The Sea Chase Week 8: Great American Flying on the High Seas 400 Miles UP

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WPCNR ADVENTURER’S LOG. By Cynthia Goss. May 8, 2003 / 2°52’S 24°42’W / Atlantic Ocean: Two American adventurers, one of whom hails from Westchester’s own Larchmont, are attempting a record sailing passage from Hong Kong to New York enjoyed a two-day lead Thursday, over the mark set 154 years ago but were
preparing for a slow and difficult crossing of the doldrums with its
squalls, fickle winds and glassy calms.

Approaching the equator and still 3,900 miles from New York, Rich Wilson (Rockport, Mass.) and “Captain Larchmont,” Rich du Moulin (Larchmont, N.Y.) aboard the trimaran Great American II had built a lead of 400 miles over the pace set by the extreme clipper ship Sea Witch in the China tea trade a century-and-a-half ago.

Since leaving Hong Kong on March 16, the 53-foot trimaran, with its two crew sailing watch-and-watch, has waged a see-saw battle with the ghost of the legendary 192-foot clipper, trailing it in the China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Sea Witch recorded 74 days 14 hours for the voyage and to beat this time Great American II must arrive in New York before May 29th in the afternoon.

A Great Run on Wednesday. 220 MPD Average.

On Wednesday, the 7th, Great American II continued to open out on Sea Witch, logging 270 miles for the 24-hour period, her best day’s run during the passage. During the last seven days she sailed 1,543 miles for an average distance of 220 miles a day.

The Doom of the Doldrums

Ken Campbell, the boat’s shore-based weather router at Commanders
Weather in Nashua, N.H., predicted that Great American II and her crew
would slow as they entered the doldrums late on Friday and might take as long as two days to pick their way through the squalls and calms before hitting the steady breezes of the northeast trades sometime on Monday.

Fighting the African Coast Doldrums.

A week ago weather conditions were continually forcing the boat on a
northwards course closer to the African coast and away from the direct
route to New York.

“They did an excellent job during the last week of getting out of an
area of light winds and getting west,” Campbell said. “Closer to the
African coast, the doldrums are gigantic, stretching 500 to 1,000 miles
north to south. Once you’re in them the only way out is going straight
north, and at only 100 miles a day in those conditions it could take a
long, long time.”

Campbell said he would have preferred the boat to be even further west and closer to the South American coast but predicted Great American II could make a good crossing in a thin portion of the doldrums at 28 to 30 degrees longitude west, close to its current position.

“That’s the sweet spot,” he said.

Renegade Squall Report from the High Seas

Rainsqualls present the danger of too much wind and are usually followed by lighter breezes. For the next few days Great American II’s crew must be especially vigilant to avoid the black clouds associated with squalls as they pick their way northward.

“We sailed through enormous, ominous black clouds throughout the day,” Wilson said in a satellite email message Thursday. “There was rain in most clouds. We outran two but were finally caught late in the afternoon by a rainsquall. We sailed on into the night, changing sail from spinnaker to reacher and back again before setting a jib and then the reacher again to deal with the changing conditions.”

Schooldchildren Follow the Action

Some 360,000 schoolchildren are following the adventure of Great
American II on a daily basis through the sitesALIVE! educational
program. Some of these students hope to be in New York when the vessel reaches its final destination.

* * * Jibs and Reaches

HOW THE PUBLIC CAN FOLLOW GREAT AMERICAN II: The website tracking the voyage of Great American II is http://www.sitesalive.com. Daily position reports and a Captain’s Log are posted on the site so classrooms, students, and families who purchase licenses can follow the progress of the boat. For information, go to
http://www.sitesalive.com/oceanchallengelive/.

The saga of GAII will also be published in a number of national,
regional, and local papers, in the Newspaper In Education supplements, and tracked on the AOL@SCHOOL program (keyword: sitesalive).

