Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Volvo Ocean Race - Day 9 Leg 4

Team Telefonica's Joca Signorini celebrates a new arrival to his family, a baby girl!

Extreme Sailing Series - Danish Team Complete Act 1 Line-Up Starting Tomorrow

[source: Extreme Sailing Series]

Fighting talk on the dockside, find out what the sailors expectations are ahead of the first day of racing for 2012

A new team in the form of Team Trifork from Denmark can finally be unveiled today as the 8th team in the starting blocks for the first Act of the Extreme Sailing Series™ 2012 in Muscat, Oman. The team will be co-skippered by Jes Gram-Hansen on helm and Rasmus Kostner, tactician, who both come from a World Match Racing Tour and America’s Cup background, alongside the youngest member of the team, 26-year-old Jonas Hviid-Nielsen on bow combined with the Extreme 40 race experience of Pete Cummings (skipper of the winning Extreme 40 team in 2009) and Simon Hiscocks from the UK. It has been a long journey for the Danish team that began a year ago as Jes Gram-Hansen explained:“Rasmus and myself went into different sailing programmes like RC44 and Farr 40 after the 32nd America’s Cup in Valencia but all the time our dream was to create our own team. We analysed what kind of circuit would be the one to go with, and with the changes to the America’s Cup and the Extreme Sailing Series being more and more the series to be in, we decided to try and build a team for the Extreme Sailing Series. So we invested all our money into buying a boat a year ago and then we spent most of the year in Denmark taking out business people from companies to show them what we love and what we think would be a good way to be involved in the project. We have long-support from Trifork (a software company) which we have in been a good relationship over the years along with our clothing partner, Simon Spurr, to help get us here to the start line in Muscat.”

Rasmus Kostner, Team Trifork co-skipper and tactician

The team’s expectations are as you would expect for the ‘newbies’ to the tour: “We have a lot of respect for the guys who have been on the tour and some of them have sailed multihulls for a long time,” continued Jens. “We’re here to learn and I’m sure we will make some mistakes but we’ve got two great English guys with us, Simon Hiscocks and Pete Cummings, so, hopefully, they will keep us out of trouble! Hopefully, we’ll improve over the season with a longer term goal of overall victory in a couple of years time.”

After various stints of team training up the Omani coast at Massanah, the racing starts for real tomorrow, Tuesday, 28th February, in Muscat. The live race coverage will start at 1130 GMT on Wednesday (29th Feb), streaming on Thursday (1st March) and Friday (2nd March).

Read quotes from the sailing teams here.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Extreme Sailing Series - Act 1, Muscat Promo

A nice little promo video for the first act of the Extreme Sailing Series 2012 due to start on February 28.


Saturday, February 18, 2012

Volvo Ocean Race Game - Leg 4 Start

Sunday, February 19th, leg 4 of the largest online sailing game will start. This leg takes us from Sanya to Auckland. The briefing is now available on the website - http://www.volvooceanracegame.org/


There are 3 mandatory legs in this game (5, 7 and 9) and your points from 3 other legs will contribute to your final score. Now is the time to jump in and get enough mileage to be eligible to win a brand new IWC watch or Volvo XC60!


Become our friend or add us to your watchlist, just search for thesailingscoop within the game.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Sanya In-Port Race Preparation

A countdown to the Sanya Haitang Bay In-Port Race scheduled for Saturday February 18, 2012.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Aqua take the first event of the RC44 season

[source: RC44 Class Association]


© MartinezStudio.es

A three hour wait for the breeze to fill in delayed proceedings on the final day of the RC44 Puerto Calero Cup, AEZ took their second race win in Lanzarote, but Team Aqua were not far behind giving them their first event win of the 2012 season.

Puerto Calero has shown to be a real test for the 14 teams competing in the first leg of the RC44 Championship Tour. After their winter break it was the reigning champions who showed they could change gear in the wide range of conditions in Lanzarote.

Chris Bake and the crew of Team Aqua (GBR) started the week slowly with a 10th and 13th, but quickly got in the groove slotting in four wins, a second, third and fourth to give them victory by 11 points over second placed Aleph Sailing Team (FRA).

The team will retain their golden wheels for another event but are wary of the competition for the rest of the season. “Every boat out there is a concern, they all have the capacity and they all have their days,” said Bake, however the team were chuffed with their first win of the season. “For the team obviously every win is a great win, especially in this class where the teams really give you a run for your money, as you saw the first few days. It’s easy to make a mistake and once you do that its game over, so all in all its really appreciated by all the team that we were able to pull out another great event.”

For the young French team missing an eighth place in the final race secured them second overall, exceeding their own targets for the event as the team’s tactician, Mathieu explained. “It’s a fantastic result for us second place, we couldn’t expect such a good result so it’s great. The team is improving at every event. We had a good first year and I think this year the team is pretty strong.”

