Just Over the Horizon

Well, the summer sailing season is upon is and I should have more reasons to blog, just being lazy.  I’ve been blessed with wonderful sailing opportunities this year, the problem is an embarassment of riches and too many choices.

But in the midst of that, I still read a lot of books and want to comment on a couple.  The first is “On the Brink” by Henry M. Paulson, former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.  The second is “Sonic Boom” by Gregg Easterbrook.  The third is “The Age of Wonder” by Richard Holmes.   Certainly on the surface they don’t seem in any way connected, but I kind of think they are.

I suppose you would say I was raised in a center-right environment;  I am still a registered Republican, but like I imagine a lot of Americans, I was exhausted by what I perceived as the ethical turpitude and incompetence of the Bush administration.  Enter Hank Paulson, one might say letting the fox into the chicken coup.  But his book - obviously a self-justification, as we would all write were we in his shoes - paints an interesting  picture.  I knew a bit of his story by reading the corporate history of Goldman Sachs, recounted in these pages.  He had an uphill climb, as a gentile and a Chicagoan.  But he reached the top by extreme hard work, and he presents himself as not interested in riches and fame, and motivated by the stimulation of the jobs he held, of course culminating in Sec Treas.  Paulson is 3 years older than I am.

“Sonic Boom” by Gregg Easterbrook is about the near future.  His premise is basically - you ain’t seen nothing yet.  Yes, we have a tragic and empathetic financial mess right now, but in the long view it will be seen as a speed bump.  The fundamentals of globalization and staggering productivity gains will only experience network effects, feedback loops, etc. etc. and the world economy will grow in ways we can hardly conceive of, with attendant increases in benefits to many many people of the world who need it.  BUT - he emphasizes that the very network effects that do and will cause all this to happen also produce our always-on, zombie like, disconnected, bewildered - and dare we say it??? - unhappy state and that this not only won’t go away but is likely to become more pronounced.  Since the underlying causes will themselves be more pronounced. Hmmm…..  Gregg is 3 years younger than I am.

Back to Hank Paulson - he tells in somewhat breezy style but considerable detail about his side of the crisis.  I guess it should come as no surprise that he didn’t personally invent many of the paths that seemed bizarre from the outside - like approving $700B in TARP money to buy bad debt and then deciding to recapitalize banks instead of buying bad debt.  Legions of staffers and outside economists pushed him in that direction and he agreed.  He tells us that he suffered from teenage years with bad tummy under stress, and recounts that he was physically sick at a number of major moments during the crisis.  He gives high praise to Tim Geithner for his calm, cool analytic skills and grasp of the big picture., (I have to say that’s my perception as well) and similarly kudos for Ben Bernanke.   In their minds, and I think in the minds of my neighbors and friends in the Port Washington, there really wasn’t much to discuss - this had to be saved or the world economy would have gone down.   My sense is that they are mostly right, but of course we will never know in detail.

Then there’s Gregg Easterbrook’s interesting take.  He says - forget about whether the fund managers should be strung up by their thumbs - fundamentally these actions saved…the baby boomers!! at the expense of the young people who will pay the bills for  us baby boomers when we are slobbering in our wheelchairs.  We (sort of) preserved the mortgages on outrageous oversized homes of baby boomers, and set up kind of retaliatory structures that will make it hard for young people to enter the housing market going forward.   Hmmm….

Of course there’s more to both books - Easterbrook has some pretty important things to say about health care needing to be fixed and if it’s not the Sonic Boom will be much smaller long term.  Paulson points out, and I hear this in the scuttlebutt around New York, that at the real, real root of our problems is savings disparity between the East and West.  We have to increase the savings rate in the US, no ifs and or buts, cannot continue as we are, and a good way to do that, though we may all hate the thought, may be a Value Added Tax.

Finally I come to Richard Holmes’s book.  This takes place roughly from 1780-ish to 1850-ish.  It is beautifully written and focuses on the way our undertanding of  nature evolved into what we know of today as technology; he views this from a technical but equally importantly from a cultural and religious perspective of the time.  It emphasizes England, because he is English, but includes connections to French, German, Italian and nascent American  “natural philosophers.  By the time of the beginning, some pretty heavy stuff had been worked out by the likes of Newton, Hooke, Boyle and others - but it hadn’t been applied or commercialized.   In fact, the thrust of this book is about understanding what it meant to apply and commercialize.  And in fact to invent the very word “scientist” which didn’t exist until a Royal Society lecture in 1820ish. 

