Fires, politics and foiling cats—Sailing news from the U.S. and beyond

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 10 May 2016 These are interesting times here in North America as hot air pours south across the border from the wild fires that are ravaging the landlocked Canadian province of Alberta; as hot air rushes northbound from the U.S. presidential campaign trail, and as America’s Cup racing returns to New York waters for the first time in almost 100 years. Granted, these three events have little in common, but the fact remains that it’s equally as odd to see a massive forest fire raging out of control in mid-Spring as it is to see a 162-year old political party threaten to implode or to see foiling catamarans flying around the lower Hudson River.

Granted, one could make the argument that it’s equally smoky for Oracle Team USA to madly wave the Stars and Stripes, given that only one sailor on their squad for the New York City America’s Cup World Series (ACWS) event was a natural-born American, but we will (kindly) overlook this ironic vein, at least for now.

More interesting is the fact that Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) managed to pluck top-place honors, despite finding themselves dead in the water at the start of Race Three, their rudder hung-up on the starting pin’s anchor line. Fortunately, Olympic Silver medalist Blair Tuke leapt into the water and freed up his teammates; unfortunately, the Kiwis soon discovered that they had holed the bottom of one of their hulls in the incident.

Impressively, and thanks to a strategically placed wind hole, ETNZ managed to foil past the fleet of five other vessels to take the Race Three bullet, beating out fellow antipodean Jimmy Spithill and his largely Australian crew of Oracle Team USA to take first place in Race Three and in the overall NYC ACWS event. Groupama Team France rounded-out the podium finishes at the New York ACWS awards ceremony.

If that wasn’t enough of a Kiwi coup, Grant Dalton, CEO of ETNZ, along with grinders Guy Endean and Sam Bell and the team’s boat builder, Adrian White, got to ring the closing bell of the NASDAQ stock market on Monday to celebrate a successful routing of the Americans on their home waters.

While there’s no word yet as to if “the Donald” will start calling the birth certificates of Oracle Team USA sailors into question, there’s no question that the reported 100,000 spectators would have walked home happier if the hometown team had prevailed, but-given the passports involved-the whole “hometown” angle felt like more smoke from the Canadian wildfires (or was it more hot air from the campaign trail?).

Speaking of the Big Apple, the Clipper fleet is making its way to New York City by way of Seattle and the Panama Canal. At the time of this writing, the twelve teams sailing aboard identical 70-footers were just south of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and were making good progress towards the canal, where racing will be suspended as teams transit from the Pacific to the North Atlantic.

While the Clipper crews have some weeks left before New York’s skyline hoves into view, the frontrunners of the Transat bakerly should be arriving in the Big Apple on Tuesday afternoon/evening. According to the latest reports, François Gabart (FRA), sailing aboard his “Ultime” trimaran “Macif”, is enjoying a healthy line-honors lead of some 200 miles over his nearest competitor, and is also tracking for a record-setting run, provided that his breeze holds.

As for the hot air that seems to be sweeping across both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border, experts are now saying that it will take a meteorological event to tap-out the Canadian blaze, and almost six more months will be required for the political fires in the Lower 48 to abate. If you find yourself wishing that a meteorological event would simultaneously extinguish both of these blazes, you are certainly not alone.

May the four winds blow you safely home,