The state of ocean racing

[Guest]

Just have a look at the Weather in the Isalnds this time of year...

 

We turned up in Fiji two weeks ago in wet weather gear... Vodafone Turns up in Noumea with thunder and lightning.

 

Whats happened to the skid to the Tropics?

 

Earlier or Later???

[Kestrahl 6]

Another contributing factor is clubs canceling races in heavy conditions, which favours and encourages light less seaworthy boats, imho

 

And people don't get to experience 50 knots before heading offshore.

Luckily in chch Naval Point has the attitude that if people want to race, they will run it. We had a twilight a couple of seasons ago when a 40 knot+ front came through, the club had a rescue boat out that wasn't needed and one on standby. Everyone headed for shelter and made it back safe. I was hanging out in the yacht club and the bloody cops turned up and gave us a grilling for running a race in what they claimed was unsafe conditions and told us how they are the ones who have to deal with the families etc..

 

Some of the new Benes with less than 30% ballast ratio would concern me - that doesn't even pass the NZ sportboat rule for stability http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=6095

[Fogg 427]

Struggling a bit to really see what the problem is.

 

So we're going through a patch where a bunch of crews are deciding to push a bit harder than maybe wise, leading to some structural failures. Pushing the envelope. A bit like racing car drivers do now and again. Both professional and amateur.

 

So where's the surprise in that? It's basic evolutionary instinct to try to go one better than last time. And where's the new trend, hasn't this been happening since we first decided to leave our cave and see if the next valley was any greener?

 

It just gets more profile in these days of 24x7 connectivity to the scene of the incident. As others have alluded, there have been incidents/tragedies since yacht racing has been happening (Fastent/Hobart/Queens' Birthday etc etc).

 

Yes a couple of yachts and crews have perished recently mainly from hitting the rocks but that could (and does) happen in cruising, it's not unique to racing.

 

And even with some of the most spectacular recent structural failures, the crews have got the boat to safety in the end.

 

So I don't see such a problem to get all fizzed up about.

 

Time to go sailing (better not overdo it though).

[Guest]

Struggling a bit to really see what the problem is.

 

So we're going through a patch where a bunch of crews are deciding to push a bit harder than maybe wise, leading to some structural failures. Pushing the envelope. A bit like racing car drivers do now and again. Both professional and amateur.

 

So where's the surprise in that? It's basic evolutionary instinct to try to go one better than last time. And where's the new trend, hasn't this been happening since we first decided to leave our cave and see if the next valley was any greener?

 

It just gets more profile in these days of 24x7 connectivity to the scene of the incident. As others have alluded, there have been incidents/tragedies since yacht racing has been happening (Fastent/Hobart/Queens' Birthday etc etc).

 

Yes a couple of yachts and crews have perished recently mainly from hitting the rocks but that could (and does) happen in cruising, it's not unique to racing.

 

And even with some of the most spectacular recent structural failures, the crews have got the boat to safety in the end.

 

So I don't see such a problem to get all fizzed up about.

 

Time to go sailing (better not overdo it though).

 

Yep just keep building them there flimsy boats - no problem aye - its all to do with evolution and that makes it acceptable.

Roger that. No problem.

[markm 30]

As I think Murky summed up the "boat breaking" side so much better than I can, thought I'd comment on a slightly different aspect.

 

Interesting to note how the make up of the fleet has changed over the last 30 years or so. There was a time, or so I'm led to believe as I can't claim much in the way of personal memory of such times, when the fleet comprised boats in the 28-36ft range. A time indeed, strange as it may seem now, when even the recently mentioned Cav32s raced competitively.

 

Looking at the fleets to the tropics over the last five years or so, it's very different. From the current race, an Elliott 40 is the baby, the rest are 44 or larger. the fleet seems to be large fast boats and larger though slightly slower boats of the cruising persuasion. To say a Farr 44, a respectable boat by most of our standards, is the backmarker pretty much makes the point. I do remember a few years back, we did get a Chico 30, a F1104 or two and a F11.6 out there doing it but nonetheless, a pretty serious change.

 

Don't really think we can blame organisers, they've endeavoured to make it more attractive to the slower boats starting them early but still not really any takers. As an aside, suspect this was the year the slow boats starting early would have rocketed off and be over half way to Noumea before the Saturday starters cleared Kawau but that's a different story.

