Jungle Drums of España

Folks, I'm going to be back, by and by, with some words to go along with this, but first I'm going to kick this off with some photos by German photographer Heike Schwab, down from Munich to shoot the Audi Medcup opener at Alicante, Spain.

Four pictures, four thousand words, right?


Photo © Heike Schwab


Photo © Heike Schwab


Photo © Heike Schwab


Photo © Heike Schwab

Welcome to the Family, Iran

Most of the sailors in America hate US Sailing, and they don't know why.

Write that on the blackboard a hundred times and see me after class. Or don't.

'Tis the merry month of May and we don't need another journalist pundifying on. We need the reincarnation of Franz Kafka. To hold up a mirror.

It's not as though the world of sailing suddenly woke up transformed into an insect and then proceeded in the manner of Kafka's traveling salesman—lying in bed testing his new-found, wiggly legs and ruminating on how hard he has it relative to other traveling salesmen. (The Metamorphosis)

It's not as though we are on trial and no one will tell us why. (The Trial)

We are on trial before ourselves, indicted for delivering neither a comprehensible America's Cup nor a comprehensible Olympic mission. It's an international problem, however, not an American problem.

It seems we cannot agree to stand on this leg, or those wiggly many. Is Olympic sailing obligated to represent every corner of the sport, or is it an opportunity to shape and promote high-end sailing? If the former, then we are failing. If the latter, why isn't anybody in the driver's seat? How did we, as a sport, get to this point, with both our international governing body (ISAF) and our American governing body (US Sailing) addicted to funding through the Olympic Games, which doesn't hate us, but does not need us.

I suspect the answer is "easily." Witness people resisting the suggestion that more skippers be required to pay dues to US Sailing. People are confused, and I don't think that's clarity rising on the horizon.

Last November the U.S. delegation clearly explained why it did not vote to support the multihull as an Olympic category for 2012, even though as individuals they like multihulls just fine. The moves and the pressure points, however, were so Machiavellian as to be incomprehensible to the average joe who just likes sailing and wants to do the right thing for the good of all.

I wasn't expecting any other outcome from the ISAF re-vote on 2012 equipment—the voting in Qingdao over the weekend left everything as-is, dropping the multihull as a category—and I have no vehemence to express on behalf of this faction or that. Is it absurd to not include multihulls in an Olympic lineup? Of course. Is it absurd to be making the choice in the way that we do? There's the thing.

I don't see a beaten path toward a higher level of dialogue. Perhaps, dare I say it, toward inspiration. Olympic participation is a powerful force that shapes sailboat racing in a way that is too important, and has too much potential, to be left to politics. Very often the "debate" about putting our best foot forward (out of how many wiggly little legs and feet, Franz?) is reduced to personal attacks, and we saw a lot of those in the wake of the decision last fall that dropped the multihull. Had the US Sailing delegation voted the other way, "for the future of the sport," the attacks would have come from a different quarter, but they would have flown just as thick and fast. Sometimes it takes a thick skin to be a volunteer.

You gotta love this paragraph published at ISAF to explain the vote in Qingdao:

The first step in the proposal, to “reaffirm their decision on the 2012 Olympic Events made in November 2007” was not carried. Council then proceeded to the next two proposals in the submission, to vote on whether the selected events for either the men’s or women’s events should be changed. Standing by their decision of November 2007, the Council gave a clear message to support the events as already approved, with neither proposal securing the two-thirds majority required to change.

Hmm. With none of those proposals carrying, it sounds to me like a conflicted group. The "clear message" to me is not that, and this paragraph quickly follows in the report published by ISAF:

Speaking after the Council decision, Olympic athlete and President of the International Tornado Association, Carolijn BROUWER (NED) commented, “The multihull sailors had lost some faith in ISAFs direction on the Olympic events, but after today’s decision where more than 50% of the Council did not reaffirm the November decision, it feels a little bit like an apology. There is a glimmer of hope. Listening to the debate, we are confident the multihull event will be back on the Olympic programme in the future and the multihull community will work with ISAF to achieve that objective.”

