Smooth Sailing
Sailing
News By A Sailor For Sailors!
In
association with Hood Sails, Royal Natal Yacht Club, Henley Midmar Yacht Club
, South African
Hunter Class Association and Sailing
KZN.
RNYC Sunsail
Series For Dinghies
Sunday
Afternoon On The RNYC Lawns
HMYC
Partington Long Distance Series
JJ Giltinan
Trophy For 18-Foot Skiffs
Your Weekend Weather according to the SA Weather
Service is set to be as follows:
Durban & Richard’s Bay: Saturday will be partly cloudy and humid at 31
degrees with a moderate to fresh north easter blowing. Sunday will be even
warmer at 32 degrees however will become cloudy in the afternoon with a 20%
chance of evening thundershowers. The wind will again be a moderate north
easterly.
Midmar: Early morning mist on Saturday will clear and leave a
partly cloudy sky with a maximum temperature of 29 degrees and a moderate
northerly wind. On Sunday there will be a light southerly with a partly cloudy
sky and a maximum temperature of 31 degrees.
Vaal Dam: Saturday will be cool at 24 degrees with a partly cloudy
sky clearing throughout the day. The wind will be a moderate north easterly.
Sunday will be partly cloudy with a maximum temperature of 28 degrees and a
moderate north westerly wind blowing.
Cape Town: Saturday will be a fine day at 28 degrees despite some
early coastal fog, which will clear to leave a cloudless sky. The wind will be
a moderate southerly. Sunday will be slightly cooler at 26 degrees with a
partly cloudy sky clearing throughout the day and a fresh southerly wind
blowing.
Good
news, there is Dinghy Racing tomorrow, Saturday afternoon. The RNYC’s Sunsail
Series
continues with the final round of racing tomorrow, completing the series which
stated last year. Two races are scheduled for the afternoon with the first of
these getting underway at 14:00. From what I hear around the place there is
going to be a bumper turnout of dinghies tomorrow afternoon. A whole bunch of
Lasers were seen out practicing last Saturday
afternoon and I am sure that they and a whole lot of less practiced
Laser sailors will be there too. Then there are the Sprogs, a couple of those
were out practicing last Saturday too! They will be competing against some of
the youngsters who sailed the nationals and a few others who, know that they
have got their boats out of mothballs can’t wait to carry on sailing. The 29er
fleet is also looking good while the Flying Fifteens are making great noises
again so. So all in all it looks like it is going to be a good afternoon on the
water. Then, when it is all over at around 17:00, the prize giving for the
series will take place at the RNYC. This function will be held in the Foredeck
Bar and will start pretty much as soon as everyone if off the water, showered
and has a drink in hand. Snacks will be served.
While there is no organised
sailing this coming Sunday there certainly is an organised afternoons
entertainment down at RNYC. Sunday afternoon on the lawns looks like the place
to be to take advantage of the brilliant summer weather and the create social
atmosphere that the club offers. Braai fires will be on the go with braai packs
and salads available in addition to the regular menu and live music will be
provided by Ricky McGregor. For more details contact Nicky at RNYC on 031-301
5425. Remember, you don’t have to be sailing to make the most of your club
faciltities!
As most of you should know by now, the 2003 Lipton Cup
Regatta
will be sailed in Durban this July, in the week immediately after the NCS
Regatta, from the 5th to the 11th in fact. There are
several good campaigns in the making individually however nobody is going to be
able to train by themselves and win the regatta. With this in mind Craig
Millar, the well-known skipper of Zephyr, has initiated the “Keep The Cup
Campaign”.
The aim of this campaign is to raise the standard of L26 sailing in Durban
through regular competition and ensure that the Durban entries in the Lipton
Cup are in with a fighting chance of winning the 2003 regatta. The more L26’s
we have on the water then the better our chances of achieving this. What
Craig’s campaign is looking to achieve is to get every possible Durban L26 on
the water for every Sunday of organised offshore racing. While not every L26 is
going to be making a serious Lipton Challenge, it is hoped that most of them
will sail. Either way, the more boats we have on the start line for club racing
the more competitive our racing is going to be. End result, better, more
practiced crews and a stronger chance of winning the cup! The first Sunday of
racing takes place next weekend, on the 19th. It will take place
offshore with the first race starting at 11:00 and will be hosted by the RNYC,
being their Leo Caney Series.
