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Last Race of the season

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Prospector
Master Marine Consultant

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Canada
3159 Posts

Initially Posted - 09/26/2011 : 07:08:16

So the season wrapped up with the Georgina Cup weekend, in which Iris had 2 showings, the first was rather lackluster (6th place out of a dozen or so boats) and the second was great. Let’s talk about the second race.

We were sailing in fleet 3 – the slow boat fleet in JAM division. On board I had 2 crew - my 14 YO daughter and my wife's cousin who had never sailed before, but weighing in a 200 lbs, and working as a mechanic he made for good rail meat and raw power. He was also a "do-now-and-ask-later" kind of guy which was fantastic - wanted to learn, but knew when to ask, and when to do. Our start was the second of the day, concurrent with the fleet 2 start.

The wind was good, about 10 – 15 knots, but shifty, and in our bay there were definite patterns setting up. Shorelines were playing games with the breeze, and paying attention to where the patterns were would be a big part of the race.

At the start we managed to get a really good position, but were early to the line. In order to burn time, I told the crew we were going to do a quick 360° turn which would eat up about 45 seconds, but we had to be precise since the fleet was bearing down on us. With about 16 boats on the start, and most of them lined up on our position, we didn’t have a lot of room to maneuver. The boat swung through 180° and then, facing the fleet, refused to go further. For whatever reason, my daughter, Chuck, froze when she saw the boats facing us. A C&C 34 in fleet 2 was about 5 feet off our bow, and while I was yelling for Chuck to release the sheet, he adjusted course diving deep below us. I yelled out an apology, and the skipper just smiled and waved.

Chuck let out the sheet, and we came around and back into position, just leeward and ahead of a Niagara 31. As we curled into position below him, we accelerated and headed up to burn time. We were about eth 4th boat to leeward of the committee boat, and as we came up to luffing, the rest of the boats were forced into the committee boat, leaving about 3 boats able to get by. At least one boat was turned back at the pin.

We fell off hard and ran down the line for about 10 seconds, then as the horn went, came up to our course and took off ahead of the Niagara, and the rest of the fleet fighting for position at the line. A Viking 28 that came across to windward of us was called out as over early, and as he picked his way through the fleet to restart, he opened gaps in the advancing boats that we were able to take advantage of, finding clean air to push ahead.

We were frugal in our tacks as we raced to the windward mark. In fact, as we went the wind slowly shifted due to the shore effect in our bay. The line we chose had us come up to the mark about 30 yards to leeward of it. A single tack brought us into the zone on port, and a second tack took us around the mark, and on the reach to the gybe pin.

The course was a “triangle-sausage”, or “modified Olympic” course as we usually race in our club, so it was familiar to me. With the shore of our club being a wide, deep bay, we get some interesting changes in wind patterns in the vicinity of the club. The swirl in the bay, converted the reaching leg of the course into a upwind leg on a close reach rather than the downwind that one would expect. Close to the end of the leg, the wind would shift back behind us converting the leg into a beam, then broad reach, setting us up for the gybe around the pin. Careful attention to the wind paid big dividends. By the time we were through the second leg, a gap had opened between the leader s and the second fleet. It was good to be among the leaders.

On the downwind leg back to the start/finish, we set our pole and shifted weight forward. In this leg I am used to attacking from the rear, stealing wind from boats ahead of me, but most of the boats ahead of Iris were in the 2nd fleet, so I focused instead of maintaining our distance from the boats behind. As we sailed, the distance maintained itself, perhaps shrinking a little. Being in the JAM fleet, our whisker pole is critical on these legs, but always a pain to set up and takedown. But with 2 other people on board to drive, I was able to set things up as I liked, and the boat responded well. I barely drove on the downwind leg at all.

Rounding the mark, I focused on getting back up to the windward pin with as few tacks as possible again. As we went we were close to a C&C 30 that sails a division above us. Our path brought us into the mark a little low this time, so we tacked up into it about ¼ mile away. The C&C was approaching on the opposite tack above us. It was going to be close at the pin. I hailed for room as they tacked our bow inside the 3 boat length zone. They said I had no rights, they were right.

We rounded the mark right on their transom, and headed back up to the committee boat. Rather than going wing & wing again, we tried going gybe-gybe to reach the line. As we did, we kept pace with the wing and wing boats, and a Kirby 25 from fleet 2 caught up to us, sitting on out lee side for about ½ the leg. Eventually they got ahead, and we crossed the line just behind them.

On straight time we crossed the line second in our fleet, about 5 minutes behind the first place boat and four minutes ahead of the next boat. But the boat ahead of us was a Viking 28 with a phrf of 207, our PHRF is 243 so on corrected time we were less than minute out of first.

Since our start is massed with fleet 2, comparing our times to theirs is fun to do. On straight time, 7 of the fleet 2 boats finished ahead of us, but on PHRF, we would be in 2nd place, by only 2-1/2 minutes or so.

Comparing to the spin fleet isn’t really fair since the multipliers are so different, but just for fun… we finished after every flying sail boat, but our corrected time (with dissimilar multipliers) would have put us in second place against them as well, by about a minute.

"Iris"
1984 FK/SR #4040
http://frosthaus.blogspot.com/

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Edited by - on

cshaw
Captain

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USA
460 Posts

Response Posted - 09/26/2011 : 09:49:37

Great report on your race! Congrats on the very good showing also!

I have scared my crew doing a similar type of start before, but it worked out well for me also.

Cheers!

Chuck