The book covers the “maturation” of the Royal Society, the explorations of the Pacific, ballooning , the advent of chemistry as we know it with a “pretty boy” by the name of Humprey Davy, the building of big electric batteries, safety lamps in coal mines..you get the picture.

The end of the book brings in Charles Babbage, who was by any measure an eccentric fellow, and as we know labored his whole adult life on mechanical analog computers.  He was close friends with Michael Farraday, partied and toured Europe with him, on Babbage’s nickel..we might remember Farraday as building the first electric motors and elucidating the basic electromagnetic prinicples that make radio and our always-on cellular life ultimately possible.

So - “Age of Wonder” is a fascinating look at a time we might consider naive and sweet, of course humans have never really been naive and sweet except in hindsight, but I think it’s fair to say that all of us technologists of today are a whole lot more focused and cutthroat - we’ve had the ensuing 200 years from the time of this book to apply and commercialize the age of wonder into things that…are good…???…

There are many opportunities to hear “Messiah” presented in the New York metro area - including a quite good “Grade 2/3″ (to use match racing parlance) performance this Sunday in Port Washington.  Being a bit of a “junkie”, I wanted to hear another one this year, preferably a “Grade 1/2″. 

The New York Philharmonic with guest conductor Helmuth Rilling and his singers, Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart, are doing it this week but I couldn’t make an evening performance.  So I decided we’d try an open rehearsal on Tuesday morning.  Obviously the potential audience is mostly music students and retirees, but Avery Fisher was actually quite full.  The first 15 or so rows were roped off, but having arrived pretty early, we sat center a few rows back from that, probably very expensive seats - but all seats are $16 at an open rehearsal.

It’s funny to see the orchestra and chorus in jeans and warmup clothes with backpacks, Starbucks, and water bottles instead of tuxedos.  They also slouch and cross their legs and chat.  Some of the German kids in the chorus were studying City maps between their bits.

I like to have a libretto for Messiah because basically it is 4 dozen or so Bible verses repeated a bunch of times, and even after many times of hearing it, it’s not easy to tell what they are singing.

This is the 2nd Messiah I’ve heard with a countertenor (male voice equivalent to mezzo-soprano) which can be somewhat disconcerting.  Daniel Taylor is a conductor in his own right and voice professor at Univ of Montreal and at McGill.  Of the four solo parts his were the least, but I was very impressed that he was the only one without paper music.  And several times the conductor had everyone pick up at particular spots to work on a section, and Taylor would just nod and be right in there, like he had a clear mental picture of the whole thing.  Maybe all the pros can do that, but he seemed very professional.  The other soloists were very good as well - Shenyang (only one name) the bassist is out of central casting for bassists - BIG guy.

The only drawback to the open rehearsal is that if the conductor feels they have something down cold, he just stops it - which unfortunately he did in…the Hallejuah Chorus!  But otherwise this seemed like the real thing and a very interesting way to hear such a performance.

I just finished a quick read of David Loyn’s “In Afghanstan”.   Loyn has been a BBC correspondent for 30 years, most of that time covering less-than-desirable places featured regularly on the news.

I would not say that Loyn presupposes success or failure of the US in Afghanistan; but as he recounts the whole history of external involvement in this tragic country - which had the misfortune to be geologically incredibly challenged but at the same time at the crossroads of important gateways between East and West - it’s quite clear that to Loyn at least,  sucess in Afghanistan on the part of the US would be truly a first.  Everything we hear or see about Afghanistan has happened at least once , usually multiple times, and not infrequently many times before.  The incredible intransigence of the combatants is born of their geography, in a crucible measured in many, many centuries. 

Can 33,000 troops, a new strategy and the technology and new-found wisdom of the US make a difference?  I certainly would like to believe that it would, but Loyn’s book makes it clear that the odds are very, very long based on history.  What do you think?

Yesterday we attended an all Bach organ recital by Cameron Carpenter in New York.   Cameron is a 2006 graduate of Julliard, BA and MA, and believes that the organ as a musical speciality is in great danger of dying; his antidote includes: new interpretations, showmanship, and promotion of the virtual organ.  As you might guess, these do not win him fans among the tradionalists. He started performing commercially in 2007 and has since played all over the world, so surprisingly doesn’t get back to his musical home in New York too often.

