Hannah Mills set for Extreme Sailing Series before Rio bid

WELSH sailing star Hannah Mills will return to her bid for Olympic golden glory next year. Mills, 24, who is planning on continuing her 470 partnership with Saskia Clark through to Rio 2016 after winning a silver in Weymouth last summer. In the meantime, Mills has been invited to take part in the Nice leg of the Extreme Sailing Series by The Wave, Muscat skipper Leigh McMillan. She feels the experience could boost her preparations for a return to dingy sailing in the build up to the Rio 2016 Games. "I think it's important to take some time off and the Extreme Sailing Series is about learning new skills and improving my sailing in all areas," said the 2012 470 World Champion. "I think if you stay in the same boat for the whole four-year-cycle it gets pretty demoralising so you have to keep it fresh. "I want to do as much different sailing as possible before stepping back into the 470 sometime next year." Mills was only one of a few women involved in Nice. The Dinas Powys ace hopes her success alongside Clark in London 2012 will inspire more women to stay in sport. Women won eleven of Great Britain's 29 gold medals, their best-ever haul. "It's great to be one of the only women here, but obviously it would be great if there were more women involved," continued Mills. "Anna Tunnicliffe (US two-time World Sailor of the Year Award winner, who is also competing in the Extreme Sailing circuit) has done a lot for the sport and the way sailing is going I'm sure there will be many more opportunities for women to get involved. "I definitely think Team GB women doing so well was a huge boost especially for the young girls. "When kids are coming through school it's very easy to drop out of sports so hopefully London will encourage them to stay involved for as long as possible."

Getting Started - Dinghy Sailing

Go Pro optimist Sailing

Sailing Club Spotlight Berwick Sailing Club

A MECHANIC who saved Berwick Sailing Club £4,000 by repairing its safety boat has made the semi-final of a national competition to find Britain’s top maritime hero. Eyemouth’s John Wood has made the semi-finals after being nominated by Alistair McDonald, commodore at Berwick Sailing Club. The new annual awards scheme was launched in June by Old Pulteney Single Malt Scotch Whisky to reward the outstanding passion, commitment and achievements demonstrated within Britain’s maritime communities. After coming to the club’s 
rescue by carrying out essential repairs, John certainly fitted the bill. During a regatta in May, the club’s safety boat was damaged when it capsized in rough waters. The boat’s engine was in a sorry state and looked a write-off until John stepped in and worked day and night to save the club a bill in excess of £4,000 to replace it. “What John did was a big thing for the club.” Alistair commented. “It’s essential we have a boat to serve our safety needs and John worked solidly for a week to make sure we did.” A former Royal Navy engineer, John has also devoted a lot of time to the club since his two sons have joined up, going along to training sessions, helping at regattas and providing transport to events further afield. But despite his keen interest in the club, John has no desire to take to the water himself. Rather than go sailing, he prefers to watch his sons, aged 12 and 16, in action.

Best inland sail in Britain

Hobie Waves 20 plus knots

Tallship Lord Nelson sets sail on round-the-world voyage

A tallship with a disabled crew has set off on a 50,000-mile voyage around the globe. The Jubilee Sailing Trust (JST) ship Lord Nelson left Southampton on Trafalgar Day. A crew of 50 people, of mixed physical abilities, including wheelchair users, will sail the ship on the two-year voyage. The ship was escorted by a flotilla of other sailing vessels down Southampton water. It set sail for Rio de Janeiro at 11:50 BST, the time that Admiral Lord Nelson hoisted his final flag signal to the fleet at Trafalgar to "set all sails possible with safety to the mast". “ This is no pleasure cruise - our crew will be working together to guide Lord Nelson across the Atlantic and then around the world” End Quote Alex Lochrane JST chief executive The ship was designed and built to be sailed by people of all physical abilities, working side-by-side. It was named after "Britain's most famous disabled sailor", the JST said Beryl Jones, a retired disability adviser from Anglesey in Wales, who has multiple sclerosis, was on board. She said: "My grandfather was a sea captain who sailed the world and I guess at this late stage in my life I am following in his footsteps. "This sail will provide adventure, involving almost every activity on board. Scrubbing the deck and potatoes, washing dishes, setting the sails, keeping watch and peering from the crow's nest - a thrill of a lifetime." The project, called the Norton Rose Sail the World Challenge, will be completed in 10 main ocean passages, which will take up to two months each. The first leg is from Southampton, across the Atlantic, to Rio de Janeiro, from where the ship will set sail for Cape Town in South Africa. The crew of 50 will change for each of the 10 main ocean passages It will visit 30 countries and all seven continents and each passage will be completed by a different crew. Alex Lochrane, JST chief executive, said: "This is no pleasure cruise - our crew will be working together to guide Lord Nelson across the Atlantic and then around the world. "We are delighted to be able to give both disabled and able-bodied people the opportunity to take on massive challenges and push their boundaries."

