DO YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE WATCHING PAINT DRY INTERESTING AGAIN?

Washington Examiner chief editor Hugo Gurdon asks, "Whatever happened to America's Cup?"

The best way to understand America's Cup racing over the years is as the waterborne version of Unlimited Class motor racing.  But it's a bit jarring to Mr Gurdon.

Sailing has been radically transformed since I caught the bug as an early teenager in 1970. That summer, when I was learning to plane in a sailing dingy, big, sleek sloops were racing off Newport, Rhode Island, to see who’d defend the America’s Cup, which the New York Yacht Club had won against global competition again and again without interruption for the previous 119 years. The trophy became known as the America’s Cup because no one could take it away from the Americans.

It might be more accurate to think of the "radical transformation" as, first, coming up with racing sloops that could plane on the power reach (America³ had that capability in the 1992 defense) and, later, writing the rules in such a way that souped-up planing dinghies could compete in the races.  That's long been the tradition in America's Cup racing.  In the beginning, a pilot boat called America sailed to the Solent to compete for the Fifteen Guineas' Cup in a race around the Isle of Wight.  That yacht put such a horizon job on the local boats that somebody informed Queen Victoria, "Your Majesty, there was no second place."  It's also possible that America cheated.  But, as America sailed the Atlantic to get to the race, the New York Yacht Club's rules required that any contending boat had to sail to Long Island Sound for subsequent races.  That kept Canadian boats from floating down sheltered waters on the Hudson.

But that was then, and this is now. Australia, in 1983, became the first non-American boat to win. Controversy over its winged keel led to a period when designs went haywire and totally different types of boats raced each other uselessly. A little American catamaran beat a 90-foot New Zealand monster off San Diego in the 1988 final. Teams spent most of their time in court wrangling over the rules. To prevent a repeat of that fiasco, uniformity was reimposed, but with a completely new class of boats. On March 6 this year, the latest America’s Cup finals will start off Auckland, New Zealand, where the defending hosts are challenged by Italy. Both will be racing AC75s.

These “boats” are a lot closer to the Sailrocket than to the elegant yachts of yesteryear. Like the world record holder, they lift entirely out of the water on hydrofoils, one on each side amidships, as long as the wind is 10 mph or more. Usually, only one foil is in the water, with the other hanging in the air to reduce drag. The only other part of the boat that is submerged is the rudder, which is extra long so it can reach down from the elevated stern and steer. Thus, a 75-foot boat weighing nearly 8.5 tons surges out of the water, balances on one leg, and moves at three times the speed of the wind. When these boats are up and flying, they really — fly. They’ve been recorded at 49 knots, or 56 mph, and New Zealand’s team claims to have topped 50 knots.

On occasion, qualifying races take place inland, such as in Chicago's inner harbor in 2016.  Fitting.  Those foils are technological extensions of the bilgeboards on the Inland scows, some of which had a tunnel hull to mimic the waterline profile of a catamaran, which is what the AC75 boats are, if a bit more expensive.  But by reducing your resistance you are able to move your apparent wind forward, which is the trick for getting speed out of your Laser, your Inland scow, your windsurfer, or your catamaran.  In fact, "coming about" on an AC75 is a lot like "coming about" on the Inland scow.

When tacking, they lower one foil and raise the other, looking similar to those desert lizards that avoid burning their feet by lifting them alternately off the scorching sand. But these are not land lizards. They are marine predators. With their black hulls and black triangular sails shooting over the water, they look like a velociraptor crossed with a shark fin. The sails carve the air like blades, hardly changing position whether they’re running, reaching, or close hauling. The sails are really wings, not old-fashioned canvas buckets to catch the wind. You’ll never see a spinnaker on one of these.

Why not? On a performance aircraft, the engine exists to drive the airfoil through the air. On a performance sailboat, the skipper trims the airfoil to use the air most effectively. The fundamentals of racing are still the same.

Some sailing purists complain that the AC75 races aren’t exciting because sheer speed eclipses canny tactics, and the races are sprints, only lasting 20 minutes. There is some truth in this. But the America’s Cup still pits the best race sailors in the world against each other, and they still dog each other, for example trying to force opponents to luff up and fall off their foils sluggishly onto their hulls. And then there are those supreme moments when these vast black scalpel blades are skimming over the blue of the southern Pacific, leaving motorboats floundering in their wake. If that doesn’t make your heart race at least a bit, you should check whether it is still beating.

