Easing into Spain

Easing into the EU I eased into my stay in Spain through Amsterdam, my most often-used hub in Europe because it has the shortest, most direct flight from San Francisco. On the shuttle bus from the airport hotel to Schiphol to catch my flight to Barcelona on KLM, two young men, who turned out to be from Spain, were returning home after taking training as airplane mechanics at the KLM center in the Netherlands. My focus during this part of my stay in Europe was to collect information with which to write an article about the upcoming holiday in Catalonia, Dia de Sant Jordi, which is the day of books and flowers in Catalonia, a cultural holiday, that I’d happened upon two years before when I was visiting Barcelona for the first time. I had been reading about the Catalonian independence question in the the newspapers both in the United States and in Spain, and I wanted some people on the street’s opinions of the situation and how they thought about it. And I had the angle to explore in the article about the political context of the situation in Catalonia, which had stirred a lot of emotions, enveloping the traditional, Catalan holiday of Dia de Sant Jordi. So I asked the two airplane mechanics what they thought about it. The one guy said he was Catalan, and he had a positive opinion about the idea, and he said he supported having the referendum in October. After that referendum, in which half the people voted to be independent from Spain, the government in Madrid took over the government duties in Catalonia, arrested several of the political leaders of the referendum, and stripped Catalonia of much of its constitutionally-guaranteed rights of autonomy. His friend was from Madrid, and he seemed a little reluctant to talk about what he thought. I’m not so sure about it, he told me. He didn’t like people being critical of Spain. Both he and his friend were amiable, and both told me that the bigger problem in both Madrid and Barcelona was corruption. That exchange with the two airplane mechanics was my first talk with anybody from Spain on my trip, and I thought it was a symbol for the new Europe that a man from Madrid and a man from Barcelona were flying on an Airbus for their Dutch company talking to an American tourist. The new Europe has a unique diversity among people, especially hub international cities such as Amsterdam and Barcelona, where old, medieval cities were fast becoming high-tech 21st century start-up engines. Often this Catalonia question was lingering in the conversations I had with people for three months. “What do you think about it?” is something the people I met in Spain often asked. To talk about stuff is the way of life here. So, as a reporter, I reached-out often to talk to people, hoping to capture a story or a viewpoint from an everyday person that I could record and then weave into my musings about living in Spain and Spainish. Many hours I spend many days puzzling out words, reading, experiences and I was wandering around each day in Castellano and Catalan. Everyday was engaging. A simple walk down the street to get a coffee and a bocadillo was many steps out of my usual morning routine. Barcelona’s neighborhoods are vibrant and dynamic, a “pedestrian-centered” life style. And socially-engaging. People converse. All the time.

The Bookish Traveller's Spring 2014 Tour

The Bookish Traveller's World Tour of Bookstores and Libraries a city's bookstores and libraries are the major indicators of what people in the city read. Hence, they are indicators of what people in that city think. After a long drive that included circling Paris twice on a failed attempt to locate the hotel then running out of fuel because of a broken gauge, waiting for a French tow truck after sleeping in the van at 8 degrees centigrade, I arrived in La Rochelle. In France, I have a different attitude about life; I feel as if I have energy to live as much time again as I have lived since I first visited the Netherlands and France in 1977, and again in 1979, with side trips three times to the UK. Walking in Paris this summer, I had the insight that I was connecting back to who I was before the tangent taken of family and career. The three decades and a half intervening between 1977 and 2013 is a lived life of events and feelings and reflections about those events. My Bookish Traveller's World Tour of Bookstores will occupy me for awhile. This time, it took me to the La Rochelle Library. A city's library and bookstores, realized one day in France, are a prism through which to glimpse a city's intellectual life. What people read is a window into what they think. A city's library and bookstore is a nexus of the reading community--such places are the realm of the bookish traveller. My travel most recently on the European motorways brought me north of Paris to Ermenonville and Parc Jean Jacques Rousseau. (http://www.parc-rousseau.fr) His name is familiar to this park, in the English style, as a nineteenth century philosopher. There is a small philosophy bookstore in the park's office and center, wherein philosophy events are organized to take place in the park, a short drive from Paris North. The Bookish Traveller's Favorite Book Stops Shakespeare and Moe's in Berkeley Black Oak Books in Berkeley Recycled Books in San Jose and Campbell Logos in Santa Cruz City Lights in San Francisco Miami Coconut Grove Manchester, England Shakespeare in Paris LaRochelle Library John…in Detroit

