March 2011 – Page 2 – stephenlirakis.com

THE SUPER MOON AND THE VERNAL EQUINOX

This was a big weekend. It is the last day of winter/first day of spring eg: the Vernal Equinox.Night and day are equal in length. Last night the well publicized “Super Moon” rose in the East. It really lived up to the billing. We went to the beach to watch it rise, we were not alone, which should hardly be a surprise, but I never imagined there would be so many people.

For those of you who are Virgo’s, it may be a disturbing weekend, all of this activity coinciding.

Finally, I spent this lovely day inside listening to Bill Gladstone at the well presented North Sails tactics seminar at the Wickford Yacht Club, along with Chris Wick and Lee Reichart.

north u 3 20 11 32523 — bill gladstone at wickford yacht club

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CORONET UPDATE TAKING SHAPE

EIGHT BELLS FOR GERRY DRISCOLL

I will keep fond memories of sailing with Gerry as, I am sure, will many others. The words of the obituary seem meager to describe a life that was so much fuller.

The attached photos were taken by Paul Mello in 1979. “Intrepid” belonged to Baron Bic; we were a trail horse for “France III” being sailed by Bruno Trouble. We, or I should say Gerry won every start and we failed to reach the windward mark ahead only once all season. The hope was that if Gerry could find the financing, he would come back as an American contender. I will add that while the miracle of 1974 was not likely to be repeated, but Gerry as always could push the competition hard.

EIGHT BELLS

John Gerald Driscoll III, Gerry, passed away Saturday evening (March 12th)

in his sleep at his apartment in La Jolla, CA. He was 87 years old.

His sailing career highlights include winning the Star Class World

Championship in 1944 and winning the Congressional Cup match racing

championship in 1965 and 1966 with an 18-0 record those years. Gerry’s

involvement with the America’s Cup began as tactician for New York Yacht

Club Commodore Robert McCullough on the twelve meter Vim12-US-15, which was

the trial horse to Columbia 12-US-16 in the 1964 America’s Cup trials. He

then went on to sail the twelve meter Columbia in 1967 in the America’s Cup

trials and was skipper of the twelve meter Intrepid 12-US-22 in the 1974

trials.

Gerry was instrumental in the organization and fund raising for Rod Davis

and the twelve meter Eagle 12-US-60 syndicate in 1987, and in 1992 he was

San Diego Yacht Club’s liaison to the challengers for the 1992 America’s

Cup.

The Driscoll name is prominent in the San Diego marine industry. Gerry

founded the family’s first boat yard in 1947, and now there are multiple

repair and maintenance facilities, marinas, and brokerage services

throughout San Diego and Mission Bay.

ATLANTIS FOUND?

atlas mtns337 — ATLAS MTNS FROM GIBRALTAR

When I sailed through the “Pillars of Hercules” at sunrise it was a dream fulfilled. Like many people of my generation the classics were an integral part of our education. The myths and stories associated transported me to a world that was part real for me. We my never know conclusively, the location fits the description. The photograph was taken from Gibraltar looking across the straits to the Atlas Mountains.

Scientists Say They May Have Found Lost City of Atlantis Near Spain

By Rebecca Boyle

Posted 03.14.2011 at 2:23 pm

1 Comment

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Donaña National Park, Spain Scientists believe the lost city of Atlantis is buried in the mudflats of Spain’s Donaña National Park. Harres via Flickr

All the news about devastating tsunamis is drawing greater attention to a new claim that researchers have found the lost city of Atlantis — buried in mud on the southern tip of Spain. Scientists say they have found proof of a 4,000-year-old civilization that was buried by a tsunami.

The research was unveiled Sunday in a new TV special.

This effort to find Atlantis began in 2004, when German physicist Rainer Kuhne identified some strange features on satellite photos. Swamps at the mouth of Spain’s Guadalquivir River, northwest of Cadiz, held strange geometric shadows that some thought resembled the remains of a ringed city.

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Science, Rebecca Boyle, ancient artifacts, antiquities, archaeology, atlantis, controversy, history, lost city, myths, spain, Tsunami

To follow up on the findings, teams of researchers from three countries used ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography, magnetometers and spectrometers to map the ground and sniff out evidence of human-built objects buried in the mud. They say they found a communal oven and evidence of canal systems buried in Spain’s Donaña National Park.

Richard Freund, an archaeologist from Hartford University in Connecticut, said a tsunami flooded the ancient community, located 60 miles inland.

“This is the power of tsunamis,” he said, according to Reuters.

The team also found artifacts from farther north that suggest refugees may have settled a second city, where they built memorial artworks to commemorate the one they lost.

Other researchers criticized the results, however, including members of a Spanish team who have been studying the site since 2005.

