Smooth Sailing
Sailing
News By A Sailor For Sailors!
In
Association with:
Freestate Optimist Dabchick & 505 Champs
Point & Royal Natal Yacht Clubs Merger Meeting
Geronimo Abandons Jules Verne Attempt
Orange II Starts Jules Verne Attempt
Crewed Round The World Record Attempt Starts
Your Weekend Weather according to the SA Weather
Service should be as follows:
Durban
& Richard’s Bay: Saturday will be 32 degrees, partly
cloudy and humid. The wind will be a light northerly but a light northeasterly
in the afternoon. Sunday will be 29 degrees, cloudy and humid with a 20% chance
of evening thunderstorms and showers. The wind will be a light northeasterly
but a moderate southwesterly in the afternoon.
Midmar: Saturday will be 28 degrees and partly cloudy with a 20% chance of
afternoon thunderstorms. The wind will be a light northwesterly. Sunday will be
26 degrees and partly cloudy becoming cloudy in the afternoon with a 30% chance
of thunderstorms. The wind will be a light northwesterly becoming a moderate
southwesterly in the afternoon and a light southeasterly in the evening.
Vaal
Dam: Saturday will be 25 degrees and partly cloudy
with a light northeasterly wind blowing. Sunday will be 30 degrees and partly
cloudy with a 20% chance of thunderstorms. The wind will be a light
northwesterly.
Cape
Town: Saturday will be 28 degrees and partly cloudy
becoming cloudy by the evening. The wind will be a fresh southerly. Sunday will
be 25 degrees and fine with cloud on the mountain. The wind will be a fresh
easterly.
The Henley Midmar Yacht
Club’s 9-Hour Race takes place on Saturday.
Word from the organisers is of a good and fairly varied fleet that has entered
already. As always a fair number are expected to enter on the day although they
will be making a donation to the NSRI for the privilege! The club is gearing up
for a big weekend and there should be at least two good parties, with both
Friday and Saturday looking like they will be pretty festive. This event is
generally a pretty festive one on the whole with a good social scene on the
lawns in front of the club where those not sailing at the time can site around
watching the progress of their boat and pass comment on the antics of those
attempting change overs without slowing down! This is a highly recommended
event. For those of you who aren’t going to be able to be there we will carry a
full report and the results on Monday morning.
Viqui, from the Royal Cape Yacht Club, kindly sent us
the following report on the 2004 Mykonos Regatta, which took place last weekend. By the sound of
things it was a great event. It defiantly sounds like one worth doing sometime
in the future!
“The decision to have one start from RCYC for all the
“downwind dash” boats worked well this year. The promised South Easter hadn’t
pushed through by the 08h30 start, but there was enough of a breeze out of the
South West to get everybody over the start line at a decent pace. The wind
stayed fickle throughout the day, forcing a couple of early retirements, who
then regretted their hasty actions as the wind improved and the rest of the
fleet enjoyed some great sailing. Despite showing promise, the wind dropped to
fluky and annoying with “more holes than a marathon runners takkie” as
described by one skipper, and slowed down the smaller boats in the race.
Fluky
and holey it may have been, but Warrior made short work of the distance and
roared up the channel under spinnaker to finish a few minutes before 17h00. Hot
on their heels came Wizard and Beluga who were safely tied up at the Navy Jetty
in Saldanha by the time the next boats came home. With all the Class One boats,
bar one, home and moored up in Mykonos Marina by 22:30, the Class Two boats
were anxiously watching the clock in order to beat the cut off time of
midnight. After an impassioned plea to the Race Committee on the VHF from Keith
Mattison on FTI Flyer, the time limit was extended to 01h00.( Much to the joy
of the Bridge crew!!). His calculations proved correct, and FTI Flyer crossed
the line at 14 minutes past midnight. Unfortunately, nobody else from Class Two
finished within the extended time limit.
The
Marina Terrace was buzzing with tired but happy crews downing beers and trading
war stories until the wee hours of the morning. Fortified by the legendary and
very generous complimentary breakfast sponsored by Club Mykonos for all the
competitors on Saturday morning, even those crew members who were looking
fairly tatty around the edges were beginning to perk up at the prospect of the
Bay pursuit race.
Starting
47 boats in a pursuit race requires a very cool, calm and collected bridge
crew, who despite the previous long night spent finishing boats on the distance
race, ran a smooth and precise start sequence from the committee boat
Albatross, very kindly loaned by Paul Roos. The wind had increased steadily
throughout the day, and by 15h30 was blowing a steady 18 – 20 knots, giving the
fleet a barrelling run down to the finish line. The new J120, Naledi, enjoyed a
close tussle with Wizard all the way across the bay, and crossed the line
first, to take Line Honours for the day. With the majority of the fleet
finishing within 30 minutes, it was apparent that Dave Smith, rating officer
had got his sums right yet again! A total of 34 boats finished the Bay race,
with the rest of the fleet retiring from the race for various reasons.