Surviving a school shooter lockdown

Letter from the home of gun violence; Commentary from a lockdown survivor Charles Heimler (charlesheimler@yahoo.com) I was a first hand witness to a school lockdown.  Faced with third hand reports of a black man on campus with a gun, our school was put into active shooter response mode.  And the word came from the college administration to lockdown the area in which I work.   This happened one week ago today, and I'm still reeling from the experience.  The experience left me highly concerned about my job--this is not what I expected to be encountering 30 years ago when I began teaching in a community college.  Now, I have thought about the idea of always having now to be prepared for a shooter in school;  now, it's the holiday and it is not until January that I have to return to my office and classroom on the campus. We haven't had time in the end of the semester rush to even debrief our experiences; the only word from the college leaders was an email the next day about the episode that ended "all's well that ends well".   I reflect upon the experience, and my part in it, I can't hardly say that all is well.  Like many of us, I've become a student of gun violence on campus in the last few weeks.  And the national experience following the recent horrendous events have been brought directly to me as a participant and eyewitness. Teachers are now told that they must respond the the shooter before the first responders arrive.  The little training we've received makes an important point salient--you and your students are on your own when the gunman arrives; don't expect the SWAT team to save you.   I've been reading the accounts of the specific episode at our college.  Student journalists posted to facebook during the lockdown.  The media trucks appeared on the campus in the middle of the incident which occured during their prime evening newscasts.  News outlets across the country, the UK, and the Phillipines reported on the event.  Five pages of links are available on the internet. Meanwhile, the commentary about shooters in schools continues on airwaves and print periodicals.  Even though the experience at our school was triggered only by the alleged sighting of a black man in a white tee shirt with a gun, it was treated by the campus authorities as a live shooter incident, and they responded according to a shooter on campus training that prepped them for such a mindset last September. The person who make the report has yet to be located.  That that response was prompted by a third hand report indicates the power of a false rumor, perhaps festered by the authorities themselves, who during the same week as the shooter incident issued all campus warnings about a black man with a knife on campus, a smell from the boiler that called out the fire department, and the malfunction of the lights in the student parking lot.  Many commentators have expressed their punditry about the gun violence that has overwhelmed America in this holiday season.  Yet have they the perspective that I and others have from surviving as an eyewitness to a campus shooter lockdown? Now, teachers are "pre-responders", tasked with organizing the students and the shooter before the civil authorities are able to arrive. Now  I see campus shooters through the lens of my own eyes, and having barricaded a score of students behind closed doors and awaited the arrival of a gunman and his hail of bullets to arrive into the former sanctity of the school, I now wonder about the "next time", and am told by all that this is the new normal for American teachers.  Not what I'd expected three decades ago when entering the teaching profession.  

San Jose City College Lockdown

Here is the interview from an eyewitness, yours truly. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/video/8082782-san-jose-city-college-professor-recalls-lockdown/

City Colleges In California

Colleges must reinvent their leadership in their communities to be effective. San Francisco is the most recent story. One told further south in the Santa Clara Valley at another community two year college--San Jose City College. http://wap.ktvu.com/wap/news/text.jsp?sid=242&nid=2325802647&cid=5038&scid=-1&ith=0&title=Local+News&headtitle=Local+News

Finn World Masters in Wales Opening Day

Finn World Masters opens in tropical Pwllheli How lucky can you get? After a month of terrible weather across the UK, the Finn World Masters in Pwllheli North Wales has opened amid soaring temperatures and brilliant blue skies. The 131 Masters from 23 countries who are gathered in Pwllheli just cannot believe their good fortune. The championship was opened, Sunday, by the President of the Masters fleet, Fons van Gent (NED), to the sounds of the 40 strong Caernarfon Male Voice Choir and in the presence of a host of local dignitaries including Lord Elis-Thomas, Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales until 2011 and Lord Wigley, former Member of the Welsh Assembly for Caernarfon. The opening ceremony was opened by Gareth Hughes Jones, President of the Clwb Hwylio Pwllheli Sailing Club, who thanked all the many sponsors, in particular the Welsh Government, and the Gwyedd Council, as well Firmhelm which supplied the supplied the event shirts. Before declaring the championship open, Fon van Gent said, “I would like to thank the Pwllheli Sailing Club for hosting our Finn World Masters 2012. We really like the venue. About the weather, we were told that in Pwllheli that it's cold and rainy so I brought all the warm clothing that I own. But I remembered the song 'Wherever you go always take the weather with you.' So I did.” Then Fons van Gent handed the Finn Masters flag over to Gareth Hughes Jones and the championship was officially declared open. The Caernarfon Male Voice Choir entertained the 300 sailors families and guest to a selection of various songs before everyone enjoyed the wonderful array of food available and the free beer courtesy of the Purple Moose Brewery. Practice The practice race was sailed earlier on Sunday. Despite the great weather, the price the sailors paid was a fitful wind as the forecast force 3-4 disappeared soon after the scheduled start, with two failed attempts to get the fleet away. After an hour's postponement, a sea breeze filled in and the fleet sailed two laps of a windward leeward course before being sent in. Laurent Hay (FRA) was the early leader, but opted for an early shower. Greg Wilcox (NZL) soon took the lead, but as the new breeze distorted the course the boats were sent home. The first two races are scheduled for 12.00 on Monday. The Olympic Torch Relay also visits the club on Monday, the second time it has coincided with a major Finn Championship in two weeks. The championship consists of eight races including a medal race for the top 10 on Friday. The welcome from the club has been tremendous and all the sailors are looking forward to a great championship. A full gallery of photos can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Finn-Class/110408332633 ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/Finn-Class/110408332633 ) Follow the event on the club website at: http://www.pwllhelisailingclub.co.uk/finn2012/en/home/ ( http://www.pwllhelisailingclub.co.uk/finn2012/en/home/ )