The concert venue was St. Mary’s of the Virgin in Times Square.  Until we got got there I didn’t realize it was an Episcopal and not Catholic church, in fact I know it as “Smoky Mary’s” (for their proclivity for incense).  As I felt at St. Machias (”The Actor’s Chapel”) a couple of blocks south across from the Eugene O’Neill theater, it is amazing to step out of the craziness of Times Square into such a space.  The church is designed similarly to a small cathedral, with a clerestory and fan vaults, very lovely.  It has an Aeolian-Skinner pneumatic/electric instrument dating from 1932.

This recital was recorded by Telarc for an upcoming CD/DVD, with interesting multiple triangle microphone nests on 50 foot stalks up near the pipes,  which are on the West end of the church, as is the console.  Powerful lighting was installed all around the console as was a high-def studio camera, connected to an equally heavy-duty high-def projector onto a screen just before the nave of the church. 

We got there early, and found our seats.  Having heard that he does this I wasn’t completely surprised, but Cameron Carpenter introduced himself to everyone in the audience that he could reach in the box pews until about 15 minutes before performance time.  He was very friendly and down to earth.  I told him I had been looking forward to this for a long time (which I meant in the general sense of hearing/seeing him perform) and he said something like  ”well one way or other it will be memorable”, which I later realized probably meant that he assumed I understood musically that he would be criticized for his interpretation.   I’ve read since Saturday’s performance that even people who like him feel that, while he is technically the most skilled in the business today, his interpretations of Bach are not his strong suit.  They impressed me tremendously in virtuosity, but in spots I felt there was a mix of old and new that didn’t quite work - this coming from someone who knows almost nothing about music.

I then asked him what he thought of the instrument and he said “for a pipe organ, it’s very good”.  He first kind of rocketed on to the organ performance stage with the Marshal and Ogletree virtual organ installed at Trinity Wall St. after its Aeolian-Skinner pipe instrument was damaged in 9/11.  This http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/arts/music/07carp.html article about that appeared right after I heard him on NPR.  So I knew he much prefers virtual organs.

While waiting for the performance to start, I couldn’t help but overhear two guys talking in the pew behind us who were obviously organists, so eventually I engaged in the conversation.  They were in their 50s and big fans of Cameron Carpenter, but made jokes about how the Julliard crowd wasn’t likely to be there.  They also said the organ was in their opinion the best in New York and that one can go to Julliard for free student organ recitals any Thursday during the school year.

A few minutes before 3:00, Cameron then switched from black jeans and tee into his show garb - no not a typical organist’s alb,  but tight white jeans and tee shirt emblazoned with hundreds of sequins, and white flamenco shoes.  He says he orders the shoes from Cuba because they allow his incredible pedal speed much better than organists’ flats.  I don’t know whether it was an accident of the lighting or carefully designed, but while on the screen in the front of the church his sequins were silver and didn’t reflect much light, if you cared to get a crick in your neck and watch the top 1/3 of him behind and above you, he flashed like fire, it almost hurt the eyes.

Anyway, the performance was really remarkable.  (I’m on thin ice musically in the following…) He did the Tocccata in F Major which he transposed to F#, followed by the Preludes and Fugues in B Minor, A Minor, E Minor, D Major and G Major.  He did this because they form a tonal cycle.  I was pretty confused because the program said one Toccata plus 5 prelude/fugues = 11 pieces, but he had 13 heavy black books.  Each book contained pages of his transcriptions kind of pasted in of varying sizes.  I was too far away to see them clearly but I guess they were hand made.  His skill and speed are truly remarkable.  Several times he did his trademark, where he switches the foot pedals to the upper registers, leans back holding on to the chair and plays the hand parts with his feet at lightning speed, the flamenco shoes moving so fast you can hardly see them, then transitions back to the hands with no gap.  As the guys behind us said it would, the sound seemed to come from everywhere in the space even though all the ranks were far above and behind us.  Really wonderful to live close enough to easily get in to events like this.

Revolutionary  was his first CD for Telarc which I bought after hearing the NPR interview.  Since then he’s done a self-published one of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”, also recorded on Trinity Wall St.’s virtual instrument, and Saturday’s performance will be released as CD and DVD in April, 2010.

The program says that Cameron Carpenter finds time in his schedule to visit high schools to promote the organ and donates instructional time to promising students.

 Here are a few links. 