 

Anyway, some would claim the kiwi sailors are simply getting smarter and aren't silly enough to sail up there on a 30fter at five knots any more, some would say it costs too much, some that they won't go because no one else their size will go.

 

Can't say I'm real persuaded on the cost, it costs but it always has, it's more hastle admin-wise but you sort of have to say if getting your boat cat 1 inspected is enough to put you off, how committed were you really in the first place?

 

Again, the "no boats like me" holds some water but I can't help thinking how many classes can revive themselves through the enthusiasm of one person and couldn't something similar hold for kick starting small boat offshore, one person revving up mates type thing.

 

Anyway, just observations and interested to see if anyone's brave enough to put up some suggestion as to how, or for that matter if, that side of offshore could be revived.

[Guest]

Also interesting to see in the race 3 years ago, 2 or 3 boats came down from Noumea to get some work done and race back, none this time ...

[Fogg 427]

Yep just keep building them there flimsy boats - no problem aye - its all to do with evolution and that makes it acceptable.

Roger that. No problem.

 

What do you mean by 'flimsy'? What's your point of reference?

 

Tell us when boats were never flimsy or never broke stuff or got into trouble?

 

By definition evolution involves two steps forward and one step backwards. What has suddenly changed that it is now totally unacceptable to experience any failures (steps backward)?

 

Failure can be the best thing that happens if you learn from it and move on, rather than beat yourself up.

 

Ask any successful leader/sportsman/entrepreneur etc

 

I get so fed-up with the growing nanny-state culture where every time something goes wrong, people scrutinise it under a microscope and say "Something must be done, something must change."

 

Why?

 

It's a bloody Western obsession that everytime anything adverse happens "we must act now" in response to "prevent anything like this ever happening again." Sometimes letting nature run it's course is the best approach...

[Megwyn 2]

Now I am really worried.

 

I find myself agreeing with AC.

 

This cannot be . . .

[Guest]

Don't really think we can blame organisers, they've endeavoured to make it more attractive to the slower boats starting them early but still not really any takers.

'Slow boats', don't you mean the cruising division. Sorry but that is what it is seen as by many. If any of those boats did OK they would forever be tagged as 'But they had a 3 day head start'.

 

I was watching the start and comparing Stieny to BG. Roughly the same length yet one had huge more beam and a mainsail with more area then the other one had it you combined all 3 sails it had up. One looked like it needed a shave, drunk Lion Red direct from a keg and wore oil stained denim overalls, the other looked like it used lots of 'hair product', drank low fat skimmed soy lattes and worn a tutu on it's day off. There were more than a few comments along the lines of 'be good to see the fleet get a hell blow to see how each pans out'.

 

Speed comes at a cost.

[B00B00 310]

Lets just go sailboat racing......

Those people who don't want to race them 'flimsy' boats don't have to. Just stay at home and Whinge about it.

 

The Noumea race in 2009 was horrendous. I was on a Y11, popular and common local built racer/cruiser. We made it after 8 days upwind and the boat handled the conditions reasonably well but it did break. 3 days into it the main bulkhead started to come apart and eventually the mast base and bulkhead separated completely which caused the mast collar to also detach due to the amount of vertical movement between the mast and deck. This is a structural failure, no different to whats going on on some of the new boats.

But this would never happen in the good old days to a locally made boat, only a modern carbon race boat or production built import......

And before you start, yes we had slowed down, 2 days with storm jib alone.

 

See video at about 2:20 for the broken bulkhead.

 

I would personally rather be racing in a light weight 'Flimsy' boat and going as fast as hell at the extremes of design and technology than racing an overweight bulletproof boat. These Flimsy boats are a lot of fun!

 

 

Just a week ago we were caught out in a 40kt squall in Thailand on a TP52 and broke the boom, did an overnight repair and went back out racing the next day, no point making a big deal out of it, just did what had to be done and went sailboat racing. Saying 'this is bullshit' is not going to help or get you back out on the water.

see video of that here. Boom break is at the end.

 

On the same boat we have recently broken the prod and the rudder stock in an offshore race (vietnam), again, that's just yacht racing at the extreme's. Try it, its great fun....

