Hi Fidelity Sailing

Vcast on Razr – Will this work for Sailing?

USA Today technolgy writer Kevin Maney has an excellent article on what he calls the “Fidelity” of technology.  Basically, it’s about the difference a user experiences when they change from consuming entertainment and information on all the various technology platforms we have now have to feed our insatiable jones for “getting high on information”, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers like to sing about.

Kevin’s themes are broad generally, mostly related to large consumer auidences for things like mass market TV, movies and music.  But as I read his article, and his blog which I do every day, I put a bit more thought than usual into these trends and how they might impact sailing.

Certainly Quokka gave us the first dose of “high fidelity” sailing in a technology form.  They were probably just a bit early to the market.  The Volvo Ocean Race hasn’t lost a beat though, and for sure what they did with their coverage in this cycle elevated again the standard for onboard communication to a mass audience.

The question for sailing though is going to be as Kevin develops – it is not about the ability to technically deliver a message, it is about tailoring the message to the media platform.  Do I want to watch a match race on a Vcast capable phone – doubtful. Would I like to get inside information and interviews from my favorite team in the America’s Cup delivered this way  – probably.

But to go one step further into the world of simply communicating within our own clubs – consider how these tools will be used for YouTube type broadcasts about club events to club members who could not attend, but yet still want to have the sense of involvement.  It is these sorts of things that will help keep the community of sailors glued together during the times when we can’t be physically present, keeping clubs more relevant to people who have an interest, but not the time we once did to be with our friends.

You can read all of Kevin’s USA Today story here.

Help Chuck Get Well

A mark waiting for Chuck

Every club has guys like this – you hardly ever seen them, you certainly never thank them enough.  They guys who just go out week after week, year after year, and set marks in all kinds of weather.   The days you are enjoying a wild ride downwind – trade places with the markset people who have bashed upwind in a small motorboat to set your course.  If you’ve never done that, you owe it to the sport to do it. 

In Buffalo we have one of these guys (well, we have several actually).  But one of them needs our help now – Chuck Chilcott, who sets marks mostly for Buffalo Harbor Sailing Club – but actually he’ll work for just about any club that asks. 

Chuck had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago – and he’s not covered by medical insurance.  So they leaders of BHSC are putting together a fund raiser for him – details below.

Get well soon Chuck – it wasn’t the same last week without you.

FUND RAISER FOR CHUCK CHILCOTT IS ON TAP FOR FRIDAY, SEPT 15: As many of you have already heard, Chuck Chilcott was recently stricken with a heart attack.  Fortunately, Chuck is on the mend although still in the hospital.  Those of us who are members of the Buffalo Harbor Sailing Club, or have raced out on the water for a long time know that Chuck has been an instrumental part of our racing program for a number of years.  Not only has he virtually run the racing program for the past 20+ years, but he has also been an active participant in setting the marks in the spring and having them pulled in the fall.  Clearly, without Chuck and his boat “Markset” on the race course, we would not have the quality programs that we have all enjoyed for a long, long time.  In addition, Chuck has assisted the Race Committees of almost all of the Clubs in the area, including the Buffalo Yacht Club, The Buffalo Canoe Club, Sugarloaf and the Youngstown Yacht Club.
 
Now it’s our turn to step up to the plate!!
 
Chuck needs our help right now!!  He has a lot of medical expenses that we want to help him with.  So in this regard, the BHSC has formed a committee of Past Commodores and other active members to put together a fund raiser for Chuck.  Plans are to have the fund raiser at the Pearl Street Grill on Friday evening, September 15.  Tickets will be on sale at a cost of $35 per person.  This will include a buffet dinner, cash bar and a silent auction for a number of items of interest.  The fund raiser will start at 7:00 PM.
 
