Class C Start – Bandido - 3rd overall in Class (left) and Veloce 2 – 1st overall in Class (right)
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| UK-Halsey Wins Two of Four Divsions at MEXORC |
MEXORC has always been a big event for offshore boats on the West Coast of Mexico, but this year the event truly blossomed with the creation of the Copa Mexico Trophy that was presented by the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, who is a sailor. John Bennett of UK-Halsey Southern California/Mexico has been servicing the active fleet of offshore boats in Mexico for years was happy to see how the fleet has grown and how well the boats with UK-Halsey sails are performing.
In Class C Andres Baptista’s VELOCE 2 won a tough battle against a very well sailed Melges 32, MOJO and Ernesto Amtmann’s red Frers 43 BANDIDO. Racing was close throughout the series between these top three boats often with seconds separating the positions. In the end, it came down to a last race showdown. Going into the eighth and final race, MOJO, was one-and-a-half points back and had to put a boat between them and VELOCE 2 to win.
The last race was no different than all the others – a nail-biter with several lead changes. Starting out the last beat of the last race, VELOCE had the lead and set up to protect the right since the wind normally shifts to the right in PV. MOJO, with past J/80 World Champion Jay Lutz calling tactics, went left on a flyer. Looking up the course at the larger boats, VELOCE’s tactician, UK-Halsey’s Mike Considine, saw a huge right shift and a lot more breeze. VELOCE 2 sailed to the pressure and was soon reaching at nine knots to the mark while MOJO was still sailing upwind in less breeze.
VELOCE 2 had huge lead at the start of the last run to the finish, which turned into a jib reach because of the wind shift. Baptista’s crew was relieved that there would be no passing lanes. As VELOCE 2 got closer to winning the race, they saw all the boats in classes A and B sitting in a dead zone 200 yards in front of the finish line, while behind them, MOJO was close reaching with her spinnaker pulling hard.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE REST OF THE ARTICLE.
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| ARCHAMBAULT 35 TCHIN-TCHIN CONTINUES TO DOMINATE IRC 3 |
One of the fun and challenging early Spring events in France is the Massilia Lexus Cup raced in Marseille with a circle for IRC boats and another for one-design boats.
In 2009, Jean-Claude Bertrand’s Archambault 35 TCHIN-TCHIN dominated IRC Class 3 in regatta after regatta. So when Beneteau introduced their new First 35 at the 2010 Massilia Lexus Cup, they stacked the boat with pros to knock off the “gold-standard.” But the win was not to be; the all-amateur team on TCHIN-TCHIN showed the rest of 14-boat class how it is done in 30-plus knots of wind by scoring four firsts and a second. TCHIN-TCHIN sails with an exclusive inventory of UK-Halsey France’s Titanium sails, the same sails she used to win the Black Wing Trophy in 2009.
On the one-design circle, UK-Halsey also dominated 10-boat First 31.7 Class taking first, third and fourth place. Jean Claude Pietra’s AQUARIUS finished the eight-race series with five firsts, two seconds and threw out a third. Stephane Beaume’s MINTAKA-SNCM was third, but she won two races. She had a shot a second, but ended up with two DNFs in the windy series. Even through Beaume had to keep one of the DNFs, she was only two points out of second.
No member of the UK-Halsey France raced on board the winning boats.
Congratulations to all our customers for doing so well with their UK-Halsey sails.
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THE RACING SEASON ABOUT TO START,
TIME TO BRUSH UP ON THE RULES AND DEFINITIONS |
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If you are serious about learning the Racing Rules of Sailing, you have to start with the definitions. These words have very specific meanings and you can’t understand the rules unless you know the meanings of the defined words. In the US Sailing version of the Rule Book, there are three pages of definitions on the last three pages of the book – they are hidden behind the index. To help sailors, we are posting the definitions on our site. You can study them online by clicking here.
You can also find all the definitions and the rules of Part 2 (When Yachts Meet) in the UK-Halsey Rules Quiz program. Our rules program is the easiest way to learn the racing rules of sailing because we use animation, not static diagrams. You see situations develop as they do afloat — making complicated issues simpler to understand. The program is much more than animated quizzes for brushing up on or learning the rules. It comes with exclusive instructional videos, it’s own blog where members can get their rules questions answered, PDFs of the new US Sailing Appeals that are related to the quiz answers, and a rules test with the answers explained in detail. As a download, UK-Halsey constantly updates the program.
To take a video tour of the program, click here. A major upgrade to the program since video tour was created is our new rules test. It is located in the Lifted Tack Section of the program. To see one of the educational videos that is only available to owners of the program, click here.
The cost of the program is $55, $40 for owners of the 2005-2008 Rules Quiz CD. The program runs on Macs and PCs and runs smoother on newer computers. To buy the program, click here. |
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| STAND OUT, BE CREATIVE, EXPRESS YOURSELF ON YOUR SAILS |
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Imagine rounding the windward mark and pulling up a spinnaker that makes a bold statement! A 200 sq meter photo-quality smiling face. Now that would that be a head turner! Or you could be daysailing and set a huge cruising spinnaker with a photo of your pet.
UK-Halsey Sailmakers has teamed up with a Danish company that has perfected the technology for printing on sail cloth -- including silicone coated nylon. Now we can build a sail for you that is says a lot more about you than a good color combination could ever do.
We can print any image on your spinnaker while barely changing the physical characteristics of the spinnaker cloth. Today’s technology enables every sailor to get the image of their dream on their boat’s spinnaker.
