SailJuice Blog

Following the SailJuice interview with the RYA’s Stephen Park a few weeks ago, some better news for women’s match racing. The International Sailing Federation has announced that the Women’s Match Racing events and new Elliott 6m equipment have been confirmed for the final events of the 2008-2009 ISAF Sailing World Cup.

Alastair Fox, ISAF Events Manager, said: “ISAF is delighted to announce Women’s Match Racing events will be going ahead at the final three events of the ISAF Sailing World Cup, along with the debut of the new Elliott 6m equipment. Thanks to great co-operation between the ISAF Sailing World Cup event organizers and ISAF’s Member National Authorities, we will be able to introduce the Elliott 6m at the earliest possible opportunity, using literally the first eight boats in production. It is a great opportunity to showcase both the new… Read the rest

I’ve done an interview with Carolijn Brouwer on SailJuice.com. Here’s an excerpt:

Carolijn Brouwer is a talented sailor who has competed in three Olympic Games in three different classes. Most recently it was steering the Tornado in Qingdao, the only woman in the fleet. The Belgian sailor is also President of the International Tornado Association (ITA), and so SailJuice contacted Brouwer to find out the latest on the possibility of a multihull getting back into the Olympics for Weymouth 2012.

SailJuice (SJ): Hi Carolijn, what do you know?

Carolijn Brouwer (CB): The IOC have a meeting around the middle of August when the 11th medal should be discussed. The ISAF mid-year meeting is coming up in May in Poland, and the ITA has put in a submission to ISAF concerning the 11th medal and the

… Read the rest

Good news today with ISAF’s announcement of an Olympic Commission. This will new group will be tasked with developing and promoting long-term strategy for the sport of sailing at the Olympic Games, something that has been sadly lacking in recent years.

The ISAF Council approved the creation of a new Olympic Commission at the ISAF Annual Conference held in Madrid, Spain last November. The new Commission replaces the Olympic Advisory Board and will be tasked with assisting the Executive in ‘developing, agreeing and promoting a comprehensive vision and strategy of the sport of sailing in the Olympic Games’.

Phil Jones (AUS), Technical Delegate for sailing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and CEO of Yachting Australia since 1997, has been appointed as chairman of the Commission. Jones was critical of the lack of vision or strategy guiding Olympic sailing, so… Read the rest

Gary Jobson has won the America’s Cup and to many ESPN viewers he’s the face of sailing on TV. In recent years he has fought a battle with leukaemia, but it hasn’t stopped him from being actively involved in the sailing scene – both on the water and in front of the camera.

Marty McOmber has done an excellent interview with Jobson on his blog, Three Sheets Northwest. Jobson has some great life lessons here, but also some great lessons for anyone struggling with improving their sailing skills, as you’ll see in ‘Story 2′ in the extract of this interview shown below:

What lessons from sailing did you bring to your fight with cancer?
I will take three minutes and tell you three short stories. The first story is the first time I went sailing. It was on this

… Read the rest

Talk about going from Zero to Hero.

Four weeks ago, Bucky Smith didn’t even have a ride in the Etchells Worlds. Now he’s the World Champion, along with the rest of skipper Jason Muir’s crew. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs, albeit a very organised – dare I say it, professional – bunch of amateurs. They were up against some of the biggest hot shots in keelboat racing, as Bucky comments in this in-depth interview with Tracey Johnstone:

I had the utmost respect for competitors like John Bertrand (and his team of Ben Ainslie and Andrew Palfrey), Jud Smith, Chris Bush, Stuart Childerly, even the Barry boys, along with many others in the fleet. In fact, we went through the entry list after the Pre-Worlds and specifically identified who we thought were going to be the top ten.

… Read the rest

Terry Hutchinson is one of our favourite people on the pro race circuit. Always humble, very honest, and very forthright with his opinions. We’ve called on Terry’s expertise for a number of articles on SailJuice.com in recent weeks, and we’ve a few more coming soon.

You can get some of Terry’s wisdom here: http://www.sailjuice.com/search?searchtext=hutchinson

In the mean time, here’s an excellent interview by fellow Brit-pack sailing journo Justin Chisholm, himself a very accomplished Melges 24 sailor, a boat at which Terry H is very adept at sailing, and who must rank as one of the favourites for the World title later this year in the USA.

Here’s a grab of the interview below. I like the self-assessment of ‘moderately difficult’! I can’t imagine what you mean Terry! Don’t be so hard on yourself! For the whole of the piece,… Read the rest

The Volvo Ocean Race rucksack… one of the most sought-after items in sailing memorabilia. And now the bag of choice for petty thieves. Gone are the days of burglars wearing black & white striped tops with a big bag slung over their shoulder saying ‘SWAG’.

Yes, these days it’s the V.O.R. rucksack which is in vogue with the criminal community, as you will see from this shocking report of theft in Winchester, my very own local city.

http://www.hampshirechronicle.co.uk/news/4210036.Burglars_strike_in_Winchester/

As PC Steven Lanham, of Winchester police, said: “It is likely that other residents may have seen the offenders acting suspiciously around the time of the incident. Did you see anyone walking down the road with a rucksack with ‘Volvo Ocean Race’ on it? Or have you been offered for sale any of the items taken in this burglary?”

Walking down the… Read the rest

Following the article in SailJuice, where the RYA’s Stephen Park left us in no doubt of his views on the current situation with women’s match racing for the Olympic circuit, we received a response from Maarten Jamin who represents the Yngling class in the Netherlands.

Now, long-term followers of SailJuice will know that we have never been the Yngling’s No.1 enthusiast. We rejoiced when it was ejected from the Games. But with the current lack of coherent match racing activity on the World Cup tour, perhaps the offer by the Yngling class is the best short-term fix until the new Elliott 6Ms come on stream.

Below is a copy of the letter which Maarten sent to organisers of the World Cup events:

This year all organisers will face the challenge to organise matchracing for the Olympic women keelboat teams.

… Read the rest

At this year’s RYA Volvo Dinghy Show, Weymouth-based Tomahawk Foils unveiled its Tomahawk foil, the surface running, ventilated hydrofoil it has invented and patented for both sailing and powered water craft.

The foil’s inventor, Jonathan Howes explains the concept: “It’s a totally new type of hydrofoil that solves many of the problems inherent in conventional foil designs. The ventilated design has features that give a wide operating speed range without moving parts and exceptional tolerance to rough water, making the windsurfer simpler, more versatile and easier to sail”

The concept uses subtle upper-surface shaping to provide progressive changes in lift force with increasing speed in a similar way to an aircraft’s wing flaps but without any moving parts. This means that the windsurfer lifts on to the foils at a very low speed but automatically corrects for higher speeds, giving… Read the rest

Women’s match racing: the great new hope for Olympic competition. Yet the first two major regattas of the European circuit – Palma and Hyeres – have cancelled due to lack of interest.

We’ve done an interview with RYA Olympic Manager Stephen Park to get his take on the situation. You can see the interview here:

http://www.sailjuice.com/articles/womens-match-racing-problems

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

“The worry is that lots of these things could have – and should have – been thought about well in advance. They decided that match racing was going to be an event in November 2007. It’s not just that the Elliott 6Ms aren’t suddenly available, they decided in November what the equipment was going to be. Unless the boats were built in Spain it was always going to be tricky to get the boats to

… Read the rest