 

Im sure MUCH worse things were happening in the IOR days. I've heard stories of hull deck joins completely failing and centre cases coming apart in offshore races, and boats just vanishing at sea with all lives lost (RIP), and god knows how many inline rigs fell over.... Stability, well IOR boats with all internal ballast and just hollow fin- you do the math.... Delamination- Again that's been around for decades but I guess no internet back then for people to whinge about it online?

 

ITS YACHT RACING GUYS, GET OVER IT AND GO SAILING......

[Guest]

I really feel that a lot of you are missing the Point, and or struggle to understand the true facts of what happened to the BG.

 

There was no cowboy crews pushing a boat hard in 55 knots of wind, and being careless as some of you on Crew.org think, it was quite the opposite, the 55knots came hours after the issue.

 

The 70% that Gavin was referring to was how hard we were pushing the boat at the time of the issue, we had 20-25 Knots and what i would call a light to moderate sea, we were reefing down to settle in for the night which had winds forecast of 40 plus knots, the failure happened at this point, This should address 50% of the posts.

 

Even some of the crew on Board were thinking to themselves why do we have such little sail area up, but the call was made as we wanted to prep the boat early and be safe for the night, anyone that has sailed on a big boat would now what the involves, it started earlier in the day with the likes of down line in sails, moving the sail stack, checking all the gear again, every little item was given a going over, and back up plans were sorted in case of issues. To be Honest it was the best prepared boat that i have sailed on, and there would not be a crew that in the race would would have had even 10% of the miles and experience of the crew on the boat at the time.

 

Rather than sitting on here writing endless posts that do nothing for the sport, how about learning from what happened ask the people that were there what really happened, and try to see if this can be applied in future races, and maybe it might just save some lives. This applies to everything from the safety side of thinks to the methods used to keel the boat in one piece so to speak.

 

At the end of the day, no one knows yet why the boat broke, this is a lot different from the previous failures, there is a lot of work going on right now by a large number of people as to work out what happened.

 

I'm sure there is not many people on here realize that in the month before the race the boat sailed from USA to NZ and spend nearly 2 weeks sailing from Tahiti to NZ upwind in 25 knots.

 

I think the easiest way to sum up this post regarding the state of ocean racing is:

 

The level of sailing in New Zealand at present is quite low, Just look at the video of the last day of the BMW regatta that was posted, what a disgrace, not many boats could sail down wind in 20 -25 knots with a spinnaker up let alone pull off a gybe.

My thoughts behind this is that we have 2 much sailing to do in Auckland, and we lack quality sailing due to the amount of sailing there is.

look at the fleets for the Gold cup races etc, at a all time low, No more windward leewards out of east coast bays in big waves and a big northeastlies, we have be come a city that only sails in the harbour now, and the affect of that is starting to show, so when we get to head off shore some people struggle, and i feel that's why the Bull rush etc is now the small boat in the fleet, as the owners of the other 36 - 38ft yachts don't have the experience or the crews to do an ocean race. The down to this is that's a direct flow on to Ocean racing hence the fleets we have now.

 

At the end of the day everyone wants to win and will push as hard as they can, that's human nature, and the balancing act that we all like, the down side is that there is a weak link in everything we do, and its how we manage those weak links if the difference to wining and losing. Ocean racing at present is no different from V8 super cars, F1, Offshore powerboats etc etc, everyone wants to win, and sometimes it comes at a price. No one wants to crash and burn so to speak.

 

So lets all put this in prospective, and us as sailors should start working on ideas that will lift the state of ocean racing, not push it into a deep hole that it would never recover from. and at the same time make it exciting so we can get more people into it.

 

How many of you that have posted and done a lot of ocean miles?

[Guest]

good to see some of use are on the same page BooBoo

[Guest]

I really feel that a lot of you are missing the Point, and or struggle to understand the true facts of what happened to the BG.

 

There was no cowboy crews pushing a boat hard in 55 knots of wind, and being careless as some of you on Crew.org think, it was quite the opposite, the 55knots came hours after the issue.

 

The 70% that Gavin was referring to was how hard we were pushing the boat at the time of the issue, we had 20-25 Knots and what i would call a light to moderate sea, we were reefing down to settle in for the night which had winds forecast of 40 plus knots, the failure happened at this point, This should address 50% of the posts.

