amount and loving it. I am probably showing my age but I do not see clearly how this works as a system. Perhaps I am showing that I am indeed not part of the Facebook generation as stated by Russell Coutts.  What I see is a system that throws money at a perceived problem to solve that problem. It is so far from the way I grew up and what I came to love about offshore sailing; that this remains an unresolved issue in my mind. I see this a merely a vehicle to feed professional sailing.

Most top boats are now crewed by entirely paid crews and I am not going to try to turn back the hands of time. Besides the boats are now so technical, in many cases it is frankly safer to have a professional crew who are familiar with the systems.

My memories and stories are so far from the world today, it makes me question my relevance. During my early years I worked building boats, masts, sails, rigging. Studied weather; sailed as many classes as possible(dinghys,catamarans, big boats), broadening my understanding of sailing as much as I could at the time.

PIRATES AND NEW RULES

The electronic monitoring of the boats racing in the America’s Cup instead of judges in boats will changes yacht racing again. The America’s Cup seems determined to alter yacht racing as we have known it. Personally I have long wondered when we would have this sort of thing. GPS has become very accurate. Judges and the boats necessary have made match racing very labor intensive and expensive. We should be using this technology in all yacht racing. It would allow very accurate guidance in a protest hearing at the least.

It has also been announced that the solid wings for the 72 foot boats will be only the smaller version, not several as originally planned.

This is the light side of sailing. Four Americans were killed this week in a part of the world that has become famous for Pirates.

Even for modern Navy, no easy solution to piracy

BY JEANETTE STEELE

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2011 AT 9:38 P.M.

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/ USS STERETT

The 509-foot Sterett steams off Point Loma during maneuvers in 2010. The destroyer is among the Navy’s newest ships, having been commissioned in 2008.

In the vast waters around the Gulf of Aden, roughly 1 million square miles of sea, finding pirates and rescuing their victims is something even today’s sophisticated, nuclear-power Navy can’t always do.

After Tuesday’s killing of four Americans aboard their hijacked yacht off the coast of Oman, Navy officials remained silent about whether the American deaths will prompt a change in tactics. Meanwhile piracy experts say bulking up the U.S. military presence or even attacking pirate dens in Somalia isn’t necessarily the long-term answer. Any solution must change what turns people into high-seas criminals, they said.

Navy ships steaming out San Diego, including the Boxer amphibious group on Tuesday, are increasingly listing anti-piracy as one of their top deployment missions. But they are finding themselves operating in a part of the world where the brigands are not ideology-driven terrorists or warriors, but desperate youths being controlled by businessmen hungry for multimillion-dollar ransoms.

“Everybody’s going to say now we’ve got to go in there guns blazing,” said retired Rear Adm. Terry McKnight, who commanded the Navy’s anti-piracy task force when it was launched in early 2009.

“But, first of all, nobody wants to go after the pirates ashore in Somalia. And the other thing is, it’s a criminal event. You have to fall under the guidelines of international justice,” McKnight said.

“If we had a 1,000 ship Navy to go out there, we’d make a major dent in piracy … but the problem is the area is so vast you can’t be everywhere.”

Last year was the worst on record for mayhem on the seas. Pirates captured 1,181 mariners and killed eight, hijacking more than 50 ships, according to the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Bureau.

The situation is most bleak off Somalia, which accounted for 92 percent of all ship seizures in 2010.

International attention, including the Navy’s now 2-year-old Combined Task Force 151 and two European task forces, has decreased attacks in the Gulf of Aden. Navy officials said there are 34 warships, under 15 different national flags, now patrolling the gulf area.

But the pirates are pushing farther out.

Tuesday’s killings were an example of the new pattern: Somali pirates used a “mother ship,” a larger vessel they’d hijacked earlier, as a base to extend their skiff attacks northward into the Arabian Sea.

The 58-foot yacht, carrying a Marina del Rey couple and their two friends, was trailed by four Navy ships, including the San Diego-based destroyer Sterett.

Negotiation with the pirates was attempted but ultimately failed to save the Americans, who were killed by the pirates. A team of Navy SEALs raced to cover the 600 yards between the Sterett and the yacht after pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the destroyer.