America’s Top Sailing Team Capsizes, Destroys Their $10 Million Boat

Oracle Team USA, America's premier sailing team and one that's bankrolled by billionaire Larry Ellison, is the odds-on favorite to win the America's Cup title next September, but the crew hit a little snag Tuesday when their souped-up, super-expensive AC72 boat capsized in San Francisco Bay during a practice run. After that, it took all the crew's efforts, along with an assist from the US Coast Guard, to keep the remains from floating out to sea. The boat slammed into the water on its side, destroying the carbon fiber wing sail and scattering very, very expensive bits of carbon fiber over the bay. No one was injured, but the current pulled the boat through the Golden Gate and out to sea even as the team, joined by a crew dispatched from shore, tried to rein in the wreckage. "It was amazing - we watched it tip right over, and it looked like the top of the wing came right off," one witness told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Then the big ebb tide just took it right out under the bridge, and it was obvious there was nothing they could do." The team managed to return the boat, or what's left of it, to shore Wednesday morning. The wing was destroyed and the boat, which costs $8-10 million, needs extensive repairs. The rules allow each team to build two AC72 boats; this was the first of the two launched by Oracle. The second hits the water early next year. "There's no question this is a setback. This will be a big test for our team," said skipper Jimmy Spithill. "But I've seen these guys in a similar situation in the past campaign before we won the America's Cup. A strong team will bounce back from it."

Sailing Club Spotlight Annandale Sailing Club

Thames Sailing Barge Match Race

Kiteboarders make mark in sailing

The first thing you notice about a kiteboard is how ridiculously small it is. It is so small, it makes a luge seem roomy. So small that what it can do — carry a grown man at speeds approaching 60 knots — seems, at first glance, impossible. Then there are the courses where kiteboard riders seek to achieve these speeds: shin-deep stretches of water no more than a few feet from shore, in places where winds routinely reach gale force. Places where success can mean traveling faster than any sailing vessel ever to knife through water, and where wiping out can mean broken bones, and worse. The windswept, sandy coastal ponds on Martha’s Vineyard provide several prime spots for kiteboarding, which has made it a magnet for the sport. Here, starting Monday, competitors from around the world will converge to vie for the best speeds in an event organized by a coterie of local enthusiasts who also happen to include some of the fastest sailors on earth. To gear up for the event, on a recent autumn day when the southwest breeze kicked up a wicked chop on Vineyard Sound, these hardies — some might say crazies — practiced their madcap sport. “Windy is better. It can also be more dangerous, but it’s more exciting,” opined Brock Callen, 33, a professional sailboat racer from Edgartown who first stepped onto a kiteboard five years ago. “We look for the storm systems and that’s what we get excited about.” Calling this sport “sailing” caused a squall of controversy in 2008. Kiteboarders had to fight for recognition when Rob Douglas, a lifelong sailor and windsurfer who had been racing a kiteboard for only three months, broke the world record for fastest time under sail. At first, the International Sailing Federation balked at acknowledging the record. But in December 2008, it recognized that the times should be counted by the World Sailing Speed Record Council. In 2010, Douglas, who runs the Black Dog Tavern in Vineyard Haven and its affiliated shops, set a record — an average speed of 55.65 knots over 500 meters — that still stands. “It’s quite simple. Kitesurfers are sailboats,” said Douglas, 41, whose burly, 220-pound physique looks incongruously weightless as he skims lightly across the surface. “Any sailing craft on water that uses the wind for propulsion qualifies for the outright world speed sailing record. . . . Different yes, but it’s still sailing.” Different indeed. A kiteboarder balances on the board, attached by a harness and four lines to a light cloth “kite,” which fills like a spinnaker as much as 100 feet in the air.

Reefing the Sails - Why?

