First, an update, Maserati, skippered by Giovanni Soldini, is ahead of the transatlantic record set by Mari Cha IV.
Mother’s day, touches us all. Motherhood is also one of those issues that men in a man’s world don’t quite know how to deal with. Reluctant to acknowledge the place of women, while realizing that motherhood is essential to life and existence, never mind nurturing.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY
Rob comes from a legacy of prudent seamanship; the “Carina” family. I liken the sentiments to the idea that there was an assumption that when we left the dock, we were on our own.
His remarks have prompted responses on scuttlebutt, where his initial posting appeared.
BOATING ACCIDENTS – A SIGN OF THE TIMES
By Rob Nye, nearly 50 years old
I believe that to understand the recent tragedies in California, we need to
look at the entire sport of sailing and how the competitive side is managed
and promoted.
As harsh as it may sound, both events are the result of a lack of good
seamanship. Webster’s defines Seamanship as: the art or skill of handling,
working, and navigating a ship. In modern times it appears that it is
possible to be a professional sailor and not be a good seaman; it used to be
that seamanship was a requirement to get invited in the first place. Now
it’s what do you weigh, or how hard you can you hike. To navigate, it is to
have superior computer skills.
Following these accidents, Gary Jobson, president of the U.S. Sailing, has
said “we need to take a step back and take a deep breath with what we’re
doing. Something is going wrong here.”
On one hand, I take offense at Gary’s use of “we” as if all sailors bear
some responsibility for a boat being caught inside the breaking surf or
another apparently running into an island while motoring at night. Yet on
the other, speaking as President of the governing body of our sport, perhaps
US Sailing does share some blame for the lack of basic seamanship exhibited
today. I hope the “what we’re doing” he refers to isn’t simply holding
races; as if the event itself is to blame. It isn’t.
When I was growing up, the summer calendar was full of short, medium and
long distance races that included sailing to fixed marks. Even day races
used fixed marks, and once in a while, we’d put the kite up to get to the
windward mark after drifting off the starting line. Once in a while, we even
anchored. Navigation was more than “putting the pin in the box” and entering
a range and bearing to the windward mark. On any given leg we might drift,
beat to windward, reach, change sails and if we were lucky, even broach or
at least enjoy a good knockdown.
It was during this era we learned to use harnesses, sail in the fog, keep an
eye on each other and stay sharp when drifting around at 3am on Long Island
Sound. Day races were sometimes another opportunity to practice seamanship
as the decision to race was left with the skipper, not some government
agency.
I remember leaving the dock for a fall series race with two reefs, the #4
jib and harnesses on for a “casual” race. Now race committees postpone if
the line isn’t perfectly square, or the inflatable mark isn’t directly to
windward, or they cancel the race if it’s blowing over 25 at the dock or
worse, forecast to blow later in the day. Why get a crew that’s seen heavy
weather when we don’t sail when it blows, and if we do all we’re going to do
is sausages? — Read on:
http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=13715
May 9, 2012 – Coronado Islands
 Theo Mavromatis’s body was discovered this weekend by fishermen. Photo Courtesy Aegean © 2012 Latitude 38 Publishing, LLC |
The San Diego County coroner has identified a body found by Southern California fishermen on Sunday as that of Theo Mavromatis, the skipper of the doomed Hunter 376 Aegean. Mavromatis (49) and crew Kevin Rudolph (53), William Johnson (57), and Joseph Stewart (64) were racing in the cruising division of the Lexus Newport to Ensenada Race on April 28 when their SPOT tracker suddenly stopped transmitting in the early morning hours. Wreckage from the boat was discovered the next afternoon, along with the bodies of three of her crewmembers. According to the medical examiner, everyone aboard sustained blunt force trauma to their heads, with Mavromatis, Rudolph and Johnson dying from their injuries and Stewart drowning after receiving the injuries.
From the boat’s track, it looks as if Aegean was moving at a steady pace in light winds — indicating it was motoring – when it appears to have run into the northernmost Coronado Island, but many still hold to the theory that Aegean was run down by a freighter in the night. The Coast Guard has yet to announce the findings of their investigation, but Lt. Bill Fitzgerald of USCG Sector San Diego indicated that the evidence is definitely leading them in a particular direction.
– latitude / ladonna
There is no limit man will go to, in order to achieve a goal.
When I write about sailing or photography it is, in the end about amusement. I could argue that photography helps raise social consciousness,(Jim Goldberg’s Raised by Wolves) but nothing can replace direct action. We react violently when we see pets dogs or cats treated poorly. Our heart strings are pulled when we hear of starving or deprived people in poor countries of the world. But we seem to avert our eyes when it comes to the poor in our own country. I don’t know if it is that we cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge that the “greatest country in the world” has a flaw. That the fear of admitting how many people in this country live poor; is just too much to bear. The remedy seems too overwhelming.
Medical Missionaries, Part One
Posted: May 07, 2012 11:39 PM EDT
Updated: May 07, 2012 11:59 PM EDT
By Karen Meyers – email
No doubt you’ve heard of Doctors Without Borders.
In Rhode Island there is a group with a similar mission of providing free health care. For the past 25 years the local doctors, nurses and other volunteers have traveled to Central America, on their own dime, to treat the needy.
This year, for the first time in their history, with the need so great in their own backyard, they decided to stay in the U.S.
“She always wore glasses. For driving. For reading,” Melanie says.
When she passed away, Millspaugh knew her mothers glasses could change lives.
“Not to throw them in the garbage but to see that someone else could make good use of them,” she explained.
She brought them to her optometrist who is part of the volunteer medical group Northeast VOSH.
Doctor Carl Sakovits, who practices in Bristol, heads up the group. He’s been on every single mission, twenty-five of them, to Central America; to third world countries where he and other volunteers are often the only doctors people ever see.