Here’s what we need.  First, we need for everyone to buy a ticket.  So set aside the date and buy a ticket as soon as you can.  Tickets are currently being printed, and we will let you know soon where you can get your tickets.  Secondly, we need as many people as possible to actively sell tickets as this event should go well beyond our immediate sailing communities.  Finally, those of us who are business owners or know individuals who may want to donate an item of interest or a service, should contact one of the Committee Members as soon as possible.  A list of the Committee members and their phone numbers and e-mail addresses are listed below. The more items we have to auction off, the more successful our fund raiser will be!  We are also accepting donations form area yacht Clubs that Chuck has supported in the past, as well as any organization that is willing to donate.

Any cash/check donations should be payable to Chuck Chilcott and mailed to:
Chuck Chilcott, C/O BHSC, PO Box 34, Ellicott Station, Buffalo, NY 14205-0034

If you have any questions or require further information, feel free to contact any of the committee members listed below. In addition, we will be providing updates periodically to let you all know the details of the evening as we get closer to the event.
 
So don’t delay, lets all get on board and support Chuck in his time of need!
  
Buffalo Harbor Sailing Club Fund Raising Committee For Chuck Chilcott
Committee Member  Phone Number E-Mail Address
Jack Kitrenos, Chair  636-4239  jkitrenos@adelphia.net
Tom Lewin   839-4212  tlewin@adelphia.net
Bill Bredenberg  849-1487  wbredenberg@trubeecollins.com
Ted Johnson   874-3666  tjohnson@hadleyexhibits.com
Joe Gelsomino  655-2685  jjg@marinevibe.com
Rick Lenard   472-4702  sailquick@adelphia.net
Craig Wittmann  874-9200 x170 cwittmann@mjmechanical.com
Bill Markel   635-4359  William_markel@ml.com
Bob Gradwell  867-1230  rgrads@adelphia.net
Gerri Powers   866-0211  markset@localnet.com

Really Simple Rules

Dave Perry’s excellent book on rules

Dave Perry writes really good books explaining the rules and how they can – and can’t – be used.

But for many people who aren’t currently racing, or who are new to the sport, even Dave’s book with its simple and clear explanations are still too much for them to absorb.

Along comes a note from Jason Evans, the Race Administrator at Rochester Yacht Club, with the following set of simple rules.  For those with low key sailing programs, they are probably a really good place to start. Jason wasn’t sure where they came from, but that doesn’t really matter – they just make sense.

 

RACING RULES FOR KIDS AND SMALL BOAT TACTICIANS 
As a small boat skipper or tactician, I am too busy with steering or trimming to get into arcane details (of the rules). I
offer the following as a lighthearted collection of very basic rules.  While it mixes right of way rules with tactical rules of thumb, I find it quite a good place to start. Experience and study will fill in the blanks.

1. Don’t hit other boats. Collisions are slow and arguments are slower.
2. Keep out of the way of boats in front of you.
3. Port tack boats usually have to stay out of the way of everyone else.
4. Windward boats must stay away from leeward boats.
5. The inside boat gets to go round the mark first.
6. Don’t hit marks. Doing circles is slow.
7. Don’t hit the committee boat. First, it is a mark (see Rule 6) and second, it really makes them mad.
8. Nothing good ever happens on a layline.
9. The port tack layline is a very ugly place.
10. Control your own destiny: stay out of the Protest Room. Protest Committees are uncontrollable: with a 100% solid case, you have a 50% chance of being DSQ.

C a Cool Club

C Scows at Chautauqua Lake

What’s the second largest fleet of one-design boats in western NY in one place?  Well, OK, a couple of qualifers – forget Opti’s and Lasers, and club owned 420’s.   C Scows.  Who knew?

Chautauqua Lake is actually a relative hotbed of scow sailing – there are C’s at the west end of the lake, and E’s at the east end.  C’s sail out of Chautauqua YC, which really isn’t a club as most know it – just a group of people who hire a guy to run races off a pontoon boat.  It’s interesting to watch – around noon there aren’t many boats out sailing – then one by one you see them come of their docks, and suddenly, there are usually more than 20 boats on the starting line.  There are also probably almost an equal number of family and friends in some sort of motorboat out supporting their team – and serving no doubt as a tow boat on when needed.