Reefing the sails is such and important safety aspect of sailing that it's one of the first things you should understand as you begin to learn to sail. Now is a good time to discuss something a tiny bit technical - force from the wind. Force imparted onto the sailboat is multiplied by four every time the wind speed doubles. So if you go from 5 knots to 10 knots the forces quadruple. Then if you again go up to 20 knots, the forces are 16 times higher than at 5 knots. And 40 knots? 64 times. To put that in more perspective if it takes about ½ your strength to pull a line at 5 knots, at 20 knots you would feel 8 hefty guys pulling against you in a tug of war. You've got no chance. Now also think of the stress on the rigging and how 16 times more force aloft is heeling your boat over. Sixteen times!!!! I hope you're getting the point. The quadrupling effect comes from the well established Bernoulli's equation which says the pressure applied is proportional to the square of the velocity. And by definition, force is equal to pressure multiplied by area. So if we halve the area we halve the forces. Makes sense right? And that is what we are doing by reefing. We're reducing the area while the velocity is increasing in our best attempt to manage the forces. And one more thing - when you're heading up wind, your boat speed is somewhat additive to the wind speed and so the forces increase even further. The mast on your sailboat is probably supported by shroud lines attached to the sides of your sailboat and by a forestay and aftstay. They are designed to hold certain forces aloft. Should the forces become higher than design or the connections deteriorate which on a boat they are guaranteed to do over time, then you're going to have some serious problems with a dismasting. In reality and practice, you should start to think about reefing the sails at about 12 knots of wind. At 15 knots, you should definitely be reefing and at 20 knots, you're crazy if you don't have 1 or 2 reefs in. The boat will be uncontrollable if you haven't reefed and you'll be probably breaking items on your boat due to high forces from the wind. At 30 knots, the boat will probably explode. Well, not quite, but I'm making a point to reef reef reef and get comfortable with the process especially when you are starting out in your learn to sail quest. And get an instructor or practiced sailing friend to teach you how to reef your sails. The process should not be intimidating. What can be intimidating however is if you leave it to late. A good professional captain of mine who would sail across the Atlantic had a saying. If you think you should be reefing - you should have reefed yesterday and if you are thinking about "shaking out the reef" (unreefing (if that is a word)) wait until tomorrow. Leaving the reefing until it is too late means that there are excess forces already on all of the lines you're going to want to be handling which is a safety issue for you and your crew. So reef early. An additional incentive to reefing is that actually, you can make your boat go faster anyway. So if you're trying to be mucho and waiting to reef, you will be going slower and loosing the race (there is always a race). Not reefing causes rounding up. One of the best things to see in a race is when the boat that is ahead of you has too much sail aloft and they get over powered and round up into the wind. This is so awesome because in doing so they will have lost 50 meters of lead on you. Rounding up is a wee bit technical but essentially it is when the wind force takes over your boat with out your ability to counter act using the rudder. The boat just turns up into the wind. It's dangerous because you can be turned right into other traffic. And it's just a pure waste of good sailing. When you begin to learn to sail, you'll find that the boat is trimmed so that the rudder balances the turning force of the sails. The force from sails want to turn the boat up into the wind and the force from the rudder wants to turn the boat down wind. This is done for two reasons. (1) For safety: if the tiller or wheel is released the boat will round up into the wind and loose power. And (2) if the rudder is pointing slightly up wind the boat gets a lift to windward from the force of the water on the rudder. However this balance is lost as the boat heels over too much. If you imagine that the boat has heeled over 30 degrees then according to Pythagoras, you are down to 70.7% of your rudder counteracting forces. So too much heeling is bad. On top of all that, as you begin to learn to sail and understand the forces, you'll learn that the sail relies on efficiency of the wind over the sail to create lift. This requires that the wind on the back side of the sail flow evenly across the sail (stays attached to the sail) to create the low pressure and thus lift. When the wind speed is too high and as the boat heels over, the wind has great difficulty in staying attached to the sail. Thus the wind peels off and you lose efficiency. A smaller sail requires the wind to stay attached for a shorter distance and thus increases the efficiency. We sum all this up to say when you reef in high wind conditions your boat can go faster with less heeling and less likelihood of doing serious damage to your sailboat.. That's good. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4569964

Learn How to Sail

Sailing is a popular and fun activity for any body The great thing about learning to sail, especially in the UK, is that the coast is so close to us. We are never too far from a sailing adventure! Leaving the land behind us and disappearing into the ocean on a yacht is less of a dream than you may think. People of all ages are learning to sail. There is no age limit and children as young as 5 can help crew a yacht. Most sailing only requires a small amount of physical strength, meaning it can easily become a passion enjoyed by everybody. Leaning to sail doesn't have to be expensive. Don't rush out and buy the most expensive clothing and equipment. For your first few times on the water you can borrow or rent anything you may need. Invest in the sport once you've started to sail regularly. People with disabilities, such as vision impairment, can sail without restriction. Wheelchair users can still participate in the sport but should be more careful in their selection of sailing vessel. Learning to sail is a wonderful experience and a hobby which will bring you hours of enjoyment. It's not a hard sport to conquer but the potential hazards you'll encounter mean safety is key. We've put together this guide to help you when learning to sail. Where To Begin? Contact your local sailing club and offer your services as a novice crew. Or teach yourself the basics with books or on the internet, and then contact a sailing club. Book yourself onto a sailing course - these normally last a weekend, although holiday sailing courses can be up to 2 weeks. You'll find sailing centres anywhere on the coast of the UK, but the heart of sailing has to be the Southampton coast. With its many harbours and exciting sailing around the Isle of Wight, it's an excellent place to learn to sail. Sailing on the UK coast starts around April and usually finishes in September. Mediterranean sailing lasts a little longer. Look to the Canaries or the Caribbean for winter sailing. You can sail a dinghy in the UK all year round. Be Safe Safety on the water is the most important factor to consider when learning to sail. Avoid crowded harbours and peak hours. Having to keep a safe distance from other vessels will only distract you. To begin with, go out in low winds. There is no point in sailing for speed straight away. Ensure you can walk before you can run! Always run through a safety drill before you leave dock. The chances are you'll learn to sail in a small boat or one with a light boom. Learning to control the boom is essential for smooth sailing and safety. Swimming It may sound like simple advice, but if you're going on the water you need to be able to swim. Even the most experienced sailor will find themselves in the water at some point. Being a competent swimmer will ensure you stay calm in a potentially harmful situation. Vital Equipment You'll need the following items when learning to sail: A good set of boat shoes A life jacket or buoyancy aid Signal equipment Brightly coloured clothing suitable for current weather conditions A high factor sun cream Whatever adventure you're looking for, sailing can offer it. Now you know where to start, just go ahead and do it! We can assure you, you'll never look back. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1237098