Arthur’s column

One has to look no further than the Moths to see where sailing is heading.  Forget giant mulithulls and the America’s cup – to my mind there is nothing more beautiful and exciting than seeing these little dinghies come out of the water and take on an entirely new perspective and speed.

It’s not just that they are so much faster than their water borne siblings – its also the beautifully symetrical balance achieved by canting to windward and allowing the sail and the wind to carry the weight of the crew.

We saw some of this mast cant on the BMW Oracle AC trimaran, and you see it a lot on the ORMA 60s and grand priz multihulls, but nowhere is it quite so obvious and pronounced as in the moth class and of course on the windsurfer – the origin of the concept.

I think mast cant has been restricted on bigger boats because of the physical difficulties in achieving it, and perhaps with this new genre some of these will be addressed to produce an entirely new way to sail fast across oceans on a large boat.  Cant wait!

I think I started feeling negative about FIFA when there were some really obvious mistakes in the South African world cup.  Mistakes that modern refereeing standards such as those applied in every other high level sport – video refs and electronic aids – would have avoided.  We all saw the goal apart from the ref in that early enflish game.  There were off-sides and there weren’t and all in all it was a bit of a mess.

Today’s announcement that a small arab state that doesnt really play football – Qatar – gets the 2022 world cup is another travesty from this organisation that was outed for accepting bribes just 2 days ago by the BBC (almost certainly the reason why front-runner England’s cup bid failed).

They promise to use $50 Bn of that excess cash that comes from our outrageous fuel prices at the moment to build 12 new statiums (they dont actually play much so there aren’t any worth talking about at the moment).  Once the world cup is done and dusted these will be shipped off to deserving countries somewhere – lets see if that transpires!  Maybe they can be reused as another Ferrari theme park instead.

Then there is the small issue of heat.  Qatar is in a desert – its very hot.  Thats why its really good for nice golf courses (as long as you can afford the water bill). Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, the  nation will be building “high-tech, outdoor air conditioning system to assuage the summer temperatures that can reach 120 degrees during the day.”  That’s gonna be interesting – not least for the fans waiting outside the games!

Lets look a bit closer at how this bastion of world football came to decide on Qatar….

According to The Star:

“Qatar had one of the most aggressive and expansive lobbying campaigns of any bidder, led by Mike Lee, an Englishman who was instrumental in helping London secure the 2012 Olympics and Rio the 2016 Games.

Early on, Qatar struck a deal to sponsor the African football confederation congress, negotiating an agreement that gave it exclusive access to the top officials in African football. It pitched its bid from Singapore to Brazil in the final months and invited about 20 African football federations heads to a friendly match between Brazil and Argentina just two weeks before the vote.”

Something ringing a little corruption bell here?

Work has now started on the scaled down 45 foot catamarans that are the “training” boats for the next America’s cup.  The boats will all be built to the same design by the same team – this is for the introductory races (called the Youth Americas Cup) and will pro0vide some cat experience for the teams (although one has to wonder why they didnt just merge with the Extreme 40 series).

Here is a video of the boats being put together in New Zealand.

So it looks like the insane decision to drop the multihull from the olympics could be reversed.  I will be one of many sailing fans around the world that applaud this re-emergence of common sense in the ISAF.

In fact the decision is not yet made – it has to be finalised at the ISAF md year meeting in May next year – but the indications are that there will be a “Mixed Multihull” class – effectively this means one male one female on the boat. It is unlikely that it will be a Tornado – there are more modern and faster potential boats – but it will be a fast cat around 18 foot long. The full list of events proposed for the 2016 games are:

• Men’s Board or kite board – evaluation
• Women’s board or kite board – evaluation
• Men’s one person dinghy – Laser
• Women’s one person dinghy – Laser Radial
• Men’s skiff – 49er
• Women’s skiff – evaluation
• Mixed multihull – evaluation
• Mixed two person dinghy (spinnaker) – 470
• Women’s keelboat – Elliott 6m (format of racing TBC)
• Men’s 2nd one person dinghy – Finn

The video above shows the Tornado in action – surely a better spectacle for those all-important TV viewers than many of the slower classes. With the emergence of the Extreme sailing series on 40 foot catamarans, and of course the recent announcement that the next Americas Cup will be fought in multihulls, there is no doubt that multihull sailing provides a fantastic spectator experience and is at the pinnacle of the sport in so many respects.

It was shere lunacy that caused the Tornado to be dropped from the 2012 games and there are many regretting the decision.  Bring it on!

Online money transfer firm Money Bookers (note how the name actually pretty much tells what it does) is to rebrand itselff as Skrill.  This has to be the dumbest rebrand ever!

