The Hammock Papers: America´s Cup

Showing posts with label America´s Cup. Show all posts

17 July 2026

06 May 2026

Ted Turner, Rest in Peace

Ted Turner has passed.

Fair winds and following seas, skip.

01 July 2025

30 December 2024

Facing.

Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the gate:

"To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his Gods?"

Thomas Babington Macaulay, from "Horatius"

18 September 2024

Won.

Ted Turner and his crew aboard Courageous won the America's Cup on this day in 1977.

06 November 2022

Excellent.

An excellent documentary.

From Netflix ...

A chronicle of the thrilling 1983 America’s Cup, “The Race of the Century” is a classic underdog story. It tells the tale of the scrappy group of Australians who band together to dethrone the New York Yacht Club, and break the longest-running win streak in history— 132 years!— in the most prestigious sailing competition in the world. Key members of the 1983 U.S. and Australian crews sit down for interviews sharing their experience of this ultimate race to victory.

11 August 2021

Revered.

The legendary 12 meter America's Cup yacht, Courageous, is for sale.

Perhaps the most famous and revered 12-Metre of the modern era, Courageous won the America’s Cup twice, in 1974 and 1977 and is one of only three boats with that distinction in the 169 history of the competition. An icon of American sailing, she is notable also as the first 12 Metre of aluminum construction.

Launched in 1974 Courageous was designed by Sparkman & Stephens and built at Minneford Yacht Yard. Sparkman & Stephens legacy remains sterling to this day; to wit, a high-end broker recently concluded a listing summary, “She is a Sparkman & Stephens design. What more needs to be said?”

Many stories have been written and told of those Cup wins, particularly the close relationship enjoyed by Ted Turner and Gary Jobson leading to their victories. Derring-do on the water, serious debriefing, a sharp focus on sail shape and above all a "team-effort" remains the Courageous legacy – along with those two Auld Mugs, of course.

CONNECT

04 January 2020

Sailing.

The chance of mistakes are about equal to the number of crew squared.

Ted Turner

Do yourself a favor, watch this, experience the glory days, then go sailing ...

The Alchemy of Corinthian Sailing ...

23 June 2018

Courageous.

28 April 2018

Intrepid.

01 August 2017

Courageous.

Courageous: Ted Turner & the 1977 America´s Cup ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."