Archaeologists have been looking for Atlantis since Plato first described it about 2,600 years ago in one of his late dialogues. He said the city was located near the “pillars of Hercules,” which classical scholars say is the Strait of Gibraltar. (The mudflats are just north of the strait.) Plato said Atlantis “in a single day and night… disappeared into the depths of the sea.”

Previous attempts to find it have looked on the ocean floor; on various Mediterranean and Aegean islands; the Bermuda Triangle; Bolivia; and even Antarctica. Historians have said Atlantis was inspired by the 1600 BCE volcanic explosion at Santorini, one of the largest in recorded history. Others maintain it’s simply a myth.

The Spanish team said they will present their own findings later this year.

SAN FRANCISCO’S ROAD TO THE CUP MAY BE BUMPY

America’s Cup concerns unite environmental groups

‘It’s kind of all hands on deck’

San Francisco Business Times – by Eric Young

Date: Friday, March 11, 2011, 3:00am PST – Last Modified: Thursday, March 10, 2011, 5:09pm PST

Related: Sports Business, Environment

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Spencer Brown

“This is a real unusual team effort,” says Deb Self, director of San Francisco Baykeeper.

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Fearing the impact of America’s Cup crowds and construction, several environmental organizations and at least one influential neighborhood group have joined together to fire a warning shot across San Francisco’s bow.

The groups said the city’s plan to expedite an environmental study to stay on track for the 2013 yacht race has prompted them to coordinate efforts to monitor the city’s America’s Cup preparations. Their coalition, the America’s Cup Environmental Council, has not come out against the event — but it includes organizations that have been prominent in opposition to other projects, like the redevelopment of Hunters Point Shipyard

ECONOMIC TSUNAMI FOR SAN FRANCISCO?

The Tsunami is barely over and the world keeps turning. This article should come as no surprise to those of you who are familiar with the America’s Cup. But Newport should count their lucky stars that they were not successful. ( Governor Chaffee gave his state of the state address this past week and is looking for ways to close a large budget gap)

written by John Cote for the San Francisco Chronicle

(03-11) 04:00 PST San Francisco (03-11) 10:10 PST — San Francisco agreed to a deal that could cost the city millions more dollars to host the next America’s Cup regatta than the one the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved in December, according to a disputed report from the board’s budget analyst released Thursday.

San Francisco’s final agreement to host the prestigious sailing races was negotiated between race organizers and outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration and port officials in the final days of 2010. The agreement was materially changed from the version the Board of Supervisors had approved two weeks earlier, despite city officials’ assurances that the agreement had not been fundamentally changed, the report by Budget and Legislative Analyst Harvey Rose said.

“We ratified a decent deal, but the proposal changed significantly by Dec. 31” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who commissioned the report. “The impact of those changes have been completely unknown until now, and those who negotiated on behalf of the city have some serious explaining to do. There were substantial increases in obligations and liabilities for the city.”

Members of the city’s negotiating team vigorously defended the final agreement Thursday, noting changes had been approved by the city attorney’s office. They also said Rose’s report was faulty.

“We tried to be fully transparent about the changes as soon as the negotiations were complete,” said Jennifer Matz, head of the mayor’s office of economic and workforce development. “The changes did not go beyond the scope of what we were authorized by the board to do.”

The deal approved by the board on Dec. 14 allowed for further modifications that did not materially increase the obligations or liabilities to the city. Rose’s report said that “some of the modifications represent material changes in process from what was approved (at the board).” Other changes could have “a material impact on port revenues and costs.”

Matz said she agreed with much in Rose’s report, but ultimately the changes did not materially increase the obligations or liabilities of the city as a whole.

The race is expected to bring more than $1 billion to the local economy, and the deal gives race organizers, led by billionaire Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, long-term development rights to up to three piers and another waterfront parcel in exchange for paying at least $55 million to shore up aging piers to house race facilities.

With a $55 million infrastructure investment, race organizers will receive development rights and a 66-year lease on piers 30-32, a single conjoined pier, and the deal commits the city to obtaining state approval to transfer title to Seawall Lot 330 across the Embarcadero to race organizers.

The team will also have the option of paying at least $25 million more to shore up nearby piers 26 and 28 in exchange for 66-year leases on them. It will also have the option of developing piers 16, 23, 27, 29 and 80 if the team’s improvements exceed $55 million and the city agrees to the development.

The report said the board did not agree to giving race organizers the right to unilaterally establish a long-term lease on Pier 29 or to changing the calculations for the rent race organizers would pay from a fair-market system to one locked in at $4 or $6 per square foot. Supervisors also did not sign off on the deal involving Seawall lot 330. The negotiated provision calls for the city to transfer the title of that parcel to race organizers. If that doesn’t happen, the city would lease that land to race organizers for 75 years for $565,000 per year, which is the same rent the port currently receives from a parking lot.

