Flotsam & Jetsam 09.10.26
“Go sell crazy someplace else; we're all stocked up here”
Let’s start with a couple of random comments from Scuttlebutt sailing… in answer to the question “Has the America’s Cup lost its way?”
You bet it has. Thanks, America's Cup, for taking some of the coolest racing ever - and a series you could watch and be inspired to make next weekend's jibe-sets even better - and turning it into something so uninteresting that the recent events have come and gone and I haven't even noticed, or cared.
Can't watch and learn from the crew work. Can't see the guys grinding like crazy and vow to work even harder on the pumps next time you're manning them. Can't see the side-by-side bows of two boats pacing each other for the first time and seeing who can point higher, or maybe they are equal and it comes down to who catches that first shift. Can't see tempers flare on the faces of the afterguard that made the wrong call and got passed. Can't see the resolve in the faces of the whole team that is determined to catch up and pass the other boat and then does.
- Oliver DavisIt has zero appeal to your average sailor/racer. It used to be about hi tech boats, yes, but we could always eventually count on trickle down technology. Nothing from today’s flying ships will trickle down to recreational competition.
In college, I stayed up way too late to watch the AC in Australia, which was exciting and it appealed to me - a college kid who raced on IOR dogs. Brown sails, BIG personalities and a nation’s full support. When is the last time a racing sailor graced the cover of Time Magazine?
- Matthew D. Princing
I watched a few minutes of Youtube highlights from Naples….The event does not actually count for ANYTHING in regards to the actual Cup, and a few minutes of my time was enough…
The boats are technologically extraordinary, but the racing product is terrible! The AC40s are fast, (but still not as fast as my 2012 Land Rover Defender) yet their speed and sensitivity can turn small errors into large gaps, where the crucial tactical battle is effectively decided in the pre-start or first leg.
And let’s not confine this rant to the AC!
SailGP isn't the future of sailing. It's a media and entertainment product built around one distorted niche of the sport - a television product designed for viewers with a short attention span.
Foiling is exciting, but it's no more the future of sailing than monster trucks are the future of driving or glam rock is the future of music. There are a lot of people working every day to grow sailing in all its forms. SailGP contributes to that only indirectly, if at all.
To borrow a quote from Jack Nicholson: "Go sell crazy someplace else; we're all stocked up here."
- Tom Keogh
We are heading up the wrong path here! Turn the boat around!
(Click below to listen)
“Classic yacht owners are particularly welcome”
Regular readers may be aware of my occasional rants about the pitfalls of using performance handicaps to rate classic yachts, (encouraging mediocrity, rewarding dilapidation, random results etc etc) so I was interested to see the email below in my inbox this week, especially given the venue and the final line of copy. Unfortunately given the short notice can’t attend but would be very keen to publish a report from anyone who can be there?
I’d be especially interested to understand the choice of IRC for a Classic fleet given ORC is a more transparent, adjustable system and if you are willing to pay for good measurement data, its generally considered fairer, especially for boats with long overhangs… Much to discuss there!
Boat registrations now open for the South Australian Wooden Boat Festival 2027
(And by the way the word “iconic” is now officially banned from the pages of SWS)
Thanks to Julie Marron for letting us know that boat registrations are now open for the South Australian Wooden Boat Festival, returning to Goolwa Wharf on 24-25 April 2027.
(The “Returning to Goolwa wharf” is in my opinion the important bit given my mixed review of the 2023 event)
Owners of wooden, heritage, and traditionally crafted vessels are invited to register and be part of this iconic celebration of maritime heritage.
Last year’s festival saw more than 150 boats lined up along the wharf, with crowds of 18,000 enjoying the spectacle. In 2027 we would love to go even bigger and better!
https://www.sawoodenboatfestival.com.au/registration
Swan River Sailing Dinghy Association Open Day
And moving clockwise around Australia…
Tony Jones our favourite sandgroper writes…
You are invited to an open day at the Swan River Sailing Dinghy Association
15 Adams Street O’Connor
Saturday morning 17 October 9:30 till 1:30We will report on progress with the collection and celebrate the launch of our new website and membership drive.
