A counterpoint to our Never Say Never piece, lower on this page, from anarchist Kantakerous Kate.

Despite endless proof to the contrary, there still remains a cadre of holdouts who seem unable to let go of their mantra that “sailing will never be a spectator sport.” 

That is how you started the “Never say Never” bullshit. What endless proof? Someone sends a photo of a few thousand Swedes watching the VOR and you decide it means sailing is a spectator sport. You didn’t notice all those Islands and peninsulas and lakes? Well, I’ve got news for you, they are the reason that EVERYONE has a boat in Sweden and, regardless of the VOR, would be out on the water on a sunny weekend, sunbathing off some island, or elk watching on a lake. Going by your logic, that must make sun bathing and elk watching spectator sports and I suppose I must concede that the “Show us your tits” brigade might see sunbathing that way.

What were the other things you mentioned? Oh yes, “the fabulously successful” iShares Cup. Well of course people are going to watch the iShares. Strolling along Amsterdam quays, or Hyeres seafront are usual weekend pastimes and, if something that looks part way to being exciting is happening on the water the strollers are going to stop and stare. You don’t have to know anything about sailing to figure that a passel of fast boats, careering around a short tight course, is a recipe for catastrophe, so they stay and wait for it. Do you think they’d stay if a bunch of cruising yachts were milling about in some incomprehensible regatta, where nobody who isn’t taking part has a clue who’s winning? As for the Vendée, those tens of thousands don’t go to Les Sables to watch sail racing, they go to cheer their heroes and France is the only country in the world where sailors get hero status.

Yeah, we know all about Virtual Spectator and how could we forget On the Water Anarchy when its hugely successful presenter keeps ramming down our throats how hugely successful it is, but do you seriously expect non-sailors to start tuning in to Clean’s every wind drowned, advertiser plugging word, whilst looking in awe at his shots of the Bonga Regatta, or whatever two bit event has let him career around their racecourse?

“Never mind Morning Light's flop in US theatres” you blithely say, because it doesn’t support your ridiculous notion that sailing is, or will ever be a spectator sport. You should have tried reading the reviews and you’d have seen that “dull”, “mighty dull”, “a yawn” and other expressions of boredom were the reasons it flopped. The New York Times summed it up by saying “Morning Light never finds a way to make us care who wins.” Of course it didn’t, because nobody among the masses gives a damn who wins any sail boat race, unless they happen to be French and the race is around the world.

You claim that “sailing is now on the minds of more of the public than ever before”. Who says? Did you walk around San Diego and Charleston and ask “Is sailing more on your mind than ever?” Of course not and the truth is there’s sod all evidence that Joe Public gives a damn about watching sail racing, nor ever will except for the America’s Cup and potential crash, or sink stuff.

Instead of spouting nonsense and insulting guys like Dennis Connor, get it into your heads that sailing is a participant sport and mostly downright boring to watch and figure some ways of getting more people on the water. On the other hand, you could take a leaf out of the French book and try figuring out how to turn American ocean sailors into heroes. Oh dear, I forgot you don’t have any.

Kantankerous Kate

There is clearly something very bizarre about Melges racing and Italy. As the rest of the world suffers, somehow the Italians continue to rack up record fleets at all major M24 events, while Melges Europe is selling Melges 20s and 32s literally faster than they can get them. We came to Torbole to see what the hell is going on; what is causing all this success for sportboat racing in southern Europe, and how can North Americans learn something about it?

The answers are coming and they're not necessarily what you might expect, and in the meantime, we figured our Anarchist friends might like to watch some M24 racing. So we decided to give a little OTW Anarchy a shot, but without all the support and budget that we've become used to. Nope, we're going back to basics:

No big sponsors (though Point Loma Outfitting's Patagonia technical shirts are heaven in this heat)
No special SA-TV viewer, no big money or big production
No big pro video camera
No staff of mark rounding spotters and scorers.
No high speed wireless on the water

Nope, just Mer and I on a little RIB, running back and forth between the course and the media office, but it should be worth it. There are an astonishing 70 boats here despite it not being a European, national or world championship; in fact, it's hardly a serious event at all, at least judged by the attitudes of the sailors here. Everyone is mellow and enjoying themselves, ready for some fun racing and very fun partying in one of the world's most beautiful places to sail.

We are going to do our best to send out some slightly delayed reporting, though our obstacles are huge and our delays may prove long. For North American readers, that's probably not that big a deal, since by 11 AM EST, you should be able to see some of the action here. And when I say "action," I mean it; if you've never been here, it's hard to understand just how much is going on in a 10 NM stretch of water.

Today I raced on Pocket Rocket, an older boat, for the little 20NM practice race against 15 other boats. On the 2 hour beat, we sailed near or through the following fleets: I-420 (minimum 100 boats), RS K6 (20+ boats), new 49er training for Worlds next week (2 different groups of 5+ boats), 6 lasers, 50 sailboards, and numerous random keelboats. To complicate matters while making them even more carbolicious, three new(ish) boats are sharing dock space with the M24s as part of Volvo's "Test Drive" program, which lets interested sailors take out the new Devoti D-One, the canting keel Linq CQ-6, and the Laser SB3.