To Tom Wilkerson, U.S. Naval Institute chief executive, that loss of life means current anti-piracy strategy isn’t working.

Differing from McKnight, he is in the camp that says follow the pirates onto land.

“Finding pirates in the act in that area is a dice roll,” said Wilkerson, a retired two-star Marine general.

“If the U.S. and the international community are serious about reducing the piracy, they need to engage using the UN resolutions to put some kind of force ashore and remove the sanctuary.”

The Sterett is only the most recent in a string of San Diego warships drawn into pirate-fighting.

In September, a platoon of Camp Pendleton-based Marines aboard the Dubuque rescued the crew of the German cargo ship Magellan Star.

In a mission that required a White House green light, 24 force reconnaissance Marines captured 9 Somali pirates and saved the crew that was hiding in a fortified part of the ship.

Capt. Alex Martin, who led that team, said the Somalis almost instantly dropped their earlier bravado when the first Marine appeared over the bow.

“You felt like they were criminals who had been caught. It wasn’t like dealing with elements of al Qaeda in Iraq, where this is what these guys do, they believe in this,” said Martin, 28, a La Jolla High School graduate. “These were just criminals. And once they got caught, they were like, ‘Oh, God, what now?'”

The San Diego-based destroyer Howard had its pirate encounter in September 2008, when it rushed across 350 miles of ocean to aide the Faina, a Ukrainian vessel carrying military weapons.

In the end, the ship’s owners declined to risk their cargo in a raid, instead paying the pirates a $3 million ransom six months later.

And, in one of the most high-profile actions of late, Navy SEAL snipers bobbing on the back of a destroyer shot pirates holding the captain of the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama at gunpoint in April, 2009.

It was that incident, and the later 33-year sentence handed to one of the pirates by a New York court, that may have intensified the peril on the seas.

The Associated Press on Wednesday quoted Somali marauders who vowed that they will kill hostages before being captured during military raids and facing trial.

It’s not the way this business used to work, piracy experts say.

Somali pirates were known for taking hostages and holding them, alive, for ransoms that have ballooned in recent years. A common demand in 2005 was $150,000 to $200,000. Now the stakes have risen to as high as $9 million per ship, said Martin Murphy, author of the new book “Somalia, the New Barbary? Piracy and Islam in the Horn of Africa.”

If the international community promoted some other way for ordinary people to make money, that pirate bounty might not look so attractive, Murphy said, as much of it flows to the ringleaders, not the people taking the risks.

For cargo shippers, the high-stakes gamble appears to make sense for now, said Peter Chalk, RAND Corp. analyst. Using the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden cuts travel time from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean by three weeks, saving the shipping industry an estimated $2 billion a year or more.

Efforts to make ransom payments illegal have gone nowhere, Chalk said. If the United States wanted to change that, or rewrite current rules of engagement for Navy ships fighting pirates, the task would be difficult because these maritime polices are international in nature, he said.

Pleasure boaters used to be somewhat safe from Somali pirates, as they weren’t seen as rich ransom targets. That may explain why the Marina del Rey couple entered the area off Oman.

“I think here they weren’t expecting trouble because they were so far away from major concentration of attacks,” Chalk said.

As Wilkerson, the retired Marine general, said about U.S. policy toward pirates, that strategy may need to be reworked in the future.

DATES FOR THE AMERICA’S CUP WORLD SERIES

The winning America’s cup trimaran USA 17 belonging to Oracle racing is transiting the Panama Canal as I write on it’s way to San Francisco.

America’s Cup World Series Dates Released
With final venue bids under review, the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) released the inaugural America’s Cup World Series (AC World Series) dates. The first half of the AC World Series will consist of five nine-day regattas in 2011, finishing up with three more regattas by mid-2012. The winning host cities for the 2011-2012 AC World Series will be revealed in the coming weeks.

The AC World Series venue assessment process has focused on the ability of prospective host sites to provide the infrastructure and support needed to stage a superior event on and off the water. Tens of thousands of fans are expected to watch in person at each venue.

