Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Sailing Anarchy OTW

Everyday I have my usual "news" sites I check out. I start off at CNN just to make sure I'm not missing anything huge, then I wander over to some sailing sites. While there are many and I still haven't found them all yet, sailinganarchy.com seems to be the best.

While I haven't spent a lot of time in their forums, their front page write-ups are spot on with the scene of the sport from my eyes. They are showing their frustration with the AC battle by entering their own team, mainly to see how the teams will respond. One of the sailors I sailed with (I won't mention any names) has been to many of their regattas and says that no one parties like they do. They always keep things interesting and have good things to say.

Well, if you haven't already checked out the site, this feature will get you there. In the forums, they've added a new tab where they blog live from various sailing regattas. Sure, that's been done before. But they actually post live video from the water. Minutes after the live start occurs, you can watch it from the water with commentary on YouTube. Then, 45 minutes later you can watch the windward mark rounding complete with personal/professional commentary. Incredible how they took the almost impossible task of live sailing broadcasting and turned it into a simple internet YouTube activity.

Now, obviously the features are limited and there are delays but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

Keep up the good work SA.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Carson,

First and foremost let me say that I also really enjoy reading SA and believe that it does do a good job of summarizing what's going on in the sailing world every day. They don't have the kind of actual racing coverage, sailing tips, and genuine up close and personal interviews that Sailgroove does and thus I don't believe they are doing as much for the racing community as Sailgroove, but they still provide a good service.

Up until a few weeks ago my love of SA was completely without question (how could it not be? SA had been a great source of all things sailing) and I generally believed they were good guys. What I've learned over the last few weeks however has cast a little bit of a shadow on those guys.

First of all, just a few weeks ago SA came out with a long article about the "Sailing website wannabes", calling sites like Scuttlebutt and Sailgroove worthless, imitations, and all around useless for the sport. This says to me that these guys are just a bunch of stuck up assholes who only have their interests and not those of the industry or sport in mind because like you said, exactly what sailing needs is more coverage of sailing (and what pretentiousness for them to think that they are the one and only providers of sailing news!

Second of all, I've recently spoken with an extremely reputable member of the sailing community (someone I guarantee everyone knows but I don't want to mention here, though he probably wouldn't care) about SA and he led me to believe that SA is really only in this for the money, and is seriously hurting the industry. According to my "friend" SA essentially blackmails companies into sponsoring them, completely trash talking those companies that refuse to support them (premiere racing, for example).

Lastly, while the site is hip and it is clear that the people running the show are young and somewhat in touch with the new generation thus bringing a refreshing blend of humor, bluntness, and slang to the table, a lot of people have voiced concerns that on the water, whether filming or sailing, these guys are not corinthian; rather, they are cocky and a bit inappropriate.

What do you think?