RC 44 Gold Cup-Dubai

We had another light wind day today with a max of 8 knots from 345 degrees around 1400. The race committee did well to get 4 fleet races in. We had a mediocre day onboard Katusha with a 4,5,6,9. Some of the teams that won races immediately finished last in the next race. It wasn’t easy out there.

There were too many ups and downs to go through it all. Obviously, we did not sail great so we hope to improve on that tomorrow. Artemis had a good day with a 5,3,3,1 I believe and may be winning the fleet racing.

Tonight Team Aqua, whose owner Chris Bake, lives here in Dubai, is hosting a barbeque on the beach. We are headed down there now.

It was pretty warm today topping out at 30C.

Tomorrow is supposed to be light winds again. We have the DHL Race which is a short coastal race. We will race around The Palm to some extent. We will probably have a couple of windward/leeward races after that wind permitting.

For more information go to www.rc44.com

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RC 44 Gold Cup-Dubai

The Match Racing boiled down to 4 races as there was no wind yesterday and we got started at 1230 today. Likewise, we did not race everyone in the fleet. The fleet was divided into two groups and we did one mini round robin within each group.

On Katusha, we had a good day by winning three of our four races. We had a bad day because in the first race, we were involved in a prestart incident where the umpires decided we were at fault and because the two boats touched we got a scoring penalty of one race and then because there was damage, albeit minor, we got another race taken away. Plus, we had to do the penalty turn during the race.

This was extra frustrating as I believe we were not in the wrong and the tactician of the other boat even came and told me he was very concerned that they were in fact in the wrong.

So there you go, we start four race event with a minus 2 score. Pretty bad. Meanwhile, in another race, one boat T-boned another boat, the hole was bad enough that they were taking on water, and they got the same penalty as us!

I went and talked to the umpires after the racing was completed, asking about such a heavy penalty, 2 races deducted, and they said, “Sorry, it is written that way in the sailing instructions so there is nothing we can do.” You know what, someday we will have a commissioner in our sport, just like in the NFL or the NBA and he will have discretion to make the right call.

But I have to hand it to the Katusha team; we won everything from that first race on and finished realizing we are the same strong team that won the Match Racing in Slovenia 8 weeks ago.

Bob “Peaches” Little did an excellent job for us today in calling the wind and we won the side of the start we wanted in the three races we won. We even shut out Artemis at the committee boat in the last race of the day which was nice.

So, we aren’t happy about our score but we are happy with how we are sailing. And we take that into the fleet racing tomorrow.

I should mention that my long time friend Rod Davis, skippering Cereef, won the day by winning all four of his races. Rod is surely the oldest pro helmsman out here at 53. Thanks Rod for taking that honor and good on you for winning! In fact, as bad as it was for us, we will not be last, I am sure we beat Aqua and Artemis. I don’t know the final results of the day yet but you can check for them on the class site below.

I think I better go have a beer and let this one blow over.

For more information go to www.rc44.com

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RC 44 Gold Cup-Dubai

Not a lot to report from Dubai. Unfortunately, the good wind of the last two days seems to have left a bit of a void here. Today the wind never got above 6 knots and mostly was 4 knots and under.

It wasn’t possible to race in these conditions. Sid Bensalah, the General Manager of Dubai International Marine Club, told me that today was the first race day they have ever lost for lack of wind here. I was also told that it is not uncommon after a couple of days of “shamal” (that is the name of the strong northwest wind here…cool name) there is typically a bit of a vacuum.

We made the most of the day by training in the very light conditions anyway. First, after the racing was postponed outside, we came to the inner harbor, alongside The Palm in order to find a little breeze. We trained inside for about an hour just doing a very short course of windward/leewards hoisting and dropping the gennaker, gybing and tacking. Then there was a little breeze out in the channel which goes out to the sea so we trained there for an hour or so. Then there was finally 5 knots of wind outside, but not in the race area around 1600 and we sailed for another hour. So we probably got 3 hours of training in which is good for Katusha. I steered for about half of it and Peaches steered for the other half.

