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Well, if you're interested in sailing, you probably already
know that the Louis
Vuitton Cup racing is underway in New
Zealand. The LV Cup is the round robin precursor to the
Americas Cup. If you've got access to the Outdoor Life
Network on cable, and you don't mind searching the schedule a
bit, you can catch some pretty amazing coverage of the
racing. The races are getting some pretty cool coverage
by the network, they've got cameras on the boats, radio
microphones on many of the crew and a very neat "virtual
spectator" that lets us see the technical aspects of the
events in 3D computer generated animation.
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If you go visit the Louis Vitton Cup
website, you can even
download a free copy of the virtual spectator and then run a
bunch of the races over on your PC. You can replay a
race, watching it from a bunch of different views, getting a
sort of running commentary on major events in the race and for
a fee, you can even us the virtual spectator to watch the
races in real time. Overall, I think it's a pretty
impressive use of technology that is really helping to
showcase the worlds best yacht racing.
As
I've watched a bunch of the racing, it's amazing to be sort of
riding along with the yachts as they race, listening to the
groans of the rigging, watching the orchestration of the crew
as the round the marks, and even watching the occasional
blowout of a Spinnaker that cost somewhere in the neighborhood
of 30 or 40 thousand dollars. This is definitely the big
time show of yacht racing, and the Outdoor Life Network seems
to be doing a great job of covering it.
There's currently a break in the action for the Holidays, but
racing begins again on January 11th. Team Oracle BMW
beat out Team Oneworld to advance to the finals. |
| On
a recent trip to the French Polynesian islands of Tahiti and
Bora Bora, we happened across a New Zealand based tallship
named the Soren
Larsen. The Soren Larsen is currently in the middle
of a global circumnavigation, and was tied up in Papeete,
Tahiti, undergoing a refit. We had the good luck of
being able to spend some time talking with some of the crew,
and discovered that this vessel is geared around giving normal
folks a chance to learn to sail by participating as crew.
This
vessel is a 290 ton displacement, 145 foot tallship that looks
as if it just sailed out of the pages of a history book.
You should definitely visit the site dedicated to this ship,
and learn more about the voyage. Who knows, you may even
decide to book a berth on an upcoming leg of the trip.
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I got
the sailing bug just a few years ago, on a day excursion off
of an Eastern Caribbean cruise. While I'm not sure my
experience really truly qualifies as "sailing", you
might get a kick out of the story anyway... |
| "So, do I need to know anything about
sailing to use this thing," I asked the man who was renting me the small sunfish
sailboat. "Oh man, you're a funny guy," he laughed, assuming I was
kidding him. I wasn't. My wife and I were on a tiny island off the Dominican
Republic called Serena Cay. The cruise ship we had come here on stood at anchor off
in the distance. But now I was the Captain, and I didn't have a clue what I was
doing. I figured as we pushed off that I would probably be able to go away from
shore, as the breeze was going that way, but I was a little worried about what I was going
to do when the time came to return the tiny craft to shore. In the back of my mind I
was certain that there would be some form of rescue available in case we were totally
unable to get back, but I certainly didn't want to have to endure the ribbing I knew I
would take for the rest of the cruise if that were to happen. We were travelling
with another couple that we had known for years and I knew that a rescue would set me up
for an enormous amount of good natured ridicule for a long time to come.
The little boat caught the breeze quickly as we pushed away from shore and in a few
minutes I had us a couple hundred yards out, tacking slightly across the breeze. My
wife sat facing me, reclined on the deck of the little boat, enjoying the experience in
that carefree way that she seems to manage in almost every situation. I was trying
to get the hang of coordinating the tension on the sail with the pressure on the rudder,
and starting to feel that I was doing quite well at it, when a sudden gust caught me off
guard. I started to lose my balance as the boat leaned with the wind and the next
thing I knew I was sliding off the side into the warm Caribbean water. With a
startled little squeak, my wife quickly followed me into the drink as the little boat
tipped past the point of no return and capsized.
Luckily, we quickly discovered that some patient
tugging on the side of the tiny craft turned it right-side up and before long we were back
under way. In no time at all, I was starting to feel more confident, and soon had us
leaned heavily to the side and racing across the wind. And when our rented hour with
the tiny boat came to an all too early end, I was even able to tack back and forth into
the wind, working us close into shore. At the end of it all, I was hooked on
sailing.
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Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
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