Rose, in an interview, said there were too many variations to give a total dollar amount that the changes represent for city coffers. One change – not requiring rent payments on Piers 30-32 because race organizers have committed to completing $55 million in infrastructure improvements – could result in the loss of about $2.2 million a year if race organizers are reimbursed for the $55 million through the rent credits and still owe rent, the report said.

Brad Benson, a port official and a central figure in the negotiations, said “the budget analyst is incorrect” in asserting race organizers had a unilateral right to lease Pier 29.

“It’s not a unilateral right,” he said.

A spokeswoman for race organizers said she had not reviewed the report and couldn’t comment.

TSUNAMI

TSUNAMI, a word that would strike fear in the heart of any person. Prayers for everyone and anyone in it’s path. Due to hit hawaii at 8:46am eastern time , followed by the west coast 11:45 am east coast time of the United States. This wave was generated by an earthquake off the coast of Japan with a force of 8.9. The Tsunami has already struck and wreaked havoc there. Click here for NOAA information.

Each time something like this happens it puts our daily annoyances in perspective.

LOVE OF THE SEA

When I saw this posting, my first thought was to be sure that it was not April first. While I still harbor a measure of skepticism, as I believe genetics still have a long way to go before the science matures; I am intrigued and amused. Of course it is a perfect explanation/excuse for my behavior over the past 45 years.

Scientists find gene for love of the sea

Posted on March 8, 2011 by genotopia

What did Thor Heyerdahl, Captain Ahab, and Odysseus have in common? They all may have shared a common variant of a gene for love of the sea.

Researchers at Mystic University in Connecticut have identified a gene associated with seafaringness, according to an article to be published tomorrow in the journal Genetic Determinism Today. Patterns of inheritance of the long-sought gene offers hope for “sailing widows,” and could help explain why the sailing life has tended to run in families and why certain towns and geographical regions tend historically to have disproportionate numbers of sea-going citizens.

The gene is a form of the MAOA-L gene, previously associated with high-risk behavior and thrill-seeking; another form of the gene, found last year, made news as the “warrior gene.” The current variant, dubbed 4C, was found by a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on 290 individuals from Mystic, CT, New Bedford, MA, and Cold Spring Harbor, NY—all traditional nineteenth-century whaling villages. Residents showed the presence of the 4C variant at a frequency more than 20 times above background in neighboring landlocked towns.

C. M. Ishmael, the lead researcher on the study, said the findings could be a boon to medicine. Although the International Whaling Commission outlawed commercial whaling in 1986, the research could benefit literally hundreds of “sailing widows” left alone for Wednesday-evening sailboat races up and down the East Coast. Each year, an average of 11 salt-stained Polo shirts washes up on the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts, the only remains of a lantern-jawed investment banker and his half-million-dollar boat. Ishmael said he is trying to have the irrational urge to sail entered into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, standard reference for psychiatric diseases, in the next, fifth, edition.

“This receptor is an exciting potential target for new drug therapies,” Ishmael said in a phone interview. “We hope lots of companies will be interested in it. And venture capital, too.” Ishmael is himself CEO of a company, MysticGene, formed to develop such therapies. When asked about potential conflict of interest, he replied cryptically, “Well, duh.” Shares of MysticGene closed higher on Monday following the announcement.

The gene for seafaringness has long been an object of study for human geneticists. The trait was first described in 1919 by Charles Davenport, director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who named it “thalassophilia.” Using pedigree analysis and anecdotal correlation, Davenport identified thalassophilia as a sex-linked recessive gene and distinguished it clinically from wanderlust, or love of adventure. Although one might think naively that people living in towns with good harbors would tend to go to sea, Davenport suggested the reverse: those with the thalassophilia trait have tended to migrate toward regions with good harbors and found settlements there. The current study does nothing to refute Davenport’s analysis.

Further, a tentative expansion of the GWAS analysis to various racial groups largely confirms Davenport’s observations that thalassophilia is more prevalent in Scandinavians and the English, and less common in people of German ancestry.

Thalassophilia joins a rapidly growing list of complex behavioral traits that have been shown to have a genetic basis, thanks to GWAS. Besides the warrior gene, recent studies have found genetic links to promiscuity, aggressive behavior, especially while drinking, religiosity, and bipolar disorder, or manic depression—all traits that Davenport and other early human geneticists were deeply interested in. The difference is that modern science better understands the mechanisms involved.

