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Scuttlebutt is published each weekday with the support of its sponsors, providing a digest of major sailing news, commentary, opinions, features and dock talk…with a North American focus.
Today's sponsors:
Bitter End Yacht Club - Doyle Sails
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What survivors want you to know
by Margaret Pommert, 48° North magazine
Who are the experts on the experience of overboard recovery? It’s the people who’ve had it happen to them in real life, not in a practice drill. This article is a window into the experience of those experts—local boaters who have been overboard and are willing to share what they learned from their experiences. Some stories may be familiar, others may not.
Before we get into it, you’ll see that all of the survivors featured here are women. This is purely coincidental. I have no data that suggests that women go overboard disproportionately often. This is just a result of the fact that I have a lot of connections with the local women’s boating community, and that’s who happened to respond to my inquiries for this story.
1. An overboard situation can happen to anyone.
Most boaters think it won’t happen to them, yet two survivors interviewed for this article are professional captains and instructors and several others also have a lifetime of experience. Whether novice or savvy salt, cruising or racing, aboard large boats or small, sail or power, no one is immune to the risks of going overboard.
2. Life jackets — just wear them.
You’ll meet lots of sailors who don’t wear life jackets. But I have yet to meet an expert on the overboard experience—a survivor—who doesn’t ALWAYS wear their PFD.
Put life jackets on before you leave the dock. Don’t assume you’ll put it on before the conditions pick up, or before you must go out of the cockpit, or when an emergency happens.
Consider the experience of Judy Rae Carlson from Port Orchard. She was the mainsail trimmer in a race that was predicted to be a light-wind drifter. When the winds slowly built to the point that she wanted her life jacket on, a crewmate retrieved it from the cabin for her. She had it in her lap so she could put it on… but before she did, a broach threw her head-first over the lifelines.
3. If not already integral, add crotch straps to your life jacket.
Fitting your inflatable life jacket with crotch straps should, and in many cases does, hold you higher in the water. It also prevents the inflated bladder from squeezing your neck, head, and ears, which can cause you to panic. This is common wisdom and is reflected in offshore racing requirements, but it strikes a more relevant chord from a person who saw the benefit firsthand. – Full report

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Another nail in the sailing world’s coffin
Ben Barger, who was the U.S. windsurfing representative at the 2008 Olympics, once compared his event to the marathon. Due to unrestricted sail pumping, he found the exertion and recovery to be extreme.
Assisting at World Cup Series Miami 2020, Chicago Yacht Club’s On-the-Water Director Jay Kehoe referred to RS:X Olympic equipment as windwhakers. “Off the start line, with all the pumping, the snapping of the sail creates this ‘whack-whack-whack’ sound.”
To watch the video from the RS:X Men Medal Race in Miami: click here.
Bruce Matlack was the first US National and World Windsurfer Champion, so he has been witness to windsurfing for a very long time. Now 76 years old and still going strong, he shares his view of free-pumping:
Back in 1979, Paul Henderson wrote an excellent article exposing this kinetics disease with reference to the 470 class. In 2006, I felt so strongly about this developing curse, that I made pumping illegal in the class rules of the new Kona windsurfing class.
We were model successful in North American racing but less so in international events with even more on-course judges present. The top 15% “over there” cheated whenever the backs of these judges were turned. It has been discouraging. No longer is our game controlled by the ethics of competitors. The new unspoken rule is, “Hey, if you can get away with it, do it!”
Recently the original Windsurfer was reborn as the Windsurfer LT Class, and despite my best efforts, the Class Association decided that pumping would be allowed for up to 30 seconds after the start and unlimited downwind. The Class President explained, “We’ve been unable to control it, so this is the working compromised system.”
In my opinion, that is total B.S. The true answer, I believe, is “We don’t want to control it.” So, sailboat racing has evolved into soccer. Sportsmanship on the field, or on the water, is mostly controlled now by umpires with their yellow and red flags waving in the major championships.
The natural progression in sailing is how a class decides to eliminate all or part of Rule 42 (Propulsion Rule). While this might be fine at the elite level, it is a participation killer further downstream, and is just another nail in the sailing world’s coffin.
By the way, the Windsurfer LT Class in North America has agreed to honor Rule 42 as it is written in the Racing Rules of Sailing, as we have in the Kona Class for 14 years. For anyone interested in joining these two classes, rest assured it is about sailing and not sail pumping.