Academic freedom and college governance

The Academic Senate of San Jose City College Graduation week update---- May 24, 2012 One of the most important projects your senate needs to complete before June  30 is to write minutes of all the senate meetings during last fall semester. We have tape recordings of the meetings. We have to listen to the meetings ( each is about 2-3 hours long) and then write "action style minutes" of what was decided and reported during the meetings. Lisa Brillon, our Program Assistant ( until June 30), will download the meeting voice recording  to your USB drive and then you can listen to the meeting on your computer and take notes on what you hear. Then work with Ms. Brillon to produce the typed text. These minutes will then be posted on the academic senate website to be used by accreditation report writers as evidence of our college meeting accreditation standards. I would like faculty to help with this. I will make it worth your while with small tokens of appreciation. Please let me know when Charles Heimler (1996) Reading and English __________________________________ I have been asked by Human Resources and President Kavalier to recruit four faculty members to serve on the hiring committee for the Vice President of Academic Affairs position. On President Kavalier's recommendation, the Board of Trustees did not renew the current VPAA's contract for next year. As you know, the practice for appointing faculty to hiring committees is that an open call is made by email to faculty who indicate their interest by email.  These volunteers are then approved by a vote of the Academic Senate at a regular meeting. Because the senate has held its last meeting of the year, we will not be able to follow that practice in this case. At its last meeting, the senate voted to grant decision making powers until its next regular meeting to the Academic Senate President  and the Senate Executive Committee, which consists of the senate officers and two other senators elected to that committee. According to the Senate Bylaws (Article III, section C) “During summer and winter breaks, the Academic Senate President may, after soliciting all eligible instructors by email one week in advance, make appointments to hiring/screening committees.” And according to the Senate Bylaws (Article III, section E), the senate executive committee shall assist in “making decisions with the senate president when the senate is not in regular session outside the academic calendar.”  According to the Senate Bylaws (Article III, section E), “the executive committee shall meet as necessary in open meetings between regular senate meetings and/or as needed outside the regular academic calendar.” Since the past practice has been to allow seven days for faculty to self-nominate themselves before a vote is taken, the nominating process will have to extend beyond the last official day of the semester.  The Senate Executive Committee will review nominations for this committee at their executive committee meeting on June 18, 2012, at a time and place to be determined, and  consult with the Academic Senate President regarding hiring committee member selection. If you wish to serve on the VPAA hiring committee, please reply to this email by June 17, 2012.  Candidates must be available to serve on the committee from June 18 through July 31, 2012. Thank you for your interest, " Charles Heimler, Academic Senate President Fabio Gonzalez, Academic Senate Vice-President Joseph King, Academic Senate Treasurer Dan McElroy, Academic Senator Executive Committee Member Jose Cabrera, Academic Senator Executive Committee Member

Turns out Ainslie is more Finn sailor than Brit!!

I've been following this story and posting updates on Facebook.

ISAF needs to insist that motorboats on the course have trained spotters on board.

Holland to France

For the Armistice regatta, I leased a car and a trailer and picked up my boat in storage in Dronten..

Then, drove 1200 KM in a day to arrive near Bordeaux.

Toting kit back and forth in Europe makes my holiday happen!

Maubuisson Redux

Le Grand Prix Armistice 29 Oct to 2 Nov 2011

Five races in four days with 73 Finns beach launching from the Forest Bombanes beaches.
Results are at the Cercle Voiles Bordeaux Maubuisson (Cvbm) website.
It was a great development of the euro travel program with help from HIT Masts Holland!

