I do not usually have any interest in the America’s Cup. There is too much hype and too much money. But a video link on the Sailing Anarchy site about the Swedish team caused me to watch the preliminary races yesterday and today and they were interesting. The site, Bermuda, to which I have never sailed, is beautiful. The boats, up on foils, sailing at twenty to forty knots, are beyond my experience. There are no sail changes. Only an incredibly flat wing mast mainsail and jib. No spinnakers because they go so fast the apparent wind is always forward even when the true wind is aft. This is not sailing, it is flying. And there are frequent lead changes. In most past America’s Cups the races were over at the start. The boats go incredibly fast, out of the water suspended on narrow foils. My memory is that water is eleven times denser than air. The way to go fast is to fly and these boats fly.
I do not watch the races live. I record them and then fast forward through the commercials and the predictable parts.
That the teams are named by nations is absurd. The ‘United States’ team is steered by an Australian and lead by a New Zealander. I don’t know how many, if any, Americans are even on the boat. The America’s Cup has always been about wealthy men with big ego and corporations. Team New Zealand’s main sponsor is Air Emirates, not quite a Kiwi firm, and also the sponsor of Arsenal who won the FA Cup yesterday.
I will continue to watch. After seeing two day’s racing I don’t know who will be the challenger or who will win the Cup. I didn’t expect to be interested, but I am.
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This afternoon Carol asked me why I didn’t sail this year from Florida to Panama and then to San Diego. Thinking that perhaps some of you have wondered as well, I provide my answer.
I am late for the hurricane season in both the Caribbean and off Mexico, which nominally starts June 1.
After sailing almost 8,000 miles in three months both GANNET and I need a pit-stop. GANNET has not sustained any serious damage, but, as you have seen from the to do/buy list, the little boat needs some repairs and replacements. And I am tired. I am not at my limit. If I had to, I could sail the 1500 miles to Panama and the 3000 to San Diego, but I don’t want to right now. There is no way of knowing if this is just because I am old because there is no base line of sailors who have sailed a Moore 24 8,000 miles in three months.
And I want to spend time with Carol. If women had not been a part of my life, I would have circumnavigated ten or twenty times, and my life would have been so much less.
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I am probably more senile than I think I am, which is as to be expected.
I clearly remember deactivating the Yellowbrick after GANNET was in her slip at Marathon Marina. However, as Bob and David let me know, it continued to send up positions. I thank them for alerting me. Somehow I must have turned the device back on.
I went to my Yellowbrick administration page but could not find a way to deactivate the device via the Internet. I was able to change the interval that positions are uploaded from six hours to the maximum twelve hours.
I emailed Yellowbrick and explained the situation. As always when I have emailed Yellowbrick I received a prompt reply that told me they could deactivate my Yellowbrick, but I could then only turn on tracking again at the device. I emailed them to deactivate, and they did.
If I thought that we were an intelligent species I would be surprised that companies like Torqeedo don’t understand how important support is to customer loyalty. Apple and Yellowbrick do.
While viewing the Yellowbrick tacking page, I went back to the first days after leaving Durban and found one position that showed a speed of 8.8 knots and another of 8.4. Not up to America’s Cup standards but pretty good for a 24’ boat.
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I have been wearing my Apple watch and closing the circles on the activity app. I have resumed wearing out the carpet in our stairwell, climbing twenty floors a day, and on Friday I did my full workout for only the third time this year. I felt strong and was not surprised when I did my age in push-ups for the first time since early January, though I am a little sore today. Sailing oceans you keep your upper body more than your legs, particularly on GANNET.
The next workout day is tomorrow.
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Carol and I walked down to the lake yesterday.
The photo above is of Evanston’s South Beach. Not quite Miami. The water of Lake Michigan often appears Caribbean turquoise. In late May this is an illusion. Though the air temperature was warm, the water is still cold.