 

Even some of the crew on Board were thinking to themselves why do we have such little sail area up, but the call was made as we wanted to prep the boat early and be safe for the night, anyone that has sailed on a big boat would now what the involves, it started earlier in the day with the likes of down line in sails, moving the sail stack, checking all the gear again, every little item was given a going over, and back up plans were sorted in case of issues. To be Honest it was the best prepared boat that i have sailed on, and there would not be a crew that in the race would would have had even 10% of the miles and experience of the crew on the boat at the time.

 

Rather than sitting on here writing endless posts that do nothing for the sport, how about learning from what happened ask the people that were there what really happened, and try to see if this can be applied in future races, and maybe it might just save some lives. This applies to everything from the safety side of thinks to the methods used to keel the boat in one piece so to speak.

 

At the end of the day, no one knows yet why the boat broke, this is a lot different from the previous failures, there is a lot of work going on right now by a large number of people as to work out what happened.

 

I'm sure there is not many people on here realize that in the month before the race the boat sailed from USA to NZ and spend nearly 2 weeks sailing from Tahiti to NZ upwind in 25 knots.

 

I think the easiest way to sum up this post regarding the state of ocean racing is:

 

The level of sailing in New Zealand at present is quite low, Just look at the video of the last day of the BMW regatta that was posted, what a disgrace, not many boats could sail down wind in 20 -25 knots with a spinnaker up let alone pull off a gybe.

My thoughts behind this is that we have 2 much sailing to do in Auckland, and we lack quality sailing due to the amount of sailing there is.

look at the fleets for the Gold cup races etc, at a all time low, No more windward leewards out of east coast bays in big waves and a big northeastlies, we have be come a city that only sails in the harbour now, and the affect of that is starting to show, so when we get to head off shore some people struggle, and i feel that's why the Bull rush etc is now the small boat in the fleet, as the owners of the other 36 - 38ft yachts don't have the experience or the crews to do an ocean race. The down to this is that's a direct flow on to Ocean racing hence the fleets we have now.

 

At the end of the day everyone wants to win and will push as hard as they can, that's human nature, and the balancing act that we all like, the down side is that there is a weak link in everything we do, and its how we manage those weak links if the difference to wining and losing. Ocean racing at present is no different from V8 super cars, F1, Offshore powerboats etc etc, everyone wants to win, and sometimes it comes at a price. No one wants to crash and burn so to speak.

 

So lets all put this in prospective, and us as sailors should start working on ideas that will lift the state of ocean racing, not push it into a deep hole that it would never recover from. and at the same time make it exciting so we can get more people into it.

 

How many of you that have posted and done a lot of ocean miles?

 

[Guest]

Lets just go sailboat racing......

Those people who don't want to race them 'flimsy' boats don't have to. Just stay at home and Whinge about it.

 

The Noumea race in 2009 was horrendous. I was on a Y11, popular and common local built racer/cruiser. We made it after 8 days upwind and the boat handled the conditions reasonably well but it did break. 3 days into it the main bulkhead started to come apart and eventually the mast base and bulkhead separated completely which caused the mast collar to also detach due to the amount of vertical movement between the mast and deck. This is a structural failure, no different to whats going on on some of the new boats.

But this would never happen in the good old days to a locally made boat, only a modern carbon race boat or production built import......

And before you start, yes we had slowed down, 2 days with storm jib alone.

 

See video at about 2:20 for the broken bulkhead.

 

I would personally rather be racing in a light weight 'Flimsy' boat and going as fast as hell at the extremes of design and technology than racing an overweight bulletproof boat. These Flimsy boats are a lot of fun!

 

 

Just a week ago we were caught out in a 40kt squall in Thailand on a TP52 and broke the boom, did an overnight repair and went back out racing the next day, no point making a big deal out of it, just did what had to be done and went sailboat racing. Saying 'this is bullshit' is not going to help or get you back out on the water.

see video of that here. Boom break is at the end.

 

On the same boat we have recently broken the prod and the rudder stock in an offshore race (vietnam), again, that's just yacht racing at the extreme's. Try it, its great fun....

 

Im sure MUCH worse things were happening in the IOR days. I've heard stories of hull deck joins completely failing and centre cases coming apart in offshore races, and boats just vanishing at sea with all lives lost (RIP), and god knows how many inline rigs fell over.... Stability, well IOR boats with all internal ballast and just hollow fin- you do the math.... Delamination- Again that's been around for decades but I guess no internet back then for people to whinge about it online?