There is a full report of this regatta in the current issue of Finnfare published at finnclass.org.

Thank you for the special foreigner's podium to the French Finn Association and CVBM.

USA Olympic Finn Trials Weymouth

This week is a prelim regatta in France. It qualifies entrants to the Trials
if the actual regatta exceeds the 80 boat quota. This is the new US Sailing Selection
System.

New year 2010

Look for more postings in the weeks to come.

Letter from Europe

Letter from Europe
June 9, 2009

Sailing in Europe and visiting its many interesting places in conjunction with sailing regattas has always been something I’ve wanted to do. The ending of my year’s sabbatical from work gave me the time to travel there for a week before the ISAF World’s at Medemblik, Holland and then on to southwest France for the Finn World Masters. Instead of chartering a boat for the one week of training and then one week of the regatta, I bought a boat from Jan van der Horst of HIT mast Holland, with the option that he would buy it back when I was done using it. The price of the boat will be amortized over the course of the next few summers sailing more events in Europe, such as the Masters Worlds in Croatia in 2010 and then in 2011 Punta Ala, Italy, which have fleets of 250+ as well as national championships in France, Holland, and the U.K., events which attract fleets of over 60 boats.

The first stop was Medemblik, Holland, arriving by Schiphol Airport, where I rented an Opel station wagon that would become my transportation and my hotel for the next week. The parking lots at Europe’s regattas are filled with campers and tents, so car camping is allowed. Medemblik is a medieval village on a Dutch lake that was created by damming off the North Sea in the 1930’s. It provides open water sailing and is a training center for the Dutch National sailing team, as well as Germans for whom it’s easier to get to than Kiel, the center of German sailboat racing. Finn sailor P.J. Postma as well as the Dutch Yngling team, who got a silver medal in China with their unorthodox strategy of training 9 women and only deciding the final three a few days before the regatta, base their campaigns there.

The U.S. Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) had a well-organized effort there in preparation for the regatta. High performance director Kenneth Andreasen was there, and Bunny Warren was hired to coach the Finn team of Zach Railey, Andy Casey, Bryan Boyd, and Ian Cook. USSTAG owns two RIB’s in Europe and is renting a third. Warren ran practices and then practice races which attracted 27 boats. The US team’s largesse was much appreciated by the Olympic hopefuls from the many assembled nations.

On the day the Delta Lloyd regatta started in Holland, I drove south to Dronten, Holland, to Jan van der Horst’s farm, which is the headquarters for HIT (Horst Innovative Technologies), where Jan had arranged for another Jan Kingma (THE KINGMAN), who is the 71 year-old Finn Master Worlds webmaster, to drive my boat and his on a double trailer to the masters regatta in France, a 1200 kilometer trip through Belgium, Normandie, and into the Bordeaux region. We were part of a caravan of Finns, as HIT mast Holland was chartering 20 boats for the event, five of which were on a trailer behind a Peugeot van and three of which on a trailer behind Horst’s Hymer caravan.

On the way, we stopped at Roderic Cassandre’s (NED 8) castle in the Loire Valley region of France. Cassandre sailed Finns back in the day when Willie Kuhweide was king of the fleet and now regularly places in the Gold fleet at the masters worlds. He bought a castle six years ago—why? He told me that ever since he was a little boy he wanted a castle. He and his wife have been renovating it with modern apartments and a 26-seat movie theater, raising chickens, and doing all the things that modern day castle owners do. He said he studied in books about 1500 castles that are on the market in Europe before settling on this one, which has a moat with water in it, a chapel, and a kennel, as well as a turret filled with fliegelmaus (bats), 200 of which flew around uncomfortably close to our heads after we inadvertently disturbed them in the morning daylight.

After a night with the Dutch knight in the castle, the caravan moved on towards Bordeaux. The toll roads all the way cost as much as the gasoline. We took breaks along the way when Margrit van der Horst would have koffie ready for us in the caravan. The sun and warmth increased the more we ventured south. I used the maps feature on my new iphone to monitor our progress while Jan told me stories about the D-Day invasion of Normandy. This was also the area from which the Normans invaded the British Isles in 1066 and laid the basis for what would become modern English—70 percent of English words are of French origin.

