Author: Rob DeWitte

Against a field of tough competitors with wide PHRF splits, apparently getting the gun by 13 minutes, is still not enough!

Yes indeed, Gil and I took on 10 others with a massive range of handicaps, and did ourselves proud on a day with steady moderate wind.  The forecast called for a veer of 20-30 degrees, so we had a big choice to make:  take the route near shore and enjoy an early lift with better breeze, OR, head out into the lake, take the header early and tack onto a lift to the layline.  We opted for the latter, a strategic choice that was the road less travelled.  We started on Port, dipping a few boats to start a wee bit late right at the pin end of the line, crossing just inches beneath Christephanie’s stern.  In clear air, we moved well, and then chose carefully the right moment to tack.  Battlewagon came across to meet us, a bit ahead, but we each tacked — them toward shore, and us away from shore.  After another tack, we needed 12 degrees of lift to hit the windward mark.  Sure enough, we got ten degrees, and cut off a nice corner.  Battlewagon rounded ahead of us by about ten boat lengths (after 90 minutes of upwind sailing), and we were well ahead of Coyote (a personal victory).

Hoisting double-handed is a choreography of the absurd, but we managed quite well. We rounded at Shell Pier just behind Battlewagon, and overtook them shortly after hoisting (that’s when they snapped this great picture of us), and then blasted away toward the CCIW spider, extending our lead continuously.

We were carrying the spinnaker on a pretty hot angle and debated with one another whether to jibe at the spider or douse and finish under genoa.  We opted to douse, and it was the correct decision for us, but the wind kept veering, and boats who came after us were able to carry their kite on the last leg, and eat into our lead with precious minutes.

Pandora II got top honours, with Coyote just behind them.  I’m content to mix it up with those sailors, anyday, and especially today!

Fanstastic sailing with Gadget, and a great get together on the BBQ dock afterwards.  We commemorated Fred Gillbank with rum and coke and enjoyed burgers and salad and typical after-race banter on a perfect summer day with a fresh easterly breeze.  Is it really mid September?

 

Continuing in the fine tradition of recruiting former competitors to join PERSPECTIVE and take a turn on the helm, here is Ken Denholm from Eclipse showing that he still knows how to use a tiller.

I was  just about to touch down after a long trip to Europe while this race was happening, so here’s a quick summary from Gadget:

Great sailing on a nice steady breeze.  Flew the #1.  Had a decent start on the starboard tack.  Had Top Gun and Battlewagon slightly ahead of us, and so it remained for the entire race.  We picked the laylines, made clean tacks, jibes, roundings, hoists and dowses.  Avoided traffic.  Just couldn’t catch them.  Failed to prep the main prior to the final upwind, so that’s something to work on.  Apart from that, sailed a good clean race.

And thanks to the lads taking PERSPECTIVE around the course for a few weeks without me, we are in good standing with two weeks to go in the Fall Series.

In positive psychology, flow,  is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

Tonight, all five of us were in a state of flow.  David, Mark, Bert, Skootch and I put on a clinic of tactics, strategy, sail trim, and maneuvers with 100% concentration, crystal clear communication and seamless teamwork.  It was pure joy.  And it paid!

Our objective was to finish ahead of Battlewagon and Sandpiper to secure (I believe) third place overall for the summer series.  Sandpiper was away, so we focused on a match race with Battlewagon.  Strategically, that meant we ignored the rest of the fleet, and didn’t give a fig about putting in a good start, so long as we were ahead of our rival.  That’s exactly what we did, ensuring that we were well in front of Battlewagon as we headed to the line.  We were about 20 seconds late, and they were 15 seconds behind us.  When they tacked, we tacked to cover.

With this approach we were able to stay ahead of them to the windward mark.  They had neither gained, nor lost ground on the first beat.  Our hoist was like honey on toast, and we gained precious boat-lengths.  By this time, Top Gun and Remarkable were quite far ahead, Sabotage was in Dundas, and Legacy was doing great.  With one eye on Battlewagon astern, and another eye on the iPad, we trimmed and trimmed and trimmed and rode each oscillation in the wind to maximize speed and VMG to the leeward mark.  Check out the video to see Lazy Sheet the Jedi master of spinnaker trim.  When Battlewagon jibed, we jibed to cover, and we gained with each maneuver. Again, they jibed and we covered.  But the third time, we chose not to cover.  By now we were abreast Remarkable with the inside lane, and the wind had shifted so that we could soak down to the leeward mark — a little slow, perhaps, but a great tactical position vis-a-vis Remarkable.  With the downwind gains we had made, we were starting to set our eyes on an even bigger prize!