Mer raced on Majica, and led all boats to the top mark, while we were DFL. Funnily enough, her team went from first to last in mere minutes and finished just behind us, while both teams had a great time on the water. And now that we've gotten a little taste of racing on Lake Garda, we're ready to watch the week unfold. Hopefully you'll join us for some of the ride.

From onboard the Class 40 Team Keysouce...

After the GP Petit Navire where we placed 7th, we double handed the Transmanche en Double placing a 5th, expectations were high for the fully crewed Record SNSM based out of St Nazaire.

Now St Nazaire isn’t the most attractive of destinations on the French West Coast but the French make such an effort with these events the whole place was buzzing and they’d set up a great race village around the main yacht basin with the Open 60’s, Class 40’s, multis and a handful of IRC boats on display. Lots of events happening over the Saturday and Sunday before the offshore started on the Sunday. One of the highlights had to be Mich Dejoyeaux match racing Bernard Stamm in the dock on little dinghies (see attached snap) – Le Proffeseur winning it in incredibly fluky wind conditions.

The course for the 40’s and the IRC boats was 230 miles, the 60’s had to race a longer course at 400 or so miles. The start on Sunday afternoon involved the whole fleet going into the lock watched by thousands of keen French sailing fans with all the boats being announced on the tannoy and getting great cheers from the fans. We were really buzzing and it’s just so different from racing in the UK – awesome.

As ever we had no decent French speakers on board so didn’t really have a clue when we were starting, in fact we put in a couple of ‘practise’ starts before actually working out the right start!
We started with the 60’s and the multihulls on a one sided beat, clear air was the order of the day so we started on the starboard end of the line and above all of the bigger boats- Stamm and Jourdren on Cheminees Pujoulat were the main guys to watch out for and they got absolute screwed over and rolled by the 60’s at the start – great for us, not so good for them.
Worked the first few miles really hard and by the time we were out of the main channel we were leading with Cheminees chasing hard - an amazing feeling for the whole team.
Our overall strategy was to hang right on the first half of the race as we were expecting a decent right hand shift – 20 marks of the course certainly kept us busy on nav. Tactically we were really keen to stay with the pack – this was only our third 40 event and we really don’t know enough about pace and how to sail these boats and reckoned that we’d learn most by keeping near everyone else.

So, surprised as we were about leading, we decided to just place a loose cover on Cheminees – he had the same strategy as us though so we kept hanging out on the right.
After over 5 hours at the front of the pack, and keeping Cheminees around a third of a mile behind us,  the third placed boat was well in the distance, maybe a couple of miles behind. We then sailed into our first hole as dusk fell, Cheminees saw this and sailed around us – also most of the rest of the fleet caught up while we were stuck in two tenths of fuck all – very annoying.
Finally got going again and reeled in a couple of the boats that had taken us and moved back up to 2nd overnight.

At the turning mark it was light and shite again, Cheminees probably half a mile in front and we were being closely followed by Ixus a Pogo – those things seem really slippery in the light.
Worked hard to keep them behind us and slowly crept forward also catching up on Cheminees. Then the next hole came which took us by surprise – all of sudden Cheminees was almost last and we were dog last- 50 degree unexpected shift gifted it to the back markers – second really annoying moment of the race.

Very tempting to take a flyer at this stage as we were pretty disgusted to have been doing so well and then getting shit out the back but we decide to man up, bank the loss and chase the fleet (Cheminees did the same). We were now light airs running and we don’t have a light airs VMG sail – our big runner is way too long in the luff and broad shouldered for this so we really suffered when the breeze was sub ten knots – used the zero for a whole and then the fractional blast runner flown from the mast head but really tough to keep up with the fleet.

Late in the afternoon on the Monday the breeze started to fill in a little more solid and we got our big runner up – still not the best sail but the best we had.  We carried on fighting to get back in touch – we were still hanging out toward the back of the fleet at this stage.
Throughout the night, determination and hard worked started to pay off as we picked off boats one by one – took our last boat at around three in the morning and then pushed on for the finish coming in third.

Although knackered after a tough race, the team was on a complete high with this placing - we’d have taken 3rd at the start if it was offered and particularly when we were last! Keysource is now in Les Sables and we’re off to meet her in France next week in preparation for the double handed race to the Azores – 24 boats competing and Soldini back in the fleet so there’s plenty to aim for. I’m racing the first leg with Mike ‘Senior’ West the owner and the second leg back with Ian ‘Bag’ Bartlett our boat captain. 1,250 mile each way so think it’s gonna be an awesome race.  Bring it on!

On June 27-28, Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club (CCYC) in Chicago, IL hosted the Windy City Team Race. Saturday allowed for some great team racing with low to medium breeze, and Sunday delivered exciting racing with steady big breeze. Local team Fair and Balanced with skippers Craig Thompson, JB Turney and Ned Turney won the event and earned a berth at the U.S. Team Racing Championship for the George R. Hinman Trophy after a best of 5 final against the second place Team Laser Performance with skippers Taylor Canfield, Matt Clark and Andrew Keane. Racing was very close in the top 4 teams leaving a tie for 3rd place awarded to CCYC teams Happy Factor with Martin Johnnson, Augi Hernandez, and Josh Henrich and The Montrose Saloon skippered by Ben Marden, Andy Graff and Hunter Ratliff. Vickie Matthews served as PRO and Betsy Altman as Chief Umpire.

Complete results and photos right here.