At the regatta, the French organizers had a clear and organized procedure to get sails stamped, registration fees paid, and registration packets distributed. The 130 Euro registration fee, which included a bottle of wine, shirt, poster, scarf, drink tickets, 2 meals, snacks, patisserie, use of the club, the easiest beach launching I’ve ever used and whatnot was incredibly fair. It all went very smoothly but on the French time schedule, which was very, as we say in California, laid-back, and subject to the club people taking a very long lunch in the middle of the day. But who cares? We were there at the beach, at the lake, with a boat, and a villa to stay for 9 days for 90 Euros per person. I rented a Gitane bike for 60 Euros and pedaled to and from the regatta site and around the village adjacent to the beach (yes, the women go topless). The tourist village of Maubuisson had just opened for the season the day before we arrived, so the shopkeepers were very pleasant to us—the possibility of gathering fresh Euros melts even the snotiest French attitude. I was the only American at the regatta—when I registered, the lady exclaimed—“The American is here. You have finally arrived. We have been waiting for you to arrive.” Within a day the yacht club staff began addressing me as “Monsieur Charles”. Through some unexplained neurological dynamic, I was able to recall my 1 year of French in graduate school and carry on most of the business of the day in French and read Le Monde in mornings. I’m sure I mangled many verb tenses but nobody seemed to care.

The day’s schedule was a holiday fest—koffie and croissants in the morning, bicycle to the club for the 1 pm start, sail one or two races, return to the club late, pull the boat up on the beach with 3 or 4 sailors helping, and talk about the racing in English accented by Swedish, Dutch, French, Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, German, Czech—one of the most amazing finds was that Finn master sailors speak English really well and they were very capable of distinguishing between the lame-ass behaviour of the Bush government and ordinary Americans, whose character, culture and personalities they still admire. At the most basic level, we are all Finn sailors—in love with the boat and the “Finn ethic”. After the club scene dwindled, bicycle 4 km back to the club through the forest and enjoy the evening twilight until 10 pm—it didn’t become pitch black until nearly 11 every night.

The regatta concluded with a long prize giving ceremony in the French style. On Saturday we packed the boats in intermittent rain, the only day with rain. Then, we proceeded in the caravan north to Holland with a stop in a transit hotel (60 Euro/night) just north of Paris. I left my boat in storage at Horst’s farm (later to be transported to the Gold Cup in Denmark), took the train to Amsterdam, where I was on a mission to return to the flat on Nieuwe Keizersgracht where I spent the winter of 1977. That experience is another chapter—only to say now that they have some strange coffee in Amsterdam. I read about it in a Rich Steves column—you don’t drink it, you smoke it. And afterwards I got really lost on my rented (7.50 Euro/day) one speed Dutch bicycle circling around North Amsterdam trying to find my way back to Centraal Station.

--Charles Heimler (for more reports check out the blog at charlesheimler.blogspot.com)

Finn Master Worlds 2009 Gathers 264 to Maubuisson, France

Champion du Monde Finn Veteran 2009, June 1-5

Two hundred sixty four Finn sailors ranging in age from 40-86 assembled in Maubuisson, France on a lake near Bordeaux for the 39th edition of this event, attracting participants from 21 nations to the host club Cercle de Voiles Bordeaux, Carcans, Maubuisson (CVBCM) for the annual regatta organized by the Finn World Masters.
German Andre Budzien, sailing a Pata B4 with Pata Willets mast and a North poly, won his third world championship on the final day in the Gold fleet after a four day qualifying series of 130 boats in flight races. (For complete results, go to finnworldmaster.com)
For Friday’s race, the fleet was split into two groups of about 130. The winds were generally were moderate northeasterlies for the first two days, then two days of light and shifty, and on Friday a southwesterly of 15 knots appeared. The French club provided libations, patisseries, fresh oysters and other snacks after each day’s racing, while the club bar had food, liquor, and espressos available all the time.
At Sunday’s opening ceremony following the practice race, Finn World Master president Fons van Gent (NED 748) welcomed the sailors and their companions after a contingent from each nation carried their national flag banner to the accompanying national anthem. Several counties had their whole squad march in the ceremony in a show of support for all their nation’s sailors. The last country to walk-in was France, led by 86-year old Didier Poissant, a former Olympian. The recognition of the world’s Finn sailors at the opening ceremony helped create an atmosphere of international cooperation and sportsmanship.
The host club, CVBCM, is situated beside the Lake of Carcans, which is surrounded by sandy beaches and the Bombannes Forest of pine trees and deer. It is one of the best places for bike path touring between the lake, the forest, and the ocean 3 km away. Maubuisson is a small tourist village that caters to middle-class French on holiday. Its shops, ATM machines, and restaurants only opened for the season on the day before the Finn World Masters began.
The regatta format was 1-2-2-1-1, seemingly a leisurely scheduled, but a half hour to hour sail to the course followed by a one hour sail back in made for some long days, especially when each race usually required one general recall, an I flag, and then a black flag to get a proper start. With 130 sailors of extreme experience and skill in each race, spots on the line were a premium and many paid a penalty as there was seldom even a line sag to find a starting spot within.
The courses were the traditional Olympic triangle, which rewarded those who had a knack for getting in phase with the wind on the three beats in each race, as the races often saw 40 degree shirts and deep holes when the wind was light. Finding clear air was, of course, important, and especially so when big clumps of boats on the course created their own wind shadows. Mark rounding pinwheels of twenty or more boats added to the thrill of the racing.
At the Annual Masters Meeting, representatives of Split, Croatia, site of the 2010 World Masters May 23-28, gave information about the regatta. Prevailing winds there are 8-18 and the venue will be the Gold Cup course.
For 2011, Punta Ala, Italy was selected for the Finn World Masters. It will be May 12-17.
It was also announced at the AGM that registration for the regattas will now only be done through the finnworldmasters.com website.