I suppose Laser sailors don't qualify as "sailing purists."  Fine.  You can get a five-race regatta in in an afternoon and still have time to close the bar that night.  In addition, a number of those "best race sailors" have some Laser hardware in their trophy rooms.

Find an America's Cup trial near you and go watch it.  Extra props for chasing the action in your Laser.

A NEW RACING SLOOP FOR LATE ADOLESCENTS?

Years ago, the Inland Lake Yachting Association trained aspiring America's Cup champions in the X Boat, a hard-chined sloop, and many of the youngsters graduated to the M Scow.

The Melges Boat Works later introduced the Melges 17 as a Reichel and Pugh adaptation of the scow hull and a few things learned in America's Cup competitions as a successor to the M Scow.  That boat was a good performer, which was a Boat of the Year a few years ago; but it might have been a handful as a transition out of the X Boat.  Back to the drawing board ... put some of the same adaptations in a hard-chined hull and call it the Melges 15, which also won Boat of the Year in its class.

The Lake Geneva Yacht Club hosted a season-opening regatta for the class over the weekend.

I'm pleased to report that the Yerkes Observatory will continue as an observatory, rather than as office building for a condo complex or something.  That will be for another post.  That was Saturday's racing conditions, the kind of spotty early-season easterly I knew all so well.

Here's the fleet sailing in.  I got busy helping people with a balky hoist (club management are aware of the problem, like the Tin Man it can't be left out in the rain for long) and didn't get any pictures of the rigging.

They might have a winner.  We'll see if it catches on with the rising youngsters.

Otherwise, there will be another round of creative destruction (see the M Scow, the M-20 and later I-20, and prior to those there was a Class D racing scow) on the inland lakes.

THE FASTEST THING WITH SAILS. The premiere of The Ultimate Ride coincided with an historic day at the Inland Lake Yachting Association's Class A Championship. The wind direction was right for the race committee to set a 3 1/2 mile windward-leeward giving the boats a chance to make velocity good to windward and get onto screaming planes downwind.

The premiere of the movie was preceded by a lawn party. The invitations specified "sailor's best" for attire. Throw a blue blazer over your summer race officer outfit (white shorts, white polo shirt) and people will call it "styling." Before the movie began, partygoers were able to watch replays of the day's racing using a program by Kattack, a company that was downloading Global Positioning data from transponders on each of the boats for subsequent use. If the for-sale version of the software includes wind vectors to go with the traces of the boats, this program has great potential for training purposes.

The movie? Recommended for sailing enthusiasts, and especially for Inland sailors. Gary Jobson, who narrates the movie, came to the premiere to introduce the movie, and he noted the A scows have about 50 percent faster velocity made good than America's Cup boats. (Velocity made good is what matters in racing: you can be sailing fast but away from the next mark; the art is to have the right blend of footing and pointing upwind, and tight and broad reaching downwind.) He intends to talk up the A Scow among the East Coast E Scow fleets. No spoilers here, just some teases: an A Scow once ran down a smaller scow in a mixed fleet race, and an A Scow crew attempted the Chicago to Mackinac. But you'll have to buy the movie or rent it or make nice to me to find out how they fared.

WHOOSH! One of the presentations at the Inland Lake Yachting Association's Winter Inland is a new Melges Boat Works scow handling disc set. (I pity those of you who don't live near the lakes of the Upper Midwest. There's nothing quite like a big racing scow in full cry.)

I had heard about this stunt before, but on the disc is the evidence: Buddy Melges and crew towed a water skier behind an E Scow. (It was too windy that July day in 2003 to use the larger A Scow as the towboat.) The sailboat, with the water skier in tow, reaches across Wisconsin's Lake Geneva from the Lake Geneva Yacht Club on the south shore toward Williams Bay. At mid-lake, the scow and the video boat pass close by a powerboat, parked mid-lake to do some fishing. The body language on the powerboat skipper when the skier goes by is priceless.

MORE FOR THE INLAND LAKES.

Another Lake Beulah dinghy sailor becomes Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year.