Follow THIS LINK to visit our website
You will be able to view the progress on the restoration of Falcon 3 and how we are spending the funds we raised through a Lotterywest Grant. We also look forward to letting you know how our mission to find a home to display the collection is going and the highly valued work of our volunteers.
We have hired a coffee van to reward you for the trip and we look forward to catching up with members and supporters, old and new.
Adventure Capsules
The list of achievements of the iconic 25ft Laurent Giles VERTUE long and famous. Despite the design celebrating its ninetieth birthday recently, it continues to achieve remarkable feats of sailing and adventure
Check out this recent story by Alasdair Flint of a casual little jaunt from Scotland to Greenland
It’s just one article in Roget Robinson’s quarterly newsletter on all things VERTUOUS which should be essential reading for would be small boiat adventurers.
I suppose many of us harbour quiet sailing ambitions—our personal ‘Cape Horns’. For some, it is an Atlantic crossing; for the truly adventurous, perhaps it’s squeezing a Vertue through Havengore Creek – has anyone done that? For me, I had become slightly obsessed by the idea of sailing my Vertue to Scoresby Sund, the world’s largest fjord situated on the northeast coast of Greenland
The slightly edgy idea first came to me 15 years ago. I was planning a trip to the remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and spotted that Scoresby Sund was only 230 nm to the west of the island. I thought it would be fun to visit so I bought all the necessary charts and added it to the sailing schedule. However, the chief objective was to reach Jan Mayen and climb Beerenberg. Had I studied my ice charts more thoroughly, I would have realised that we were way too early to visit Scoresby Sund and it was still blocked with ice. In 2019 Will Stirling rang me to ask if I would like to join him on a voyage to Scoresby Sund in his gaff cutter Integrity, of course I jumped at the idea. I joined him in Husavik, on the north coast of Iceland. We were all ready to sail early in July but the ice still hadn’t cleared. All was not lost, we had an exciting voyage further south along the Greenland coast. The trip helped to add to my experience navigating in the ice.
In 2022, I decided to have another crack at it with my Vertue, Sumara. By now I had learnt that the ice doesn’t clear until the 23rd of July. I had been told this very specific date and based my schedule around it. I sailed to Husavik. The ice did indeed clear but the weather was diabolical. The Denmark Strait is notorious for its severe storms, unpredictable weather, and generally hostile maritime environment. It is known as one of the windiest and most dangerous stretches of open water on Earth. I couldn’t see a window long enough to safely cross to Scoresby Sund, so I decided to retreat back to Scotland.
Not to be defeated this year I decided to have one more shot at it in Sumara. This was to be my fourth, and it was definitely going to be my last attempt. I gave some thought to why my last trip didn’t achieve its goal. We retreated due to the weather conditions, but I could possibly have pushed on. My issue was that my crew was not a very proficient sailor, and I would be making the critical “go or no-go” decision on his behalf. I am sure he would have said “Whatever you think Captain” but I really didn’t want to make that decision on his behalf. This year I wanted to have a crew member who could share that responsibility, someone who could assess the weather and sea conditions and have their own opinion. They would know what they might be heading into.
I was also keen to find someone who could stick with the boat all the way back to Scotland. I needed to avoid having to plan sailing around impending flights from Reykjavik, and I wanted to avoid over wintering in Iceland. Paul was up for it. We are off!
The New Lyman-Morse High-Tech Classic Motor
As I head towards my mid-sixties I occasionally catch myself looking at reviews of Classic Motor Boats with more interest than is appropriate for an avowed “sailor”
This boat is one such example. Its not quite the one for me (mainly based on price tag!) but definite worth a read… From the latest Classic Boat Magazine by Carl Richardson
In July this year, the Hood 42 LM, a custom flybridge express cruiser was launched.
Built by Lyman-Morse, this modern classic motor combines traditional New England Downeast lines with high-tech composite engineering.
