BEING IN THE RIGHT PLACE

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, a big day in Newport with a parade and everyone wearing a grin. Tucked in a corner is the CCA’s Safety At Sea Seminar; typically held every March in Newport in preparation for the Bermuda Race.

We must remember this is a 4 day race, 6oo miles. Not really a long time; it does get you offshore away from land but not for long. I don’t need to attend as I qualified last year for the the transatlantic race, 3000 miles, and 16 days.

The way to win this race is being in the right place for weather and to maximize the benefit of the Gulf Stream. It is far more important than sailing fast. The people in the following pictures can help put you in the right place.

KNOTS

I have always been fascinated by knots. It was what every sailor knew when I was young. I was taught by the professional sailors of the era. My first attempt was the black and white belt.I was 13 years old. I no longer remember the name of the string I used but it was still sold in chandleries expressly for macrame.

These professionals told be of a shop specializing in macrame near the docks in Brooklyn. I took a while, but I hitchhiked and found the shop; however the man who owned it was old and had failing health, so all I could do was to gaze in the window.

I still tie knots, I suppose much like someone who knits. During the America’s Cup Jubilee there was a Frenchman (not the one in the video) tying knots on the dock; we had a duel of sorts, testing the other’s knowledge of knots.

IT’S ABOUT THE RIGHT OWNER

I have always considered Yves Tanton a very good yacht designer with good original ideas. But it seems he suffered from having the wrong owners of his boats, because he never seemed to get the recognition he deserved.

He was designing light displacement boats long before it became fashionable. But he never seemed to have a boats in the hands of an owner who got good publicity.

Olin Stephens had very good fortune in that department. Olin had some boats that did not realize their potential but he had enough boats good boats in the hands of capable owners.

Juan K has had more than one keel fail, but again he has had enough successes to push the mistakes into the shadows.

 

GET YOUR SEABOOTS READY

 

Announcement of the Transatlantic Race 2015 and the Atlantic Ocean Racing Series 2015

march13_bpNEWPORT, RI, USA, March 15, 2012 — Following the success of the Transatlantic Race 2011 and its companion Atlantic Ocean Racing Series, the Royal Yacht Squadron and the New York Yacht Club, in conjunction with the Royal Ocean Racing Club and the Storm Trysail Club, announce the Transatlantic Race 2015 (TR 2015). The race will start in mid-May, 2015 from Newport, Rhode Island, the on-the-water home of the New York Yacht Club. The TR 2015 is scheduled to coincide with the 200th Anniversary of the Royal Yacht Squadron (RYS) in early June.

The Bermuda Race has not yet happened, and already  plans are set for another transatlantic race. While I understand the desire to break a record set;  the idea of finishing at the  Lizard, which is near nothing, seems silly.

DATA WE DREAMED ABOUT.

For me this is a dream come true. To have the data instantly available and unobstructed by crew.This is cool.

People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time.

According to several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year. These people said they are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600.

The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on the project.

Seth Weintraub, a blogger for 9 to 5 Google, who first wrote about theglasses project in December, and then discovered more information about them this month, also said the glasses would be Android-based and cited a source that described their look as that of a pair of Oakley Thumps.

They will also have a unique navigation system. “The navigation system currently used is a head tilting to scroll and click,” Mr. Weintraub wrote this month. “We are told it is very quick to learn and once the user is adept at navigation, it becomes second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users.”

The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby, according to the Google employees. The glasses are not designed to be worn constantly — although Google expects some of the nerdiest users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed.

Internally, the Google X team has been actively discussing the privacy implications of the glasses and the company wants to ensure that people know if they are being recorded by someone wearing a pair of glasses with a built-in camera.

The project is currently being built in the Google X offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main campus that is charged with working on robots, space elevators and dozens of other futuristic projects.

One of the key people involved with the glasses is Steve Lee, a Google engineer and creator of the Google mapping software, Latitude. As a result of Mr. Lee’s involvement, location information will be paramount in the first version released to the public, several people who have seen the glasses said. The other key leader on the glasses project is Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, who is currently spending most of his time in the Google X labs.