Sure enough, Battlewagon jibed back onto our line, dead astern and well back. And we were inside Remarkable, soaking deeply toward the douse.  David dropped the pole, Bert and I flew the spinnaker sans pole, Skootch went into the hole and down came the kite.  We hardened up quickly, and kept an eye on Remarkable astern.  When they tacked, we tacked to cover.  Then the wind shifted 20 degrees, giving us a big knock.  We tacked immediately, converting the knock into a lift that put us on track for the finish.  Just before the line, we had to duck Pandora, but there was room to do that and finish ahead of Remarkable.  Top Gun was in our sites, but we didn’t quite get them.

What a rush!  Mission accomplished, and some 🙂

Yet another balmy summer evening on the water.  What a great season we’ve had!

Before the start, the gusts were tempting us to choose the #2, but it eased a bit before the start and the forecasts called for progressively lighter wind as the sun got lower in the sky.  We opted for the #1 and got it right.  It was the first chance to see how the big foresail would perform with the tighter rig tension dialed in on the weekend.  Answer: peachy!

Tonight was a night when we enjoyed the sweet sensation of getting the details right.  A great start, timed perfectly in clean air to windward of the fleet.  Pristine tacks, confident sail trim, and hard hiking had us right in the pack at the windward mark.  And then, as it often does on PERSPECTIVE, the magic happened.

Our hoist was smooth and we quickly overtook Sandpiper.  Kiwi sailed deep in the ample breeze and we got the boat moving well with the pole high up.  Our jibes were fantastic, especially the third one, which was like a clinic, and we continued to gain ground.  The highlight of the race came when we, Sandpiper and Battlewagon were converging on the downwind.  We and Sandpiper were on Starboard, Battlewagon on Port.  We were the leeward boat.  We began to push Sandpiper up, who then had to hail Battlewagon, calling them to keep clear.  To do that, Battlewagon had to jibe when they didn’t expect to.  As a result of that tangle we gained ground on our two rivals, and were able to keep that all the way to the finish.

At the leeward mark, our douse was quick as a bunny, but we got caught in some traffic as a smaller boat had the inside lane on us.  Try as we might, we couldn’t get inside them, and it cost us precious boat-lengths.

No worries, a few amazingly crisp tacks to cover Battlewagon — a few boat-lengths behind — and we were able to stay ahead of both our rivals.

Encore! Encore!

 

Plenty of wind yesterday for the Peaches N PHRF regatta out of Newport Yacht Club-Stoney Creek.  I mean 15g21 at the start of the day, down to a steady 10 knots or so by the end.  The watchword?  “Hold onto your false teeth!”  Here’s an awesome highlight video from Sapphire in our fleet, with plenty of good shots of PERSPECTIVE on the race course:

It was great to include a couple of crew-mates from our friends on Sandpiper.  Len & Trevor joined Bert, Rob I, Mark F and me for a very busy day on the bay.  Trevor and Len were great company, and I hope a new tradition has begun, to combine forces for regattas.  (We just gotta find Len a blue shirt :-)).

Before the races, I dialed the shrouds down to an even tighter setting, hoping we could fly the #2 headsail, because it points so much better than our #3.  I also had the backstay adjuster almost at max.  The rig was tight, and it worked!  We were able to consistently out-point our fleet, and won several upwind drag races against Battlewagon.  Of course, everyone hiking hard, and Len trimming the mainsail in every gust were essential to those little victories.

During the day, we experimented with reefing the mainsail with the #2 headsail.  We held our own against Battlewagon’s full main & headsail.  And during an upwind beat, when the wind started to slacken somewhat, the lads shook out the reef like a group of Volvo Ocean Racers.  Sweet!

Race #1:  Our start was solid, we found clear air quickly and were the first in our fleet to the windward mark.  On our first downwind leg, flying the kite, we were sailing deep and hit 9.2 knots, streaking away from the fleet.  A solid jibe and we had a hot angle to the leeward mark in big winds.  Things started to go wrong, and there was too much power, so we doused a bit early.  That put us astern of our fleet.  We fought back upwind, and the guys on the pointy end were kept very busy trying to assure a clean hoist.  But then our biggest disappointment happened:  the spinnaker halyard shackle let go halfway up the hoist, and the whole kite went into the drink.  Aaaarrrrrggggh!  (gotta look into that shackle since that is the second time this has happened recently).  Once we recovered, we were well astern.  We managed to overtake Tardis before the finish, but they still got us by a couple of seconds on PHRF.  Fourth place finish.

Faced with the prospect of white-sailing against a spinnaker fleet, we relaxed, enjoyed a bite of lunch, and got ready for the next race.

Race #2: Got the gun!  It was a thing of beauty. I wish I had the camera running for this race, because the highlight reel would make us proud.