Report by Charles Heimler, USA Finn 32 (see my blog at charlesheimler.blogspot.com)

Sailing Team America 2012--A Village for the Best

Sailing Team America 2012—Funding the Best American Olympic Hopefuls

Sailing Team America 2012 is a new foundation formed to support our Olympic hopefuls. Its specific focus is the “twenty-somethings” who have the burning desire to represent their country in the Olympic Games in 2012 and beyond. It recruits and nurtures a development squad of sailors to help them qualify for national sailing teams.

The organization formed out of the United States of America Finn Association (USAFA) this past Miami after silver-medal winner Zach Railey and USAFA president Scott Mason sought candidates for the USAFA’s Finn development program. It was recognized that there needed to be a transition from post-college level sailors into the world of Olympic sailing.

The program expanded to include 49er sailors and 29er sailors in recognition that skiff sailing will be increased in the Olympics.

“Once sailors qualify for the US Sailing Team, they receive training, funding, logistical support and so on,” said Sailing Team America 2012 Executive Director, Charles Heimler, veteran of the Laser, Snipe, and Finn classes. “And in the US, college sailing grooms the best coming out of high school. What we’re doing is building a bridge of financial support, coaching, gear and so on to move our best prospects to the next level.”

“In Miami, we provided a boat for three-time All-American Bryan Lake in his first Finn regatta,” said Heimler. “I’d known him since he was a Snipe sailor. He finished well up in the fleet and improved each day in his very first Finn event. Kids I coached in junior programs program are now young adults racing 49ers, Radials, and 470’s. Getting the “texting” generation into this Olympic quadrennial and the next one takes a village of mentors if we’re going to match and then outwit the Brits.”

“As our athletes sailing this Spring in Europe crystallize their experiences, that knowledge will be transferred to the development squads,” said Heimler. “Then we will leverage those insights at our National and North American championships this summer.”

The organization is now forming a board and obtaining tax-exempt status. More info can be had by contacting charlesheimler@alumni.ucsd.edu.

The Difference at the international level

After sailing for over a month with some of the top Finn sailors, here are the main items I observed. They, along with The Playbook by Canadian Olympic Chris Cook, can help those interested in improving their Finn sailing.

1. These sailors are very disciplined and arrive on time.
2. They emphasize gym programs, even after sailing on the water.
3. They ride bicycles to and fro as their transportation, thus saving on expenses and working it into their training.
4. Very careful about what they eat and drink--oatmeal, fruit, cliff's bars, fruit cups big meal after sailing and vices like coffee and a pastry on Sunday.
5. Open, conversational personalities and are helpful to other sailors.
6. Do things to promote the Finn class and Finn fleets overall
7. Speak English well as their second language (except GBR, of course).
8. Mental endurance and physical stamina. Can concentrate and perform keenly in all wind conditions through the length of a training session and a regatta, especially in the medal race.
9. Are truly having fun, and are appreciative of the nice places they get to sail in.
10. Spend the pre-season lining up sponsorship, kit, and regatta schedule that's locked into place for the whole season and whole quadrennial.
11. Have Coaches and coach boats with debriefings.
12. Arrive at the venue 10 days to 2 weeks before an event to acclimate and train.