Artemis made up the podium, just two points adrift of the French, Torbjorn Tornqvist teaming up with Artemis Racing’s CEO, Paul Cayard for Lanzarote.

AEZ seemed to excel in the lighter shifty conditions, the team from Austria clinching the final race of the series, adding to their win from the previous day and taking them up to fifth overall.

Rene Mangold’s team have been a regular on the Tour since 2009, over the winter they bought in new tactician, Markus Weiser (GER) who has high expectations for the season. “The last two days have been very good for us, they worked out really well, we had a shocker in the second day, we were second to last after four races and we were really disappointed, we had a few boat handling problems but recovered quite nicely. We have a few new sails for the next event which will make us a little more competitive.”

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Volvo Ocean Race - NDT - Behind the scenes

A short interview with Stefano Beltrando, who is a NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) expert for a number of teams in the Volvo Ocean Race. This is a great opportunity to hear about the work that goes on behind the scenes at each of the stop overs.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Full on start to the RC44 season

[source: RC44 Class Association]
The 2012 RC44 Championship Tour kicked off in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote with a full day of match racing. A familiar team was at the top of the leader-board after nine flights and six matches a piece, and some new faces showed they will be real contenders this season.


Match Racing at the RC44 Puerto Calero Cup - Photo © Nico Martinez


Match racing in Lanzarote - Photo © Nico Martinez

RC44 Puerto Calero Cup – Match Race Results
(After six races)
1. Team Aqua (GBR2041) 6-0
2. Katusha (RUS007) 5-1
3. Synergy Russian Sailing Team (RUS13) 5-1
4. Aleph Sailing Team (FRA17) 4-2
5. No Way Back (NED18) 4-2
6. RC44 Team CEEREF (SLO11) 3-3
7. Peninsula Petroleum Sailing Team (GBR1) 3-3
8. AEZ RC44 Sailing Team (AUT44) 3-3
9. RUS7 Sail Racing Team (RUS7) 2-4
10. Artemis Racing (SWE44) 2-4
11. Islas Canarias Puerto Calero (ESP1) 2-4
12. Team Nika (RUS10) 3-3 (-2 penalty points) 
13. Ironbound (USA1) 0-6
14. AFX Capital Racing (ITA7) 0-6 (-1 penalty points)


Ask Team Aqua (GBR) what makes them so good and they will always answer ‘consistency’, and the key to that consistency has to be their team. Cameron Appleton (NZL) was at the helm today and had a familiar team around him, names like Matt Cassidy (USA) and Andrew Estcourt (NZL). With six wins and no defeats their season started as it ended in 2011 and credit went to the team. “The guys really need to take credit for today they did a great job, it was tricky and everybody got tested, every boat had issues and a big part of what they did all day long was what got us around the race course in such good shape.” Cameron Appleton, match race helm and tactician, Team Aqua.


Former World Match Race Champion Ed Baird (USA) is new to the class; today he took the helm of Synergy Russian Sailing Team and they nearly finished the day with a clean sheet, had it not been for a ripped spinnaker in their race against Katusha, who also finished the day with a 5-1 score-line with new helmsman in the form of four-time America’s Cup winner Brad Butterworth (NZL).


Baird was happy with his first day’s racing with the Russian Synergy team. “It was really exciting conditions today with the big shifts and big gusts which was a lot of fun. The team is fantastic these guys are very well prepared I’m impressed with how well they sail the boat, it makes my job a lot easier when I know that everything is going to go smoothly. Unfortunately we had one race where we broke the spinnaker and lost that race but otherwise it was a very good day!” Tomorrow, owner Valentin Zavadnikov will take over the helm.

Pieter Heerema was the top rated owner driver on the water with No Way Back (NED) winning four, and losing two, defeats coming from Team Aqua and the French Aleph Sailing Team steered by Mathieu Richard. A good start to the 2012 season and some new additions to the team as Heerema explained.“We thought it might get a bit too windy for a good day of match racing but it worked out really well, in fact the weather was absolutely fantastic.We have some new team members and our new tactician (Ross MacDonald) worked really well with the crew, so we’re very happy.”

With the NE wind picking up to 20 knots at times and the fleet raced to the leeward side of the Island, it really was a baptism of fire for the 14 teams. One team whose results really didn’t reflect their performance on the water was AFX Capital Racing Team (ITA), but the Italian team were in no way down beat at the end of the day. “The racing today was fantastic. I really enjoyed it even if we lost all of our match races. For me it was my first experience and for most of the team the boat is a new one so with each match we found more details that we need to improve on. I’m looking forward to the fleet racing; we can work on the boat speed and have some good races for sure, I am very optimistic about that.” Massimo Barranco, owner AFX Capital Racing Team.

With six matches completed by each of the teams in Lanzarote, the continuous round robin will carry on throughout the season at every RC44 event until the end of the season in Croatia where the 2012 RC44 Match Racing Champion will be crowned.


