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Ya Think? Lord knows we love The Cone of Silence and all it represents. This could be a fascinating addition to their already superb legacy. Count on SA to Go The Cone in a big way. - Ed. Hi Scot, As you may know, the WSSC, who govern speed sailing are not interested in the governance of records other than ‘outright’ records – i.e. they only want to deal with monohull and multihull records for boats of unlimited size. There has been a bit of chat about whether Sailing Anarchy could be the appropriate body to govern records for sailboats or various lengths and types. To me, it seems a perfect fit. 1. Sailing Anarchy is partly about stories of people doing crazy stuff in sailboats – particularly, stuff that the average bloke can have a crack at on a real world budget. “New records” and “record attempts” should create some cracking stories. 2. Being the medium that governs the Records is not taxing. You put the onus onto the record breaker – if people reckon they have broken a record, they send you the evidence and you decide if you believe them. If you do, you post it. Obviously it needs to be independently verified but increasingly offshore race organizers provide real time tracking anyway - otherwise Argos Trackers are a simple and reasonably cheap way. 3. I guess you could start with records for 1 hour, 12 hours and 24 hours and for a few lengths of monos and multis. Say under 5 metres for dinghies, under 10 metres for Sports Boats and 30 footers (which are all over 30 feet), under 13 metres (for 40ish footers) and say under 18.5 metres for 60s. We are thinking of having a crack at the 24 hour record for boats under 10 metres during the latter part of the Transpac – if we get far enough this time! To record it, we are planning to carry an Argos tracker which records our position every 1 hour which should provide pretty solid evidence. ARGOS CLS provide a service where they rent the trackers by the day and include 1 reading per hour, for about $50 per day. I hear it can be 25 knots for the last 48 hours of the Transpac and though we will have to sail toward the finish, rather than for fastest angle, I think that The Cone could possibly do 350 miles in 24 hours if the conditions are perfect for a whole 24 hours and the big ‘if’ – if we can keep it together. That might not be the fastest 24 hours in a 30 footer ever (which will create some interest in itself) but will probably be the first verified. Once ‘marks’ are set, I can imagine people making record attempts for the record’s sake – which I reckon would be fun to do and fun to read about. Interested? Regards, 4/20/05 |
