Merry Christmas!
Don’t be that guy.
A friend sent me these pictures a while ago. I do not know what event they are from. Probably makes you feel better about the last mistake you made though. More are below.
I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback about this blog, but mostly regarding pictures. I am a little short on time right now, so rather than write an article, I’ve included some pictures of a trimaran crash (and a few news tid bits). I appreciate your feedback, and I am happy to hear suggestions about how to improve the site.
Francis Joyon – Is still on pace to beat Ellen MacArthur’s around the world record. He’s got a little while to go, but he’s tearing it up right now. I believe he is averaging just under 20 knots an hour at the moment, not bad for sailing by yourself.
Royal Yachting Association letter – The RYA’s Chris Atkins recently sent a letter to ISAF President Goran Petersson asking that the slate of Olympic Sailing disciplines be reconsidered. ISAF can review this decision at a meeting in May of 2008. The letter cited recent requests by the International Olympic Committee which included making Olympic sailing more media friendly, more focused towards younger athletes, and focused towards developing the sport in more countries. To that end, the letter states that in 2002 the IOC actually recommended to ISAF that there should be a reduction in the number of keelboat events at the Olympics. Reasons for that recommendation include the high cost to run keelboat events (compared to dinghy events), and that the keelboat events “suit the resources and physiques of established Olympic sailing nations and are hardest for new ones to break into.”
I did not intend to bring this issue up again, because I thought it was over and that multihulls were out of the 2012 Olympics. But there are several countries pushing the issue with ISAF, including the
On a side note, I was surprised by the statements in Chris Atkins’ letter regarding the state of Olympic sailing in general. Although sailing does not have the media appeal of many other Olympic sports, I always understood that sailing was a sport the IOC looked upon favorably. Furthermore, it was my belief that it is a very popular sport worldwide in terms of people who participate in sailing. Mr. Atkins letter suggests otherwise. I am not sure what the facts really are. I saw Chris Atkins’ letter on Sailing Anarchy the other day, but it is not there anymore. I am not sure where on can find it now.
420 Clinic in
That’s why you need an escape hatch.
The Mitchell Report
I love baseball. I watch baseball all the time. In fact, if there was no such thing as baseball, this blog would probably have 10 times the content it does right now. I even get depressed after the baseball playoffs are over. I am excited to have just learned that the Red Sox will open their season a week early next year. But the games will be in
But I digress, back to the task at hand.
It is refreshing that Senator George Mitchell’s report on his investigation into the use of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball was made public. Baseball players should be made to play by the same rules as other athletes. People will always try to cheat, in any sport. But sports organizers should put forth their best efforts to ensure that the playing field is level. It is their duty to the competitors, and to the fans. The testing program for Olympic athletes is so strict, compared to that of Major League Baseball, that it is ridiculous.
As we speak, there are American sailors training to go to the Olympics. They are paying for their sailing with their own money, and donations made to their non-profit organizations. Conducting a sailing campaign in the
US Anti-Doping’s list of banned substances is comprehensive to say the least. It includes everything from anabolic steroids and HGH to recreational drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. It also includes some over the counter medicines and used to proscribe the maximum level of caffeine one can have in his or her system. I campaigned Tornados from 2001 – 2004. During that period, I was told that someone my size was in danger of failing a USADA test if he had more than 3 cups of coffee a day. Caffeine has since been removed from the banned substance list, fortunately.
The WADA policy states “The presence of a prohibited substance in an athlete’s urine (or blood, when applicable) constitutes an offense, regardless of the manner in which the Prohibited Substance came to be in the athelete’s system.” Representatives from USADA recommend that individuals be extremely conscious of every pill and protein shake they put into their body. Manufacturers of illegal performance enhancing drugs often also produce legal drugs, vitamins, and supplements. It can be the case that trace elements of the illegal drugs appear in the legal ones. Individuals have failed USADA drug tests in this way in the past (although I do not think any sailors have). Many individuals in USADA’s testing pool refuse to take any cold medicines or vitamins at all, for fear of failing a test in this way. Almost everyone refuses to buy medicines when traveling out of the country, as it is too difficult to verify their source. This makes life difficult if you get run down on the road. Barry Bonds said he did not know what “the cream” and “the clear” were. That would not have gotten him very far with a USAD agent. But is got him the Major League home run record.
Seventeen aspiring Olympians received penalties from USADA this year. The most lenient suspension was to a weightlifter that had THC in his system. He received a 3 month suspension from competition. Several individuals on the 2007 list, including Marion Jones and Floyd Landis, received suspensions and were stripped of their results. One track athlete was banned from competition for life. Two people were cited for “failure to submit to doping control”, which probably means they missed their tests. Their suspensions were one year and two years. It is not that hard to have a missed test. Everyone in the testing pool is required to submit quarterly calendars detailing their training and competition schedules. These must be detailed almost down to the hour. So on December 1st, one has to be able to say where they will be on February 20th, at 2 PM. Of course, one can update travel plans, but this is difficult to keep up with (it used to make me feel like I was a teenager, calling my mom to see if I could stay out late). If an individual is not where they stated they would be, they have two hours (or maybe four, I forget), to turn up, or they receive a missed test. Three missed tests = a suspension. All of this information can be found on www.usantidoping.org.