The fleet racing which counts for the RC44 Championship starts on Thursday 9th February at 12.00GMT. Racing continues through to Sunday 12th February; Follow the racing on the live blog at www.rc44.com.


Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Volvo Ocean Race - Maintenance in Sanya

A video update of current shore team activity in Sanya. It seems that the modifications and repairs are never ending!

See the Volvo Ocean Race YouTube channel for more updates.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Kiteboarding Trials for 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition

[source: ISAF]

ISAF has announced that Kiteboarding format trials will be held in Santander, Spain from 21-25 March.

In May 2011 ISAF Council selected Windsurfing and/or Kiteboarding as a possible event for the 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition.

ISAF and the IKA have proposed the following format options for Kiteboarding to be trialled in Santander: short track, slalom , course racing and enduro.
ISAF is inviting Member National Authorities, National Kiteboard Associations and Kiteboarding manufacturers to nominate a maximum of one man and one woman to attend the format trails.

Click here for the full press release.

Australian 18ft Skiff Championship

Thurlow Fisher Lawyers with skipper Michael Coxon and crew Aaron Links and Trent Barnabus have retained their 18ft Skiff Australian Championship with a race to spare winning 3 of the first 4 heats. These guys are certainly now favourites to take out the JJ Giltinan Championship to be sailed from February 17-25 on Sydney Harbour.

We like this little piece of video we found at www.18footerstv.com

Monday, February 06, 2012

More strong upwind conditions for the GOR trio

[source: Global Ocean Race, Oliver Dewar]

The first week of Global Ocean Race (GOR) Leg 3 has been the most demanding of the entire circumnavigation so far with strong conditions for the five double handed Class40s from within hours of the start in Wellington, New Zealand, on Sunday 29 January.

Conrad Colman and Adrian Kuttel led the fleet in to Cook Strait from the shelter of Wellington Harbour with Cessna Citation right into 30-knot headwinds and big seas forcing the fleet to reef for the first night at sea. As light faded, Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron took pole position with Campagne de France as Marco Nannini and Hugo Ramon split from the fleet and took Financial Crisis on a flyer south parallel to the coast of South Island.
As the main pack of the fleet dropped south-east leaving Chatham Island to port, the leadership changed constantly and the speeds increased with Ross and Campbell Field on Buckley Systems delivering the highest average of 14 knots with Campagne de France, Cessna Citation and the South African duo of Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire with Phesheya-Racing all polling averages of 13+ knots.

By Wednesday, Financial Crisis had re-joined the group as the fleet prepared for strong south-easterly headwinds with Buckley Systems leading and 20 miles separating the front three boats with Campagne de France furthest south a 49 degrees. Beating into a Force 8-9 gale with the boats hurled through immense seas took its toll and on Thursday evening at 48S, Ross and Campbell Field – leading the fleet on Buckley Systems – and Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron on the Franco-British entry, Campagne de France in second place, abruptly turned north. Initially this was thought to be a move to avoid 40-50-knot headwinds, but injury and gear damage on Buckley Systems had forced the Fields to head for port in Auckland, 1,000 miles to the west, with Mabire and Merron making the same call.

For the complete update, click here.

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Volvo Ocean Race Game Leg 3 Finish

We finished Leg 3 in 2912th spot, an improvement from leg 1 & 2, but I think we can do better again in Leg 4.

In the Malacca Strait we closed in on the top 1000 but once the leaders reached Singapore they got a little extra puff an opened up a really nice lead.

Overall we are now 4536th out of an estimated 177,000 boats! Not bad, although the car looks out of reach at this stage!


Telefónica take the hat-trick with a Leg 3 win

Telefónica took another win in Leg 3 of the Volvo Ocean Race in what many of the crew have named as an extremely tough leg.  Telefónica may have had Code 0 troubles on the first day but with their "never give up" attitude the team pulled it back together to sail through the tricky Malacca Strait and lead the fleet in to the South China Sea, never looking back. 

Puma had a tough leg with several mishaps, a collision with a tree trunk, a snare with a fishing net and then to top it off, their flyer off to the east in the early stages of the South China Sea did not pay off.

IAN ROMAN/Volvo Ocean Race

Leg 3 results:
1. Team Telefónica - 12d 19h 58m 21s
2. Groupama Sailing Team - 012d 21h 45m 24s
3. CAMPER with Emirates Team NZ - 012d 23h 28m 23s
4. PUMA Ocean Racing by BERG - 013d 00h 29m 12s
5. Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing - 013d 03h 05m 05s
6. Team Sanya - 014d 04h 35m 16s

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Artemis AC45 training in Valencia

Artemis Racing have started their two boat training session in Valencia, Spain this week. Artemis now have two AC45's and are sure to benefit from their latest edition.


We like this work by team photographer Sander van der Borch.


Photo credit: Sander van der Borch / Artemis Racing

Photo credit: Sander van der Borch / Artemis Racing


www.artemisracing.com