Great American II’s Newspaper In Education participation is supported by the sitesALIVE Foundation. Established in 2002, the Foundation addresses teacher training in computer technology and funding for
budget-constrained schools. The mission of the foundation is to enhance K-12 education by promoting the use of technology with real-world, real-time content from around the globe.

Some 360,000 students are expected to follow the voyage of Great
American II.

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Whole Foods Market Coming to Fortunoffs in White Plains

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WPCNR EAST END INQUIRER. From the Mayor’s Press Office. May 9, 2003: UPDATED May 12, 2003 The Mayor’s Office announced Thursday evening that Whole Foods Market, the nation’s largest organic food market has signed a lease to occupy a portion of the new Fortunoffs now under construction at Bloomingdale Road and Maple Avenue in White Plains.

Whole Foods Market will give White Plains two supermarkets within one block of each other on Bloomingdale Road, as WFM joins the recently opened Stop N Shop on Westchester Avenue.

According to the company’s website at www.wholefoods.com, Whole Foods Market has 143 locations across the country. Its nearest location in the New York metropolitan area is in Greenwich and Marlton, New Jersey. It currently has plans to open New York stores at 59th Street and Columbus Circle and Union Square in Manhattan and Jericho, Long Island.

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Democrats Nominate Bernstein, Boykin, Greer for Council. Camacho Quinn Rejected

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WPCNR Backroom Bulletin. By John F. Bailey. May 9, 2003 UPDATED WITH PICTURES: At the Democratic City Committee meeting at the Party Headquarters at 170 East Post Road Thursday evening, Democratic Party District Leaders nominated incumbents Robert Greer for his fourth term for Common Council, and City Council President Benjamin Boykin, Jr. for his second term. They also nominated long term campaign manager, Arnold Bernstein to run for William King’s council seat which Mr. King is vacating.



BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN: Benjamin Boykin and Robert Greer were nominated last evening. Both candidates said it was important to manage White Plains’ growth carefully in the next three years and that was the major challenge and issue the city faced. Both said they would continue to work for all the people of White Plains.
Photo by WPCNR News

After listening to speeches by Boykin, Greer, Bernstein and Eridania Camacho Quinn, who was challenging the Nominating Committee selection of Bernstein, instead of her candidacy, District Leaders voted by secret ballot to reject her bid by what was described to this reporter as a decisive margin.



FAVORITE SON: Arnold Bernstein, left, with Nominating Committee Chairman Howard Glassman right, after Mr. Bernstein received the vote of confidence he was looking for from District Leaders last night. Former Campaign Manager for Adam Bradley, Robert Greer, Glen Hockley, and Rita Malmud, Bernstein now will take a run of his own.
Photo by WPCNR News




SUPPORTING THE TICKET AFTER HER CHALLENGE: Eridania Camacho Quinn, the woman candidate supported by minority leaders and encouraged to challenge the Committee slate, said in the aftermath, “I agreed I would work for the slate. I was assured they would run me at the very next opportunity. I will make sure there is going to be a next time.” She thanked the party for the opportunity to challenge Mr. Bernstein for the nomination to the Common Council. She said she did not think she would primary the other three nominees in September.
Photo by WPCNR News


Mr. Bernstein, commenting on the Camacho Quinn challenge, said “She exercised her rights and we welcome it. She’s a very classy lady.”

When asked about reaching out to the Hispanic community, whose leaders exiting the meeting were very upset with the outcome of the vote, Mr. Bernstein said the party was committed to “putting people first.”

Bernstein said his next step in his campaign would be gathering petition signatures, due by the beginning of July.

Bradley: Strength of Democratic Party

Adam Bradley chatting amiably with WPCNR after emerging from 170 East Post Road said this was one of the strengths of the Democratic Party that people could disagree then come together. He said the party was fortunate to have four such highly qualified candidates.