While it is rare to follow a wooden boat build from the keel up, Editor Carl Richardson had this pleasure with the C.W. Hood Yacht Design Hood 42 LM.
As the early frames and sections become a planked form, you can start to see shape and understand scale. Later the boat’s style and detail become clearer, but nothing would quite prepare me for the result.
Seeing this boat sitting on a still swinging mooring, there is something almost ethereal about its design. The proportions and the style are, to these eyes, so balanced and refined as to be near perfect. None of that happened by accident. It’s a reflection of the skill of the builder and the designer and also the ambition of the owner, as well as the time they were willing to invest.
The World according to the United Nations
BEFORE
AFTER
On September 4, 2026, the UN General Assembly voted to back a new world map. The “Correct the Map” resolution, pushed by Togo and the African Union, encourages countries to use the Equal Earth projection instead of the old Mercator one. The vote was 164 in favour and six abstentions, with the US the only country to vote no. It’s non-binding, but it gives a long-running campaign some serious institutional weight.
The problem with Mercator is that it was never meant to be a picture of the world. Gerardus Mercator designed it in 1569 to help sailors navigate, and while it keeps shapes and angles accurate, it stretches everything near the poles. That’s why Greenland looks about as big as Africa, and why Europe and North America seem larger than they really are. Supporters say this has quietly made Africa, Latin America and South Asia seem smaller than they are for centuries. As Togo’s foreign minister, Robert Dussey, put it, “a fair world begins with a fair map.”
Reactions have been pretty predictable. France co-sponsored the resolution and said it will drop Mercator, though its foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, admitted that changing maps “obviously doesn’t change the world.” The US representative brushed the whole thing off as a distraction from more pressing problems. Since the resolution can’t force anyone to do anything, what happens next depends on whether schools, media outlets, government agencies and mapping apps decide to follow along. And Mercator isn’t going away entirely. It’s still great for navigation, which is why it has lasted so long. The resolution is really about whether it should keep being our default picture of the world.
So what does it mean for Australia? Mostly, it’s a visual change rather than a practical one. Australia backed the resolution, but is also one of the countries that gets shortchanged by Mercator. On the old map it looks about the same size as the US state of Alaska, when it’s actually around four-and-a-half times bigger. On Equal Earth it looks larger and sits a bit further south, which is a bit of a shock if you grew up with the classic version. There’s even a local twist, since one of the three cartographers who created Equal Earth in 2018, Bernhard Jenny, is from Monash University. Because the resolution is non-binding, Australian schools, agencies and media don’t have to change anything, so any shift will come down to voluntary choices. If it does catch on, the main effect will probably be a small change in perception, with Australia and the wider Pacific looking a bit more like the size they really are.
Anchor Stories
Let’s conclude this week’s news with a great little anchor story from regular contributor John Maddox in response to my July editorial. Problem solving at its best!
After completing a summer seasons chartering in the Greek Islands the three permanent crew took the 62 ft S&S wooden yawl through the Corinth Canal en route for the West Indies;
We did ask the owner for a stronger anchor but he said will wait for the chartering season. We stopped every night as you know chartering can be very stressful for crew depending on the charterers and the yachting conditions. We decided to overnight in Cannes. We anchored Med stiyle by laying our anchor 3 times the length of the yacht and then reversing up to the seawall and tying off.
When we walked back to the yacht after dinner we noticed a very large motor yacht had in the dark laid its heavy anchor chain over ours. We had no chance in HELL of raising his chain to pull our chain underneath his. There were nobody on board the motor yacht called the Guiness .
As I was the younger of the two male crew on Anjaro I said I would dive down with two heavy spanners, with air, and undo our chain. I had a strong rope that I tied with a bowline to our chain. I signalled to our crew to put the rope around our windlass so that our chain could be reconnected by me to our anchor.
We thus pulled up the anchor completely free of the motor yachts anchor.
We continued on our route to the West Indies
If you have your own anchoring story lets hear it