Summer II 2008

Great weather, beautiful day; so why were we the only boat in our fleet out?

The course was set almost due east. The start was at "0" and Dragon Lady set the windward and offset mark. We had a good start and got into a nice breeze on the south side of the course. We had a good windward mark rounding. The wind died on the north side of the course but started to fill in from the south. The RC shortened course due to the light wind and not wiling to wait for the new breeze. Those boats who went south (not us!) caught the breeze.

We were happy to bank the first.

Lake Ontario 300

This weekend I will be sailing the Lake Ontario 300 on Big Fun in the fully crewed spinnaker fleet. (see: Star article)

The boat is a 36 foot C+C. We are probably the oldest boat entered in the race and we will be in the slowest PHRF fleet. The race starts at Port Credit at around 11:00 Saturday. The race should take between 3 and 4 days to complete. We have a crew of four. Three other boats from NYC joined up to form Team National. There are over 122 boats registered for the event.

It looks like there will be light winds for the start. You can follow our progress at the website with real time GPS tracking. You will have to look for Big Fun in the participants list. It will be in the Fully Crewed Spinnaker section and probably in the PHRF IV or V fleet.

I have been looking forward to sailing the event for a few years. It should be a great experience.

PCYC Open 2008

We launched the boat on Thursday and sailed over to PCYC on Friday. The Thursday launch meant that we could avoid the drysail area during the NYC Star regatta. We arrived at PCYC late Friday with just enough daylight to navigate safely. I tried to get a dock but a PCYC staffer was still on duty. She was patrolling the basin herding the new arrivals to an appropriate spot. We were directed to the J raft which already had about 3 boats.

Saturday was very foggy. The crew wanted to be at the club early so that we could get in a few practise tacks and spinnaker hoists. There was no wind and lots of fog. The RC flew an AP at the yardarm. The wind slowly filled in but there was still lots of fog. Apparently a storm was moving in from the west. Anyway we didn't leave the dock. The fleet was somewhat upset as clearly there was wind. Very little to do and it was very boring. I found out later that the Stars had three races at NYC on Saturday! The RC amended the SI's to allow for an earlier start and removed the time limit for the last start on Sunday.

We arived early on Sunday and were one of the first boats to sail out. The winds were light but steady from the west. The wind would increase for the rest of the day. I would say the conditions were prefect for the J. Steady winds of 10 - 20 knots and not too much chop. The course was windward leeward. There is windward mark and offset mark and two leeward gates, twice around.

Our performance was pretty much as expected. We were all a bit anxious of our performance. The J fleet is very competitive. Our starts were good. However, I tended to stall the boat and we lost a few boats for no good reason. It was hard for me to get into the groove. This may have been because of my older sails. The main's luff luffed. Jaimie was able to keep me out of trouble with lots of room at the start and good direction around the boats when we had to duck. We sailed a very conservative course without too many tacks. We overstood the windward mark layline in order not to be knocked by other boats. Our boat handling was OK. We recovered from screwups and we were able to do what needed to be done quickly.

We had one interesting encounter at the leeward gate. We were on starboard inside of a port taker B who was inside a starboard tacker C. Inside of us was another starboard tacker A who took way too much room to round the mark. I couldn't head up port B since he was restricted by C. In order to avoid hitting A I ended up doing an uncontrolled gybe. The main sheet got tangled in the traveller and I couldn't haul in the main as we headed up around the mark. A new boat arrived and of course wanted us to head up. There was lots of potential protests here but no one bothered. The result was that we got pushed back. That was an example of our inexperience. There were two near collisions. We were on starboard and two port tackers either didn't see us or thought they could pass. These guys were protested.

After the event we sailed back to NYC with a nice westerly breeze. We ended up in second last spot, but the goal wasn't performance; it was to have fun. We had a great regatta.

Luck

The 'summer' series began on the 9 th. The wind was strong from the west. There was a 20 degree shift during the start sequence so port tack was favoured. We had a great start and lead the fleet to the windward mark.

Unfortunately I was on automatic pilot: at offset hoist spinnaker. The wind shift was such that the course back was too high. We got the chute down quickly but were well back of the fleet. My anxiousness for doing well lead to a big mistake. Keep cool Richard! On the second downwind leg we saw boats peeling off and abandoning. We didn't know what was going on. At the 'finish' we could see that Grand National was sailing N A. The RC couldn't set the finish mark. The race was abandoned.

So 'Luck' trumps 'Stupidity'!

Last Spring Race 2008

aNo mark boat so no windward leeward. The RC set the start near '1' with '0' as the windward mark. With the wind coming from the south west (215) it would be mostly port tack upwind. We were able to be on starboard gybe all the way downwind.

JR was not participating.

We used the jib on the first upwind leg. Our only competitor, Windlight, was able to stay with us. They used full sails. We switched to genie on the downwind leg. Windlight didn't use a chute. The combination of genie and chute/no chute gave us an easy win.

News from the British Nationals

This does happen (but rarely).

Wednesday, June 25

The wind was from the south so we were able to sail off the dock. My thought was that there would be a counter offshore breeze and this would offset the predominate wind. This didn't happen and the wind from the south intensified. I also expected that the wind would shift west. It didn't happen; the wind was steady at around 20 knots bearing 225 throughout the race. Kim and a 'volunteer' from the crewbank manned the mark boat. The RC could set a windward leeward course.

The first start had a general recall. We were delayed by 20 minutes while the RC sorted things out. The wind was intense enough that we decided to drop the gennie on the first downwind leg. (This was a good move as we had good realtive performance. We crossed Polaris and Victory Dance.)

JR started with only a main sail and shortly after the start they decided to bail. They started so they would be scored as DNF and not DNS. Their skipper was suffering from a knee injury and they felt the rough seas would be too painful. OK so lets get a First!

During a gybe, the chute got fouled when the halyard got wrapped around the forestay. We couldn't get it untangled. We were well ahead. There was no need to worry about. The wind was from 225 so dead downwind was 45. I wanted to sail 0 and 90. We got confused with the gybe angle and sailed dead down wind ( i e very slowly ) on our approach to the finish.

We accomplished our goal: First. The first should come in handy when the results are finalized. Only one more race in the spring series.