Which, as voices of reconciliation go, is fine. But again it sounds like one more competing special interest, not a vision of what the Olympic Sailing Games could be. Kafka said of his own life, "I have hardly anything in common with myself."

Say it ain't so, and welcome to the family . . .

The latest member of the ISAF family was welcomed with the approval of Iran as an ISAF Full Member, bringing the total number of ISAF member nations to 126.

The America's Cup? The next absurd turn in mismanaged PR is, I believe, playing out live on Scuttlebutt—Kimball

Voice of a Sailor

Two sentences into the first piece I ever read by Margie Smith I knew I loved her writing. With just a few stories in SAIL, Margie made her case as a woman who kicked over the traces of one life
—a news career in front of the TV cameras—in favor of something that's going to have to define itself, so let's get out there and make something happen.

The poet Theodore Roethke wrote, "I learn by going where I have to go."

SAIL readers first met this lady while she was waiting tables and learning to sail in the BVI. Very soon she was off through the Caribbean, writing about the classics regatta at Antigua, crossing the Atlantic, exploring the Med, recrossing the Atlantic and then dashing off to replenish the kitty with a spot of work back home in Philadelphia. Which is where she was diagnosed.

Things are different now. Margie Smith's blog, Cancer is Hilarious, is no romp in the park. But she's the same writer, and yes, she can find the hilarious note in almost anything. Her reflections upon taking off when she did—and sailing a few miles and meeting a few people and having a few laughs—get served up on a seething platter of hope and fear and love of life and dire honesty and wrenching humor that not every one of you, my readers, will want to take the time to emotionally digest. For me, it's been a good investment. I've learned the term, Infusion Room, and as a cancer/chemo civilian I would not otherwise have known that wigs are marketed with names like, "the Raquel Welch."

I'm not going to represent her most personal voice here. It simply is too personal. That belongs to Margie.

But I believe she will forgive me if I excerpt a passage as to why she is glad, so glad, that she went sailing when she did. These are the thoughts of someone who got out there and did something she had dreamed of doing in the thick of life, and she's going to get back out there. Or not. What I've been reading is a life or death struggle, happening live.

I'll shut up now.

This is Margie:

It's exhausting being upbeat. But dwelling on the negative is even more work. People die from cancer, yes. They also die from heart attacks, drunk drivers and freak accidents. When people asked if I was afraid of drowning at sea while sailing across the Atlantic, I told them the odds were greater of dying in a traffic accident on the Schuylkill. To this day, I worry about meeting my demise on that expressway (maybe while driving into Center City for chemo). If nothing else, the Zen-meets-fun philosophy I’ve honed during a couple years of island life and unstructured travel has taught me not to waste precious time fretting about things I can’t change.

In the end, the questions about how you die become a lesson in how to live which, barring suicide, is the only part we have any control over anyway.



Exactly one year ago, I was in Antigua, racing in a classic boat regatta with my friend, Captain Kidd. He had been debating whether to keep sailing on toward the Pacific or do the practical thing and head home to Cape Cod, get a real job and sock away some money. One night, he announced he had decided to sail the Pacific. He said, “If I only had a year to live, that’s what I would do. That seems like a good enough reason to do it now.”

Once I was on a plane with my St. John friend, Fun Kim. We had just spent two weeks in Venice. Prior to that, I had made my first trans-Atlantic crossing, sailed around the Mediterranean with a crew from Malta and traveled solo through central Italy. Fun Kim had been sailing the Aegean and cavorting around Istanbul. Before all that, we were both living and working in the Virgin Islands. We were on our way to Palma de Mallorca to look for yachting jobs.

Security was tight as there had been a bomb scare in London. We decided to fly anyway and, while sitting there waiting for take-off, agreed that if the plane went down, well, we couldn't complain too much about how things turned out. We had done more in the previous few years than many people do in a lifetime. And we had both called our mothers to tell them we loved them.