Speaking of Peaches (Bob Little), I have gotten many emails regarding his nickname. So here is the real story. His Mom did not give him the name. It came when he was part of a delivery crew with my good friend Kimo Worthington and the young Curmudgeon, Craig Leweck. They were delivering one of the Pendragon’s up the coast from LA to San Francisco. Young Bob apparently did nothing but eat the canned peaches the whole trip. So it was Kimo and Craig that gave Peaches his name and it has stuck!

The Match Racing will be shortened due to losing today. So, we will race five matches each and likewise won’t race against everyone. It is kind of random as to who you sail. At the end of those five flights, the top two will race for the finals, second two for the 3rd and 4th places, etc. Let’s just hope there is wind so we can race.

Friday through Sunday is the fleet racing part of the RC44 Gold Cup. The forecast is improving for each day as we go forward so it should be all on by the weekend.

For more information go to www.rc44.com

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RC 44 Gold Cup-Dubai

We had a good day today on Katusha. The forecast was for fresh winds and big seas, so most teams stayed at the dock until 1300. Since our boat is still relatively new, we took the opportunity to get out early, on our own, to check our boat and rig thoroughly from structural point of view. All was good and we had a nice sail from 1100 to 1230.

We came back to the dock, made a few changes to a new mainsail, ate lunch and headed out at 1330 with the other RC 44s for the practice race. As the seaway was large outside the harbor….2 meter waves, Peter Reggio the Race Committee Chairman, decided to have three practice starts inside. What does “inside” mean? It means between The Palm and the shore, so hidden a bit from the waves. This was also a great idea because we were sailing right under all those big buildings I sent you pictures of yesterday. Good spectating and good PR for our sport!

We had Bob Little (“Peaches” as he was nicknamed by his mother) on the helm. Bob is a very good sailor who decided to get a real job a number of years ago. As the fleet racing is an amateur driver competition, Bob enjoyed the opportunity to get some starting practice in. He did a great job working with our bowman Morgan Gutenkunst getting their time-on-distance judgment down.

Then we went outside for the practice race. We had a good start, but struggled to find the groove in the big waves. We got better as the race went on. Downwind was a lot of fun as the boats were surfing the big waves and it was easy to gain and lose a lot of ground downwind. We did not do that well in the end, 6th I think. We have a debrief every day after sailing and we have been very positive about our training whether we win or lose. The key is to keep building our strength as a team. We will learn the tricks of these boats.

We had a nice welcome cocktail tonight and tomorrow is the first day of match racing. The format is a single round robin and since there are 10 teams here each team will have 9 matches. The winner of this part of the competition will be the team with the most points. We should be getting underway with the first flight around 1130 wind permitting. Unfortunately, the forecast is for the wind to lighten up substantially so let’s hope it doesn’t all go away. As you know, we have been sailing in plenty of light air recently.

For more information go to www.rc44.com

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RC 44 Gold Cup-Dubai

We have had two days of training here in Dubai on Katusha. Today was a very good day with wind speeds up to 14 knots. The boats were surfing downwind and there was plenty of action.

We trained with Aqua most of the day. We had about eight match race starts and three races with them. They had the upper hand on us all day, but we learned a lot. We have two new crew members for this regatta, Bob Little who will be our fleet racing helmsman and match racing tactician and Alan “Buddah” Nakanishi who is helping Robbie with the trimming of the kite and the jib. Alan is from Hawaii and been around as long as I have.

The remainder of the crew includes: Morgan Gutenkunst on the bow, Sander van der Borsch in the pit, Tahito Sanchez (mainsheet assist), Robbie Naismith (genoa-spinnaker trim), Jared Henderson (cockpit), Marco Constant (mainsheet) and me steering in the match racing and tactician in the fleet racing.

I took a few photos at the airport and around the Dubai International Marine Club which is hosting the Gold Cup. The airport is HUGE! You would think Dubai is the hub of the world with how many flights and people pass through here. I was here a few times 5 and 6 years ago and I can tell you that all those building behind the Yacht Club were not here as well as most of the other structures near the marina. We are just in front of The Palm and it is still under going massive construction. You wonder who is going to buy all these places.