This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL2kqFt2SQw&feature=player_embedded# is the famous foot work on the Chopin Etude at Trinity Wall St and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtKgOZX3DcU is a longer one also on that instrument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Carpenter

http://cameroncarpenter.com/

Of course I’m a bogus New Yorker, but there might be a few more like me…  Today the NYT business section had a light-touch editorial discussing the similarities between Goldman Sachs and the Yankees.  Both garner no neutrality, you either love them or hate them.  Both are swimming in money and use their financial superiority to get..more superiority.  BUT - it’s hard not to admire the fact that both are disciplined, hire very wisely, and win most of the time.

So having watched the whole World Series, and since it was supposed to be a very nice day in Manhattan, I decided to go to the Parade.  I had no illusions that I’d actually get close enough to see anything - spots directly on Broadway were filled before the sun rose, obviously watching it on TV was the best view, but I looked at it as a study in human nature, and I wasn’t disappointed. 

I left on the 9:11 from Port Washington.  I was somewhat surprised (shouldn’t have been) that there were lots of Yankee fans on that train.  Schools were closed in both New York and New Jersey.  I asked a group of kids in my car which (subway) train they would take, and they said the “2″ or “R”.   We got in around 9:55.  The “2″ is the closest train to the LIRR gates in Penn Station so is natural, but it was mobbed.  So I hiked up to the A-C-E which I am more familiar with anyway, and took the “E” to its terminus at Chambers St., getting there around 10:40.

I asked a number of people on The Railroad and the train if they had a plan - not surprisingly, it didn’t seem that anyone at this late hour had any ideas for getting close.  So, I exited on the South side of the WTC station onto Vesey St., which is just a block from Broadway, and started working my way East.  Let it be said, this is not for those with claustrophobia, and I border on that;  I just put it out of my mind and it was OK except for a few moments when it was nearly hard to breath.

Shortly after exiting subway, St. Paul's Chapel on the right

Over my left shoulder, the hardy people climbing scaffolds

To be truthful, I probably never saw the Yankees, but it was actually hard to say. 

A float!! Probably not the Yankees

At a certain point I figured it was time to bail out, so I turned around.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to get West, and within 5 minutes I was in a blank spot.

View West on Vesey St. over the WTC building site

Within a hundred feet of the above picture, I realized that all was not clear sailing.  Since I’d arrived earlier, NYPD had erected barricades all along Church St. and it was, if anything, more jammed and claustrophobic than earlier; that is, most of was wanted to leave and ease the crowding, but we couldn’t move.  Eventually I got across Church St. and, looking North, figured walking was going to take a while.  So I ducked back in to the A-C-E station, which was mobbed, and got an “A” train to 14th St.  From there I was in familiar territory and walked up through Chelsea, past the General Seminary building, which is structurally complete. 

By now feet and legs were very, very tired.  But as I often do, I talked myself into thinking that it wasn’t worth taking the subway, so I kept on going up the linear park along the West Side Highway, to Pier 88.

NYPD divers doing ?? under the bow of the Intrepid

And lastly, the USS New York, which is docked just north of the Intrepid.  Needing to get back home, I didn’t take the time to figure out whether/how one could board her, I’d heard you can;  it’s not a beautiful ship as compared to a destroyer, it’s essentially a troop carrier on steroids, but it’s big. 

USS New York

And so, I headed back to the Island, tired, but feeling like I’d seen a good slice of America.  Cheers!

First - the final results of the King Edward the 7th Cup at latitude 32 degrees:

1st Ben Ainslie (GBR) Team Origin
2nd Adam Minoprio (NZL) ETNZ/BlackMatch
3rd Ian Williams (GBR) Team Pindar sponsored by Argo Group
4th Eric Monnin (SUI) Swiss Match Race Team
5th Johnie Berntsson (SWE) Berntsson Sailing Team
6th Mathieu Richard (FRA) French Match Racing Team
7th Blythe Walker (BDA)
8th Torvar Mirsky (AUS) Mirsky Racing Team

None of “our” folks from the Knickerbocker Cup made it into the top 8 places. It goes to show that deep experience in match racing wins - although even the famous Peter Gilmour was knocked out.  Torvar Mirsky was very impressive to me in the first couple of days, I’m glad to see they made it through.