When their daughter Stephanie was born, Nancy and Dale Roble brought her home from the hospital, and her father sailed his MC Scow around Lake Beulah with "It's a Girl!" written on the sail.

"Little did he know this gesture was indicative of what was to come," Stephanie Roble said.

From her first lessons as a child to a top-ranked sailor in the world, Roble told that story to a New York Yacht Club audience back in February when she won the prestigious U.S. Sailing Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year Award.

Note to my salt-water readers: "scow" does not refer to a barge, rather to a class of bilgeboard racing boats, the largest of which are capable of towing water skiers.

Note there is much to recommend life in the Lake District.

Competitive youth sailing is as common as the lily pads that frame the clear, spring-fed Lake Beulah, but taking the sport as far as Roble has is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement around this area, which is known for the East Troy Electric Railroad and apple picking at Elegant Farmer.

I'm not sure about that once-upon-a-lifetime, what with Sally Barkow also getting her start at Lake Beulah. What would be once-upon a lifetime is the trolley stopping at Beulah Siding for spectators to walk to the lake for a major regatta. That last happened when now-gone hotels sent carriages to the siding to meet the interurban.

The Inland Lakes have been developing high-achieving sailors since before the interurban.

"Still, there's a history of good sailors to come out of Wisconsin and the Midwest," said Roble's college coach, Mitch Brindley. "Even with the short season, they're highly motivated. Someone like Steph has always made the most of every opportunity she's had whenever she was on the water."

Roble's first lessons were at the age of 5 at the Lake Beulah Yacht Club's sailing school in the Opti Sailboats. Growing up on the lake, she was always in a boat or a kayak because the water was essentially her front yard. All her friends and neighbors also sailed.

Yes, when I moved to Illinois, I started sailing at Lake Geneva. Talk about a learning curve, and a lot of the accomplished sailors began developing their local knowledge young.

Because the lakes are close together, there are chances for the youngsters to pit their skills against similar-age competitors on Geneva or Delavan or Pewaukee or Little Cedar. Then there is the rest of the world.

Sailing is a way of life on Beulah. All summer long, white sails fill the lake with children, teenagers and adults practicing, or sailing in regattas. While they look picturesque against the blue sky and puffs of clouds, they can get very competitive.

"I remember winning my first race with my friend Katie Porter," Roble said. "And I was just like wow, that is a really cool feeling.

"And then a couple of friends had discovered the national sailing. For us, it was like, wait, there are Optis outside of the Midwest? We had no idea what was going on. We were in our own little special bubble."

It's a pretty good special bubble, as the rest of the world discovers from time to time.

Wisconsin is known for good sailors, from [Olympian and America's Cup defender Buddy] Melges to Sally Barkow, to Brian Porter and Annie Haeger, who is attempting to secure a spot on the Olympic team.

"A lot of people don't realize the strong sailing community that we have in the Midwest," Roble said.

Brindley said Roble's diligence and focus have pushed her to this level of sailing.

"She's driven like any successful person is," Brindley said. "She puts the time in and the hard work. She's just like all the other top athletes — it is just that her chosen field is sailing.

"She's very calculating and deliberate in her actions on the water and with her tactics and strategy. And she doesn't make a lot of mistakes because of it."

It's necessary to be deliberate. Scow or dinghy racing is like playing chess on an elastic board, thanks to the shifty winds and shore effects.  The one wrinkle inland lake racers have to adopt to elsewhere is current or tide.

TWO FOR THE INLAND LAKES.

Big Foot (Wisconsin) scow sailors Harry Melges IV and Finn Rowe are thinking big, as in Olympic sailing big.  Yes, that Melges name might suggest some inherited human capital, and yet that is as nothing without the time on the tiller. "In [the 2014 E Scow Blue Chip at Pewaukee], the pair, along with three teammates, won all six races to take the top spot overall — an incredible accomplishment for a seasoned crew of racers, let alone a group of kids still in eighth grade."  Note, dear reader, the Inland Lake Yachting Association's Blue Chip regattas are the post-season: a crew must finish in the top three places in either of the summer Inland regattas or in their home club's principal racing series (usually the "A series" in the racing schedule) in order to be invited.  The kids start learning young on the inland lakes, and they're pretty good.

Get a good start and sail on the lifted tack!

FAIR WINDS.

The Wizard of Zenda sails to the final horizon.