The 2011-2012 AC World Series will be sailed in the AC45, the forerunner to the next generation of America’s Cup boats.

The 2012-2013 season will be sailed in the larger and faster America’s Cup boats, the AC72, and its champion will be crowned just prior to the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup (America’s Cup Challenger Series) in July 2013. This AC World Series will also enable all teams seeking to compete in the America’s Cup Finals in September 2013 to be race-ready for the AC72.

2011-2012 America’s Cup World Series Schedule*

Event One: 16 – 24 July
Event Two: 13 – 21 August
Event Three: 17 – 25 September
Event Four: 15 – 23 October
Event Five: 10 – 18 December
Event Six: 17 – 25 February, 2012
Event Seven: 14 – 22 April, 2012
Event Eight: 19 – 27 May, 2012

*Dates are subject to change

G. L. WATSON ONE DESIGN

World’s oldest one-design starts build

  1. Thu, 17 Feb 2011
  1. Steffan Meyric Hughes
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Work has started on building the world’s oldest one-design yacht

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    Work has started on recreating the world’s oldest one-design class yacht. Hubert Stagnol, the French boatbuilder with a yard based in Brittany, has already laid down the wood to build the first example of the class, which lacks a name, in 124 years.

    The design was commissioned from GL Watson and Co by the Clyde Canoe and Lugsail Club and the first three were built in 1886, named Red, White and Blue. Three more were ordered the following year, but it’s thought no more were built after that time, and it’s also thought that none of the originals survives.

    It is, according to GL Watson, holders of the design to this day, an opportunity “to allow 21st-century sailors to gain first-hand experience of the origins of one-design sailing”. The drawings reveal that the origins of one-design sailing are a 19ft 2in (5.9m) LOA yacht with a 1ft overhang at the transom, 6ft (1.8m) beam and a sail area of 313sqft (29.1m2). A transom-hung rudder, long bowsprit, lug rig and low cuddy cabin complete the look.  The boat is being built for a mystery client.

    SAILROCKET UPDATE

    Helena and Paul are friends who are pushing the sport of sailing forward. From my perspective with enormous charm and grace. I wish them the best of luck, as I watch with interest at their progress.

    New Vestas Sailrocket 2 Aims For Speed Sailing Record
    During the last 15 months, the Sailrocket team has been focused on building a better, safer and – above all – faster boat in Vestas Technology R&D’s facilities on the Isle of Wight. Now Vestas Sailrocket 2 will be launched to the public for the first time.

    “Since we started pursuing the Outright World Speed Sailing Record 9 years ago, the record has been raised by exactly 9 knots. The current record holders, the kite surfers, have taken it out of the reach of all the previous contenders and it is going to take a very special boat to get it back. Vestas Sailrocket 2 is a boat that aims high. The only satisfactory outcome for us is the outright record,” Paul Larsen, pilot and project leader from the Sailrocket 2 team says.

    With the record raised to the current level, the ambitious team behind Sailrocket is even more eager to develop a boat to break the Outright World Speed Sailing Record. In order to do that, conventional design has been left behind and everything is pushed to the limit.

    “Many lessons have been learned since the first Sailrocket was launched in 2004. The first boat shows the scars of the many learning processes we have been through over the years. In the end it performed as predicted; although she briefly emerged as the fastest boat in the world, she never achieved the Outright record title. The record was like a mirage: as we got faster, so did the record,” Paul Larsen says.

    “We learnt a lot with the first boat. The recent performance of the kite surfers vindicated our decision to build a new boat. I’m confident that Sailrocket 2 has the potential to take the record to new levels.”

    Vestas Sailrocket 2 will be launched on 8 March at Venture Quays, in East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Both Sailrocket boats will be shown to the public.

    www.sailrocket.com

    EGGS

    Am I that current that Lady Gaga would copy my ideas? This crib was conceived and designed by my wife and built by me for our first grandchild. Work on the plug started more that a year and a half ago. The egg was then shipped to our son in the crate shown.

    Lady Gaga it is reported was less than original this year. People are saying her new song sounds exactly like Madonna. The costumes were certainly not as cool as in the past; and now even the set is taken from our idea? really.