Scot Tempesta makes a living
not with his web site, but as a left-wing AM radio commentator
recently with San Diego's radio station KLSD (formerly KOGO).
He's married, has two sons, and lives in Carlsbad, CA. His
e-mail address is scot@nethere.com. He attended San Diego
State, was a sailmaker (Sobstad) for awhile, and partied
hard in those early days. He was a fine sailor than and undoubtedly
still is. In the early 1990s he won the Lipton Cup and California
Challenge Cup sailing for the San Diego Yacht Club when it
was sailed in Olsen 35s. Now they use J/105's.
When you Google "Scot Tempesta", the top entry is
"Scot Tempesta: Loudmouthed Idiot". Not that I'm against
idiots. I was a big Johnny Damon fan before he left the Sox
for the Yankees. But the moniker seems to fit. His role model
seems to be Howard Stern. He started SA in 2000 because he
was seeing "way too much BS going on in the sport -- cheating,
manipulating, softball journalism, a lack of honesty, no
alternative voice, etc." Nothing wrong with that. But Scot
is proud that his forums on SA have no rules. So what happens
is that everyone hides behind anonymity and says whatever
they want. If you like f---ing this and f---ing that (including
F---ing Nelson), all kinds of scurrilous accusations, and
scatological dialog, the SA forums are for you. Instead of
spending $8.95 to go to a like-minded movie, you can get
the same pleasure out of SA for nothing.
Scot nevers seems to miss an opportunity to bash J/Boats'
offerings and the J/105 in particular. Apparently J/105s
are overpriced and underperforming. I guess Scot does
not understand or place any value on one-design racing and
well-organized class associations. He uses our openness and
our mistakes against us. How many other class associations
do you know that are as transparent and open as we are?
Why don't you see Scot Tempesta's name prominently in Sailing
Anarchy? I guess he's just shy. If you look around, there's
a "Contact" page, but no mention of Scot Tempesta
as the founder or primary operator. But in other venues,
he not above taking credit for "the most visited sailing
website in the world". What you will find on
SA is a very long "Legal" page on Terms and Conditions
for using his web site. There are twelve long lawerly paragraphs,
the first of which is "1. Copyright". It seems
all of SA is copyrighted in 2001 even though most of it has
appeared since 2001. Is that possible??? And "Any redistribution,
retransmission, or publication of any material is strictly
prohibited without the express written consent of the copyright
owner", e.g.
Sailing Anarchy, e.g. Scot Tempesta. With a section entitled
"Lies and Rumors" on SA, you must be prepared for
lawsuits, yes?
Actually if you search really, really hard you can find
Scot Tempesta's name on one page of SA. It's the page called
"Sore Loser" which gives a complete e-mail dialog
between Scot and the aggrieved and agitated designer of the
Bravura 29, which Scot trashed on his web site. The designer
fell to Scot's level in his "rebuttal" while threatening
legal remedies. It's a sad, sad dialog.
So why am I agitated by SA? Especially when I don't
read the web site? Somebody e-mailed me part of his
home page (a copyright violation, of course). I was not
too surprised to see quotes from the (copyrighted) Minutes
of a recent meeting of the J/105 Executive Committee conference
call. These minutes were placed in a private area of our
j105.org web site for the Members of our Class Association.
Scot Tempesta is not a member and had help from a San Diego
sailor in accessing them. The quotes were not identified
as quotes from the minutes, but rather as quotes by individuals
on the call. And by implication he completely distorted the
reasons for some of the voting. There's no point in reasoning
with Scot Tempesta and asking for a retraction. He is way
beyond reason and not worthy of our time.
We encourage our owners to read our Owner's FORUM if you
want to know what's going on with the J/105 Class or "Sailing
Scuttlebutt"
for generic sailing news. SS counsels "save your bashing,
whining and personal attacks for elsewhere".
I guess they are referring to SA.
Nelson Weiderman (speaking only for myself)
2006 J/105 Secretary/Treasurer
[Lightly edited 5/25 to correct the "left/right" error and
to make it a tad less confrontational.] |