On a warmish March Saturday in 1987 I went to the Melges Boat Works shopping for a sailboat, and Buddy himself was minding the store. I subsequently purchased a used M Scow from him and enjoyed it for a dozen years; got schooled by his sons and assorted other serious sailors racing it; worked with Gloria on race committee, and enjoyed the America³ America's Cup campaigns, which featured Inland scow sailors in important positions, and used the non-political Koch brother's money.

The Melges Boat Works might have some new winners among the one-design sloops, and the grandchildren are making a name in sailing.  Thanks for being helpful to at best an amateur day sailor.

THE RACING SCOW EVOLVES. For years, the Inland Lake Yachting Association sanctioned competition in a variety of racing scows, ranging from the 40 foot Class A sloop and the 28 foot Class E, both of which are capable of pulling waterskiers, through the 20 foot Class C catboat and Class M-20 sloop, to the 16 foot singlehanded (except in heavy air) Class MC catboat and doublehanded Class M sloop. In recent years, the A and E fleets have enjoyed greater popularity, the M-20 has morphed into the I-20, and the builders have ceased production of the Class M. A few true believers continue to participate in the Class M invitational and championship regattas.

There appears to be a worthy successor to the Class M in the form of the Melges 17, a 17-foot (d'oh!) doublehanded sloop that incorporates a number of America's Cup inventions including extensive use of carbon fiber, the curved roach high-aspect mainsail, and asymmetrical spinnakers. (Blogger now lets readers click on these pictures to see bigger pictures.)


The Melges 17 Championship visited the Lake Geneva Yacht Club. Despite the weather mayhem all around us, there was no wind Saturday afternoon and ample opportunity to look at the boats and catch up on sailing news. Alas, no action shots, although I had an invitation to help out on observe from the race committee boat if they did race.

Class C and M champion Jane Pegel is impressed with the Melges 17's responsiveness to wind conditions. (She is quite formidable at adjusting the M Scow to any change in conditions, and many is the Lake Geneva, nay Inland, sailor she's blown past by adjusting more accurately to a wind shift.) To her eyes, the Seventeen reacts more quickly to wind changes, both accelerating and decelerating. That might keep the less-adaptive skippers closer, but the more alert and more adaptive skipper should still win.

The Seventeen is a bilgeboard scow, but the when-all-else-fails-pull these handles are not part of the boat's rig. No doubt legions of M and MC crews who have had to sit on those handles will appreciate the less-cluttered crew positions. But I'm going to have to look at this boat more closely with a view toward possible sources of complexity. (On a Laser, everything is in plain sight, and the new rules that allow pulleys instead of a cats-cradle of loops and knots on the boom vang and outhaul make adjustments somewhat easier to execute, although one must still remember to release all those settings for downwind before bearing off!)


A roller-furler jib, and a retractable spinnaker pole.


Intriguing boat ... I have enough toys, right?

A SAILING SESQUICENTENNIAL.

Late in August, 1874, General Phil Sheridan went on a fishing trip into Wisconsin.  He mentioned that he'd enjoy seeing a sailboat race.  On Wisconsin's inland lakes, the well-off had been sailing for bragging rights almost as soon as statehood, and the local sandbagger sailors were more than willing to show off for the general.

That's a modern rendition of a sandbagger, so named because crews shifted bags of sand from one side to the other to give the sloop the proper heel.  What happened to "flat is fast?"  Only demonstrating the folly of a rule governing waterline length.  If you can build a boat with a short waterline when she's flat and a longer waterline when she's heeled, you have more waterline length, and you're faster.

Everybody had so much fun that the local sailors had ideas to hold the race each August, and hopes that the general would return to award the trophy.  The local sailors commissioned a silversmith to create a replica of the winning yacht, Nettie, and made plans to race on or as close to August 31, the day of the initial race.  The general, however, had other plans, some of them involving a twentyish civilian aide in the quartermaster's department, and as far as I know did not observe any more races on Geneva Lake.

The sailors, on the other hand, had a trophy, and a race to race, and the Lake Geneva Yacht Club, which became a corporate entity later, treats the Sheridan Race as the act inspiring its founding.  August 31 was a Saturday, and the tradition continued.