“You go down there and we’re talking about thousands of people who are in the same desperate situation,” says Dr. Sakovits, “the need is so immense and you’re the only one at that moment who can do anything to help them.”
He gives eye exams, dental and medical check-ups and even uses donated supplies like the glasses from Millspaugh back in Barrington.
They find extraordinary poverty, pain, and hope.
Such as Jorge in Honduras. His joints were fused at birth. Stuck at home with his parents in a one-room hut, he could not go to school.
“He was bright, he just had physical limitations,” said Dr. Sakovits.
The only way he got around was when people carried him in a wheel barrow or a burlap sack.
We were able to put him in a wheelchair,” says Dr. Sakovits, “we gave him dignity. We gave him the ability to sit up, interact, and attend school.”
Their success in Central America was inspiring. Then Doctor Sakovits began to notice a profound change right here in his own country.
“I started to hear my own patients talk about worries of layoffs, hours being reduced at work,” he said.
They often have to choose between health care and groceries.
“They’re struggling to pay the rent or pay their mortgage or struggling to feed their family,” he said. “As a group, we were feeling, it was really time.”
Broadening their mission, their focus was on an impoverished home.
So Northeast VOSH headed to Tennessee, teaming up with the group Remote Area Medical, or RAM. RAM holds free mobile clinics something that is allowed in only three states: Connecticut, Illinois, and Tennessee.
Here’s what awaited them:long lines. People camped out in tents and in their cars in the parking lot, on this cold 30-degree night in Bristol, Tennessee. Twenty-four hours before the gates open, desperate for care, fearful they will miss out.
If you’d like to donate, or volunteer to Northeast VOSH, contact them at islanddoc5@aol.co
Door handles serve many purposes, the obvious function of opening and closing a door, decoration, symbols. I have regarded door handles as a sort of gargoyle for a house, but they can be just a fantasy of imagination as well.
I think there must be some irony here. The trend has been for narrower and narrower bow sections as designers looked to reduce wetted surface. Crews ware stacked further and further aft both upwind and down. With the success of the mini transat boat that is an ugly duckling, will the trend land in our playground? The following was written by Elaine Bunting.
The inland lake scows have long been a favorite. I owned an “E” scow which I sailed on Narragansett Bay in the early sixties and subsequently sailed quite a lot in Barnegat Bay with Henry Bossett. That’s us capsized.
The latest hot trend in ocean racing design is the scow bow. But it’s ugly and it looks as if it’d be brutal upwind
I’m torn when I think about the latest trend for ocean racing, the scow bow. On the one hand, it’s a fascinating development. On the other…cripes, these new designs are ugly.
Round bowed scows have been well proven; the skimming dish designs have long been popular in the US, though less so in Europe. Yet the design principle made no major inroads into offshore design until last year, when French engineer and solo sailor David Raison won the Mini Transat in his self-designed mini 6.5m Mini Magnum/Teamwork Evolution.
This round bowed, push-me-pull-you 21-footer beat the 2nd placed prototype Mini to the finish in Brazil by 130 miles – a huge margin in such an evenly matched fleet – and recorded an average across the entire Atlantic of 6.8 knots.
He nicknamed his wide-bodied design ‘le gros porteur’, the jumbo jet, in reference to its max beam, carried as far forward as possible.
Now there is a proposal from design group Reichel/Pugh for a 90ft scow (pictured above) designed to attempt to beat the Transpac record. We’ve got a full report on this intriguing design in our May issue.
The basic principle of the scow design is to maximise hull righting moment. The beam is carried well forward which means that, when heeled, the hull lines are further outboard than with a conventional bow. This makes the scow design very powerful when reaching, obviously important on races such as the Mini Transat or the Transpac, which have a predominance of reaching conditions.
It has the added advanced advantage of large reserve buoyancy in the bow to prevent the bow from burying or nosediving when driven hard off the wind.
Put that together with a canting keel, as is the case on David Raison’s boat, and you have a potentially very powerful yacht indeed.
However there are two snags with this design.
The first is that, upwind, the rounded bow slams, even when well heeled. This means it may not be that versatile a design or particularly comfortable in all-round conditions.
And in view of what are seeing in the Volvo Ocean race, which has suffered multiple structural problems in the harsh seas of the Southern Ocean, it would be a very brave designer (and sponsor) indeed that plumped for a scow design round the world or more general racing conditions.
Secondly, let’s face it: these two new extreme scow designs are not pretty. Would you want a yacht that looked like this? I wouldn’t. If your boat was jarring as this, you’d have to win.
But since Raison’s dramatic victory, I suspect designers everywhere have been playing around with the scow idea. In classes whose rules don’t place a restriction on maximum righting moment, it’s an obvious idea to explore. If it takes off, clever minds may even find some creative ways of softening the brutal front end.
Images from the last “America’s Cup” visit to Newport when lead mines were still in fashion.
The reports of the tragedy of “AEGEAN” remains a puzzle for me. Could the 37 foot hunter yacht have been destroyed in the manner described by hitting coronado island? Then have the debris field float against the current to be discovered?
Was the boat hit by a ship as first reported and the transponder then continue to send a signal until it landed on the island?
As usual everyone has opinion, which has been formed without all of the facts. How often have we seen that happen in life?
We continued our search for sites of former mills in Rhode Island last weekend. Spring was evident, it has come early for us this year, but not without a price. Although it does not show in the photographs of the dams; the water table is very low as a result of a relatively dry spring and little snow this winter.
Alterations to Snow Lion are nearing completion, we all have high hopes of a speed advantage beyond the rating increase. The Bermuda Race start is a little over six weeks away. The longest days of the year. By the time I return from Bermuda the days will be already getting shorter.