Read the story here - for some fresh quotes from some PR hack who must be on some sort of wonderful weird substance :

“Payments have changed as well. It’s not all about shops or even money. It’s about life online and how it’s extended to so many areas. Being safe while you do exactly what you want to do. Freedom from worrying. Being able to give and receive more without having to try harder. Meeting needs in a new way. A way that does more than just meet them. A way that can only be called Skrill.”

Err ….  I wonder.

1. In my life payments pretty much remain about shops and money
2. All the cute bits about not worrying etc are what you expect in a wallet – whether its paypal, moneybookers, click and buy or any other one – hardly a reason to name yourself after a rare antartic tern
3. And no – its not really a rare bird – its apparently the only name they could think of for this online wallet

Britain went through some monumentally silly name changes, from British Steel to the Royal Mail, but I really think this one takes the cake.  And the irony of it all is, in these troubled times, some idiot management consultant/branding expert got paid loads of money to produce this result!

If Moneybookers wants to become cool perhaps they should rather focus on what they do as apposed to what they are called.  If they are so cool then why is there no facebook app (such as Coin jars)?

A simple rebrand doesn’t cut the mustard.  And, no, there will not become a new term “skrilling” for moving money, like googling for searching.  Nice try, but it aint gonna happen.

Footnote:

Thanks to Bob Rains who points out that Skrilla is urban slang for money.  Too bad the wise guys forgot the extra A at the end.  I still think it sucks as a name.

Quick note on an interesting article that I found in the Telegraph this morning.  Is the US government printing money in a manner no different to all the other ponzi schemes out there?  Is this not just the biggest Ponzi scheme of them all??

The following quote is from Bill Gross – MD of Pimco – the world’s largest Bond house (he knows what he is talking about!).

“[Cheque] writing in the trillions is not a bondholder’s friend; it is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme,” he wrote on his investment outlook, arguing that creditors have always expected to be paid out of future growth.

“Now, with growth in doubt, it seems the Fed has taken Ponzi one step further,” he said. “The Fed has joined the party itself. Has there ever been a Ponzi scheme so brazen? There has not.”

Leave your thoughts in the comment box below – this is a topic worthy of discussion.

The next Americ’a cup will take place in 2013 on a Catamaran (with some sort of centre hull).  It will be 72 foot long and will have a wing sail. As we have seen already in the last cup, this promises to be a beast of a boat, fast and furious.

A new 45 foot version of this wall also be launched as a training ground for the AC.  Called the “youth americas cup” this seems to me to be out to compete with the Extreme 40s series.

More information on the boat here.

The identity of the Stig seems to have now been confirmed as Ben Collins.

This video shows the speed of the Foiling Moth against other boats – there is no doubt that foiling is where its all going.

I have followed the progress of foiling multihulls for a number of years and came close to buying one.  There are two production multihull foilers at the moment – the Hobie Trifoiler which was the fastest but broke a lot and is no longer made and the Windrider Rave.  Both of these have been clocked in excess of 40 knots!

On another note – I am certainly not the only one out there that sees Sunday’s F1 race as simply a travesty of justice.  Ferrari should be stripped of the places in the race. If they had not implemented team orders arguably Vettel would have given Alonso a run for his money while he was hindered by Masse.  I dont disagree with DC views that team orders happen all the time anyway, but surely if there is a rule you should be forced to stick to it? Perhaps they should do away with that rule and simply accept that its a team sport not an individual one?

A very interesting blog article by Paul Larsen from the Vesta Sailrocket speed team on his thoughts having sailed on L’Hydroptere in the Solent.

“Whilst all this happened I was imagining what it would be like lining up for a crack at the 500 meter run onboard this boat. I feel I can honestly say this. That boat is truly on the edge at high speed. To me it is fun… but not what we aspire towards with our own project. At 50 knots I can cleat off the wing and let go of the controls. I couldn’t help but feel that Hydroptere felt like three boats forced to fly in close formation.  When it gets upset by chop or ferry wakes it seems to fight itself as it wracks, yaws and nods around. This is not fast. Once it shakes itself free of all this and settles down to smooth formation flying again, you can feel it accelerate as the internal fight subsides. Foils are effective brakes when they are not in harmony. The torsion that those large foils put on the beam must be significant and to keep them in harmony must be a large engineering problem in its own right. To ride this thing at record speeds must be one of sailings finest balancing acts. She goes her fastest when she is flying the windward foil but when you look at what her motion is when she does this you quickly see that it has issues. The problem is that when she rolls, she goes from riding flat on three foils to sitting on two foils that are diagonally offset. If she just rolls to leeward then she risks lifting her ‘T’ rudder out of the water and losing all pitch stability. I guess it all depends on how she is trimmed at speed i.e. does the T rudder pull down or create lift… or neither in that it just follows the surface piercing front foils.”

Read the entire article here : http://www.sailrocket.com/blogs

L'Hydroptere on the Solent