Some of us, have to get approval at the home front to purchase a new sail, well the approval process could be a lot easier if your new sail carries photo of your kids, pet or a work of art.
Your imagination is the only limit. Just send us a JPEG or vector graphic of what you would like on your sail. It can be as plain or as detailed as you want. Why should advertisers be the only ones seeing their logos boldly displayed?
For a price of 80 Euros you can have a full-page test print on spinnaker cloth. This cost will be credited toward the purchase of a spinnaker with a printed graphic.
Having a printed graphic will add about three weeks to the production time of your sail.
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| UK-HALSEY CUSTOMERS SMILING AFTER THE HEINEKEN REGATTA |
Congratulations to Sir Bobby Velasquez, and his crew of his Beneteau 45F5 L’ESPERANCE, on their second place finish in the non spinnaker fleet (17 boats) in the 2010 St Maartin Heineken Regatta. Sir Bobby’s sails were built for the Heineken 2008 and are obviously still fast.
“UK-Halsey Diamond-Drive sails are still the leader in long lasting durable racing and look great too,” said UK-Halsey Miami’s Mark Wood who designed and built the sails for L’ESPERANCE.
Huge congrats go to the Chicago-based Santa Cruz 52 SIN DUDA, which won Spinnaker Class 2 with four firsts and a two seconds. SIN DUDA was the smallest boat by far in the 13-boat class that included the Farr 115 SOJANA, a Swan 90 and a Swan 80. UK-Halsey Chicago’s Pat Considine sailed on the boat with two of his brand new spinnaker designs that made the boat excel downwind.
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| J/80 AVET WINS MORE THAN THE SAN DIEGO NOOD REGATTA |
This year’s San Diego NOOD Regatta was a good test for Curt Johnson and the crew of AVET. Their main goal was to see how they could get a better understanding of rig tuning and trim. AVET’s crew of Lauren Turner, Paul Burnett, and Kerry Klingler worked closely with Curt to get the most out of the boat. Our overall goal in not to just win this regatta. The long term goal is to get a better understanding of the trim and boat setup for the upcoming North American and World Championships. The results were clear, with sores of 3,1,1,1,3 AVET dominated the regatta. For AVET, the key was our light wind settings; we were consistently faster and higher than the other boats.
In this year’s NOOD regatta, UK-Halsey sails won every race. With UK-Halsey boats finishing first, third and fourth
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| BIG WINS AT THE BIG DADDY |
 Two UK-Halsey-powered boats won their divisions in the Big Daddy Regatta, which is the season-opening event on San Francisco Bay. Philppe Paturel’s Archambault 40 CIAO won PHRF Division A with all firsts over a custom Tripp 43, a J/125 and a One-Design 35, which all tied for the “second fiddle position” behind the red and black boat. In the Ultimate 20 division, Trent Watkins’ UFO won the eight-boat division with all firsts in the three-race series.
This was the first showing for an Archambault boat on San Francisco Bay and Paturel was happy to have shipped his 40-foot IRC racer/cruiser west from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He raced with UK-Halsey’s Sylvain Barielle, who will skipper the boat for the rest of the 2010 season on the Bay.
Paturel was also very impressed by the quality of racing on the San Francisco Bay. “It was my first race in this basin and I was impressed by the organization and the quality of the courses,” said Patuel. “I was also taken by surprise with the strong currents! It reminded me of the Tour de France à la Voile when we were racing along the rocks of Brittany, France, where the currents are very mischievous. You’ve got to be smart enough to evaluate your laylines.”
The Archambault 40 is a French production boat that has a terrific track record in Euope. Paturel is the North American importer for the Archambault line which includes a 35-footer (see the article above about TCHIN-TCHIN) and a new 34-foot one-design. For more information, contact Paturel via e-mail at: contact@archambault-boats.ca
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Rob Davis’ X-35 NUTCRACKER sailing in to extremes on Port Phillip Bay off Melbourne, Australia. Her UK-Halsey MatriX sails far fast across this broad wind range. Davis wrote, “Here are a few shots of the new sails, a lot of people have commented on how good they look! Heavy air image courtesy sail-world.com and take by John Curnow © Copyright TetraMedia Pty.Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
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| LOCAL SAILING MAGAZINE WITH A NATIONAL SAILING MAGAZINE LOOK |
 The best way to see LI Sail is to browse the electronic magazine. In fact that is the only way to see LI Sail. You find LI Sail on the internet but it is no ordinary website. It is a new online flip book style magazine about sailing in Long Island waters. LI Sail is in its first year with eleven monthly issues published.
LI Sail features stories on cruising, sailing towns, regattas, yacht clubs, history, sailboats of all sizes and issues that affect sailors in Long Island waters including Connecticut, Manhattan and Block Island. Current stories include frostbiting at Huguenot YC, Babylon YC and Mt Sinai with the Mt Sinai Sailing Association and iceboating on Lake Ronkonkoma. The boats featured tend to be smaller in winter but LI Sail proves, with each issue, that sailing is a year round sport even in the Northeastern United States.
According to Publisher Randy Burke “We have three ways we get our stories. First, we go to clubs or events and photograph the sailing, and then write a story about it. Second, readers send stories and pictures for us to publish. Finally, we tell stories from our own sailing experiences.”
LI Sail is free in exchange for your email address at http://www.lisail.com/.
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