The forecast for tomorrow is even more wind, maybe up to 20 knots, from the Northwest, then easing for the rest of the week. Hopefully not too much easing.

For more information go to www.rc44.com

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

Artemis ended the Nice event with a loss today against All4One. It was a close race but the French/German team had the upper hand at the first cross and they did a nice job to protect their lead.

Two matches were completed early this morning in the northerly drainage wind. In those matches, Emirates Team New Zealand scored a come-from-behind win over Synergy in the last 100 meters of the race as the wind was dying and the boats sailed downwind into a very large sea rolling in from the east. In the other match, BMW Oracle handed Team French Spirit-Pages Jaune a loss in what was never really a close race.

Then we had the long wait as the wind transitioned to the easterly. We had a few issues on our boat before the start with a broken mainsail batten but we finally got underway around 1330. After our race, Emirates Team New Zealand and Synergy raced again and it was Synergy who took the win in a very close race with a few penalties being given to Emirates Team New Zealand. In fact, there was contact in one situation and the jury penalized Emirates Team New Zealand 1 point and Synergy 1/2 a point. So currently, Synergy leads that semi final with a score of 1/2 to 0.

In the other semi final, Azzurra was over the start line early and made things easy on TeamOrigin. So that semi final is tied 1-1.

Racing continues for the top four tomorrow but the bottom four are finished.

Artemis finishes up in 7th which is not what we were aiming for. But we have made a good investment in our future by getting the team together and competing here. We have learned a lot and will be stronger in New Zealand in March for it.

I am off to Dubai tomorrow with Robbie Naismith, Marco Constant and Jared Henderson where we will race next week on Katusha, the RC 44, with the rest of our team.

Despite the difficult conditions here with the wind in Nice, it has been a fantastic event and all the sailors have enjoyed the racing. This morning, at 0730, there was a line of people right out of the village gate waiting to get on the spectator boat list. Not bad for the middle of November!

Thanks to Louis Vuitton and the city of Nice for all of their support!

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A hundred feet up at Fifty

Going up the mast is a young man’s job, or it was thought to be until this regatta when Paul Cayard, aged 50, went up the rig for the first time in his career as windspotter for Artemis…

As the skipper, or ‘team captain’ as he prefers to call himself, Paul Cayard could probably have put himself anywhere in the afterguard of the boat, his feet safely on deck. Instead, he banished himself to the windspotter’s position a hundred feet above deck.

“The view is beautiful, but the boat sure does look skinny from up there,” said Cayard after his first foray up the rig. It goes without saying that you need a head for heights, but you also need to be ready to take the knocks. Every time the boat crashes through a wave, the top of the mast is moving arcing back and forth by a matter of metres. Hanging on is not easy, and bruises are inevitable.

So why is the oldest man on the boat the one who gets hoisted up the mast? Cayard laughs and describes his new role as “a man facing up to his mid-life crisis”. More seriously, he continues: “We talked about it for a while and we decided for Artemis that it would be better to have Terry [Hutchinson] be the helmsman. Morgan [Larson] is his tactician in the Quantum Racing TP52 campaign they’ve been doing.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

Only one race was completed today and that was a semi final match between Azzurra and Origin. The Italians continue to sail well beat the Brits by over a minute to take a 1-0 lead in their best of three series.

No other racing took place. We have struggled here a bit with the wind but it is the end on November in the northern hemisphere.

We are first up tomorrow with a 0830 start which means 0730 dock out. We race All4One in a one race knock out. The winner of our race will race the winner of BMW Oracle-French Spirit for 5th place.

We had a few meetings today one of which was the shareholders of the World Sailing Teams Association. We had a very good meeting that included planning for next year. The Auckland event in March and Sardinia event in May were confirmed. We are working on two more and they will be confirmed by the end of the year.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

One win and one loss for Artemis again today. The bad news is that Synergy beat Azzurra so that ended our hopes of being in the top four and going onto the semi finals.

