Saturday, September 24, 2011

The Term Sailing - a Casual Observation

Over at Google Labs they have developed software that will search through over 5.2 million books: 4% of all books ever published! The Google Labs N-gram Viewer is the first tool of its kind, capable of precisely and rapidly quantifying cultural trends based on massive quantities of data.
So, what better way to test out the N-gram Viewer than to try out the terms "sailing" and "boat" just to see the trend from 1920 to today. The results are pictured below - just interesting to note the slow decline of "sailing" while "boat" seems to be making a slight comeback... It is also interesting to graph the phrase "yacht racing". The words did not appear in print together until the late 1860s. "Sailboat racing" did not appear significantly until about 1920. Yacht racing is still out pacing sailboat racing in usage today.

RED LINE = BOAT      BLUE LINE = SAILING

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Oak Orchard Yacht Racing - Sailors' Night and the Black Pearl

SAVE THE DATE:  OCTOBER 22, 2011

Come enjoy a chef prepared, sit down, waitress served, spaghetti dinner at the Harbor Point Country Club.

Don't miss  the brigantine Black Pearl presentation "One family's journey on the road to restoring an icon" The owners, Amanda and Nick Alexander will be there for the narration and photo presentation.

Everyone's invited!   Skippers, Crew, Families, Friends, the more the merrier.

Sailing Participation mementos awarded.

Cocktails             5:00
Dinner                 6:00
Black Pearl Presentation        7:30


ALL THIS FOR ONLY $14.00 PER PERSON
EMAIL RESERVATIONS:  onedogfarm@yahoo.com

The Alexanders' Black Pearl:
The hull of the 73-foot-long Black Pearl is built of wood, its main mast stands 68 feet tall. It normally operates with a captain and a five-member crew, and at least half a dozen people can sleep overnight below the deck if they don’t mind being a bit crowded. Both the Alexanders are licensed captains, and their vessel often is used for sailboat training, especially among Sea Scouts.

The Black Pearl was built in 1948 by C. Lincoln Vaughn, a Newport, R. I., shipbuilder who used it as his personal yacht. He sold the Black Pearl in 1959 to Barclay Warburton III, who helped to promote the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City by anchoring the vessel at the museum’s pier in the early 1970s for sea music festivals.

Warburton sailed the Black Pearl to the Caribbean many times and to Europe for the first TransAtlantic OpSail race. In 1974, he organized the American Sail Training Association, and the Black Pearl became its flagship. Upon Warburton’s death, the Black Pearl was willed to the association.

After several owners and in desperate need of repair, the Black Pearl was purchased in December 2008 by the Alexanders.



Bone Yard Boat article link

Monday, September 12, 2011

San Francisco - Perfect Sailing Conditions

Beautiful cinematography in this video that captures the great sailing conditions of San Francisco Bay:

San Francico Melges 24 from sfmelges24 on Vimeo.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Canada's Cup Returns Home

The first time since 2003 a Canadian team has won the Canada’s Cup, regarded as one of the world’s most prestigious sailing races.

Bob Hughes
HOLLAND, MICHIGAN -- When Ada, MI resident Bob Hughes helped win the Canada’s Cup in 2007, he dreamed of defending and winning it again in his home state. But Sunday, Hughes’ dream came to an end as Toronto’s Vincere defeated Hughes and Holland’s Team Heritage. Hughes said he was incredibly disappointed he couldn’t do more to keep the cup in the United States.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Rochester's Sertl Wins Third Rolex Title

Amy Seymour Moran, Heather Devine, Rolex USA,
Cory Sertl, Jane Mastrandrea,
Annemarie Cook
(
Photo By: Rolex / Daniel Forster)
“It’s pretty exciting,” said Sertl of her third win of this championship title. “To do this with all four of us from Rochester Yacht Club, and especially since our focus this summer has been on taking our kids to events and not so much on our own personal sailing. To be able to relax and pull together our experiences – sailing together, sailing here and sailing the J/22 – is just really satisfying.”


"Only Hollywood could have scripted a more dramatic and exciting finale as racing for US SAILING’s Rolex International Women’s Keelboat Championship (Rolex IWKC) came to its nail-biting conclusion today on Lake Ontario." (US Saiing)   Read more

Video of final race:


 Watch and Read more at US Sailing News