Celphtaught slipped us this incendiary story after he saw a boat burn to the waterline at his club on Lake Champlain. Apparently, one of the owner's friends was working on her 26-footer and didn't know to turn on the blower before starting up the old gas engine. Another dumbass, another injury. There's even some video, and a bunch more pics courtesy of Zach Allen.

That's what I am after two weeks of spending six hours each night coming up with fun stuff for you lot. You guys have made it a thousand times easier with the hundreds of stories and pics you've sent to me, and I thank you sincerely for it – for all the stories, not just those that made it to the front page.

The Ed will grace you with his editorial presence from here on out, and I get a few days to breathe before heading off to find fun new stories from the road. Be sure to check in for the final installment from our European Vacation (including the all-night party with the Russian strippers), a report from Sail Newport, where I'll be calling tactics for SimonS in the Melges 24, and some as-yet-undetermined craziness from the Port Huron and Chicago to Mackinac races – which should be totally off-the-hook this year both from a racing and a partying perspective (speaking of which, if you have any last-minute rides on ultra-fast boats, give us a shout). You'll even get the chance to ridicule my hack performance at the end of July at the Viper 640 North Americans in Marblehead, where I'll be at the helm of “Asp Hat.”

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement – this has been my most enjoyable time yet at the helm of the pirate ship called Sailing Anarchy.

When the Italians find a boat they like, they push it to the limits to get on the pace. That was proven by their total dominance at the Melges 24 Worlds last month, and it's true in the Melgest 32 as well – with Italy taking the first four spots of 12 teams at the Audi Melges 32 event in Cagliari, Sardinia. Even Illbruck's Pinta could only manage a fifth. Melges 24 World Champion Uka Uka Racing won it on the final race, with former Mumm 30 World Champ Claudio Recchio at the helm, Gabriele Benussi on tactics and our good pal Federico Michetti on main. This hot shot is from Max Ranchi.

One of the very first Anarchists, J_T was the naviguesser on Julien Dougherty's 36.7 Tenacious for their huge Newport-Bermuda win last week in the professional Gibbs Hill Lighthouse division. Dougherty is still offshore, but JT was good enough to tell us about their awesome victory, and a tough, tough race.

SA: How many of these have you done?
JT: I didn't do the last cycle for work reasons, but this is my eighth time racing to Bermuda. I've also done a couple of deliveries – this was maybe my 14th time crossing the Stream.

SA: This is one of the classic navigators' races. How did you prepare?
JT: I spent a lot of time just sort of looking at charts of the Stream. I stare at it – try to figure out how to go through it without any consideration of wind at all. I use expedition and other electronic tools on the boat, but all of my real decisions happen on paper. I use plotting charts for those. After analyzing the stream for days, the night before the race I plotted everything important – the North and South Wall coordinates, the eddies, the spots where the warm and cold eddies meet, the direction and speed of drift of the eddies. Then I plotted where we wanted to be, setting up our desired entry point for the first eddy, for the entrance and exit to the Stream, and for the waypoints that would let us use the two eddies South of the Stream. We missed every one of them.

Rocky Bonow on Moonstar was towed to safety yet again after his boat was beaten up by a passing storm front. Moonstar was last rescued near Thailand in 2006, but this time he refused to be taken off his boat after making a distress call near Fremantle. The boat was eventually towed to harbor, where police looked hard for drugs...

The Catalina 22 “This Old Boat” also had issues this weekend, sinking after a knockdown filled the boat with water in just four feet off Oriental, North Carolina. The crew were rescued by another boat on its way in from a race, and five hours later, the boat had been raised and towed to port for repairs.

Still another couple were rescued this weekend from a remote Atoll in the Marshall Islands after they ran their 40-foot cruiser onto the reef trying to enter Aur Atoll. Matt and Judy Johnston and their grandson Tyler were taken from their boat by the crew of Blue Star, a luxury motor yacht owned by Russian-Israeli media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky.

Some moron in the English Channel forced a British Coast Guard helicopter mission on Sunday to track him down and inform him from the air that he was keying his VHF on channel 16 for more than an hour, effectively jamming the distress channel for the entire area. The frequency was opened up just minutes before a mayday was transmitted. Annoying on a race course, potentially life-threatening on the ocean. The Coastguard said, “If you cannot hear any radio traffic in a busy area it is probably because you are continuously transmitting.” Ya think?

Well-regarded E-Scow/Lightning sailor Gary Froshaug died yesterday while sailing his Lightning in Syracuse, Indiana with his wife and a friend. Froshaug had a heart attack while hanging onto the boat after a capsize, and couldn't be revived despite 40 minutes of CPR. Share your stories of Gary here.