• We were at risk of being pushed into the committee boat on our approach to the start, so we stalled for a few seconds (head to wind) to escape the trap.  This put us ten seconds late, and in a lot of bad air, so we tacked away quickly into clean air and sailed our own course to the windward mark.
• Sail trim was impeccable, even with ferocious gusts that tried to round us up
• At the windward mark, we were short of the layline by about a boat-width.  Battlewagon had just rolled over us and made the mark.  Rather than tacking twice, I pulled a chapter out of the Doug Folsetter tutorials.  We went for speed, and at the last moment, I turned hard upwind, letting the boats momentum carry us above the mark and back down to fill the sails, clearing the mark, and barely losing any distance.  This was the moment we kept talking about later in the day.  What a rush!
• And now we had to chase down Battlewagon, with Conspiracy also a few boat-lengths ahead.  The course had an offset mark in it, so there was a bit of a drag-race section before heading downwind.  Bert trimmed the headsail perfectly, Trevor eased the outhaul, Len filled the mainsail, and we rolled over Conspiracy and closed the gap on Battlewagon  (Check out Ben Gravelle on the bow of Conspiracy watching us go by…remember him giving us a newbie lesson onboard our first season?)
• Downwind, only Sapphire in our fleet flew their spinnaker, so we were in a wing-on-wing battle with Battlewagon.  We held our own even with reduced sail area, and managed to secure the inside lane for the rounding.
• But there was traffic ahead.  A whole cluster of smaller boats proceeding more slowly.  I thought I could get inside them all, but at the last minute had to bail.  A quick adjustment on the helm swung our bow within inches of the outboard engine of a blue hull.  By the time we were back on course, Battlewagon had slipped ahead of us and they had us right where they wanted us: behind and to leeward, right in their stink.
• We couldn’t tack away right away because of the traffic behind us, so we held on until it was clear to proceed. We converged with our rivals once again at the windward mark.  Once again a wee bit behind.
• Once again we kept up with them downwind.  Once again we got the inside lane.
• But this time there was less traffic, and we were able to round inside so that we were now in the better position. But it was a tight situation.  They were half a boat-length behind and our hulls were just a foot apart from each other.  Could have stepped across, even in the howling wind.
• “Hike Hard!  Jib in! Mainsail up!”, and slowly we began to pull away.  Rather than losing a pinching contest with a J35, we were able to gain distance and height on them until they were in our bad air, and slipped to leeward and behind.
• They tacked.  We tacked to cover.  Again we out-pointed them, and the separation grew.
• One more crisp tack to finish and we got the gun with 15 seconds to spare.

Confidence is up!  High fives all around!  Is the wind slackening?  Shake out the reef.  Good.  Change to the number one headsail.  Good.  Massive gusts (20+ knots).  Not good.  Put the reef back in.  Not enough.  Change back to the #2.  Okay. Ready.  Three minutes to start!

Race #3: With all that adjusting between races, our start approach wasn’t well prepared, and we were a bit late, but tacked away to find clear air and immediately shook out the reef.  Balance was great now as the worst gusts seemed to have blown themselves out.  We powered up and pointed high, once again meeting Battlewagon at the windward mark.  Sapphire was there too, having an excellent day (they were flying their spinnaker really well, and kept making up lost ground on the downwind legs).  Another drag-race to the offset mark. Another wing on wing downwind.  Another traffic jam, but this time I snuck inside some of the smaller boats, but Battlewagon had to go outside them.  A great advantage that set us up well to shut the door on our rivals.  Again, we were fast and high on the upwind, extending our lead by a lot.  Downwind, Battlewagon flew their spinnaker but didn’t manage to catch up.  Sapphire, on the other hand, overtook us, rounding the last leeward mark just ahead of us.  We immediately tacked away from their bad air, crossed the line of oncoming spinnakers. Tacked over, crossed them all again and realized we were on the layline to the finish!  We had to duck Sapphire, but just by inches, and we knew they would have to tack again.  Could we get another gun?  We were on port, Stigaro on starboard and it looked like we would have to duck them, but that would risk missing the finish line, and two more tacks.  Now, we couldn’t let that happen, so we pushed it very close to Stigaro, snuck around their stern, hardened up and pinched to the finish, just meters from the anchor line of the committee boat.  Another gun!

Final results are posted here, showing a second place overall finish.  Sapphire took top honours, and Battlewagon got third.  Another great regatta for PERSPECTIVE!  Thanks to all the crew for an awesome day.

Yup you read that right, and if we win the protest hearing, the Thursday crew will post a 1st place result!

How did this come about?

First off, the crew was sharp as a tack, trimming carefully for every flutter in the wind, and solid maneuvers throughout

Second, it was a night of light and shifty wind: almost a drifter, unless you avoided the worst of the light patches. Battlewagon, Sandpiper and we sailed low and fast toward the Hamilton shore to find better wind.  It was a long way around and we even tacked further over to Hamilton halfway to the windward mark, to get around the deep glassy hole.  At times it felt like we were sailing away from the target, as we got seriously knocked.  But that meant, once we tacked we were lifted all the way to the mark.  Legacy, Remarkable and Top Gun got trapped in the big milky patch for a while.

