Lymington sailing twins Stuart and Ado Jardine received a shock when they stepped ashore after Wednesday afternoon XOD racing in Lymington this week when they found a surprise 80th birthday party had been organised for them at the Royal Lymington Yacht Club.
The legendary pair, who have both sailed at Olympic level with Ado winning bronze in the Mexico 1968 games, are still winning races as they enter their ninth decade.
Fellow sailors presented the pair each with a bucket and line to use as a sea-anchor to slow them down! Two huge cakes were then cut and served to all and the twins thanked everyone for organising the party which genuinely came as a complete surprise to the pair.
In the last 15 years, Stuart and Ado have increasingly focussed on repaying what they see as their debt to the sport and to the Club, be it as Race Officers, week in week out for our Monday night dinghy racing series, running Open events, organising and captaining Club team entries for team and other racing events, and organising an array of children’s sailing events, whether in Optimists, Lymington River Scows or model yachts. They know what it takes to make the best sailors and don’t flinch from encouraging their charges.
Having now sailed at Lymington for nearing 70 years, Ado said the both plan to continue “As long as they’re still in one piece”. One XOD sailor said, “When Stuart is not at the front of the XOD fleet, Ado is.”
Chris Neve, RLymYC Rear Commodore Sailing said, “The Royal Lymington Yacht Club is honoured to have the Jardine brothers as Members. Both Stuart and Ado have been at the top of this wonderful sport for 60 years through their illustrious Olympic and international racing careers. They are both also still giving so much to the Club day in and day out, whether it be the XOD Class, the juniors or in fact any Member who asks for help in improving his or her sailing. We are very grateful to Stuart and Ado for all that they do for us and also to Mary-Ann and Wendy, who have helped them every inch of the way. Long may they continue to be an inspiration to us all!”
A tradition of restricted male only membership dating back almost 200 years has been swept aside by the Royal Yacht Squadron on the Isle of Wight after the membership voted to allow women in as full members
Sign of the times: After 198 years Royal Yacht Squadron votes to allow women as full members
A meeting on Sunday, attended by 150 of the 475 members, voted unanimously in favour of the motion to extend membership privileges to women. There was not a single vote in opposition though the decision still has to be ratified by the full membership.
Officials at the Squadron, which is housed in a grand castle in Cowes and billed as one of the most prestigious yacht clubs in the world, said they had been lobbying members on the issue of women’s membership for four years before yesterday’s ballot.
There was no announcement from the RYS which established their ‘gentlemen only’ membership in 1815 when the club was founded and the club declined to comment.
Even lady associate members, the wives of existing full members, who were not eligible to vote, were unaware of this dramatic change of policy.
RYS invites candidates to join but the only known criteria for membership is an active interest in sailing.
Royal Yacht Squadron leads the armada against windfarm plan
‘Lillgrund Wind Farm in Denmark – could you sail between these?’ .
Britain’s most prestigious sailing club, the Royal Yacht Squadron, is orchestrating a campaign against the largest wind farm ever planned in the world, off the south coast of England. It fears the Navitus Bay wind farm could impact on the main sailing route from the Isle of Wight to the south west, including the Fastnet Race, which starts in Cowes and finishes in Plymouth.
Navitus Bay wind farm proposed site – .. .
The development comprises 200 turbines, each the height of a skyscraper and spread over an area the size of Glasgow. The planned wind farm, which is three to four times bigger than any previously built, is expected to earn its Dutch owners Eneco more than a quarter of a billion pounds a year in subsidies alone.
The scheme has already attracted widespread criticism with opponents claiming it will ruin coastal views for generations to come. Eneco has submitted notice of its plans – in a 173-page report – to a special Government body set up to deal with ‘national significant’ infrastructure projects. A full planning application for the wind farm is expected next year with the decision process taking a further 18 months.
Eneco’s preplanning report suggests each turbine could be as high as 670 feet – taller than the Gherkin skyscraper in London – and as close as eight miles to the coast. Eneco claims it will provide power for anywhere between 500,000 and 800,000 homes.
The campaign against the Navitus Bay wind farm is being spearheaded by the Royal Yacht Squadron, which is based in Cowes.
It has written to 200 sailing clubs on the Isle of Wight and along the south coast calling for concerted action against the development, which will occupy 76 square miles of the English Channel between the Isle of Wight and the Dorset coast.
Chris Mason, the Royal Yacht Squadron’s yachting secretary, said: ‘We understand renewable energy is important but it is very difficult to see why it has to be built this close to the land.
‘This is prime sailing territory. This is definitely a hazard and definitely a problem for sailors.’ Mr Mason said he had no idea if Prince Philip, who is the squadron’s admiral and as such its head, had been consulted before the letter had been sent out.
Chris Radford, who runs the Challenge Navitus campaign group, said: ‘Navitus is eight miles from the shore and the turbines could be 200 metres high.
‘This could damage an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a World Heritage site and a great public amenity. There are also potentially damaging effects on tourism, safe navigation, diving and fishing interests.
‘Nothing on this scale has previously been built so close to a tourist area. We think these risks are out of balance with the suggested benefits from wind power. This development could be further offshore or somewhere else with less impact.’ by Telegraph/Sail-World Cruising
Here is a video compiled from sources by RTE ONE. entitled “Mayday at the Fastnet Rock“. about the response and rescue of the crew of Rambler 100 after the keel broke off capsizing the boat.
I met the owner and crew of “Phaedo” shortly before the start of the transatlantic race in June, when we took a safety at sea class together. They were new to ocean racing. They performed well in the transatlantic race and in the Fastnet. I guess one could say that they took to it like ducks to water. They have assembled videos of all they have done in a terrific way.