Back to northern latitudes.  As previously, we made the trip from Port Washington, NY to Southwest Harbor, ME in 3-1/2 days.  The first long day was the length of Long Island Sound plus Fisher’s Island Sound, to Stonington, CT (85 miles).  Good dinner at the Dog Watch Cafe at the end of the dock at Dodson’s Boatyard.  Nice touch below:

Fire pit in chilly air in front of Dog Watch

Lovely Monday afternoon off New Hampshire

We had dinner Tuesday night at the Red Sky in Southwest Harbor http://www.redskyrestaurant.com/, a small and simple but upscale place with an excellent menu.  Last year, Kyle Morris of Morris Yachts (maker of jewel-like high-end sailboats also in the Mt. Desert/Bar Harbor area) came to dinner while we were there.  This year David Rockefeller and entourage came in.  He is of course so recognizable, and to me anyway does not look anywhere near his age of 94.  He has a home in Seal Harbor, a couple of miles away, a Hinckley 59 sailboat, and is having a new Talaria line motoryacht built by Hinckley, some say as a boost to keep them going.  By coincidence, just this past Saturday’s New York Times business section had this article about Hinckley’s financial woes http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/business/10hinckley.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&dbk=&adxnnlx=1255609029-ILMEJ1cwL+VpHRr4pabksw which mentions Mr. Rockefeller’s order.

The weather cleared but it got quite chilly Tuesday night, Wednesday we reluctantly left for the return to reality.

"Hinckley Heaven" with Somes Sound and Mt. Desert Island hills in distance

Thunder Bay

Well it turned out that I had a bit of Day 4 this morning.   Of my boatmates of the other days, Dave had a court appearance (he is a process server as a part-time job along with his sports activities) and Suthy was fairly nervous about doing mark boat by himself.  He was late for a dinner engagement last night, so I got him a copy of the SIs (Sailing Instructions) which have an appendix of chart of Hamilton Harbour with the out-of-bounds buoy locations drawn in.  We knew them pretty well by now, but Suthy wanted them so I took them in this morning in street clothes for flying.   There is a legal liability associated with these little marks, if someone destroys one of these IODs on a reef inside our marks, the club would be stuck and not the skipper;  yesterday in fact two boats went outside our marks, from our vantage point it appeared they were on someone’s patio, but no damage;  they both got (offsetting) penalties.  When I found Suthy, no one had been located to go with him so I told him I’d go out until my taxi time;  heck better to be on the water than in the shops, I had no room to carry anything or particular inclination.

Dave’s personality took some getting used to, but I learned a lot from him.  He told me that he entered the management ranks at Bermuda telco without only a high school education because he was good with process and I could see it in action, I really enjoyed him as well as Suthy.  He knew how to do this mark boat stuff to make the PRO’s job easier, and this PRO was a stickler and had a laser range finder and electronic compass.  I think I remembered most of it and tried to put it to use today.

It was another gorgeous day, but not much breeze, post-front.  I see from tonight’s results that they didn’t finish the quarter-finals which, given forecast for more of the same, may make Sunday a long day - hey it will be just like Manhasset Bay!

Suthy had someone radio in to beg for backup, and this person came out on “the barge”,  thus I got to ride around for a while on that.  “Timmy” (a man my age or so) owns and drives the barge, and can turn it on it own axis.   He also is a sailor and another one bitten badly by the match racing bug.   He told me he’s about to take his test for umpire so he can start doing Grade 3 events in Bermuda.

A NATO fleet came in today, I think 6 ships, which disrupted things a bit, and the wind was very shifty, so David Campbell-James decided to shift the whole race course West at the advice of locals who said the northerlies like today are always very shifty over the buildings of Hamilton.  Timmy thus suggested he take me in while they were moving the course, and that was it for me and Gold Cup 2009.  Below are a shot of the barge with the aforementioned dog, and the big score board on the veranda.

Cheers.

This was the third day of match racing in the Argo Gold Cup, and sadly the last for me.  I must return to New York tomorrow, don’t shed tears as I will get on a sailboat less than 12 hours after getting home for a trip to Southwest Harbor, ME.  But it’s hard to leave when I feel I’ve made friends and the winnowing down of competitors is just beginning.

Today was a “normal” starting time of 8:00 skipper’s meeting and 9:00 start of sequence, but the actual beginning of action was controlled by the end of the front which had a good deal of wind and rain until about 9:45.   We had to hustle to get our cherry marks set and be ready for the pin and leeward.  But then the NCL Majesty (800 or so feet) chose to leave.  Eddie the master of the dock and committee, who knows all the harbormasters and everyone else in Bermuda, called to get the skinny and ask the captain of the Majesty to pay attention, and David Campbell-James called the boats out about 10:15 as the ship began to transit the harbor.  That actually worked out okay somewhat to my surprise and we began racing about 10:45.  It then developed to be just a stunning blue sky day, 15-18 knots, about as perfect as it can be.

