Sail-World New Zealand- 21 June 2011
by . on 21 Jun 2011
Welcome to Sail-World.com's New Zealand newsletter for 21 June 2011
Last week the focus of world sailing attention was on the America's Cup and in particular the new venue of San Francisco.
This week, Sail-World has stepped back in time to the rejuvenated J Class, the America's Cuppers of the 1930's.
Two of these classics sailed in the home of the America's Cup, Newport RI late last week and over the weekend. There were supposed to be three, but one, Hanuman (Jim Clark), decided not race and the boat was put into the shed and the doors closed.
However that should not detract from the tremendous spectacle of the J Class sailing against the backdrop of 120 years of America's Cup history.
In this edition of Sail-World, we feature several galleries of images of these glamour yachts of the America's Cup and look forward to the three regattas set down to be sailed in the south of England, this time next year with six of the 11 J class in the world expected to compete.
For all its ups and downs, the America's Cup always pulls the sailing fans - evidenced once again last week, with Russell 'Crash' Coutts spectacular cartwheel on San Francisco Bay. We made a special effort at Sail-World to bring the action to our readers, getting a jump on the other world sailing websites - and pulling huge traffic as a result.
Those few seconds of catastrophe caused Sail-World's readership to spike at a level just under the first race of the 2010 America's Cup in Valencia, last February.
Further our coverage was featured as a direct link from the lead story position on the front page of MarketWatch.com - the free online news-site of prestigious The Wall Street Journal.
Where else can advertisers get that sort of exposure in the sailing world?
The final event in the ISAF World Sailing Cup is almost over in Kiel Week or Kieler Woche, Germany, with a reduced attendance, and low quality fleets.
The poor attendance underlines a few factors - the compressed calendar for the final three events on the World Cup circuit - with competitors choosing the second event the Skandia Sail for Gold staged at the Olympic venue of Weymouth, with over a thousand sailors participating. The fact that the World Cup events have been immersed into existing regattas, which have been keen to maintain their identity, has done little to make the World Cup the stand out event as the premier event that it should be.
One only has to look at how Rowing promotes its World Cup events (which like Sailing are separate from the World Rowing Championships), to see how Sailing should be operating - and again reinforces the urgency of the points raised in the ISAF Olympic Commission report. The other point is that the European competitors don't make a lot of effort to travel out of Europe in their off season, and can't really complain when those who live outside Europe repay the compliment by cherry picking the Event calendar to suit their own competitive aspirations and programs.
Many thanks to those who have contributed to this edition, particularly those using our online submission and image loading facility which can be accessed by http://www.sail-world.com/admin/add_story.cfm!clicking_here
Good sailing!
Richard Gladwell
NZ Editor
nzeditor@sail-world.com
Send your news and images directly to Sail-World by http://www.sail-world.com/admin/add_story.cfm!clicking_here
To subscribe a friend to Sail-World's FREE newsletter http://www.sail-world.com/nz/newsletter_subscribe.cfm!click_here
If you wish to come off our mailing list please click the unsubscribe button on this newsletter, or drop a line to nzeditor@sail-world.com or call (649) 489 9267
Stay up with the latest sailing news, as it happens, on our website www.sail-world.com/nz
If you want to link to this article then please use this URL: www.sail-world.com/84993