Lousy, Rotten Sailing Coverage

Just an opinion: I miss Herb McCormick’s free-lance articles in The New York Times. I know he’s apparently still an editor-at-large for Sailing World, but over the years, he’s had a lot of interesting things to report in this newspaper. Somehow they just don’t include his pieces any more. Tragedy. Sailing: The nonexistent sport, according to The Times. Not enough controversy, I suppose, or “too European,” lately?

Somehow, we have to get them "tuned in" to America's Cup 33 in 2009 before it's too late!

It’s a mystery how they fail to cover a sport that engrosses MILLIONS of sailors across the United States. And The Folks at The Newspaper of Record wonder why newspaper readership (and advertising dollars) are shrinking!

They have become so “politically correct” in all areas of the paper, even in sports, that it seems to be virtually impossible to have world events covered, if they are out of fashion (for whatever reason). They do make a feeble attempt to cover fishing, but that’s probably because some of these guys do this now and then.

But who sails at The Times? There has to be someone. I know that Walter Chronkite sails and was always interested in sailing sorts of things on TV, but when he retired, that was the end of that.

Here's a tiny, funny story: A couple of years back, the U.S. Navy’s longest commissioned ship (the USS CONSTITUTION) actually “sailed” again.

They had sails made (made of kevlar more or less from North, as I recall), they scheduled a formal sail around Boston Harbor, and Navy ships escorted her out of the harbor (Your Blog Host Biff Halyard was there in his Navy uniform, by the way, but that's another story...).

No one really new if the 200-year-old-plus ship would even hold together with these massive new sails pulling on the standing rigging - - rigging that hadn’t been put to the test, adjusted or tweaked in hundreds of years (obviously the Navy did replace a lot of the standing AND running rigging prior to this amazing sail).

The story: When famed announcer Walter Chronkite took the helm, surrounded by news media, the first thing he jokingly said was: “Let’s prepare to come about!”

Needless to say, everyone who knew ANYTHING about sailing turned pale, until he muttered something to the effect: “Just kidding.”