Races are both Saturday and Sunday – total involvement time is probably less than 3 and half hours on an average each day.  Often times there are “Sail-ins” – pot luck parties at someone’s home after the race.  It’s a fun group of people.

I had only sailed a scow once or twice – and then only the smaller ones – and had probably never actually seen a C up close until this summer.  Like Brad Read said about me in Scuttlebutt last week – I gotta get out more.  C’s are really cool boats – you’d think that as single sailed boat, and being as big as they are, they might be somewhat slow – guess again.  Upwind they are powerful, and when they get to the weather mark and turn the corner, in any sort of breeze, they just take off.

I’ve been wondering about the solution for those who grew up on a steady diet of Laser sailing, and can’t find the next boat for them – well guess what, it’s the C Scow.  Two Laser types in one of these boats would be a tough combination to beat (though when it’s breeze on, they sail with three – interesting class rule about the number of crew – more on that and why it could be important for another classes to emulate in a coming post).

There’s little wonder why the Scow crowd in the midwest has stayed true these types of boats for over a 100 years – they are really cool.  They are perfect for inland lakes – and for anyone that is even remotely close to being a speed junkie, get on one during a windy reach, and you’ll wonder why you sail anything else.

Chautauqua Yacht Club is a place that has the weekend racing formula just about exactly right – cool boat, cool club.

Civilized Club Racing

Alerion Express 33

Garry Hoyt is without question one of the brighter minds in the sport.  Darned accomplished sailor – Olympian and Sunfish World Champ.  But most impressive, at least for me, is his always free thinking leadership of new and better ways to enjoy the game.  He wrote a book about 20 years ago called “Ready About” – alot of what he envisioned in there has become standard fare today.  Eventually, the future catches up to the thinking of people like Garry.

Garry has always been a big believer in celebrating the simple and natural beauty of the sport.  I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with him in the early ’90’s when we were both part of the US Sailing led think tank called “Breaking the Barriers of Entry into Sailing”.  This was an interesting, and hardly homogenous, group of people who were flown into the O’Hare Hilton for an intensive session of (often times, rancorous) debate about the trends that were impacting the sport at the time.  I distinctly recall Garry talking about the need for large boats that could sail with less complexity and crew, and yet be comfortable and fast. 

With his Alerion Express line of boats he has accomplished that goal.  These boats are probably the nearly perfect marriage of traditional beauty with current state of the art sailing function – at least as it can be applied in a boat of this type. 

Garry has come with a set of class rules – 2 sails, main and jib – dacron only sails – all crew stays in the cockpit and off the rail – and no protests.  I’m not exactly keen on no protests, I’d rather see the last rule be something like “Competitive conduct appropriate for gentlemen highly encouraged at all times”, but anyone who buys one of these creations is probably going to tend to sail with high social standards anyway – maybe this can even encourage a return of dropping out of a race when you commit a foul.

Rather than be redundant and tell in words not as adequet as Garry can, you can read the entire Alerion Express story here. The section on “Select Sailing” is quite interesting.

Boats like this will get more people racing more often.  Or just plain sailing more often.  Either way, the experience will be civilized.

Starboard Stackup Solutions

BMW Oracle rounding to starboard

We’ve all been there at one time or another – even with the best of planning, trapped on the port tack layline at the weather mark, with no way to find a legal way into a long line of starboard tack boats getting ready to round the weather mark to port.  The rule changes of the last 10 years or so seem to have made for less protests in this sort of situation, but it hasn’t led to any increase in passing lanes, or general enjoyment, unless of course your idea of a good race is a parade.