The Race Committee is in proper period attire for the event.  Fortunately, the weather wasn't dog-days-of-August hot.  By tradition, the race starts and ends off the club pier, you know, just in case a cavalry commander shows up and he's willing to award the trophy.

In place of the sandbaggers, the A Scows, which is to say, the largest of the Inland scows, race.  The scow honors the sandbagger principle in that it is sailed heeled, which means less wetted surface and a longer waterline, and when one is on her lines, she's fast.

Five yachts raced, here they are maneuvering to start, which is between the blue flag on the pier and the yellow can floating close to where two skippers are jockeying for the pin end, which is in better air.  A few vintage launches still sail Geneva Lake, and at the pier, a Melges 15 is about to sail out to its race, being set up mid-lake off Black Point.

The race course was a modified windward-leeward, sail toward Fontana, then sail toward the Narrows, then sail back to the yacht club.  One skipper opted out, and the fleet separated into two match races.  Here come the leaders to finish.

Yes, the wind conditions were challenging, and yes, it being Labor Day weekend, the powerboats were out churning the lake, and both pairs of races were won by the skipper who stayed to the south shore on the leg home.  Those are carbon-fiber sails.  The A scow is in the class of racing yachts where if you have to ask what it costs, you might be wise to consider the smaller scows.

The latter-day sandbagger came alongside the pier at left for a while.  She has inboard power, something that might have intrigued General Sheridan.  The smaller one-design races (C and MC scows and the Melges 15 fleet) are done for the day and the club flagship is secured on her lift.

WAITING FOR WIND. As of Wednesday, Team Seven Sailing held third place in the Yngling regatta.

Sally Barkow (Nashotah) and teammates Carrie Howe and Debbie Capozzi moved into third place overall after seven of 11 races in the Yngling class in Qingdao. The U.S. team finished first, ahead of overall leader Great Britain, in the single race on Wednesday.

The Inland Lake Yachting Association reports that Thursday's racing was called account no winds.

After losing one race to yesterday's two-hour postponements and losing two more races today, the Olympic Sailing Regatta is running nineteen races behind schedule and does not have the capacity to make up all those races tomorrow at the same time. Six courses would be needed to do so, and there are only five available for the event. The Race Committee has decided to start the Laser, Laser Radial, Finns, Yngling classes one hour early at noon, and to push for three races instead of the originally scheduled two.

That's common enough for the Inland in August (I've sweated out the delays as race officer and as competitor), where thunderstorms wiped out today's scow racing at Okoboji.

MORE HELP ON THE WEATHER RAIL.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sends a reporter to cover scow racing on Okauchee Lake (sail letter E, for those of you not versed in Inland Lake Yachting Association racing.)  Because it's a windy day, the reporter gets on board "Doc" Henschel's C Scow.

WHEN THE WIND DOESN'T BLOW. August regatta season makes for challenging weather conditions in the State Line. Monday featured strong northwesterlies, the first harbingers of fall frostbiting, and there were still good winds Tuesday. But then comes in the high pressure and the winds swinging around to the south and then ... quitting. If you can't sail, play beanbag. No guns, no protests, no throwouts!

Unattributed Inland Lake Yachting Association photograph
Lake Geneva Yacht Club, 17 August 2006.

I still suspect that beanbag is as popular as it is among the twentysomethings because they never had the chance to play casual bag toss games as eight year olds; in this picture probably eight year olds with summers full of Optimist dinghies and Cub class sloops.

One thing Lake Geneva never had was a beachfront twister (think Coney Island Cyclone or Bay Beach Greyhound or Belmont Giant Dipper). The C-Scow sailors improvised something close to a beachfront twister. (If you've never been to Lake Geneva, be advised that the club is at the bottom of a 75 foot high ridge. Southerly breezes coming over the higher spots can make for some challenging sailing close to the docks.) Note that some marks are to be left to port and some to be left to starboard. My source tells me the noodles were used for fending off.

Unattributed Inland Lake Yachting Association photograph
Lake Geneva Yacht Club, 17 August 2006.

NOT PHOTOSHOPPED. The picture is in a recent communication from the Inland Lake Yachting Association.


That's an A Scow towing a wakeboarder. The "M" on the sail refers to the Minnetonka Yacht Club. I have seen video of an E Scow towing a waterskier, as on one ski.

Ultimate one design, forsooth!