--Charles Heimler

Finn Team American 2012 Begins London Medal Quest

Olympic Finn Team America 2012

Midwinters Regatta Shows Gains for USA Sailors Railey, Casey, Boyd

(Harbordale, Florida—February 16, 2009)—The next generation of American Olympic Finn medal contenders earned two of the four trophies at the 27th running of the Finn Midwinters this past weekend in an international field that included Olympic medalists, world, and national champion sailors of the men’s premier single-handed dinghy.
Past USA Finn National Champion Tom Lihan reprised this year’s event, also awarding first-place honors in the Women’s Radial to 2008 Gold-medal sailor Anna Tunnicliff (Plantation, FL).
2009 Silver-medalist Zach Railey finished second in the standings behind Ed Wright (GBR). The Royal Yachting Associations firebrand, training here for the winter, also place first in last month’s ISAF World Champs Miami, edging 5th place 2008 Olympian Chris Cook (CAN) by a point after winning the medal race.
Andy Casey (Alameda, CA) notched a fourth place, just a few points behind third place winner, Rafael Trujillo (ESP), the 2004 silver-medalist and 2007 World Champion.
Bryan Boyd (Annapolis, MD), challenged for the lead most of the regatta, finishing 7th.
Conditions were hot, humid, and light wind for most of the vent, save for two races on Saturday that allowed for open kinetics. The fleet generally sailed more within the rules after the race committee empowered the six coaches attending the event to yellow-flag sailors who illegally propelled their boats.
Three events this winter, the Coaches Regatta and Miami OCR in January, and this just-concluded, were the time when the national sailing teams begin coagulating their programs for the next Olympic competition, and the ISAF World Championship series (Australia, Miami, Mallorca, Hyers, Medemblik, Kiel, Weymouth), assessing the state of their sailing toward the next quadrennial preceding the Olympic Games in England in 2012.
For the American part, US Sailing will name the representatives to those games after a 3-regatta selection trials. USSA), the national authority for American Olympic sailing, will name the summer, fall, and winter regattas of 2011 that will provide data points for that selection in the near future, according to USSA coach Luther Carpenter, who added that this selection process differs from the traditional national open regatta held up to now by the USA Finn Association (USAFA) and USSA.
USAFA has also named their development sailor. Bryan Lake (North Shore, HI), a 3-time All-American sailor at the University of Hawaii, will be provided with a Finn at upcoming North American Finn regattas and clinics.

Finn Midwinters 2009 in Lauderdale

The Road to Weymouth Continues This Weekend for Team America 2012

FT Lauderdale, Florida, February 12, 2009—The top Finn sailors in North American join the top Finn sailors from the UK, Spain, and Poland in this year’s Finn Midwinter Regatta, hosted by Lauderdale Yacht Club on the Atlantic Ocean in south Florida.

The newly-minted U.S. Sailing Team Finn squad includes Zach Railey, 2008 Olympic silver medalist, Andy Casey, 2007 U.S. National Champion, and Bryan Boyd, 2005 U.S. National Champion.

Their main competition for podium honors will be Spain’s Rafael Trujillo, 2004 Olympic silver medalist and 2007 Finn World Champion, Britain’s Ed Wright, Royal Yachting Association’s performance team athlete who won last month’s ISAF Worlds Miami OCR, and Poland’s Rafa Szukiel, a 2008 Olympian at the games in China, and 7th at Miami, and Norway’s Peer Moberg, also a 2008 Olympian who finished 6th at Miami.

Canada’s Chris Cook, who sailed to a 7th in the Quindao regatta and 2nd at Miami, will return to the coach boat to mentor the promising young sailor, Toronto’s Matt Johnston, who made it to the ISAF Worlds Miami Regatta medal race in his first major event.

Temperatures are warming at the venue, with highs expected in the low 80’s and light southeast winds of 5-10 knots. Because the course is set close to shore, sailors will have to strategize between heading offshore or up the beach for windward legs. Strong currents generated by the nearby Gulf Stream and strong southerlies the previous few days with also factor into each sailor’s game plan.

Olympic sailing heads back to the Continent in April for the ISAF Worlds in Palma, Majorca, Spain and then Hyeres, France. The USA team plans racing those events as well as the other ISAF stages in Medemblik, Kiel, and Weymouth, punctuated by the Finn Gold Cup in Copenhagen in July and the European Championship in Varna in August.

Country-bound Finnsters will head for New Orleans for the Mardi Gras Hangover regatta followed during the week by the North American Masters championship for those over 40. The first major 2009 West Coast regatta is in Long Beach at ABYC starting March 21.

More information at ussailing.org, nafinnclass.org, finnclass.org, charlesheimler.blogspot.com

Copyright 2009/Charles Heimler

Double point Finn showdown at Miami World Champs

Miami OCR Dispatch #3 -- Medal race

ISAF created the medal race to bring spectator friendly drama to sailboat racing. At the ISAF World Championship in Miami, it got what it wanted. Only those with access to a motor boat, however, were able to see the excellent sailing skills of the top ten Finn sailors of the regatta. Gary Bodie, the event co-chair, told me that they’d once tried to organize a spectator boat for $10 a ticket, but no one signed up. It’s their loss.