Ran, should be acknowledged as the first back to back winner of the Fastnet Race since the Phil Rhodes designed Carina.
A completely different subject; IBM has announced a chip that will simulate cognitive thinking; much like the human brain.
ARMONK, N.Y., – 18 Aug 2011: Today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) researchers unveiled a new generation of experimental computer chips designed to emulate the brain’s abilities for perception, action and cognition. The technology could yield many orders of magnitude less power consumption and space than used in today’s computers.
In a sharp departure from traditional concepts in designing and building computers, IBM’s first neurosynaptic computing chips recreate the phenomena between spiking neurons and synapses in biological systems, such as the brain, through advanced algorithms and silicon circuitry. Its first two prototype chips have already been fabricated and are currently undergoing testing.
Called cognitive computers, systems built with these chips won’t be programmed the same way traditional computers are today. Rather, cognitive computers are expected to learn through experiences, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember – and learn from – the outcomes, mimicking the brains structural and synaptic plasticity.
To do this, IBM is combining principles from nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing as part of a multi-year cognitive computing initiative. The company and its university collaborators also announced they have been awarded approximately $21 million in new funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for Phase 2 of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project.
The goal of SyNAPSE is to create a system that not only analyzes complex information from multiple sensory modalities at once, but also dynamically rewires itself as it interacts with its environment – all while rivaling the brain’s compact size and low power usage. The IBM team has already successfully completed Phases 0 and 1.
“This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century,” said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research. “Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture. These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signaling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government.”
Neurosynaptic Chips
While they contain no biological elements, IBM’s first cognitive computing prototype chips use digital silicon circuits inspired by neurobiology to make up what is referred to as a “neurosynaptic core” with integrated memory (replicated synapses), computation (replicated neurons) and communication (replicated axons).
IBM has two working prototype designs. Both cores were fabricated in 45 nm SOI-CMOS and contain 256 neurons. One core contains 262,144 programmable synapses and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses. The IBM team has successfully demonstrated simple applications like navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification.
IBM’s overarching cognitive computing architecture is an on-chip network of light-weight cores, creating a single integrated system of hardware and software. This architecture represents a critical shift away from traditional von Neumann computing to a potentially more power-efficient architecture that has no set programming, integrates memory with processor, and mimics the brain’s event-driven, distributed and parallel processing.
IBM’s long-term goal is to build a chip system with ten billion neurons and hundred trillion synapses, while consuming merely one kilowatt of power and occupying less than two liters of volume.
Why Cognitive Computing
Future chips will be able to ingest information from complex, real-world environments through multiple sensory modes and act through multiple motor modes in a coordinated, context-dependent manner.
For example, a cognitive computing system monitoring the world’s water supply could contain a network of sensors and actuators that constantly record and report metrics such as temperature, pressure, wave height, acoustics and ocean tide, and issue tsunami warnings based on its decision making. Similarly, a grocer stocking shelves could use an instrumented glove that monitors sights, smells, texture and temperature to flag bad or contaminated produce. Making sense of real-time input flowing at an ever-dizzying rate would be a Herculean task for today’s computers, but would be natural for a brain-inspired system.
“Imagine traffic lights that can integrate sights, sounds and smells and flag unsafe intersections before disaster happens or imagine cognitive co-processors that turn servers, laptops, tablets, and phones into machines that can interact better with their environments,” said Dr. Modha.
For Phase 2 of SyNAPSE, IBM has assembled a world-class multi-dimensional team of researchers and collaborators to achieve these ambitious goals. The team includes Columbia University; Cornell University; University of California, Merced; and University of Wisconsin, Madison.
IBM has a rich history in the area of artificial intelligence research going all the way back to 1956 when IBM performed the world’s first large-scale (512 neuron) cortical simulation. Most recently, IBM Research scientists created Watson, an analytical computing system that specializes in understanding natural human language and provides specific answers to complex questions at rapid speeds. Watson represents a tremendous breakthrough in computers understanding natural language, “real language” that is not specially designed or encoded just for computers, but language that humans use to naturally capture and communicate knowledge.
IBM’s cognitive computing chips were built at its highly advanced chip-making facility in Fishkill, N.Y. and are currently being tested at its research labs in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. and San Jose, Calif.
For more information about IBM Research, please visit ibm.com/research.
Snow Lion has finished at midnight, standing 4th in class. Here is a link to an article updating the salvage of Rambler 100. A great many boats are still on the race course slowed by light winds and strong currents.
It looks like the boats that have not finished have light air ( it looks like 10 knots from the north, i.e. off the shore) and are subject to the tide that makes the Fastnet Race so challenging. “Ran” may well be winning on corrected time for a second time in a row, again helped by the light air on the course. “Snow Lion” is still fifty miles from the finish but steering a course straight to the finish. Once again the bigger boats benefitted from the weather pattern; but that’s ocean racing.
Rambler 100 capsized in the Irish sea after rounding the fastnet rock. Everyone has been rescued.
This was unexpected in the conditions which were relatively mild. Rambler a very powerful but lightly built boat.boat.Sailing her has always been about slowing down appropriately as conditions warranted.
rambler at the start of the transatlantic race
Banque Populaire finished the race in 32 hours and 48 minutes setting a new record. Snow Lion is about 30 miles from Fastnet Rock. Click here for the tracker.
Track the boats with yellow brick, the same system used for the transatlantic race. There have already been several withdrawals from the race. Click HERE to read race updates. The buzz is for the big boats to break out and finish quickly while the smaller boats would be left with light air to contend with the the tide gates returning from fastnet rock. Looking at the weather it is a beat out of the solent and along the south coast.