Trophies,
hampers and goodies abounded at the Prize giving on the Terrace, with Club
Mykonos Resort Development MD, Mr Phil Calothi and his wife handing over the
prizes to the tired, sunburnt but happy skippers and crews of the winning
boats. More smiles and cheers all round as Club Mykonos once again pledged
their support and sponsorship of this regatta for 2005, so it isn’t difficult
to see why this remains one of the most popular and well attended regattas in
the Western Cape. Long may the Mykonos Offshore Regatta continue! Results and
photos available on our Website: www.rcyc.co.za”
Texwise
based in Randburg Johannesburg, is looking for a Marine salesman to assist and
run the chandlery side of the business. The incumbent must be professional,
enthusiastic and driven to succeed. This, together with computer skills will
secure an exciting position in the marine industry. Please contact Alex or
Keith at 011-792 0243 or fax CV to 011-792 0774.
The Freestate Champs for
Optimists, Dabchicks and 505s took place at Sterkfontein Dam last weekend. This
regatta has traditionally been a junior event but the 505s joined in this year.
By all accounts this worked quite well and kept at least one of the junior
parents busy sailing while he would otherwise have been watching! With 20
Dabchicks, 21 Optimists and 10 Dabchicks on the water it was a fairly sizeable
regatta. While it does add slightly to the workload for the organisers and race
committee I really think that having more boats on the water also makes the
effort more rewarding for those who have done the work and it has to make out
sport more attractive to outsiders when they see lots of people having fun in
the same place. Sterkfontein is one of the most underutilized venues in the
country. It offers some of the best inland sailing available, matched probably
only by Theewaterskloof when its full. Being pretty much half way between
Durban and Johannesburg it evens out the traveling required by one or the other
set of participants. The down side is that one has to get all the equipment,
rescue boats and the like to the venue. That’s another reason why it makes
sense to have more classes participating in the regattas that do happen there!
Will there be even more classes at this event next year? The top three places
in each of the classes taking part this year were as follows:
Optimist
|
1st
|
Timothy
Gibbons |
11
Points |
|
2nd
|
Sam
Hancock |
23 |
|
3rd
|
David
Leigh |
29 |
Dabchick
|
1st |
James Hogg |
12 Points |
|
2nd |
Bronwen Klaas |
14 |
|
3rd |
Bridget Clayton |
14 |
505
|
1st |
Graeme Wilcox & Alan Haylett |
8 Points |
|
2nd |
Holm & Holm |
17 |
|
3rd |
Rob Wilcox & Ditmar Hermann |
30 |
The Full Results
have been posted on the Smooth Sailing Racing Reports web page.
2004 is the
Olympic year with the games taking place later this year in Athens. This makes
the next few months of vital importance for aspirant Olympians, some of whom
still have to qualify for the games while those who are already certain of
their places will be looking to refine their techniques on the water before the
all important regatta starts. As far as preparation goes sailing, and more
importantly competing at the regatta venue are of vital importance. The Athens
Eurolymp Week started yesterday and ends on Saturday.
Although it is very early in the season, and there are many other events on
around the world like the Finn Gold Cup in Rio and the US Olympic Trials, a
good number of top contenders have turned out for this event. South Africa’s
Gareth Blankenburg, who is already qualified for the games, is taking part in a
very competitive Laser fleet. In fact it’s in the Laser class that most of the
top competitors in the regatta are sailing. The British in particular have a
strong contingent at the regatta, all trying to prove their worth with their
selection series still to come. After three races Gareth is lying in 12th
position overall having scored an 11th, a 15th and
another 11th. With any luck he will be able to improve his results
before Saturday while also getting in some valuable practice at the venue after
he missed last year’s Pre-Olympic Regatta.
On the latest ISAF Rankings Gareth is ranked 6th in the Laser
class and on that basis has to be a strong contender for an Olympic medal this
year. For more information visit the regatta web site at www.eio.gr.
The
potential merger between two of the country’s biggest clubs, Point
Yacht Club and Royal Natal Yacht Club, now
appears closer than ever. In recent months delegations from both clubs have
debated the issues, produced a proposed burgee for the combined clubs and a
proposed constitution. A merger of this kind can never be easy and many of the
issues at stake have been debated in this and other forums. The reality is
however that it has to happen for the better of both the clubs and the sport on
Durban on the whole. It is good to see that both clubs have taken to the
current round of talks with enthusiasm and appear to be making good progress.