Tragedy also struck the Annapolis sailing community this weekend when Fast Company bowman Shawn Hadley died in a car wreck. Sad news, and you can share your condolences here.

Photographer Ian Roman got this sweet shot onboard line honors winner Team Origin's Extreme 40 during the 50-mile Round The Island Race on Saturday. See “Hit and Run” below for more reports from this insane 1800-boat race.

We hate award pics, but we're so incredibly stoked for our good friends Bill Hardesty, Erik Shampain, Steve Hunt, and Jennifer Wilson on their dominant performance winning the 2008 Etchells World Championship that we're running this one courtesy of Tim Wilkes Photography. Plus Billy's showing a little skin, and we knew how much our female SA'ers wanted some of that action.

Bill was headed to his girl's place in St. Paul for some deserved R & R before tackling the Chicago to Mackinac Race aboard the obscenely fast Stars & Stripes catamaran, but he took the time to give us a little post-race innerview.

SA: What was your formula for success?
BH: We seemed to have a pretty good edge in the light air, and we won two races in it on the second day. That gave us the jump we needed, and we could sail conservatively. When Vince [Brun] was right with us at first, we made sure we didn't get too much separation from him. After he had a couple of bad races, it was the same deal with Jud. We also had decent boat speed in all condition, so that let us stay conservative tactically. The last race we managed a 12th, and that was a very conservative race – we just couldn't afford a bad one.

The first leg of the BluCube Solo 1000 started on Sunday, sending 27 boats across the Irish Sea under the organization of Petit Bateau, the group organized to bring back the amateur, grass roots spirit of the original OSTAR. This race is a qualifier for the actual OSTAR, which runs next year.

The event site has an ultra-simple but very sweet little race tracker as well – something that organizers of big events like the recent Newport-Bermuda Race still can't seem to get right.

Breeze into the thirties propelled Leopard of London to a new course record in the Round the Island Race this weekend, but the list of carnage is even more impressive. The event website lists the following casualties:

• 4 boats were dismasted;
• 5 boats were damaged and needed a tow;
• 1 boat sank [a Laser SB3, we hear -ed]
• 1 boat upturned / capsized;
• 11 MOB
• 5 injuries including one person lifted off by helicopter to Southampton General with a head injury - we understand this person is now out of danger;
• 5 boats grounded.

Coincidentally, another Marten 49 was one of the damaged boats (we ran a story last week on a T-boned Marten 49 in Fremantle). This one, Pace, reported that Leopard ran them over from behind, with the big boat's huge bowsprit hooking Pace's backstay and taking it out, smashing the steering pedestals, and ripping out most of the stanchions on the starboard side. Leopard obviously didn't retire, though we have no word yet on the results of the protest.

Only five boats showed up to take a shot at winning $10,000 at the inaugural event of the American Sailing League Championship Series, an 18-foot skiff series run in front off the Pier 39 tourist mecca in San Francisco. Despite the ASL's near-silence about the event on their website, organizers packed hundreds of spectators into the stands on the Pier. Erik Simonson was there to get the action on camera, and he told us a little more about the event:

“ASL's goal is to bring extreme sailing to the masses, and with 3 lap winward-leeward courses set right off the pier's waterfront deck, the action was tight, fast and exciting, with 5 races in 15 to 20 knots of breeze. The "Dash For the Cash" held at the end of Sundays racing decided who claimed the money, with Patrick Whitmarsh's Team Harken taking home the $10G and bragging right til next time. From what I gather, the mostly non-sailor crowd were totaly mesmerized by the skiffs. They also had a live DJ and free cheese samples from Cabot Cheese, one of the title sponsors.”

The whole thing reminds us of the great story of the history of the 18 footers, and we wish the ASL luck. The more things change...

The Ed enjoyed his little jaunt on the shiny new Finngulf 43OD last month in Finland, but he may have left more than an impression – he may have left a curse. Yesterday that boat, called Farr Out, was T-boned hard just after the start of her maiden race, the Gotland Runt, which is the biggest offshore race in Scandinavia. Big hole, big bummer. Anyone else wanna invite him to sail on their new boat?

One of our readers sent us the link to this very well-done video of the Round The Island from Cowes Online. The somewhat dull commentary is more than balanced out by excellent video of some of the fastest boats in Europe, plus shots of the busted boats from Hit & Run..

Formula One sensation Lewis Hamilton goes real racing on Hugo Boss in the Round the Island Race. Lewis can't be seen here as he was down below, forced to do sewer as further penalty for running into F1 World Champion Kimi Räikkönen. Actually, he seems to be having fun here. Thanks to Sally Collison and Th.Martinez/onEdition for the shots.

