Naked in Seattle—Sailing News from the U.S. and Beyond

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 21 May 2012 When Seattle decides to put on a show—weather wise—she is a gorgeous place: Mountains abound, Puget Sound and Lake Union and Lake Washington provide ideal racecourses. Sure, it’s dark and stormy here in the deepest months of winter, but in the summer, Seattle simply can’t be beat. Case-in-point: This week’s NOOD regatta, which took place here from May 18 to May 20. While Sunday ended up being a rainy day of sailing (drum roll for the stereotypes), Friday and Saturday were the stuff of sailing legend: Perfect breeze, more sunshine than most Seattleites know how to handle, and enough psyched sailors to create a great event.

I wish I could offer a first-person report of racecourse events or even a great little vignette about a sweet starting sequence, but my shoulder surgeon still isn’t letting my newly 'fitted' bionic shoulder anywhere near a raceboat. He will pay in his next life!

On sailing’s grander stage, the international conversation has been centered on the Americas Cup World Series Venice event, where Loick Peyron’s Energy Team won the fleet-racing championship, upsetting the standard leaderboard and demonstrating the lighting-fast learning curve that ACWS teams are enjoying, while also showing that Oracle Racing isn’t the only team that knows how to make wingsails work.

In the match-racing section of the Venice event, Artemis Racing—the Challenger of Record for the 34th America’s Cup—proved the team to beat, dispensing first with Energy Team before turning their attention to Luna Rossa—Piranha for the finals. 'We executed exactly what we planned to do in the pre-start. We wanted to dial up Luna Rossa and get them to commit to starboard, then bear off onto port to deploy,' said skipper Terry Hutchinson. 'It couldn’t have gone better, but it was a tricky race. On the first run we split at the top, it was touch and go, but we snuck across and stuck to our convictions on the second beat. Luna Rossa kept asking the question and our guys kept responding.'

Be sure to check out the full media blast, as well as ace shooter Carlo Borlenghi’s eye-popping photo gallery, from this great event.

Closer to home, the second leg of the Atlantic Cup 2012 has started, taking the fleet of doublehanded Class 40 raceboats from New York City to Newport, Rhode Island. 'We are a bit less than half way back up the course to Montauk after going south to a turning mark off Barnegate Inlet on the Jersey shore,' reported American skipper Joe Harries from the nav station of Gryphon Solo 2. 'The race has been a bit up and down for us thus far, as we had a good start but then sailed into a hole just before the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and got a bit behind the leading pack.' Get the full Atlantic Cup report, inside.

And in Miami, the Volvo Ocean Race has started Leg Seven, which takes the fleet of fully crewed Volvo Open 70s to Lisbon, Portugal. Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing—long considered the dream team stuck sailing the dogsled around our spinning little stone—took top honors in the Miami in-port race before leading the fleet out of Miami towards Portugal. For overall race leaders Telefonica, a second tactical error—following a poor mark-rounding decision during the Itajai, Brazil in-port contest—pushed them further from their goal of capturing the overall crown.

'It feels great,' said Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing skipper, Ian Waker, of his struggling team’s win. 'We've had a tough time of it. We had no time at all to prepare for the last in-port race and we made a special point of having two full days' training here. We wanted to show the world that Abu Dhabi hasn't given up. We're a good team, we're determined, and it feels great to win a race.'

At the time of this writing, Groupama was in the pole position, followed by Telefonica and Puma Ocean Racing. More inside this issue, and be sure to spend some scrolling time with shooter Leighton O'Connor’s great image gallery from the Miami festivities.

And finally, be sure to check out the racecourse action from the Women’s Laser Radial Worlds, the 470 World Championships and the Rolex Volcano Race, as well as a reality check regarding the health of our oceans and the persistence of plastic.

May the four winds blow you safely home,