That plane conversation happened in 2006, a full year before the summer in Spain when we saw the running of the bulls in Pamplona, sailed to the America’s Cup, and discovered the vending machine on a dock in Valencia that dispenses that coldest Heinekens on the planet for only one euro. Clearly there is more life to be lived.

I do, however, like to think I contemplated What If? three years ago when I first quit my city job and moved to paradise in search of more. There were reasons the timing was right—I was healthy, my parents were healthy, I had money in the bank and no major responsibilities—but the final motivator was, What if? What if a year (or three) from now, something happens and I’m no longer in a position to do it?

I thank God every day I did not fail to seize the moment. Having that regret would truly be haunting.

Racer/Cruiser/Voyager/There

Looking for a Valiant 40? Come to Lake Texoma, my friend.

The Valiant 40 was among the most influential race boats of its day, albeit born as the first of a new breed, the "performance cruiser." Bob Perry's plastic classic double-ender achieved a legendary status on both sides of the aisle.

As a racer, short-handed long-distance was the Valiant specialty. To this day the boat is a sleeper, as she sits in the water. "The boat" meaning all 200 built plus the new crop of Valiant 42s that share the same hull but add a bowsprit.

The first Valiant 40 was launched in 1973, with all the man-against-the-sea visual cues to compete for hearts and minds against true believers in crabcrusher technology—tiny ports, a canoe stern, a trunk cabin that a Tahiti Ketch could love. Only out of the water did the alter ego emerge, the fin keel and skeg-hung rudder hinting at surprising numbers, including sail area/displacement and displacement/length ratios not far from those of a Cal 40. Those numbers in 2008 are not at all radical, but you can be pretty sure that if you're ever unlucky enough to crush a crab, you'll squash that sucker with the bow, not the stern.

What set me off on this was a recent foray into sailing grounds that a lot of my friends have missed. It's called, North Texas.

The game began on Lake Texoma, which hosted the first of three weekends—three lakes in three weeks—of the latest Leukemia Cup circuit. The last of the three lakes is up this weekend, and that would be Lewisville Lake in Oak Point, Texas (think Dallas; Dallas is big enough to absorb most of the galaxy).

So, returning to our original theme: Bet most of you didn't know that Valiants, originally built in the Pacific Northwest and still identified with that region, have long been built on the Texas-Oklahoma border on one of the most popular sailing lakes you've probably never experienced. Sailing is big here, but football is religion . . .



And don't take the name on that billboard, "Munson Stadium," lightly.

Back in the 1900s, when phylloxera was decimating the vineyards of France, it was one T.V. Munson of Denison, Texas who identified a resistant rootstock in American vines and shipped the rootstock cuttings that, for practical purposes, rescued the European wine industry. Munson was awarded the Chevalier du Merite Agricole, and "Munson" to this day remains a big name in North Texas. Even the mailboxes look fast . . .



Valiant has been here for a couple of decades. Rich Warstell was a major Valiant dealer before he bought the company and at first tried to keep the production line where it was born.

Eventually Rich realized that his specialty line wanted a place where he could create an artisan community of semicustom boatbuilders.

A place where the price points would work.

A place where longhorns are not crowded out of the neighborhood, just for looking scary . . .




A place called Gordonville, Texas, where sailing north will take you across the border into Oklahoma in a lot less than an hour.

Yes, there are Valiants that ply the waters of Lake Texoma, a flood-control reservoir formed by damming the Red River (there are more Catalinas and Beneteaus than Valiants, to be honest). This is the big boat lake in a region that is mostly about sailing trailerables. Older Valiants return for factory refitting alongside boats under construction . . .



So let's just look around.













The man responsible for bringing Valiant to Texas, Rich Warstell, also has a background in aviation. If you really want to get him talking, that's the subject. What's behind the door . . . ?