THE BACK ROOM AT 170 EAST POST ROAD: District Leaders listening to Dennis Power report on a registration effort. Seconds later, WPCNR was asked to leave the meeting.
Photo by WPCNR News


When I arrived at 8 PM, I was announced loudly by Mr. Bernstein at the door of the meeting already in progress. Adam Bradley, New York State Assemblyman, and City Democratic Committee leader, left the head of the meeting and came to the door. He politely said the meeting was not public and was closed to the press, to prevent any further reporting of what he said were “mischaracterizations” of committee actions in the media. For the second time in three years, WPCNR had been ejected from a Democratic City Committee Nominating Convention.

The Last Activist Challenges Bradley Gag Order

Within about 15 minutes of my cooling my heels on East Post Road, Ron Jackson (who gave up his aspirations for the Council in favor of Ms.Camacho Quinn), trooped
down out of the entrance of 170 East Post Road, where I was encamped, awaiting the close of the meeting.



THE LAST ACTIVIST HITS THE STREET: Ron Jackson said he had left the meeting in disgust. He said Adam Bradley had opened the meeting by admonishing committee members not to speak to the press.
Photo by WPCNR News


Jackson told me he was furious. He said he told Bradley and the District Leaders, “When I woke up this morning I thought I was in America. We live in a city that’s diverse. Once the minority community learns this Hispanic woman, a great candidate was rejected, there is going to be some bullet voting.”

After cooling off, Mr. Jackson returned upstairs.

The Hispanic Hope Fades.

Hispanic leaders WPCNR overheard in the hall were discussing primary possibilities at one point. One delegate suggested that on primary day, they figured there were about 450 homes they needed to target to pull out registered Hispanics to vote for Ms. Camacho Quinn. The two persons talking about this talked in low meaningful tones, speaking of organizing phone banks to get out the vote, and organizing a fleet of latino and African American taxicabs to transport voters to the polls.

Speech well-received.

Mr. Jackson came back down at approximately 9:25 to tell me the voting was commencing. He said Ms. Camacho Quinn’s speech was very well received. Whether Mr. Bernstein, Mr. Boykin and Mr. Greer made lengthy speeches, it was hard to determine, given our listening post on the street.

Ms. Camacho Quinn Calls on the Leaders to Make the Effort.

In her speech to the Leaders, acquired by WPCNR, Ms. Camacho Quinn said her nomination would give the party of person familiar with a segment of the city their ticket did not represent, noting,

“I believe in diversity. In a city where, according to the U.S. Census, 15% of its residents are seniors 65 and over, 23% are children under 18, 52.7% of us are women, and 40%, like me, are people of color, we really do need to make a greater effort to have a government that is truly representative of the people. Having this as my mission, I will work hard to keep our party and our city committee united under the one big tent.”

She pledged to support the ticket, no matter what the decision in her speech, and said, “I promise you this: I am qualified to hold office and I assure you that no one will harder for you than I will.”

The Minority Street.

The decisive dismissal of Camacho Quinn’s credentials did not play well to District Leaders of Minority descent.

After the vote was announced, the applause was about half the volume for the Camacho Quinn speech. Minority delegates exited to the street with a look of resignation, puzzlement, and realization on their faces. They appeared sobered by the margin of Ms. Camacho Quinn’s defeat.

Anjel Tejada and Ms. Camacho Quinn’s brother, Hector, talked in slow measured tones about the result, Mr. Tejada saying, “Here you have a woman with a political science degree, extensive campaign experience, and she is not qualified? In four years they haven’t been able to do this. It is not acceptable why we can’t. It can be done.”



“THIS WAS A FIX:” William Campbell of the White Plains Tenants Council was blunt and asked that WPCNR quote his remarks: “I participated in the freedom marches in Selma, Alabama, and I saw more discrimination in this room tonight than I ever saw down there.This deck was stacked right from the beginning. It was fixed.”
Photo by WPCNR News


Meanwhile, in Another Part of Town

After the meeting, WPCNR was contacted by Jeffrey Binder, declared Republican Candidate for Common Council, who reported the Republicans were talking to two women of Hispanic ethnicity to challenge for the Hispanic and minority communities.



