Yes, they do race Lightnings in Greece. Check out this Video from the land of Ouzo. Some good footage here. enjoy:
PRSA Committee Boat Clean-up, Saturday, April 10!
Assuming the weather will cooperate, we have scheduled a powerwash party for Saturday, April 10, to clean up the Bayliner before we splash her, and to clean the 16 and 19 skiffs while we are at it, all prior to the first Sunday Series race of 2010, on April 11. Please join us — wear old clothes and come prepared to scrub and polish!
“Rules Around the Race Course” seminar March 27 at Mount Vernon Yacht Club!
John McCarthy’s famous racing seminar is sponsored by DISC and MVYC. Details here. Reserve by March 20.
Video Of The Week: Iceboating Lake Winnipesaukee
Ok, I know that with the warm weather we have had over the last couple of days we have all been thinking about spring, and getting our boats wet, but this video of Ice Boating in New Hampshire is totally cool. The sound track is awesome and oh so much better than the version we were subjected to during the Super Bowl halftime this year. Enjoy:
Video Of The Week: Scow racing on Lake Geneva WI In The 1930’s – Part 2
This is some great vintage footage from the 1930’s of E scows and A scows racing. Listen to the commentary. He talks about sailing with Buddy Melges when he was a kid. This is really good stuff.
Video of the Week: Know Your Knots!
Heres a cool “Quick Release” knot that you should know:
Video of the Week: Optimist Training in Spain
Wow, these kids really know how to get it done. Check out these optimists in action:
Dogzilla brings home the bacon!!
Well it was certainly a better race on Sunday than the first one. BMW/Oracle (AKA Dogzilla) won the start by 24 seconds, but then the two boats split tacks. Allinghi went right and B/O went left. The Swiss guessed right and a huge right shift helped them to an early lead. That lead extended to about 6oo meters, and they held on to that almost all the way to the Windward mark. B/O hung on though, and helped by a late left shift caught up at the port side layline. The two boats crossed at the layline with Allinghi in front by a couple of boat lengths. However they had to overstand the mark a bit, and then had a really slow sloppy tack which let Dogzilla squeak out in front. B/O rounded the mark 28 seconds in front of Allinghi and turned on the afterburners. They took off like a rocket and never looked back. B/O won the race by almost 6 minutes to bring the Auld Cup back to America where it belongs.
One interesting side bar: Prior to the race, Bertarelli (Allinghi’s owner) decided he did not like the conditions and ordered his RC crew to refuse to start the race. At his instruction they “went on strike”. The ISAF PRO was ready for this kind of Shenanigans and pressed one observer and a rent-a-cop into service to help him raise flags and get the race going. The PRO counted down the time manually as the Bertarelli paid RC team looked on. POOR SHOW on the Swiss! Find the full story here:
Scuttlebutt #59 Bennett Rises Above Tiff
Here is a video clip of the winners:
2010 Americas’ Cup Regatta is Over!
BMW Oracle Racing (BMO) won in two straight races — one on Wednesday, one yesterday (Sunday), in light-to-moderate winds, sailing far ahead of Alinghi in both races. Race 2 was an equilateral triangle, 13 NM on a side, with marks rounded to starboard. Here is a link to more information, where you can see streaming video replays of the racing. Race 2 reruns start every three hours today — at 0700; 1000; 1300; 1600; and 1900 ET. Here is the link for the video feed. Note the video rerun feeds are somewhat off the above schedule — at 0730 this morning for example we saw the A/P flag come down, which would be about 10 minutes before the start. You can see BMO achieving 33 kts on the reach leg. See boats round the gybe mark at 2:15 after the start.
MARINA UPDATE as of Saturday Afternoon, 2/13.
Per Brian Pavlik:
Saturday, 2/13/10, 4:00 PM.
I first want to thank all of the slipholders who came down on Tuesday to clean off their boats. Many stayed to help out a neighbor. Without this effort many more could have gone down on Wednesday. Related story, with photos, here.
The only boats still down are G-6 and D-2. If you have not cleaned off your boat yet please do so before Monday as we are expecting a few more inches. There are paths to each dock and down each of the docks. The paths down the docks are icy so be careful.
The dry slip area has been partially plowed. All rows except between A and B have a path. The rest will be plowed Sunday or Monday morning. At first glance there appears to be no damage done to the boats.
The parking lot has been plowed and there is plenty of space to park.