The 38th St. Maarten Heineken Regatta Scheduled For March

A Canadian sailing in a solo around-the-world race says he is disturbed by the "horrendous" conditions he has encountered in the southern oceans — including the near absence of large sea life.

Derek Hatfield has rounded the planet alone twice before but this trip through the southern ocean has been a relentless stream of extreme storms and deepest calms.

“The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” When he spoke these words, Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, recognized as the founder of the modern Olympic Games, could not have envisaged that the initial event with nine sports and 14 nations would grow to include 33 sports, 200 nations, and 13,000 athletes. Nor could he have foreseen the multi-million dollar industry that the Olympics would become or that the triumph would become more important than the struggle – at least in the eyes of those who provide the majority of funding.

The 2012 London Olympic Sailing Regatta in Weymouth is now just 10 months away (29th July -11th August 2012). Sail-World.com with large audiences around the world will have its largest ever Olympic media team and it will break new ground with a record 3.5 million event newsletters.

Parent company TetraMedia Publisher Rob Kothe said today ‘During the Qingdao Olympics the Sail-World team was sending out 80,000 newsletters each day providing the most detailed coverage of the Olympic sailing regatta of any media organisation in the world.

Brant Beach, NJ was home to the 2011 Laser and Laser Radial North American Championships, July 12th -15th, and also home for several Canadian athletes during this event. Ontario was well represented, having 15 athletes competing in the Laser class and 11 athletes competing in the Laser Radial class.
 
The venue consisted of extremely shallow waters with several weedy patches patches for the athletes to avoid across the race course. Day 1 consisted of three races for both the fleets and included moderate breeze from the West, South West with fairly large shifts and immobile patches of pressure spread across the course.