At Henley Midmar
Yacht Club
this Saturday race two of their Partington Long Distance Series will be taking
place. This event is open to all classes of dinghy, keeler or cats. The series
is being scored on both a boat and skipper handicap and it should be
interesting to see if the two provide different results. There will be a
briefing on the club veranda at 12:30 with the race set to start shortly after
13:00.
The Duffin Trophy Regatta for dinghies is taking
place at the Victoria Lake Club this weekend. Racing is set to take place on
both Saturday and Sunday with Saturday’s first race not starting before 10:30.
The entry fee for the regatta is R70-00 and there will be a braai for
competitors, supporters and hangers-on on Saturday evening at the club.
The South African contingent
did fairly well in the 2003 Mirror Pre-World Championships this week. The top two SA
entrants finished in 12th and 13th position after four
races, which is an encouraging sign for the racing to come. One hundred and
four boats entered the Pre-Worlds regatta.
Four races were sailed in the regatta though typically for a Pre-World
Championship the results show a large number of boats not finishing races along
the way. Only four races were sailed in the series, which meant no discards for
those bad races. Today, the 10th was the registration and
measurement day with the worlds proper starting tomorrow. The following report
from the team was sent out by Willie Zevenster:
“We have been overwhelmed by all the
e-mails and support we are getting. The Pre-Worlds and the first '"lay
day'" is now behind us and we are now
focused on the main event. The pre-worlds was a tester for most as the
first race started in very little wind but just after the start increased to
25-30 knots with chop and swells that put the scare on many. In the second race
the wind dropped slightly but the fleet was drastically reduced as many headed
home. The racing on the second day was good with winds on 10-15, going up to
20 knots in the second race. Weather
conditions for the second race put the
race officer under preasure to beat the time limit for the final race
with the weather mark being way to
starboard of weather and many sailors going
the wrong direction, ending up at the wing mark. They at least had
the benefit of knowing where the wing
mark was and made up many places as the
leaders were going off into the
direction one would have expected to find
the mark. With all different conditions in the first 4 races sailed, our
team is now well equiped for the worlds
that starts on Saturday. Yesterday was our first "Lay Day" and we
went to see what there is to see in Tasmania. We visited a couple of small
towns, we saw the Tasmanian devils
(with babies) and fed the Kangaroos by hand and we went to Port Arthur.
A day experience all enjoyed very much. Waldo/Wayne, Ashton/Nicolas and
Brennan/Ricky did very well in the
pre-worlds but all will have to work very hard in the Worlds as the competition there is a lot more fierce as
all are using the Pre-worlds to setup
their boats and check out the competition.”
The
regatta has a very good web site that you can find at www.mirrortas.org.au. In addition the South
African team have their own e-mail address, rsamirror@hotmail.com for those who wish to
e-mail them words of encouragement. The results of the Pre-Worlds Regatta were
as follows:
1st S Bithell & H Scott GBR 9
Points
2nd D Moore & M Wilson AUS 15
3rd J & S Penman AUS 35
12th W Zevenster & W Watkins RSA 98
13th A Sampson & N Baigrie RSA 100
26th B & R Robinson RSA 136
60th D Zevenster & A Collier RSA 265
64th K Miszewski & T Jacobs RSA 275
66th T Thornton & C Dracos RSA 284
67th G Cairncross & S Kemp RSA 287
84th K Shallcross & S Brown RSA 350
86th T Gibb & M Thornton RSA 357
Races two and three in the JJ Giltinan Trophy
Championships for 18-foot skiffs were windy affairs with a fairly high rate
of attrition amongst the skiffs. In
race three the wined was also the only skiff in the fleet that didn’t capsize
which tells a story in itself. The South African entry, Clynton Wade-Lehman’s
Sunday Telegraph fell foul of the tough conditions and did not record a finish
in either of these two races. In the more moderate race four though they were
well up early on slipped back to seventeenth position by the finish. You can
follow the action on the 18-foot skiff web site at www.18footers.com.au. After four
races and with no discards to count yet the top four positions are as follows:
1st RMW Marine Rob Greenhalgh GBR 19 Points
2nd Total Recall Tony
Hannan AUS 29.4
3rd Omega Smeg Trevor
Barnabas AUS 33.7
4th General Electric Howard
Hamlin USA 34.7
The SAP Cape To Rio Race starts tomorrow
afternoon in Table Bay. As the
country’s premier ocean race it has attracted some good press coverage despite
the fact that it has attracted very few entries this time round. There are
however some good yachts in the fleet and the racing should be good.