This has resulted in the clubs now being closer than ever to pulling off an
effective merger. From my point of view it’s great to see that this project is
finally making headway after several false starts. A meeting open to the
members of both clubs will be taking place at the RNYC next Thursday, the 26th
of February, at 17:30 in the Trafalgar Room. No decisions will be taken at this
meeting but it will be an opportunity for the members of both clubs to hear
from the leadership exactly what progress has been made and what the
implications are for the future.
After blowing out
her second gennaker, Olivier de Kersauson's Geronimo is on her way home to
Brest for repairs before restarting her Jules Verne Trophy bid. Geronimo was
carrying three gennakers for this Jules Verne Trophy attempt. Designed as
spinnaker/genoa hybrids (hence the name), these sails provide the boat's main
driving force in light-to-medium winds. In other words, they are key to
achieving maximum speed in the trade winds and calms. Two of these sails are
new and were delivered last December especially for this round-the-world trip.
They were tested at sea last month. The first gennaker gave up the ghost just
after the start and the second followed suit today in just the same way and, it
seems, for the same reasons. Since the third is identical to the first two, it
seems reasonable to doubt its reliability, so all three must be modified before
Geronimo can restart. If she were to complete the second half of her southward
Atlantic passage or the northern leg on her return without these sails,
Geronimo would lose a third of her potential speed. It might be possible in a
race, but would be madness on a record attempt, especially since the trimaran
has covered only 10% of the course and is only a few days clear of the start
line. So the decision has been made to return to Brest, modify the sails and
cross the start line one more time.
Meanwhile Cheyenne continues to post good daily runs as she blasts
southwards down the Atlantic. On Wednesday she covered 405 miles at an average
of 17 knots. They should have crossed the tropic of Capricorn last night and
the weather forecasts continue to look good for her for the next 24 hours or
so. At the moment she is about 150 miles behind the relative position of Orange
on her record setting voyage so has been making up god ground on the record
pace.
Further north current record holder Bruno Peyron has
set off on his Jules Verne attempt onboard his new 124-foot cat, Orange II. She started on
Wednesday in good winds of 20 to 25 knots and is expecting to make good
progress in the early stages of her voyage. It will be interesting to see how
Orange II progresses on her voyage and in particular how she stands up to being
pushed hard for the better part of two months especially considering that the
boat was only launched late last year.
Also on Wednesday Polish yachtsman Roman Paszke started a round the world record attempt of his own. Sailing his Volvo 60, the former Assa
Abbloy now renamed BHP, Paszke is hoping to set a new record time for a
fully crewed monohull passage around the world. This is the first time that
this has been attempted and one gets the feeling that Paszke is just trying to
get in before Mari Cha V has a go. In preparation for this attempt Paszke
purchased the two Assa Abbloy yachts in December last year and has been
training his crew in the south of France since. They have also had to make some
major alterations to the boat, which was originally designed to spend only 30
days at a time on the water. One imagines that on this twp they will be
spending in the region of 90 days on the water. For this record attempt there
are 9 crew on board the boat as opposed to the 12 that were on board for the
Volvo Race so there is going to be a lot of hard work for this crew to do.
Cheyenne’s Web Site: www.fossettchallenge.com
Geronimo’s Web Site: www.trimaran-geronimo.com
Orange II’s Web Site: www.orange.fr
World Sailing Speed Record Council: www.sailspeedrecords.com
Our Notices of Race page on the Smooth Sailing has all the NOR’s available to us. If you
have a regatta coming up and would like to make the NOR available online then
e-mail it to hethcot@iafrica.com and it will be posted and
listed in this newsletter. To get your copy simply click on the name of the
regatta you are interested in below:
|
Regatta |
Venue |
Dates |
|
Point, Royal Natal & Zululand
Yacht Clubs and Club Naval, Maputo |
December 2003 to July 2004 |
|
|
Henley Midmar Yacht Club |
21 February |
|
|
Vaal Dam |
21 & 22 February |
|
|
Milnerton Aquatic Club |
28 & 29 February |
|
|
Benoni Sailing Club |
28 & 29 February |
|
|
Henley Midmar Yacht Club |
13 & 14 March |
|
|
Point Yacht Club |
20 to 22 March |
|
|
Mossel Bay Yacht Club |
20 to 22 March |
|
|
Island Sailing Club |
27 & 28 March |
|
|
Zululand Yacht Club |
9 April |
|
|
Point Yacht Club Easter Regatta Including Sprog, 505
& Dart kZN Champs |
Point Yacht Club |
9 to 12 April |
|
Hoedjiesbaai Beach, Saldahna Bay |
9 to 12 April |
|
|
Dabchick Downham Trophy &
Optimist Interclub Challenge |
Pretoria Sailing Club |
24 & 25 April 2004 |
|
Algoa Bay Yacht Club |
24 to 30 April |
The Classifieds has been updated on the Smooth Sailing web site. Take a surf past to see what is for sale or sought after in the wanted column. To place an ad, e-mail the details to andrew@smoothsailing.co.za.
