Scuttlebutt

David Hazlehurst on Monday August 9, 2004 03:50PM

Some years ago Bay clubs, including our own, arranged a bus trip to Baltimore to meet the winners of the Volvo around the world race for the leg ending that ended in that city. One of the crew of the Dutch boat, Assa Abloy, skippered by Roy Heiner, that won that leg was a UK resident who was retiring from racing to become manager of Cowes week. According to today's Scuttlebutt, this years races have had more than their share of SNAFU's so he's had his hands full. First a new Swan 60 ran into a chain between two buoys that protects the wreck of the Mary Rose. A sure way to slow a boat down. There was only cosmetic damage according to the report. And racers ran through a nearby small boat regatta "scattering the Lasers and 505's like snipe". Seems the big boats have right of way just like traffic on the Chesapeake Bay.

But there's better news further on. Gary Jobson reports that all is ready for broadcasting Olympic news, hopefuly including Gary. And other reports are that there will be daily sailing news from Athens, a great leap forward from Sydney and Savannah where NBC imposed their usual embargo.

Some related comments. First, when the games were held in Savannah in '96 some $11MM was spent creating a man made island as a launching site so that some species of water fowl would not lose their nests. The competitors appropriately named it Water World. Hopefully the expense was justified. Second, environmentalists claim that the cannon used to start some 35 or so classes at Cowes at 5 minute intervals over a three hour period scares all manner of living creatures, but tradition prevails. Finally after the Sydney games were over and the British team won their final Gold medal two whole pages of a major London Sunday newspaper were devoted to sailing. What would it take for the Richmond Times Dispatch to provide this amount of coverage? Maybe reverse the results of the mid 1800's unpleaantness, the Civil War?

Scuttlebutt

Archive