 

ITS YACHT RACING GUYS, GET OVER IT AND GO SAILING......

 

[Guest]

Good posts Boo and Bart

 

But I'd argue one point

as the owners of the other 36 - 38ft yachts don't have the experience or the crews to do an ocean race. The down to this is that's a direct flow on to Ocean racing hence the fleets we have now.

that lack of smaller boats is they just aren't catered for like the bigger flash ones. That's understandable to a point as BG and a group of 50fters attracts the coin where a bunch of 30 some things wouldn't have as much appeal. We have plenty of boats that could do it and crew to load on them capable of doing it.

 

That aside I totally agree with you Bart. Speed comes at a cost, it's up to you to decide how high a cost you'll willing to take on.

 

Anyway - A race is a race. A good race can happen at 25kts just like it can at 10 or even 4kts, as long as it's a close speed matched fleet. To have a great race doesn't mean you have to be doing double figures all the time. I think the mind set many have that races like this are only about speed sure isn't helping the fleet size or yachting in general. Look at the marketing of these offshore races, it's all about big fast record breaking blaa blaa blaa. Add in if you aren't big flash a potential record buster you are relegated to some secondary side show happening at another time and one would have to ask the question 'Why the f*ck even bother doing the hard pre-race yards and entering in my 30 something?'.

 

Last race (the one before??) the big flash fast boats got a shite load of coverage yet the winner, a 30 something, wasn't even mentioned in the dispatches and race round-ups until a few here bleated some weeks later. Rather telling don't ya think.

 

Put some effort into making the 30 somethings welcome, lose some of this 'it's all about speed' crap and I reckon we would see some damn good racing as the speed and financial backing gap is nothing like as wide as it is at the other size end of the fleet.

 

Note: this is knot just confined to this specific race.

[Guest]

Comparisons with Formula 1 car racing

 

1) Formula is conducted on a closed circuit and all support and emergency services are on hand and I assume paid for. Ocean Racing isn't.

 

2) What happens during an ocean race can have a negative effect on a large number of other people who had nothing to do with it. To carry a silly metaphor - after a crash during F1 do the authorities immediately insist on lowering speed limits on residential roads?

 

I can agree with Booboo and Bart that they should be allowed to do what they want and kill themselves if they want - just like racing car drivers (why is the death of an F1 driver called a tragedy, he made his living going around a track at xxx mph and knew the risks, just like eg the Volvo sailors) UNTIL the point where their actions impede on the freedoms of others.

 

The question I tried to ask with this poll is "are we at or near that point?"

 

I was surprised when Fossil told us of the political implications of the loss of Lionheart(?). I remember reading about it, deciding nav error, and carrying on. But it wasn't that cut and dried. SO when we eventually lose a few sailors in one of our local races (it's inevitable) there will be repercussions.

 

Knowing this, do Booboo and Bart have the right to "get out there and push the edge of the envelope" if there is a high probability of a disaster that will mean further restrictions on hundreds, maybe thousands of other sailors?

 

That's what I'm trying to find an answer to.

[1paulg 17]

Sure - technology developments and pushing the design envelope are part of progress for the sport ..but the ramifications when things go wrong mean that in the future Blue water races become a sport that no Insurance company want to cover (or cover at a absolute premium) .... which will mean that it becomes unaffordable for the smaller boats ...and indeed any cruising boat that wants to go offshore as a result of the losses sustained

[Guest]

Knowing this, do Booboo and Bart have the right to "get out there and push the edge of the envelope" if there is a high probability of a disaster that will mean further restrictions on hundreds, maybe thousands of other sailors?

Yes.

 

Knot sure if 'high' probability is the right word to use though. That would suggest you're leaving expecting a disaster as being pretty much inevitable, something most probably wouldn't prefer to do.

[Guest]

KM , how would you react if I bought the vacant site next to your house and built a four storey building right on the boundary, hey it's mine I can do what I like with it.

[Noodles 0]

From my lack of ocean racing knowledge I agree with booboo and orge etc. It should be up to the owner/skipper to decide if they take the boat out in a 50kn ocean race and the boat holds up.

 

Its their boat and they should know the limits from talking to the designer/builder/broker when they get the boat.

 

If you want to run on the extreme line and it falls apart, tough sh*t. You got to have the right tool for the job IMHO.