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Plastic-Free Zones in the Sailing Industry
by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt Sailing News
I don't do this often enough, but I bet most of us can say that, that being picking up trash. We walk by it, plenty of it, knowing no good will come from it, so it was with pleasure that my wife and I answered a recent call for action.
The call was to clean up a stretch of road into our community. We all saw the disarray from our cars, and the time was now to pull weeds and clear the litter, but it wasn't until I spent half a day picking up cigarette butts to understand how screwed we are.
Is there a more blatant and careless act than flicking cigarette butts out the car window, along an incline road that flushes into San Diego Bay? And given how it was clearly a common act, given the amount, I'd trade all the re-usable bottles and non-plastic straws to halt these buttheads.
So at the risk of annoying those of you who get tired of hearing how far we are from making a dent in the environmental selfishness that surrounds us, here's a report by Tyson Bottenus, Director of the Clean Regattas Program:
The oceans face a massive and growing threat from something we encounter every day: plastic. Roughly a garbage truck full of plastic is dumped into the oceans every minute, ending up in our local waterways, rivers, and marinas. Nearly 18 billion pounds every year.
It’s found in our salt, our honey, even our beer. Companies are choosing to create products out of a material that will last forever. And if you don’t like this future, brace yourselves, we face a tsunami of throwaway plastic. Four times more plastic will be produced between now and the middle of the century than has ever been produced in our entire history.
Almost a year ago, I remember reading on Scuttlebutt about whether straw bans will make a difference. As a community, I think we need to start thinking bigger and bolder about unique and creative ways to turn off the tap of cheap plastic altogether and create what are starting to be called “plastic-free zones” in our everyday lives to tackle the problem of plastic pollution.
When it comes to ending the reign of throwaway plastic, communities and consumers play a vital role in sparking action.
When we enact bans on single-use plastic such as straws, bags and dinnerware, we take the onus off of consumers to make responsible choices and put it on manufacturers and retailers to come up with “less environmentally selfish" choices for consumers instead (to borrow a phrase from the Scuttlebutt editor). - Read on

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QUOTE / UNQUOTE
Francis Joyon, the record setting French professional sailboat racer, is currently attempting to improve on the 13,000 mile Tea Route record from Hong Kong to London. But to fulfill that goal his team first had to safely navigate their 31.5m maxi trimaran past Indonesia:
“Going through the Sunda Strait was horrible. It's a place where for 100 miles or more, the China Sea disposes of its plastic waste. We saw all sorts of junk floating around, gas containers, fridges and thousands of bits of plastic. We had to sail a long way into the Indian Ocean to find any clear waters."
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Rules Guru: Gaining right-of-way
The Royal Yachting Association provides guidance from rules guru Chris Simon on the topic of gaining right-of-way..
One of the things that makes sailboat racing so interesting/tactical/complicated/aggravating (depending on your point of view) is that the right-of-way between boats changes instantly when the relative positions of the boats hardly changes at all.
For instance: (i) a boat that is clear astern of another has to keep clear, but then moves forward a few inches and becomes overlapped to leeward and is immediately the right-of-way boat; or (ii) a port tack boat that tacks to leeward, or directly in front of a starboard tack boat immediately becomes the right-of-way boat when her tack is complete.
It is an important principle under the rules that a boat does not have to anticipate the action(s) of another boat; she only has to start to keep clear when the other boat becomes right-of-way. That means that when a boat gains right-of-way through her own action she must give the other boat enough room that the now give-way boat can take avoiding action.
In the two scenarios cited above:
• A boat that establishes and overlap from astern to leeward of another boat must do so far enough away that the other boat can luff to avoid her. If the bow of the boat that was astern is so close to the leeward quarter of the other boat that if it luffed there would be immediate contact, she has not given the other boat the room that rule 15 says she must. If the other boat luffs and the leeward boat has to bear away to avoid contact she may be judged to be giving the required room rather than taking avoiding action – and this would decide which boat was disqualified in a protest hearing.
• On a beat, a port-tack boat that decides to tack to avoid a starboard-tack boat must make sure that if she completes her tack, which happens when she reaches a close-hauled course, to leeward of the other boat there is enough room for the other boat to luff (as in (i) above). If she completes her tack immediately in front of the other boat – and, having tacked, she will be moving more slowly – she must be far enough away that the other boat can avoid running into her transom.
If you gain right-of-way because of the other boat’s maneuver then there is no requirement for you to give that other boat room. That is why overtaking close to windward of another boat is a risky thing to do, as is tacking close to windward of another boat.
There are a number of World Sailing and RYA cases that consider gaining right-of-way situations which you can read.

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Game Changing
Doyle Stratis structured luff headsails including cable-less off wind sails are revolutionizing sailing as we know it.
The top boats in the recent Sydney to Hobart Race used Doyle structured luff sails and sited the gains from these sails as a key element in their success. Doyle structured luff sails reduce headstay sag and rig loads creating sails that perform better, point higher, fit a wider wind range and are truly changing the game.
Find out more at www.doylesails.com
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With only the 2020 Eleuthera Race on March 11 remaining for the four-event 2019-2020 Islands in the Stream Series, the overall results have tightened with the completion of the 45th edition of the Ft Lauderdale to Key West Race. Using ORC handicaps for monohulls and permitting one discard, Tim Tucker's C&C 115 Rockstar leads but only three points separate the top five. Details.