A vintage Bonanza with original paint and upholstery . . .



And a "baby Beaver" built from a kit, right here . . .



If you've ever spent a sleepless night wondering what Cedar Mills Resort, Gordonville, Texas, looks like on a rainy day in the springtime, wonder no more. I realize this isn't much of a sales tool, but if you ever get the chance to sail here, don't pass it up. This is a big world.

Thank You, Race Committee

On the north coast of Texas, you can see all the way to Oklahoma.

But what I carried away from Lakefest on Lake Texoma was a renewed appreciation for the volunteers who make sailboat racing possible. My friend “Johnny” did a little Hobie cat racing in his youth, but he’s not a sailor at heart. He’s a powerboater who “likes to look at sailboats” and for seven years has brought out one or another Savannah Jane to serve as signal boat for Lakefest. You know—I hope you know—that you can judge the importance of a sailboat race by how many motorboats it takes to run it.

The ladies of the Texoma Sailing Club who raised flags and kept the scoring have been at this so long that they run their own show. You don’t tell these women what to do.



And if you've never breathed the early morning air or hunted down the breeze of the day—if you've never done your time on race committee—you're missing something. It's really pretty cool.



The certified RC people and judges who came in from Houston, Oklahoma City and the like to work with PRO Jim Tichenor were smooth as clockwork. I think the sailors on the 50-some raceboats know this, but I’ll say it anyway.



We are blessed. And it's not that Texoma Sailing Club is unique, rather that all across this country there are volunteers who turn out to make sailing happen. At Fairhope Yacht Club, on the shores of Mobile Bay, people have worked for months (more like a year) to be ready for Saturday's 50th Anniversary Dauphin Island Race. There's a race to prepare, yes, but what surrounds the race is just as important. This is one of the great sailors-and-all-their-cousins-and-aunties reunions of the Deep South. It's a spirit thing. Also a spirit thing—what Long Beach Yacht Club does with its Congressional Cup. Over time, this event has been a leader in developing features we now take for granted on the match racing circuit: identical boats and sails, assigned ends, on-course judging, etc. LBYC also embraces the Congressional Cup as a communal celebration of what it means to be "us." Making the Congressional Cup happen is at the heart of club life.
Thank you, race committee.

(Congressional Cup racing kicks off next week and we'll have a winner in a week.)


On the Red River

Lakefest has been a going concern for 22 years (it was a pioneer in charity regattas and fundraising for a cause). But 2008 was the first year that Lakefest tied into the Leukemia Cup circuit to create the opening round of “three lakes in three weeks.” That has a nice ring to it, eh?

Texoma was created by damming the Red River—the state border—and over time it has become a major sailing destination for both Texas (Don't mess with Texas) and Oklahoma (Right on top of Texas). Texoma, nearly-equal drive time from Dallas and Oklahoma city, may be the only thing these two states agree on. Twelve-foot dinghies? Forty-foot racer-cruisers? They got’em. Now, one week after Lakefest, Leukemia Cup action edges closer down toward the heart of Texas, to Dallas and White Rock Lake, for centerboarder racing Friday through Sunday. Add another week and we'll have keelboats and multihulls at Lewisville Lake, May 2-5, which is also part of the Dallas big picture.

When Melges 24s hit the line, they look about like the Melges fleet racing anywhere . . .



Texas is primarily a trailerables sailing environment. Texoma is an exception. Last month I went to Mexico for MEXORC and the Banderas Bay Regatta and I spent time aboard a Beneteau 47 that was previously a Texoma boat. The name, appropriately, was Sooner Magic. Is it overkill to sail boats this size on a lake? Maybe. But what about sailing ever made sense? And let me tell you, there is plenty of elbow room. We’re talking 89,000 acres and depths to 100 feet. It’s the sixth-largest manmade lake in the USA. Grandpappy Point, home to the Texoma Sailing Club, looks like this . . .



I have a sneaking suspicion the best parties happened in the campgrounds . . .