Unfortunately there will be no live television coverage of the main start on
Saturday however there will be a highlights package screened on Supersport on
Sunday the 12th of January at 18:00. Those slower yachts that have
already started have been making fairly good progress in what seem to be very
pleasant conditions. The race web site has a very good fleet position viewer
that will come in handy as the fleet crosses the Atlantic so be sure to keep
any eye on it at www.capetorio.org.
Bernard Stamm sailing Bobst Group Amor-Lux finished the third leg
of the Around Alone Race in Tauranga, New Zealand yesterday in the
most horrendous of conditions. Pictures of the yacht finishing show the boat
surfing down massive waves under a very small looking headsail and three reefed
main. Overhead the conditions looked gloomy with grey skies and rain. Stamm
described his last 36 hours at sea as “hell”. Gale force headwinds must have
made life unbearable, not helped by a broken tiller and damage to the steering
mechanism, which forced him to heave to in the rough conditions while he
remedied the problem. In addition the yacht suffered some delamination in the
forward part of the hull and this will have to be fixed before the next
Southern Ocean leg. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet is still out there battling
the elements on their way to the finish. It looks like the second placed boat,
Thierry DuBois Soldaires will make it into port sometime today with no further
arrivals after him until early next week. For more information including the
latest reports from the boats visit the race web site at www.aroundalone.com. The current standings are as follows:
Class 1:
Bobst Group Amor-Lux 0
Soldaires 334
Hexagon 788
Tiscali 809
Pindar 990
Ocean Planet 1170
Class 2:
Tommy Hilfiger 0 1113
Everest Horizontal 739 1852
Spirit of Canada 980 2093
Spirit of Yukoh 1181 2294
BTC Velocity 1786 2899
The final of the Louis Vuitton Cup starts tomorrow with Oracle BMW up
against Alinghi. The last time these two met it was Alinghi who swept past the
Oracle challenge. This time though they don’t expect things to be quite as easy.
Oracle BMW skipper Chris Dickson is on record as saying that the sail number of
their boat, USA 76, is about the only thing that hasn’t been changed since the
last time the two teams met. Oracle BMW seem confident that they have managed
to find a whole lot more speed in their boat and will be able to give Alinghi a
good run. Alinghi have had more development time, having had an extra week
while Oracle fought it out with One World for the semi-final spot. Whether they
have made as many changes though remains to be seen. All in all it should be a
very interesting match, perhaps the most interesting of the lot so far. Watch
how things progress on the regatta web site at www.louisvuittoncup.yahoo.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
Western Cape Points Series Various WC Dinghy Clubs September 2002 to
March 2003
KZN Optimist Grand Prix Series Various KZN Venues November to
January
Sailing KZN Blue
Water Challenge Various KZN
Clubs December
2002 to July 2003
2003 Cape to Rio Race Royal Cape Yacht Club 11 January
Port Owen River
Race Port
Owen 25
January
Round The Island Race Lake Denys Yacht Club 1
& 2 February
NNYU Interclub Challenger –
Leg 4 Glendee Yacht Club 15 & 16
March
Hunter Nationals Henley Midmar
Yacht Club 20 to 23 March
MACS 24 Hour Challenge Milnerton Aquatic Club 21 & 22
March
IRC KZN Champs
(Announcement) Zululand Yacht
Club 21
to 23 March
Western Province Dinghy
Champs Saldahana Bay 18 to 21
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 hethcot@iafrica.com.
One trailer
with box
New mast, sails
and standing rigging
R17 000-00 ONCO
Contact: Tim
Two Laser
Rudders & Mast
Also Second hand sails
For Michaelhouse
sailing club
Contact: Rainer von Schlichting
E-Mail:
raisch@mhs.kzn.school.za
Complete, in good
condition & on road trailer
Preferably fiberglass
‘wide hull’
JHB or Northern OFS
Contact: Jeff Dell
Cell: 082 707 7166
E-Mail: jeffm_d@hotmail.com
Andrew Heathcote
Mobile: +27 (0) 83 783 8805
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