Spirit 28
In any
condition
Preferably on
the Vaal.
Prepared to pay
for extras, instruments, and endearing features, but the
bare
necessities is all I want.
Must float, and
have good sails.
Diesel motor an
advantage.
Contact: Pat
Jay
Cell: 082 449
9911
E-Mail: patrick.jay@larox.com
Swing Keel
Version on very good and light trailer
Very well
built and finished
VHF radio
fitted
Depth Gauge
Speed and log
Two plate gas
stove
Lifting
rudder and custom made stainless steel rudder with fixed blade
5 HP Yamaha
outboard
4 berths x
1,95m
Outstanding
condition
R45 000-00
Contact:
Chris Storey
E-Mail: storey@501.co.za
With integral
and separate tanks.
Less than 18
months old.
R6 500-00
Contact Brendan
Boyle
Cell: 082 442
8676
E-Mail: brendan@iafrica.com
22
ft Vagabond Motor Cruiser
With 2 x 115 hp
Yamahas in excellent condition.
Sleeps 2 with
separate toilet, fridge, fish finder, on braked high speed
trailer.
Lying Vaal Dam.
R165 000-00 or
nearest offer.
Contact: Steven
Cell: 082 321 2143
Good condition.
New centreboard.
Includes two sets of
sails, dolly and boat cover.
Also included is an
unlicensed road trailer.
On view at Benoni
Sailing Club.
R6 500-00
Contact: Leon Stander
Cell 082-873-6611
Work: 011-817 9300
Home: 011-817 1836
Complete new
paint
New sheets
genny ok spinaker ok main old
Has all
extras motor cusions etc
R20 000-00
Parked on
shore at TYC
Contact: Ken
Bishop
Cell: 083 631 3856
Fully
equipped for extensive blue water cruising
27HP Yanmar
engine.
Includes
chain mooring in Durban.
R350 000-00
Contact Don
Sellars
Cell: 072 354
9724
E-Mail: donsellars@absamail.co.za
In very good
condition
Lots of
extras and one year old motor
R89 000-00
Contact: Leo
Harford
Phone: 021-465
5548
Cell: 082 923 6126.
Contact: Hennie
De Villiers
'CRACKER'
R60 000-00
Includes sails
Trailer and mooring
Contact: Andrew Murray
Phone: 031-467 8190 (a/h)
Wooden Extra
in racing trim for sale.
Condition
excellent, made by Stephen du Toit.
Kept
permanently indoors and seldom sailed in past few years.
R9 500-00
Includes spare
sails, dolly and cover.
Contact: John
Sibbald
Work 021-762
5067
Home: 021-786
3012
Cell: 082 658 2490
2 X full sets
of sails
Boat totally
recently refurbished thus in mint condition
Lying
Haartbeespoort Dam
R45 000-00
including mooring
Contact:
Geoff
Cell: 083 321
1485
Magic Box
Composite Hull
Recently refurbished
Includes licensed
trailer and dolly, sails and cover
Won 2001 Nationals
R8 000-00
Contact: Kim Davies
Cell: 082-780-8357
E-Mail: timbercuisine@wol.co.za
WANTED
Fairly good
condition
In Gauteng
area
Contact:
Wayne
Cell: 083 289 3098
Relatively cheap!
JHB Area
Contact: Mark Meredith
Cell: 082 771 2708
Second Hand
Hobie 16 Mast
Contact: Heinz Venter
Work Phone: 033-263
1251/2 on ext 227
Home Phone: 033-263 2237
Laser
In good condition.
Contact: John Knipe
Cell: 083 281 1399
E-Mail: jknipe@bayunion.co.za
Hobie 16
Any condition.
Contact: Lorraine
Cell: 084 611 4889
Contact: Simon Waterkyn
In
Gauteng area
Contact: Niel Ellingson
Cell:
073 224 0945
Optimist
In sailing condition.
Will pay cash.
Contact: David Untiedt
Cell: 082 8881734
Andrew Heathcote
Mobile: +27 (0) 83 783 8805
This newsletter is
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subject matter contained herein is entirely of a yachting orientated nature or
that which may be of interest to yachtsmen.
Please note that the views
contained in this newsletter are those of the authors concerned and in no way
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