One Google employee said the glasses would tap into a number of Google software products that are currently available and in use today, but will display the information in an augmented reality view, rather than as a Web browser page like those that people see on smartphones.

The glasses will send data to the cloud and then use things like Google Latitude to share location, Google Goggles to search images and figure out what is being looked at, and Google Maps to show other things nearby, the Google employee said. “You will be able to check in to locations with your friends through the glasses,” they added.

Everyone I spoke with who was familiar with the project repeatedly said that Google was not thinking about potential business models with the new glasses. Instead, they said, Google sees the project as an experiment that anyone will be able to join. If consumers take to the glasses when they are released later this year, then Google will explore possible revenue streams.

As I noted in a Disruptions column last year, Apple engineers are also exploring wearable computing, but the company is taking a different route, focusing on computers that strap around someone’s wrist.

Last week The San Jose Mercury News discovered plans by Google to build a $120 million electronics testing facility that will be involved in testing “precision optical technology.”

SHAPES AND SIZES

Life is complicated. I know who I am looking at when my wife nudges me. At the same time we as a nation are gaining weight like never before. The food has so many additives(just read the label) most of which are not good for us. How do we reconcile these seemingly dichotomous issues.

HEAD FAKE?

?The America’s Cup will grace San Francisco not once, not twice, but thrice, citizens were promised: before  catamarans race for the main Cup currently held by Larry Ellison’s Oracle team in 2013, there will be smaller World Series races in October and in August, according to plans the race event authority floated before city leaders.

That may change, event organizers quietly mentioned in a release this week: the boats may in fact race here only twice. The August race could be in New York City, the Event Authority said in a March 5 release, issued to announce that NBC secured television broadcast rights.

This came as a surprise to San Francisco officials and New Yorkers alike, but is likely nothing more than a “head-fake” from an event authority angry over a scaled-down deal, a source told The Snitch. 
It was always the plan for America’s Cup-related races to crisscross the globe this year: in a month, the race heads to Italy. Other scheduled races are planned for Venice, and Newport, Rhode Island.

Three teams are competing in the AC World Series. The location of the August event — San Francisco or New York — will be announced “shortly,” organizers said in a release.

The races will be televised for the first time since 1992.

The Event Authority itself did not deign to speak to The Snitch; phone messages and emails were unanswered as of Wednesday afternoon.

The possibility of losing a race to New York is a “surprise” to Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, involved in negotiations to scale back the waterfront land giveaway promised to race organizers in return for gracing San Francisco Bay with their boats. “This was not something I’ve been told by the AC Event Authority,” Chiu told The Snitch via text message late Wednesday.

The America’s Cup is not unknown to New York City, though it’s been a while since the boats graced those waters. When the New York Yacht Club owned the cup betweem 1930 and 1983, the race was held there all the time. The race has not been held in the Hudson since the club lost the cup in 1983.

Reached via telephone in Newport on Wednesday, Michael Levitt, communications director for the New York Yacht Club, of which Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a member, said he had yet to hear of any plans to race sailboats in New York.

Whether this came as a surprise to Mayor Ed Lee is unclear; a spokeswoman for the mayor, who last week announced a vastly scaled-back event, said that the city is “waiting to hear” if the televised race will be held in San Francisco or New York.

“This is one of a series of sailing events even in 2012, so the impacts to the City [San Francisco] will be minimal of one race is held in New York,” Lee press secretary Christine Falvey wrote in an email. “Under either scenario, there will be a regatta here in 2012.”

A source close to the opposition movement called the Event Authority’s bi-coastal hedging a “head fake” designed to keep San Francisco on its toes after waterfront development rights were scaled back.

Under the original agreement, Ellison’s race team was to spend $55 million to rebuild Piers 30 and 32 in exchange for rent-free use of them for 66 years and title to Seawall Lot 330 — all prime, undeveloped waterfront property — nearby.

Those plans — which likely could have left the city in debt until the year 2100 — were scuttled last week, after the Event Authority failed to secure sponsorship rights.