Leeward gates have been in fashion for almost two decades now.  While no one is exactly certain where the idea of a gate came from first, wise veterans of the sport tell me it was probably something Elvstrom first suggested.   When leeward gates first started to become popular and well promoted on the west coast, I asked Dave Ullman if he had ever used a weather gate.  He said that he in fact had, at several large (meaning probably 100+ boats on the same line and course) 470 regattas in Europe.

One of the benefits we’ve seen from the America’s Cup is their change to starboard roundings in match racing.  I suspect that the Swedish Match series also helped to foster the growth of this trend in match racing.

Now it comes that in the recently completely Kiel German Sailing Grand Prix, for the fleet races between the three AC boats, weather gates were used, with I’m told by a participant in the regatta, a great deal of success. 

The problem with really short courses with large fleets – which could mean even 15 boats – is that the overwhelming premium half way up the leg is protecting the right, so you have a chance to get in line at the weather mark.  Depending on the course and breeze, often times your starting strategy is geared towards getting in line at the weather mark. 

While it is a lot more simple to just set one weather mark and round to starboard, it might be better if we started using weather gates for windward-leeward races.  This will of course place a premium on the ability of the RC to have a first class mark set team – but if all the racers take one day off a summer and help set marks for their fleet, the problem of additional RC personnel is largely solved. 

Starboard stackups aren’t any fun for anyone. Why not try starboard roundings or weather gates in fleet races?  The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work and we go back to what we know.  Or maybe it works well and we all have more fun. 

 

And the winner is…..

Team “Cujo”

….Everyone involved in the recent Bayview YC Women’s Regatta. 

Team “Cujo” is pictured above during the prize giving with their regatta winning pennant, seen here in their cool team Boa and Tiara, provided by Sailing Anarchy’s “Sister Virgin”, ever the slave to trends and leading edge fashion.

We’ll have a more complete report from the event organizer last week – if not a behind the scenes inside view from said “Sister Virgin” too.

Friday Funnies – The Paris Hilton of Sailing

Paris Hilton being Paris Hilton

The reaction to the post this week on how to stop the decline of club racing has been generally supportive.

There are always of course people who miss the fundamental point of a post and think I’m somehow attacking their favored element of sailing.  I’m often flattered that people seem to think I have enough juice that I can somehow control the destiny of the sport.  Sometimes, depending on the tone of the response, I’ll engage the writer in a private email conversation which almost always leads to the conclusion that we both want the same general thing for the game – more people having more fun more often in sailboats.

But a few people get just plain nasty – and I wonder what I’ve done to push their buttons to such an extreme. I’ve learned it just comes with the territory of having and expressing an alternative view point.

One quote a few weeks ago – “you think you are a big hero, but you are just a local zero”. 

I’ve been called alot worse too….

But this one yesterday took the cake….

“You have never won a single thing in a major sailing event in your life.  You have never sailed with anyone that matters.  You are just the Paris Hilton of sailing, famous in Scuttlebutt for nothing more than being famous”.

Me as the Paris Hilton of sailing – as only Paris would say “That’s Hot!” 

 

VC and Political Advice for Sailing

John Doerr – Kleiner Perkins

If you know anything about venture capital and technology, then you know that Kleiner Perkins is one of, if not the, leading VC shops on the planet.  John Doerr is of the key guys there – he had something to do with the founding of Google, Amazon, and Sun, along with many more.

But forget for a moment is technical brilliance and the money he has helped to manufacture - what has probably made him stand out more than others in his field is his good common sense.  Even though we’ve never met, I learned a really valuable lesson from him – he once is credited with saying….

….”Never reject wisdom because it arrives late”. 

To that I’d add “or because it comes from outside your little circle of self-supporting friends”.

I might also add “when everyone around you is telling you how awesome your idea is, look for, and listen to, someone who thinks that maybe there is another way to view whatever it is you are selling”.

The Kleiner Perkins formula – whatever their magic potion is – must work pretty well.  It resulted in name partner Tom Perkins building this boat, which was just launched earlier this summer. 