Artemis beat French Spirit PagesJaune in our first race of the day. There was a 6 tack tacking duel up the first windward leg and an interesting obstacle in the form of Azzurra and Synergy coming downwind on starboard tack. All four boats got very close at one moment and we lost the tight grip we had on the French while keeping clear of the starboard tack boats coming downwind. But we managed to maintain control and lead around the top mark and stretched from there. Synergy locked that match with Azzurra, when the Italians spinnaker exploded on the final run to the finish.

In our final match of the second Round Robin, we faced BMW Oracle. We got the right side of the course that we wanted off the start. This gave us starboard tack right of way at each intersection as the boats come together about 10 times up the first 1.5 mile beat. On the last one, BMW Oracle was able to live to windward of us on port tack and pin us out to the starboard tack lay line. We had to follow them into the windward mark and we never got a chance to take back the lead.

So, we ended the two round robins (shortened round robin 2) with a 5-6 record and finished in 5th place, BMW Oracle 6th, All4One 7th and French Spirit PagesJaune 8th. The four of us will race a knockout series later in the week to determine our final placings.

There is still one more match to be raced in round robin 2 which will take place tomorrow and pits Synergy against Team New Zealand.

Wednesday will be a maintenance day and starting Thursday the top four will race there best of three semi finals series.

For complete results go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com.

Also please visit the Artemis team site www.artemisracing.com.

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Louis Vuitton Trophy – Nice, France

One win and one loss for Artemis today. The bad news is that we lost to Synergy who are on a bit of a roll. We beat All4One so they are definitely out of the top four.

Synergy then went on to defeat TeamOrigin in the third flight of the day, so now they are one point ahead of us and our tie breaking advantage has gone away as we both have beaten TeamOrigin.

In the Synergy match, we were just ahead on the first windward leg, not clear ahead, but with starboard tack rights as we came together for the second time. We tacked to leeward of Synergy as there was 4 times as much port to be sailed as starboard. We call that 4 to 1. However, we were not able to close up to them on the long port tack and we ended up following them into the windward mark. Approaching the leeward mark, we had closed a lot and almost crossed ahead of them. However, they were able to gybe inside of us and make the left gate mark. We may have not made the perfect tactical decision here as we could not quite pull off the pass. Once they rounded ahead of us, that was pretty much it.

Against All4One, we had a split tack start with us out to the right. This means that when we come together we have the power of starboard tack. We forced them away once and then the second time, they shot through to leeward of us as we completed out tack onto port. There were many protest flags flown here by both boats. There was a green (no penalty) by the umpires for the first incident, our tack, and then a penalty on us for the second incident, probably windward/leeward. Terry is at the umpire debrief so we will find out exactly what they saw and why we were penalized.

Anyway, we sailed well from there as the wind died considerably. I was up at the top of the rig most of this race and it was a very rough ride because there is a fairly large southwest swell running. Morgan Larson did a nice job calling the shots on the last lap and we stretched enough to comfortably get the penalty turn in at the finish line and take the win.

BMW Oracle lost both of their matches today against Team New Zealand and TeamOrigin so they are not looking good for the semi finals. BMW Oracle were well ahead of TeamOrigin in the first race of the day but lost the lead when they did not cover TeamOrigin and left them on their own going right. TeamOrigin got a big shift over there and passed BMW Oracle to take the win in that race.

There are three flights left. Team New Zealand, and TeamOrigin are very safe in for the semi finals and Team New Zealand will win the Round Robins and therefore chose their opponent for the semis. With Synergy beating us and TeamOrigin, we have our work cut out for us to get into the semis. I think they have to lose both (they face Team NZ and Azzurra) while we have to win both (BMW and French Spirit). If they only lose one and we win both we will tie and I am not sure yet how that gets broken. In any case, all we can control is the races we are in so we have to go out and win two tomorrow.

For complete results go to www.louisvuittontrophy.com and the team’s site www.artemisracing.com.

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