Regrets? I have a few. I’ve been on the road for more than a week and haven’t been able to revisit the old blog in a while. That will self-correct next week. Also, Lakefest was scheduled one week too late for me to get to the Madill Spring Rodeo. On the other hand, I’ve been here . . .



And you probably haven’t. Pretty country, too.

Fink, Texas was never incorporated after its founding in the early 1800s. The population topped out below 100, and I’m guessing that I could count all of today’s denizens on my fingers and toes. But Texans know a good Fink when they see one. The state celebrates Fink Day every fourth Friday of June. Get ready to haul out your Lone Star bunting—Kimball

P.S. It's back to the road. See those trailers rolling, rolling, rolling?

Soft Water Only This Time

Things change when you win the Olympic Trials.

US Finn rep Zach Railey has just wrapped up racing at Lago di Garda ("probably my favorite place in the world") where conditions have not smiled upon the Expert Olympic Garda event. Think light air, rain, and the threat of not making a complete calendar of races. Going in, however, Railey was recalling other regattas at this stupendously scenic mountain lake in the north of Italy. "I'd sail all day and ski all night," he said. "But not this year. Even if I didn't hurt myself on the slopes, Dean Brenner would kill me."

Brenner being the tough-minded volunteer chairman of the US Olympic Sailing Committee who has made it his mission "to maximize US medal chances" in the Games and to get his charges to Qingdao in good order. Brenner has also been voted to a second term as OSC chairman, the first time that US Olympic sailing has had such continuity. Brenner says, "It's unique for us because in the past we've thought in four-year cycles. Instead, we're taking a young team to Qingdao, and we're already doing our diligence on 2012."

Don't underestimate the demands placed upon anyone who occupies this unpaid position. It takes initiative, brainpower, a lot of travel, and a willingness to face a heap of grief. Look for Brenner to be at the center of the storm next month when ISAF at its mid-year meeting in Qingdao reopens the question of "equipment" for the 2012 sailing Games at Weymouth, England. The hullabaloo over dropping the catamaran—that was the vote last November—is heading toward a crescendo, and let's not be simple-minded. Many forces are in play, and there is good reading at Andy Rice's blog on the subtleties of ISAF's invitation to delegates to "reaffirm" decisions already made, and the vote count required for changes, and questions of the longterm best interest of Olympic sailing given that both our international and national sailing authorities depend upon the Olympics for their lifeblood cashflow.

I called Brenner "tough-minded." A man would have to be that to stay in this game. The US vote received a lot of attention at the last ISAF confab, and will again next month. With that thought in mind, let's revisit some conversations from last fall about why the US delegation did not throw its support behind the multihull:

So here we are talking to Dean Brenner on his cell phone, and Brenner is telling us . . .

"There have been suspicions of secret deals. I'll look anybody in the eye and say, no. But we never shied away from saying that men's keelboat was a priority for us, and that's because we believe it affords the US team our best medal chances. You could take a different approach. Some people say you should make decisions, not on medal prospects, but on what's best for the sport, and that sounds good, but if your team doesn't win medals your fund raising is going to dry up and you're not going to be successful in the long run, are you? In the end, we made a sensible, tactical choice on how to vote, and the only legitimate gripe is if you think the US would have a better medal chance in catamarans."

And now we're talking to another volunteer on his cell phone, and that would be US Sailing President Jim Capron, on the subject of the ISAF Annual Meeting in Estoril, Portugal . . .

"The Events Committee put up a slate, but the Council typically does not vote the slate," Capron says. "That was true again in 2007. Once that happens, each event is back on the table. Our proposal for 5-5 gender equity was voted down, and soon it was apparent that five of seven events were a shoe-in, no matter how US Sailing voted. The windsurfer was in, because the rest of the world wants it. That left keelboats and multihulls in question. If we had voted exactly in line with our submission—no to the windsurfer, yes to the rest—it would have been a non-vote because the windsurfer was going to be in. So we had a choice, and the only way we could express that choice was to vote for one and not the other, the keelboat and not the multihull."