“Maltese Falcon”

So, there’s some direct evidence – all 298 feet of the most advance sailing technology ever – of the direct benefit of not rejecting wisdom because it arrives late – or from the outside.

 

Former Senator – Tip O’Neil

Legendary Senator, the late Tip O’Neil, once said, and wrote a book entitled, “All Politics is Local”.

And so too, all sailing is ultimately local.  “Think global, act local” also applies when considering how to make your pond a more active sailing area.

Another bit of wisdom I picked up from John Doerr – when he was once asked about “conflict of interest” when Kleiner Perkins would invest in two directly competitive companies within the same market sector -

“No conflict, no interest”.

So – while I’d generally rather focus on the positive, the fact is not everything in the sport is as fun as it should be, and we need to examine why that is.  If in the process some people take exception to what I say, well, that just comes with the teritory of trying to put forth an alternative view point, and I’ll gladly accept the criticism for trying to help clubs get more people sailing  and racing more often. 

For anyone who is interested – you can learn about the accomplishments and philosophy of John Doerr here.

 

How do we stop the decline?

While there are pockets of growth within various clubs and classes, anyone who thinks that yacht racing in the United States is growing generally would be mistaken.   No matter where I look or who I talk to, almost everyone is saying the same thing – the sport is smaller than it was even 10 years ago.

The causes of this are many, some societal, like dual income families, and the growth of many new sports and sports programs that are just plain more fun for kids, when all is said and done.  We can’t change societal factors, but we can acknowledge them and tailor sailing events to fit within that matrix.

But alot of the decline is of our own making.  The biggest problem is not money – the boats are still floating around somewhere.  We just haven’t struck upon a chord to get them to untie from the dock or get off their trailer and go back on the race course.  Perhaps the reason for this is the shift away from true casual recreational racing to a strict diet of winner take all windward-leeward racing.

Time, or rather the abuse of precious weekend time by unthinking and self-serving race organizers is perhaps the biggest culprit.  When it’s more effort to get up and rush out of the house to go sailing on a weekend day than it is to go to work duing the week, the decision to race or not is simple.  Why bother?

What we need to do is go back to the future.  Look at PHRF type racing.   30 years ago, most of that type of racing was point to point, with really casual low key racing.  The focus was really on getting to the party in an organized fashion.  Now, what is largely sold is only windward-leeward racing.  Not only does this require a specialist crew, it is for the most part really boring to be mostly nothing more than rail meat.  Who wants to spend a weekend day like this?  Getting your once a week diet of this for a few hours on Wednesday is all of this type of racing most people want.

One-design – I don’t get the decline here at all.  Except that maybe again it is the notion that everyone is just so hard core – at least as viewed by most people.  Personally, I’ve got no problem with the hardest of hard core racing, but that clearly isn’t want people want.  Maybe it’s the shift to bigger boats and the exit out of small one designs that has caused fleets to get smaller, and less enthusiastic about sailing on weekends.  There are pockets of success in some classes with strong club racing programs, but over and over, from the Great Lakes to the Chesapeake to southern California the trend is overwhelmingly evident in the shift away from good, solid club racing.

Maybe what we need is for Sailing World, and perhaps Sail and a few other ink and paper publications, to focus on what makes good club racing, and really promote those successes on a monthly basis.  I could care less if i ever read another article about how cool racing in Key West is - I don’t get the attraction of going to Key West in January and having to bundle up like you are going skiing.  It happens every year, there is always a day or two of weather cold enough that you see crews in ski hats, if not ski-type warm clothes.

Maybe what is needed is for the industry types like Peter Harken and the North guys to sit down with the editors of the sailing publications and say “look, we need you to help the sport by focusing on the middle of the game, not just the little kids and glamour classes.”  It would be the smart play because there’s alot more money in the middle of the market than at either end.

So – what’s your idea on how to get more people racing more often?