Although I am critical of how inconvenient and condemning the USADA testing policies are, I understand their purpose. For even with such strict policies, people will try to cheat, and they do figure out how to pass tests while using performance enhancing drugs. Marion Jones is a prime example. But it is shocking that amateur athletes are subject to such strict testing, while
Major League Baseball has been trying, kind of, to ban performance enhancing drugs for many years. But the players’ union is strong, and MLB never fought that hard about it. Just as importantly, Barry Bonds hitting home runs sells tickets. The league did not really mind seeing players find ways to enhance their performance.
Finally though, in 2002, it became illegal to use performance enhancing drugs in baseball. But tests were infrequent. In 2005 the penalty for a first-time positive test was increased from 15 games to 50 games. That is under one-third of one baseball season. Several pro baseball payers have failed tests, served suspensions, and are back on the field, earning huge contracts. There current program is hardly a deterrent. One is unlikely to be tested, and even if one tests positive, the suspension is lenient. For an amateur athlete, the mere publication of a failed test could end his or her career. It is hard enough to raise money for an Olympic effort when things are going right. Trying to raise support after failing a drug test would be rather difficult.
Who knows what will happen next? Will the Mitchell Report actually lead to an effective testing program for baseball? Maybe. Will anyone named in the report be suspended? Maybe, maybe not. Senator Mitchell actually recommends that no one in his report be suspended. This is surprising. If the guy at my gym drops his stash on the floor in front of the cop who uses the locker next door, he gets arrested. But if you make 10 million dollars a year, and use HGH, they just tell you not to do it anymore. In the meantime, fathers all over New York City have to explain to their 10 year old kids what Human Growth Hormone is, and why their favorite player, Roger Clemens was not supposed to be using it. Then they have to explain why Roger Clemens is suing the league, and why it is hard for guys that use HGH to get voted into the Hall of Fame.
It is idealist to think the sports world will totally eliminate the use of performance enhancing drugs. But it should try, and everyone, in every sport, should be held to the same standard.
Sailing on a Spaceship
Just after I graduated from Boston University, I decided to charter a Tornado for the 2000 Miami Olympic Classes Regatta. Jon Baker and I (we were competitors in college while he was at Tufts University), made plans to race the regatta together. We chartered a boat from Richard Feeny, who took us out for our first sail a couple of days before the regatta. Neither of us had ever been on a multihull before. All three of us went on the boat for our orientation sail. There was not much breeze at all when we left the beach that day at the Miami Yacht Club.
Every type of boat has its own characteristics which make it feel a little bit different. The length, beam, sail area, boat weight, and all the other design variables make each boat sail in a unique fashion. On the other hand, a boat is a boat. Right? I thought differently about five minutes into that sail. We got one puff (which was probably no more than 6 knots), the boat began to fly a hull, and I felt like I had gotten whiplash (I kind of wanted a seat belt). The ease of acceleration was so foreign to me. It was amazing how effortlesssly the boat wanted to go forward. I learned later why the Tornado is so efficient.
Its dimensions are,
Length – 20’
Beam – 10’
Total Boat Weight – 155 kilos (341 pounds)
Mast Height – 30’
Sail Area – mainsail – 16.35 sq. meters (176 sq. ft.)
Jib – 5.29 sq. meters (57 sq. ft.)
Spinnaker – 25.77 sq. meters (277 sq. ft.)
Crew – 2 (average crew weight of about 320 pounds)
Trapeze – 2
Considering the numbers, a couple of things become apparent.
Boat Weight - At 20 feet long, and weighing in at 341 pounds, it is a very light boat. Compare this to two other very strong racing classes, the Lightning – 20 feet long, 960 pounds, and the Melges 24 – 24 feet long, 1780 pounds.
Crew Weight – I state the average crew weight at about 320 pounds, although that may not be totally accurate. But the range of crew weights in the fleet is something like 300 pounds up to about 360. The Tornado is a big boat with a lot of sail area for two people. But with two trapezes and a 10 foot beam, your 320 pounds exerts plenty of leverage. This is another odd sensation for the first time Tornado sailor, your head is really far from the middle of the boat when out on the wire. Almost all production beach cats are no wider than 8′ 6″, the legal width for trailering down a road. A Tornado is more time consuming to rig and derig, because its beams must be removed for trailering. But it is much faster than comparable beach cats in breeze because of its wider beam.
High Aspect Sails – The Tornado’s 30’ tall rig allows for a very efficient sail plan.