Switching back to Dean Brenner . . .

"We believed that if we voted for both the keelboat and the multihull," Brenner says, "we were wasting our vote and leaving the final decision to somebody else. It was a close vote. It could have come to a tie, and that means you've taken a chance. My dream scenario would have multihulls racing and not boards, but somebody was going to be left out, and the boards were definitely in."

It will be no less labyrinthine, and Byzantine, methinks, when next ISAF meets.

Final results for the Garda event, including Vincec Gasper's first and Zach's sixth, can be found HERE.

And, hmm, since Peter Huston has taken the trouble to write a thoughtful comment in response to this blog—find it at bottom; it's worth the read—and since my purpose was not to "parrot" a party line but to hang a few things out there in stark relief—I'm coming back to add this other thought. It too is dragged forward from my response to the ISAF vote in Estoril, and it's a bit closer to my own thoughts, because . . .

There is no other sport where being part of the Olympic Games has so much power to skew the deal. I mean, there's no reason for Lightnings to be part of the Olympics, but if they were, it would radically redefine what it means to race Lightnings. And there was a point ahead of the 2007 ISAF Annual Meeting when keelboats were apparently being squeezed out, and keelboat sailors were complaining in the forums that this large group of sailors was being, that word again, disenfranchised. As of April 2008 we see the mostly-American readers of Scuttlebutt sending a strong signal that they are not happy with the present state of affairs.

And as I try to listen to all sides I only increase the depressing sense that ISAF—no matter how informed and motivated the individuals—is incapable of making any inspired, creative leaps.

And unless my ears deceive me, I hear you, my friends, replying, well . . .

Duh

—Kimball

The Torch is Passed

In the news bz, we have a saying, there's always a local angle.

And, there's always a sailing angle.

San Francisco officials hoodwinked a horde of spectators, protesters, and scene-makers by switching the route of the Olympic torch, but the crowds were ample, nonetheless, when they brought the thing right to my home away from home on the San Francisco cityfront.

The sailing angle . . .



And the crowd. I had to hold the camera over my head to take this shot of people holding cameras over their heads . . .



And the torch. Hard to spot, but it's in there. I believe the message is, Don't even think about about messing with this . . .





We had dueling flags . . .



Plenty of opinions . . .



Partisans . . .



And danged if I know. It's San Francisco . . .



BMW Oracle Goes Sailing

Now it's Russell Coutts' turn to try his hand at sailing a Formula 60 tri. Knowing how badly Ed Baird got burned, is he reciting Shepard's prayer?

(don't know Shepard's prayer? you could google it up)

Photo by Gilles Martin-Raget

Gitana Gets Her Record

Pacific records have yet to be beaten down hard, so it is no surprise that Lionel Lemonchois and crew aboard the maxi-cat, Gitana 13, were able to claim a new record on the San Francisco-Yokohama route. But that is not to belittle the gutsy seamanship involved. The boat covered 5,616 miles through the water at an average of 21 knots, and it was kicked around by one weather system after another. Top speed burst was 39.7 knots, and the best day's run covered 612 miles. Normal sailing for these guys, but not for the rest of us mortals. At 11 days, 12 minutes, they took a big bite out of the old record of 14 days, 22 hours.

New to the crew was Around Alone veteran Kojiro Shiraishi, who was hired to help scout the tricky final approach to Japan. Before he left San Francisco, however, Shiraishi made a pilgrimage to the museum at the Maritime Historical Park—closed for renovation, but opened for him—and the 19-foot Mermaid that Kenichi Horie solo-sailed from Japan to San Francisco in 1962 in 94 days. That epic voyage is etched into the minds of Japanese sailors. The boat may not look like much, but for a Kojiro Shiraishi, it's like touching the holy grail. Photographer Christian Buhl was his guide, and Christian supplied our pic . . .