James Robinson Taylor catches a flying fish punching out of a Mediterranean bow wave in this shot. Given the sheer volume of marine wildlife that we get to see when sailing, how come we don't see more shots like this one? Show us what we're missing, and submit your best sailing-related wildlife pics. Our favorite shot wins some swag from Line Honors Performance Sailing Supply.

Anarchist “sucky bus” sent in this picture of the algal green slime covering the water around Qingdao – yet another nail in the coffin of what may be the worst choice for an Olympic sailing venue in history. Almost no wind, dirty water, political constraints, and now slime so thick that boats can't sail in it?

At least there's womens' gymnastics.

In contrast to Tenacious' big win in Bermuda as we relayed it yesterday, our good pal Bora Gulari had a sadder tale to tell. We were originally meant to receive daily reports from Bora on board the Nelsen/Marek 46 Natalie J, but serious water intrusion during the wet all-upwind race killed that idea, along with most of the electronics. Our favorite International Moth rock star gives us his report from the cheap seats – just a week before he begins his Moth World Championship run in Weymouth.

It's really frustrating – we couldn't have asked for conditions that better suited Natalie J, yet I blew it. She loves to go upwind in medium air, and after the start, we were ripping. We had plenty of speed on boats that rated much faster, and we were headed for the only way out of the adverse weather – the warm ring on the North wall of the stream. We couldn't lay the corner of that ring – we got some of the eddy, but not all of it. When we were about to enter the stream, we were sure that we were leading our class by a decent amount. Then we hit the stream and I've never seen it flowing so hard. We had five knots of adverse current. Surely it couldn't last long...

Read On

2008-06-27

Randall Pitman's Genuine Risk was one of the most disappointing programs of the 21st Century. Despite a pimp look and plenty of hired guns hired to get the big CBTF boat to move, GR never showed any promise, and has been sitting in a shed in Sarnia, Ontario for a while, collecting dust.

Today she was splashed in preparation for the Chicago-Mackinac race, which starts in just a couple of weeks, and after that, she becomes a donation to King's Point. Is it the last chance for a badass boat to do something besides lose?

Loads more pics here, courtesy of 'J/80 Jibberish.'

In contrast to the woeful Genuine Risk, another dog just won every race in the Boat International Superyacht Regatta in Porto Cervo, Italy. Alfa Romeo has formed a partnership with Alinghi this season, and her game has jumped up again, with wins across the board this year – just in time for Neville Crichton to get a new boat.. Photo from Giuliano Luzzatto/Alfa Romeo

On our way to Oslo after World's, we stopped in Lake Garda after getting a tip from Federico from Melges Europe about a big event on the lake. We headed over to the end of the lake and easily found the 100-odd boats at the 470 European Championship, and Mer went shopping while I hung around and met a bunch of the sailors. The girls here made the Porto Cervo chicks look tired, and fortunately, I had Mer's camera.

Save your complaints about what a sexist, lecherous bastard I am. I already know. I promised you some pics of the hardbodies of the 470 class, and here they are.

Big Money
Twelve of the world’s best match race skippers are confirmed to do battle next week in Match Cup Sweden, the fourth stage of the World Match Racing Tour. Included among these are the first seven currently topping the Tour leaderboard, with racing scheduled to commence for the Open division on 1 July and end on Sunday 6 July in Marstrand. At stake are valuable points towards the World Championship, not to mention a piece of the US$200,000 prize money purse.

Yellow Submarine
After yesterday’s first race day of the Olympic Classes during Kiel Week 2008 Part 2 (June 25th to June 29th), the world-wide known “yellow jersey” will be worn by the leading team of each class. Like in cycling, the number 1 crew in each class will wear the “yellow jersey” on a day to day basis, thus defending the overall lead of the preceding race day. Additionally, the overall second and third teams wear green coloured (2nd overall) and pink jerseys (3rd overall), which also change on a daily basis.

Runt
This weekend marks the start of the Gotland Runt Baltic Yacht Race. One special entrant is the racing yacht 4Oceans, which combines sailing with a mission to spread knowledge about climate and environmental issues around the Baltic Sea. Sweco is participating as a sponsor of the project.

Extreme Business
“We’re not thinking about the performance and sporting side of the game, it’s all about what a sponsor wants to have out of this;”, says Herb Dercksen, who had the bright idea of turning the Tornado into an Extreme 40. More here.

Lewis, Lewis
The Round the Island Race – that’s round the Isle of Wight, in case you didn’t know – and among the first off will be McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton on board Hugo Boss. More about all the entries is here.

If you aren’t out sailing, this weekend, keep a watch on SA Sailing News to keep abreast of the action.