Yesterday and today we ate the fare of “Cleo” (Cleopatra) the RC boat, instead of the (actually quite good) ziploc bag lunches thrown across the water.  Bear in mind again that we left the dock at 7:15 on Wed, but the yacht club kitchen must have been up hours before then to prepare everything, as I’m told nothing is catered.  Standard lunch is two choices of soups, wraps with many choices, ham sandwiches, fruit or mediterrean salad, and brioche.  Yesterday was wahoo, today chicken.  Endless sodas and water, and two bottles of white wine for RC when it arrives at the dock.

I believe I could do this again next year, as it turns out they have a hard time getting people to do what we do - no problem with finding RC boat people, but mark operators are another story.  In truth the job involves periods of boredom (but boredom in Hamilton Harbour isn’t too tough to take) interspersed with getting soaked in salt water pounding over waves at high speed, then slopping in mud from anchors, plus being yelled at mercilessly by the PRO and/or the sailors. Dave today awarded us our “BIMBO” badges (Brotherhood of International Mark Boat Operators) (seriously, I have the patches).

So we finished the basic round robin about 3:00 and began the repechage round, the gathering of 3-4 place finishers from groups 1, 2, and 3, who compete to round out the group in the quarter finals. In case I didn’t mention it, the total prize money is $100,000 so the repechage round is not for pure sailing enjoyment.

Brian Billings invited Don Wilson to speak at the press conference even though he’s only gotten a couple of points and did not make it through to the quarter finals or repechage.  Don made a great deal of money as mercantile trader, is in his forties somewhere.  He started match racing only a couple of years ago and the hook was set very deeply.  Chicago Yacht Club was not much interested in match racing, so Don basically started his own group, Chicago Match Racing Center; except that he’s dedicated to growing match racing, not making money or being exclusive.  He bought 8 Tom 28’s, RC, mark boats, equipment, clubhouse etc. etc. out of his own pocket and has basically opened it to anyone interested in match racing.  Tonight he said he has ordered a fleet of Elliott 6s (18.5 foot rocket sled sailboats) to use for match racing and for womens’ training as it is to be the new Olympic womens’ boat.   What I know about match racing would fit on the back of a small water beetle, but in my small way the hook was set, and I give Don immense credit for doing what he’s doing and coming to Bermuda to get his butt kicked by these incredibly smart sailors but smile and be happy.

I should have mentioned that there is an Argo Junior Gold Cup which begins tomorrow, kids in Optimist Prams.  The Optis were out in full force as soon as the squalls stopped this morning.  Very impressive.  I spoke several times with their sailing master, and he is really enthusiastic about RBYC’s program and this international event - parents and kids from many countries are here, it took me a while to figure out the foreign accents only in the Opti area.

So thus ends a wonderful week for me, fun people, new friends made. Hope to be back.  I’ve included pictures of my own of a more personal nature, the pros have the actual sailing well covered here: http://www.bermudagoldcup.com/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,33/

Front of RBYC, juniors readying their Optis for the day's racing

IOD in the hospital, it's mast being significantly rebuilt after collision

My team, Suthy and Dave, I gave Dave a Manhasset Bay YC hat

A prestart today

"Timmy's Barge" with incoming racers hanging out

So - today, as forecast, was the opposite of yesterday.  That drifty irresponsible United States sent us a front. Fortunately, while it had a lot of stuff in it, it didn’t have quite as much as forecast and we got a lot of racing in.  I ended the day wet, exhausted, arms and shoulders shot, but happy after nearly 12 hours.  We had one “harbor squall” about 2:00, a term I now understand, which means 60 knots and sideways rain, only in Hamilton Harbour, sunshine visible far away.  We brought the boats in, the club has amazing dodger curtains across the veranda with huge zippers, they can batten down the hatches, but it’s hot as hell inside.  I didn’t really understand until this trip, that Bermuda can get lots of inclement weather, but it’s still warm, very uncomfortable in foul weather gear.