“Seamen know very well that their cravings for the sea are racial,” Davenport wrote in 1919. “’It is in the blood,’ they say.” Today we know it’s not in the blood—it’s in the genes.

The true bits:

Garland E. Allen, “Is a New Eugenics Afoot?,” Science 294, no. 5540 (October 5, 2001): 59 -61. (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/294/5540/59.short)

Charles Benedict Davenport and Mary Theresa Scudder, Naval officers: their heredity and development (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1919),http://books.google.com/books?id=EWESAAAAYAAJ&dq=naval%20officers%3A%20their%20heredity%20and%20development&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Richard Alleyne, “A gene that could explain why the red mist descends,” Telegraph.co.uk,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8219521/A-gene-that-could-explain-why-the-red-mist-descends.html.

Jeremy Taylor, “Violent-drunk gene discovered,”http://www.asylum.com/2010/12/23/bad-drunk-gene-discovered/.

Justin R. Garcia et al., “Associations between Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene Variation with Both Infidelity and Sexual Promiscuity,” ed. Jan Lauwereyns, PLoS ONE 5, no. 11 (11, 2010): e14162.

C. Frydman et al., “MAOA-L carriers are better at making optimal financial decisions under risk,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (12, 2010),http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19830-people-with-warrior-gene-better-

SAILROCKET 2 LAUNCHED, AC45’s PREPARE TO SHIP

Paul Larsen continue their unwavering march towards the outright speed record under sail, meanwhile the AC 45 catamarans are being prepared to ship to the various teams after having concluded their testing in New Zealand.

New Vestas Sailrocket 2 aims for speed sailing record

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The Sailrocket team launches its second-generation speed sailing boat from the Isle of Wight on 8 March, 2011. Vestas Sailrocket 2 is designed to be significantly faster than its predecessor, with the ultimate aim of breaking the ‘Outright World Speed Sailing Record’.

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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.”

Main Sailrocket sponsor Finn Strøm Madsen, President of Vestas Technology R&D, emphasises the Sailrocket team’s efforts in bringing knowledge about wind, design and sailing together in order to be the fastest in the world.

“Vestas has a deep interest in the Sailrocket project. By using innovation and technological breakthroughs you can harvest the power of wind with ever-improving efficiency. That is the key for both Vestas and Sailrocket. I look forward to seeing the new Vestas Sailrocket 2 push the boundaries of wind driven performance in the search of speed,” says Finn Strøm Madsen.

About Vestas Sailrocket

Vestas Sailrocket 2 is a speed sailing boat based on a unique, stabilising concept. Vestas Sailrocket has continuously pushed the limits for speed sailing and currently holds the B class world record for speed sailing. The sail and keel elements are positioned so that there is virtually no overturning moment and no net vertical lift. As a result, the only significant response to wind gusts is a change in speed. For Paul Larsen and Malcolm Barnsley, design team member from Vestas, the Vestas Sailrocket 2 project is a realisation of their ultimate dream to design and sail the fastest boat on the planet.
Read more about Vestas Sailrocket at www.sailrocket.com.

About the ‘Outright world speed sailing record´

The Outright world speed sailing record is set by taking the average speed of a craft between two points set 500 meters apart. All records are observed and ratified by the sport’s governing body, the World Speed Sailing Record Council (WSSRC). It is open to all water borne sailing crafts from kite surfers to maxi multihulls.
In late October 2010, American Kite surfer Rob Douglas set the current record in Luderitz, Namibia with a speed of at 55.65 knots (64 mph, 104 kmh). In a month-long session the kite surfers took the record off the mighty French hydro-foiler Hydroptere and raised the record by over 4 knots. They are expected to go faster still in the coming year.

About Vestas

Every single day, Vestas wind turbines deliver clean energy that supports the global fight against climate change. Wind power from Vestas’ more than 43,000 wind turbines currently reduces carbon emissions by more than 40 million tons of CO2 every year, while at the same time building energy security and independence.
Vestas is the world leader in wind technology, with a history of technological innovation and over 30 years of experience in developing, manufacturing, installing and maintaining wind turbines. Vestas was a pioneer in the wind industry and started to manufacture wind turbines in 1979. In 1987, the company began to concentrate exclusively on wind energy.
Today, Vestas operates in 66 countries, providing jobs for over 20,000 passionate people at our service and project sites, research facilities, factories and offices on six continents all over the world.

Contact details:

For more information, please contact:
Kasper Ibsen Beck, Global Communication Partner, Vestas Technology R&D
Tel: +45 2287 8773
Mail: kaibe@vestas.com

Paul Larsen, Pilot and Project Leader, Sailrocket
Tel: +44 (0)79 4684 1929
Mail: paularsen1@aol.com

Pictures of the new Vestas Sailrocket:
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