THE CITIZEN NET REPORTER TOSSED AGAIN: I await on the street for the completion of another secret Democratic City Committee Meeting. The Journal News did not send a reporter to cover the action.
Photo by WPCNR News

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Thursday Night Fights? Camacho-Quinn Seethes at “Good of the Party Calls.

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WPCNR Backroom Bulletin. By John F. Bailey. May 8, 2003: The most reliable sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, report to WPCNR that Eridania Camacho-Quinn is furious at the lobbying calls she has been receiving from Democrats asking her not to seek to overturn the City Committee’s Nominating Committee choice of Arnold Bernstein to run for outgoing Councilman William King’s seat.

The Committee will place the names of incumbent Common Council President Benjamin Boykin and Robert Greer and that of Mr. Bernstein, Adam Bradley’s Campaign Manager in nomination tonight at the upstairs Democratic Headquarters at 170 East Post Road.

Camacho-Quinn is reported to be determined to go ahead with a floor challenge of the nomination, and is receiving strong advice through phone calls not to make that fight.

Sources close to Ms. Camacho-Quinn report she is receiving calls from Democrats asking her not to mount a challenge “for the good of the Democratic Party.”

Councilwoman Rita Malmud Makes a Personal Call

WPCNR has learned that one of those calls to Ms. Camacho-Quinn was from Rita Malmud, who, when she first ran for the Common Council came to it through her work with the League of Women Voters, and was a housewife herself, according to persons who knew her at the time. Malmud, it is reported, pointed out to Ms. Camacho-Quinn, a new mother, that the council job was very time-consuming, and that Ms. Camacho-Quinn had no idea of how demanding it would be, implying that the council seat responsibilities would take her away from her newborn son, Sebastian.

Sources report Ms. Camacho-Quinn felt this was “condescending” of Ms. Malmud to approach her this way.

Nominating Committee Did Not Like Camacho-Quinn’s Independence on the Issues.

Sources in the Nominating Committee have told Democratic Councilman that Camacho Quinn’s presentation showed a lack of understanding of the issues in White Plains and that they were stunned by her inept presentation.

Camacho-Quinn reportedly is furious at this “official” version of her nominating interview events being fed the media and District Leaders and Democrats by the Nominating Committee, saying that she feels she gave “the wrong answer” when the Nominating Committee asked her how she would make decisions on issues.

Ms. Camacho-Quinn has told friends she answered that she would listen to Mayor Delfino, examine all sides of the issue, and make the decision she felt represented the interests of all the people of White Plains. Friends said Ms. Camacho-Quinn reported she sensed a definite “chill” in the air on the part of the four Nominating Committeepersons interviewing her, believed to be: Adam Bradley, Howard Glassman, Barbara Schwartz, Jim Payne and Robert Wall. Friends report her confiding to them that “It (the interview) went downhill from there, after I indicated I would make up my own mind.”

The Nominating Committee story of the interview, related by White Plains Democrats who reported what they had been told by the Committee, is that Ms. Camacho-Quinn spoke poorly on the issues, and they were shocked at how unready she was to run. On the other hand, the Nominating Committee asked her to interview to run for Council. One Councilman told WPCNR , “They’ll kill me if you tell them I said this, but she would have made a dynamite ticket.”

Experience Needed?

The official story on the Camacho-Quinn rejection maintains she does not have the experience to run for the Common Council. However, experience and familiarity with issues has not distinguished any recent newcomers to Common Council candidacy in the past. Numerous errors of fact, perception, memory and reality were committed by recent successful Democratic candidates for Council, including incumbents, so experience is no guarantee of intelligent, factual campaigning or performance in a Council seat.

The refusal of Ms. Camacho-Quinn, who is described as working terribly hard getting out the vote for Adam Bradley’s upset of Naomi Matusow in last September’s primary, to accept her dismissal is motivated, her friends say by the circumstance that she was never prepped for the nominating committee interview, she was lead to believe she was wanted to run, and that she has a track record of successful, grass roots connection with voters.

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