The skipper’s meeting was at 7:00 am folks, the sun was not up.  First start was 8:00 am folks.  We left about 7:15 to place the “cherry” marks, so-called because they look kind of like marschino cherries, and delineate the out-of-bounds areas around reefs or the ferry stop in Paget parish.  These are spread over 4-5 miles, and involve some scary looking reefs.  This boat has no depth finder, Dave knew where to throw them from years of experience, it scared me being that close.

A few bits I left out from yesterday.  Like most larger races these days, there is  a lot of tech.  Each mark, and each boat, has a GPS with UHF transmitter to shoreside and a live feed race web site.  I have gotten to know these guys fairly well from helping them get their units on and off the marks.  http://www.race-trax.com/   Way cool.  Boats are also required to accept waterproof video cameras, there aren’t enough for all boat, and fortunately the IOD has a massive single stern cleat which accepts the camera quite nicely.  There are two “color commentators” on VHF Ch. 74 at all times.  Our other, non-official radio’s battery went dead today mid-afternoon, I was quite obsessed with the commentary as they know so much more about match racing than I do, and missed it, I wish I had brought my handheld.

The International One Design (IOD) is 33 feet long, designed by legendary Cornelius Shields, huge overhangs (bow and stern “unused” out of the water area that makes them beautiful to behold), long keels, small rudders, large mainsails, fast but slow to turn and otherwise maneuver.

So - the wind varied from 18-28 I would say.  There were:  2 broken booms, many broken mainsheet/boom attachments, one near dismasting which Torvar Mirsky averted by stopping immediately when he saw the forestay was parting, and one espisode in which an IOD ran over an umpire boat very close to the seawall at the Hamilton Princess and pretty much sunk it.  Two RIBbys (hard bottom inflatables) came over and kind of cinched it up between them as the gunnels were about 2 inches above the sea, and they nursed it back to the club.  We hung at a mooring at this seawall a good bit today as it was SO tiring to steer in the constant short steep chop.  Condo patios just next to the Princess were invaded by racers, they told me these condos are $4 million.

Mark Watson is CEO of Argo Group.  Looks to be early 40s,  our boat guys don’t know whether he did this by hard work or inheritance.  He has a slight southern US accent.  He has lived on the island for a couple of years.  He was on the Venetian (picture below) with business guests yesterday, and out near us for a while on his own cat with twin Yamaha 225s. I’d like to have the Yamaha distributorship here.  Turns out one of the guys in the inner bar yesterday was Peter Bromby, Olympic sailor and match racing champion, and paid skipper for Mark’s NYYC (aka Swan) 42 on which they did “the cruise” this year, I believe they were just arriving at Newport when we got there in July.

On to racing - “our” guys, Reuben Corbett did it again.  As in New York, I could not get him to evince any emotion of any kind after the press conference, I said to him just as in NY, that  he responded well to pressure.  They won two today, with very heavy-duty intellectual match-racing duals and sailing.  Dave Perry also won a very, very close race, clearing a penalty at the finish, they were so happy.  Dave had incredible death rolls under spinnaker which unfortunately I couldn’t come close to capturing with my cheesy camera.  Reuben had an even more amazing set of death rolls after his second win, it had gusted to nearly thirty and he just was totally out of control, you could see the rudder and almost the whole keel of the IOD.  Phil Robertson also did much better than expected, finessing some very experienced skippers.  Torvar Mirsky seemed to wilt a bit under pressure today, I thought having an unnessarily poor first start, but what do I know.  However he’s still in the running.

One of the RC is the insurer of this thing, he was telling me during a break on “Cleo” that last year they had $18000 in damages, they have a 50% ratio, which obviously beats New Orleans.   They strive each year to reduce the ratio.  No hull damage this year, but I think as of this afternoon they are plum out of booms, I mean literally, can’t break any tomorrow.

So David Campbell-James called it as of  6:30 pm.   Solly, the former mayor, and I had taken Dave in to teach his fencing class at a “public” (private) school at 7:30 and went off in search of our total of 9 marks.  I had sun glasses encrusted with salt water on, and was struggling to see in the approaching darkness.  At our last “cherry” mark (off the reef across from the YC) I committed motor boating dumb mistake #1, backing down hard with a following sea, and we shipped a couple of hundred gallons of water.  Solly was reasonably concerned, so we took it very slowly up the race course towards the pin and leeward marks (the big, ungainly hard to pull in guys with real anchors instead of sash weights, and with the expensive GPSs attached),  and finally went up on  plane and pulled the drain plug to fix the issue.  The boat is tough.