There are some other important factors not obvious from looking at the boat’s dimensions. One comes to mind pretty quickly - catamarans can fly a hull. When a multihull flies a hull, its wetted surface is reduced dramatically, and the boat goes faster. Another factor is less obvious when watching a catamaran sail, but readily apparent when onboard – the rig rotates. Mast rotation dramatically increases the efficiency of the mainsail. On any boat where the mast does not rotate (which is most sailboats), the mainsail area immediately aft of the mast is not working efficiently (and on some boats, hardly at all) because the mast is disturbing the airflow over that part of the sail. By allowing the mast to rotate, one can position the mast so it allows the wind to flow correctly over the entire mainsail. Equally as important, when the mast is rotated at the correct angle, the wind flows efficiently around the mast itself and so it also creates lift. Thus, rotating rigs make the mainsail more efficient, and they really add area to the sail plan too. This is why all multihull handicap systems require the mast height and mast chord length to be submitted when assigning ratings. Rotating masts are counted as sail area.
That day of our first sail was not quite sensational enough to make me think I was “sailing on a spaceship”, as the title of this article suggests. It was the second day that made me think that. The breeze was up, probably about 20 knots steady, with gusts that were higher. Feeny was probably having second thoughts about having chartered his boat to us. The rest of the fleet was dying to see what would happen when we left the beach. To put things in context, it was January of 2000, and the 2000 US Olympic Selection was scheduled for April of that year. The fleet was fully active, and at the top of their game after having campaigned for the previous years. And they were pleasantly surprised to get some unexpected entertainment from a few rookies (actually, everyone was very helpful with tips as they were excited to welcome new faces to the class, but they were probably also trying to ensure that we wouldn’t crash into them on the race course).
Zack Leonard suggested we sail around Key Biscayne because that was a “nice, easy” training run. But it also meant we would have to sail out Government Cut. Uh, maybe not on our second day. Finally, we decided we would stay in the enclosed area around the Miami Yacht Club. So leaving the dock, with some assistance from Feeny, and some grinning spectators on the beach, we set out for our sail. We made a small island near Star Island our first destination. That sent us downwind first. We had our instructions, including, “weight back downwind.” The first puff hit us, the bows dug in, the rudders came out, and we understood what “weight back” meant. Clinging to the rear beam, I was trying to remember if we knew how to right the boat from a capsize (I was pretty sure we didn’t). Spray was shooting off the hulls like a firehose; waves were exploding through the trampoline. I did not think I had enough hands to hold on. Then … we had to gybe.
Gybing is actually a relatively safe heavy air move in a catamaran, but we did not know it at the time. The helm went over, the boat was slowly turning, but the mainsail wasn’t coming over. What gives? Suddenly then, “BANG!!” The traveler ripped across the boat, from all the way to leeward on one side to all the way to leeward on the other. We had only been on the water for about 90 seconds, but all the little tips and tricks we were told took on new importance. The one about keeping clear of the traveler car popped back into my head, after watching it whiz by my face. Feeny did mention you could break a finger or hand there (I thought he was exaggerating, but not really).
Much to our dismay, we had to gybe several more times on our way to the monument, as we were sailing in and out of moored boats and other traffic. We managed to stay upright, and not kill ourselves, or anyone else. Although I think we only stayed out for about 30 minutes or so. We had enough excitement for day #2. By the time we had completed one downwind and one upwind run, we wondered if we were on a machine with a mind of its own. The difference was so big to me that we might as well have been a spaceship or an airplane.
After that day, I thought sailing Tornados was like playing a different sport; it seemed so much different than “regular” sailing. But then I sailed the boat for a while, and became used to its sailing characteristics. Although that process did take a while, and came at the costs of bumps, bruises, and broken equipment, I thought again that a “boat is a boat”. This transition from collegiate sailing to Tornado sailing was the same as the transition from any one class to any other. Any class transition requires one to learn heaps of new things (although there are some exceptional sailors who can win in new classes from day one). But once one gets experience sailing a particular boat, it becomes sailboat racing again. You need good boathandling, good boatspeed, and sound tactics if you want to win races.
A couple of years after my first sail on a Tornado, I did have to revisit my belief that “a boat is a boat” again though. This was after my first sail with Steve Clark on his C-Class catamaran Cogito …
Coming Up Next …My next posting will highlight the sailing characteristics of the C-Class Catamaran, and illustrate some of the many interesting development points which have taken place in this class over the years. I know I said this posting would be about the C-Class, but I got carried away with my thoughts about my first sail on a Tornado with Baker.
In Other News …A third boat encountered major problems in the Barcelona Around the World Race. Delta Dore was dismasted yesterday evening in the Southern Ocean. They had to fully cut their rig away an hour later, and mentioned that they were trying to jury rig a sail with some remaining mainsail battens. Forty knot winds, heavy seas, near freezing temperatures, that’s not exactly the most desirable work environment for that kind of troubleshooting. The ISAF web page headline reads, “Southern Ocean Claims Another Victim”, which I thought met someone died. Softer language may have been appropriate there. The current leader Paprec-Vorbac 2 covered 472 miles yesterday. That’s an average of 19.6 MPH!