Coop's Corner

For 12 days from May 5 to the start of the transtlantic leg to Lisbon on May 17, the Race Village will be open at Fort Adams. To the majority of sailors/spectators, the VOR is a sailboat race, albeit a grueling circumnavigation, often at hair-on-fire speeds. But behind the scenes, the VOR is big money in action.

By any measure, sailing is a male-dominated activity. This is slowly changing. In over 35 years in the sail & boat game I had not had one woman call me to inquire about equipment for herself. Yet in the past 12 months I’ve received calls from four women, and after chatting for a few minutes it was obvious they were shopping on their own account for sails for their own boats.

It is rare today that one hears anything about sailors effecting jury-rigs after an equipment failure at sea and making it to land under their own steam.

There are several groups in Newport that were founded by people with a desire to do something about this trash in the ocean problem. I am sure there are many more, but these are four I interact with in Newport, RI.

I am consulting for Hood Sailmakers and the other day I was handed a letter by Dawn, “She Who Keeps It All Going.” Yup, a letter. An honest to goodness, real life, business-size manila envelope with a hand-written address. There was even one of those little stickon return address labels you could order from the back of The New York Times Sunday Magazine years ago.

By Joe Cooper At the conclusion of the Ida Lewis Distance Race in August, I brought the Class40 Icarus back to the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY, through whose great graces we were able to use her in the Storm Trysail Foundation Junior Safety at Sea seminars and the Ida Race. When I got home the next evening, I was totally pooped. I had been going non-stop since January in about seven volunteer things,…

If you are going to start tossing “Who’s gonna win the Volvo Ocean Race?” darts now, you better have an idea of the background for criteria on how you decide.

Five boats competed in the Youth Challenge division of the 10th edition of The Ida Lewis Distance Race, 150-nautical mile overnighter. The basic requirements to enter this class are that 40% of the crew be between 14 and 20. This year’s Youth Challenge was interesting in that there were two Class40s: Icarus/North Sails Youth Challenge and Toothface, as well as a J/111, a J/88, and Oakcliff Racing in a Farr 47.

The experience of being on these remarkable pieces of equipment, hearing the stories that go with them, learning for instance that one of the Alvimedica guys is 25, less then 10 years older than they are. I did not have one tenth of all this exposure when I was growing up and I was stoked. Guess I will have to invent a new word for these kids to use, but for now stoked is a suitable expression.

On June 14 at about 1800 local time in Barcelona, American Ryan Breymaier and Spaniard Pepe Ribes won the IMOCA Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race, which is sailed doublehanded in IMOCA 60s.