So below are some pictures, very poor, I apologize.  Much better pictures, better coverage, and complete scores can be found here http://www.sail-world.com/USA/Argo-Group-Gold-Cup—Breakages-and-Black-Flags/62047  and here http://www.bermudagoldcup.com/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,33/ .

Venetian, "Jumbo" (that's the builder) 100ft., for privileged spectators

Terrible out of focus picture of death roll over our bow

Downwind finish when breeze had eased a bit

The off-cycle teams spectating, at the $4million condos just east of the Princess

A word on “the barge” below.  This is a commercial guy, who takes care of all sorts of yacht and dock repairs, and whose job it is during these regattas to ferry people and stuff.  The boat is a catamaran about 60 feet long with twin Evinrude eTec 115s, which is why I took the stern shot, very large platform that can hold 30-40 people.  When there are no racers aboard, it holds spare booms and other parts, water in big fishing ice chests, a couple of people, and a mangy but happy dog with a black eye patch who was on the boat every day all day as far as I could see.

Stern view of "the barge" with incoming crews

This was the first day of match racing.  The Weather Channel said cloudy, 30% chance of rain.  I lugged foulies and did not take sunscreen.  In fact there wasn’t a cloud in the sky until 6:00 pm and I was toasted like a marshmellow.

The RC left the dock right on schedule at 8:15, with David Campbell-James, the PRO, saying nothing to me about where to go or what to do.  This was pretty annoying, but made sense later.  Turns out, unbeknownst to me, while I was assigned to windward mark boat, that boat was privately owned and the owner left from Hamilton Dinghy Club, so he had no idea he was to pick me up.  Fortunately I was forward enough to speak to a guy loading small marks on a boat, and that turned out to be pin boat.  I left with him ostensibly to meet up later with windward mark, which I never did.  Turns out my skipper, with whom I shared hours of driving chores, is a long-long standing race helper and very good at all the small details.  He is a true Bermudan character, a white Irishman with the full-boat island lilt accent, “dee” instead of “the” etc.  Very nice guy, full of stories.  He started working for the phone company at 15, retired at 58, now teaches fencing and archery to secondary school kids.  We dropped the out-of-bounds buoys first, 6 of them scattered all ofver the harbor, which are intended to keep the precious IODs from hitting reefs.  Then we set pin and leeward mark, and went in to pick up our third, the recently retired mayor of Hamilton.

The morning had nice breeze.  “Our” guys, Reuben Corbett and Keith Swinton had their hands full with the top ranked skippers.  The wind died not too long after lunch, and never really came back.  We made many attempts, including bringing everything, boats and marks in and then going back out, but it didn’t work, finally ran AP over A on RC at 5:30.   Dave (Bermudan character #1) had to go to fencing practice with the kids so we dropped him off below the customs house and went in to the dock.  I told Hizzoner I would stand him to a drink at the club and he said “let’s go in to the air conditioning”, which I found meant the inner sanctum, the inside bar.  It’s a square room, not very big, maybe 24 x 24 feet, with chairs around the walls and small table in front of each chair.  Of course burgees of the great clubs of the world on the walls.  A large set of Bermudan characters were already there and not on their first drinks.  I won’t repeat anything I heard.

I met the regatta manager, Jay Hooper, whose son-in-law tragically died in a construction accident yesterday afternoon on the island.  Jay came to the race today I think to have something to do, of course I offered him condolences, he seems very friendly as is everyone I’ve met.

Along with the super-top-ranked skippers at the press conference was Torvar Mirsky from NZ, same age as Rueben and Keith, but ranked 6 worldwide.  He was amazing, 4-0 today.

We are leaving the dock at 8:00 in the morning because the blow is coming in early, and the hope is to get in some races to make up for our loss of wind today, as early as possible.  Forecast is for steady 20 by noon and gusts to 40 by midafternoon;  of course the tender old IODs won’t be going out in that, so it should be interesting - and I’m sure wet on the pin boat.  I will be leaving home in the dark to get there by 7:00.

Here are a few humble pictures.

Morning Pre-Start

Close Finish

The funky catamaran barge with group changes

"Cleo" the committee boat, waiting for wind

Below is the first day press conference, these were today’s winners and being top-seeded are basically the best matching racing skippers in the world, excepting the world-famous Peter Gilmore who is in Group 3 and hasn’t sailed yet.  Torvar Mirsky is on the left.

First Day Press Conference