In this iteration of the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta Stage Two of the ISAF Olympic Dinghy World Championship (RMOCRSTISAFODWC, 2009), Chris Cook of Canada sought to over-come his medal race bugaboo and hold off Brit Ed Wright.
As it turned out, Cook had one of his best medal races but finished just behind Wright, and with the double-points awarded in the medal race, saw the yellow jersey, which he’d worn for the whole regatta, slip off his back.

Cook had to sail through some boats ahead of him to be able to challenge Wright on the final downwind run after Wright took the lead at the top of the course.

Wright then had enough of the course to himself to focus on speed and less on positioning. In the two initial legs of the course, match racing your closest competitor and then positioning yourself to round the weather mark and make gains on those ahead in points, is a monied strategy.

P.J. Postma of Holland caught a few waves just 50 metres from the finish to pass Rafa Trujillo, who found himself having to jibe after stalling on the back of a wave. Just within their periphery, American Andy Casey’s downwind technique was firing on all cylinders, and he managed to slip across the line ahead of Trujillo, 2007 Finn World Champion.

The full kinetics allowed flag was up right before the warning, which presaged a great 30-minute, four leg, drag race. The yellow and red triangle signals the conditions that Finn sailors relish and their upwind athleticism and downwind kinetics elevate to a level unknown in other one-design dinghies.

Combine a 300-pound dinghy, 15 kts. of breeze and accompanying Biscayne Bay chop and, 116 square feet of sail area, and male adrenaline—and the sight is ready for television. For the sailors who’d been practicing in the Coaches Regatta the kinetic-style sanctioned by racing rule 42, the medal race was a culmination the winter training in Miami.

The medal race also allowed Floridian homeboy Zach Railey, to move into 3rd for the regatta. After earning in China the USA’s first silver medal in Finn in 16 years, the sports management major has been helping his coach, Kenneth Andreasen, revamp the USA Olympic program, which is adopting a physical-training and money rewards for performance model to prepare for London 2012. Zach is also helping the USAFA with a Development Program, which has purchased a trainer and put 3-time All-American Bryan Lake into it. Zach’s sailing clinics are helping the new generation of Opti and Laser sailors catch the Olympic spirit.

Copyright 2009—Charles Heimler

Swinging in Miami

Miami OCR Dispatch #2—January 24, 2009

Swinging in Miami

It’s not what you think it is.

Bob Carlen, Peter Henrichsen, and Fred Nicholson ran 19 boats through the process in the sailing center garage before the regatta. The USAFA charged each boat $50 for the re-certification. They were able to do this because Andy Casey and Forrest Gay brought the rig to and fro California, and yours truly volunteered to collect the money, schedule appointments, and keep records.

Devoti is charging nearly $600 for the same program in Europe—they are batching boats and trucking them to Poland to their factory to do the work. Needless to say, the internationals here were the first in line to get their boats re-certed by the USAFA.

Several installed the digital compass while several left their plastimos in. There’s some benefits to the digital, some suppose; the drawbacks include the lag time between the change of course and when it shows on the digital screen, and the fact that you can’t sight anything but your course of direction. A nice feature of the standard compass is that you can read all the points off the dial, say if you want to know the compass direction of that dark cloud heading toward the water from the city, and so on.

It took four hours to assemble and calibrate the rig and get the first boat done. After that, the measurers evolved the process, done for the first time, to these steps—

 Pay the fee
 Dry the boat
 Choose which compass and install the digital if wanted
 Weigh the boat
 Swing it on the lamboley
 Calculate two factors in a formula to determine where to re-place weight to keep a legal lamboley
 Remove lead as directed by the measurer. This will take claw hammers, a butane torch to heat a putty knife, and up to an hour. Take care not to put a hole in the hull with the claw hammer. Ed Wright, Rafal Szukiel and Pitr Mohr tied for the most efficient weight removal times.
 Install but do not yet glue new weight to correct the swing as directed by the measurer; sikkaflex works well for this.
 Re-weigh under the direction of the measurer
 Re-lamboley under the direction of the measurer. Then, glue the weight in.
 Collect amended certificate.

Minimum weight is 116 K, so some take out the back hiking straps, remove the pussy pads and use sikkaflex and sticky-back to secure the risers, or go naked on the deck all-together. Some even disavow continuous lines.

Several anecdotal reports claim that the boats feel different with the lower weight. The consensus seems to be that the lower weight is a good thing while there is a concern among people who respect the rules that there is an unattended opening for people to modify and then sail non-certificated boats. About 40 pounds of lead weight will soon become the property of the USAFA Chief Measurer.