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With less than one month to the start of SailGP Season 2, the newest team on the circuit has confirmed its plan for the 2020 schedule. The Spain SailGP Team features Olympians and world champions from across the country, and will be the youngest team to compete in the world’s fastest sail racing. Jordi Xammar will helm the Spanish entry following the 2020 Olympic Games, with SailGP veteran Phil Robertson (NZL) serving in an interim capacity to start the season. Full report.

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(January 29, 2020; Day 12) - With a lead this morning of more than 770 miles over the Tea Route record holder, Francis Joyon and his team on the 31.5m IDEC SPORT maxi trimaran can hope to round the symbolic mark of the Cape of Good Hope in four days time, so just under 15 days along the 13,000 mile course from Hong Kong to London. Full report.

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(January 29, 2020; Day 10) - The light at the end of the long Doldrums Corridor is starting to shine, with some of the 11 teams in the Clipper 2019-20 Round the World Yacht Race having already gained freedom as they escape the calm and unpredictable conditions the stretch of water has provided. Full report.

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GUEST COMMENTARY
Scuttlebutt strongly encourages feedback from the Scuttlebutt community. You can add your comments directly to stories on the website or submit commentary by email. Please save your bashing and personal attacks for elsewhere.
SORRY, BUT THIS IS A BRIDGE TOO FAR (#5498)
As a former Olympic 470 medalist, I couldn’t agree more with your comments about the pumping rule in 470s.
Surely there is no better way to destroy the class than to disconnect it from grass roots by making it overly physical, even more expensive (the kit gets thrashed) and to negate the very things the class is renowned for (the importance of tuning, tactics and positioning).
I would be interested to know the sailors’ views (and not just the top ones), as I for one would have left the class I loved, if going sailing felt like a trip to the gym every time.
Maybe 12 knots could work when crews are flat wiring and boats are planing but 8 knots looks ridiculous. If I was a 420 sailor right now, I would be looking at a different class to progress to.
- Ian Walker, Director of Racing, British Sailing Team
I don’t get the hullabaloo over what the 470 class allows during a race. I don’t see why the ability to pump, rock or any other action to add to boat speed is any different than being able to trim a sail to the utmost degree, hike as hard as possible, perform a roll tack, or position crew in the most effective spot possible. It’s just another form of improving boat speed in those conditions – it just happens to be a very physical form. And isn’t that what the Olympics are about; physical prowess? You don’t see Chess as an Olympic event, after all.
- Bob Reitz
RULE 42: IT’S NOT THE WHAT, IT’S THE HOW (#5499)
Rule 42 is the only rule in the book that actually defines what or what is not sailing. It is an essential rule. If we did not have such a rule there would be no rule to prevent rowing or using a motor. The key question is what should be in the rule.
The role of the on-the-water judges is not to provide complete coverage but to be dissuasive. The cost of breaking the rule should, if caught, be greater than the possible advantage gained.
Yes there are judges who drive clumsily, yes we make mistakes, but most judges spend considerable time and effort to reach the level required, and there is a constant efforts to ensure consistency. For instance, any self-respecting jury will have a daily de-brief on Rule 42, discussing issues arising from the days sailing.
- Gordon Davies
Small fleets do not have the budget for on-the-water judges for every race.
- Peter Taal
WHO WILL EMERGE TO WIN IN 2019? (#5499)
When it comes to public voting, two fine examples come to mind. When the Canadians needed a name for a newly minted province, the popular vote decided on naming it Bob. Or when the British government let the Internet suggest a name for a $287 million polar research ship, they called it Boaty McBoatface.
- Patrick McConnell
I can't think of any better way to degrade a historic award, and disrespect all the past winners of that award, than by turning it into a popularity contest. Suddenly the kings and queens of our sport have lost what was once a proud accomplishment. Shocking!
- Peter Tsong
CONGRATULATIONS ON 5500
Sailing is full of traditions, some mostly global and well known, some personal. One of my personal traditions is to send a congratulatory message for The Editor to celebrate “double aught” issues. Who knew all those years ago when Tom Leweck started his local MdR newsletter that it would survive and prosper to become one of the most authoritative, insightful, and civil places on the interwebs. Congratulations and best wishes for your continued success.
- Douglass Sisk
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CURMUDGEON'S OBSERVATION
Sometimes, someone unexpected comes into your life outta nowhere, makes your heart race, and changes you forever. We call those people cops.
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SPONSORS THIS WEEK
Charleston Race Week - North Sails - Edgartown Race Weekend - UK Sailmakers - Bitter End Yacht Club - Doyle Sails
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