Third, we had a classic Port-Starboard crossing with Battlewagon three minutes after the start.  Rather than ducking us, they held their course and we had to duck them.  So, we protested!  That meant that after the race I had to run around looking for a form and getting Bob Duggan to sign it.  This could prove to be critical in the final analysis, since Battlewagon was first across the line tonight.

Fourth, there was a marvelous traffic jam at the windward mark, but we were able to slip inside them all, and avoid the worst impact of a great cloud of sail.  That was definitely a highlight.  We rounded just ahead of Top Gun!

Fifth, a quick hoist, and the joy of a hot spinnaker angle straight to the finish line.  Top Gun overtook us, but we were able to reel in Battlewagon and keep breathing down Top Gun’s neck the whole leg.

Sixth, there was an immense traffic jam developing at the finish line as faster boats caught up with slower ones.  I think there was a boat from every fleet crossing almost simultaneously.  This meant that the boats in our fleet had to spread out along the finish line, giving us precious seconds that we needed at the end.

We crossed three seconds behind Top Gun, which was enough to put us two seconds ahead after PHRF correction.  F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C !!!

Here’s the whole thing on high speed.  Crank the volume and enjoy MARS: The bringer of war 🙂

 

 

Like an everything bagel, tonight had all the spice. Mixing it up in the pre-start. A tight drag race upwind with Sandpiper.  A tight drag race with Remarkable downwind.  Gusts, wind shifts, water over the rail, an averted broach. Crisp tacks. Great teamwork and a respectable result.

It was a night where every gust and every shift needed to be managed.  The traveler was barely cleated and the spinnaker pole went forward and back just as much.  We had to be on our toes and we certainly were!

Our goal tonight was to beat both Battlewagon and Sandpiper.  A tough ask on any night.  At the finish line we were 15 seconds behind Sandpiper.  It was such a small margin, that it could have gone the other way with the tiniest of tweaks.  Alas!  So close, yet so far!

And what about Battlewagon?  We finished a full 7 minutes ahead.  Nice!

Here’s how it went….

Wind was right in the zone where its not clear whether #1 or #2 would be the better choice.  We went for #1!  Let’s not fool around here :-).  Sure, the mainsail was inside out in the worst gusts, but we were able to keep her pointed nice and high and fast in the lulls with the backstay on hard.  We started with Sandpiper to leeward in a long drag race — the upwind leg was almost a fetch.  We held them off for 2/3 of the leg and then just one moment of distraction on the mainsail controls and we responded slowly to a gust, slowed a bit, giving Sandpiper a chance to get her nose out in front and she made us pay for that.  We got bad air and slipped a boat length behind.

Coming into the windward mark, we were not far behind Top Gun and Remarkable.  Sandpiper had chosen to tack late and we thought they’d have to duck both of the big J35s, but they pulled off a really gutsy move and threaded between the two of them.  As a result, they got around before us.  Battlewagon had hugged the Burlington shore and got to the windward mark a bit behind us.

We all jibed around the mark, and took a moment to set our pole and hoist.  We lost a bit more ground to the other boats, but PERSPECTIVE loves a hot angle with the kite flying.  Kiwi kept it hot and we went for an inside lane on our fleet, catching right up to the leaders!

For quite a while we were breathing down Remarkable’s neck.  That was one of the highlights of the season:  if we could have slipped past them, we would have been out in front of the fleet. But it was not in the cards —  a couple of shifty gusts and we slipped behind.

All of us arrived at the leeward mark in rapid succession.  All of us except Battlewagon, who had waited a long time before hoisting, and fallen very far behind.  We opted to tack quickly, rather than follow the other boats.  They all tacked later.  We knew we needed another two tacks to finish, and for a while we thought they were going to make the finish line without tacking again, but an opportunity emerged when they all had to put in two tacks to finish.

No dice.  Despite really crisp tacks and great trim, we couldn’t quite real them in.  But check out the action:

 

Yes, that is the measure of the true wind speed that met the fleet just prior to the first start.  It all came from a monster cloud growing over Mordor in the southeast.  When provoked, Smaug’s dragon breath came for us with destruction in its mind. (OK, I’ve spliced the Hobbitt and the Lord of the Rings, but can you blame me?)

Needless to say, the race was abandoned.  We were among the fortunate, who had not yet set a headsail.  In fact we were debating between the #2 and the #1, waiting to see what that big cloud would do:  bring more wind, or snuff out the 8 -10 knots that were coming from the west.  It turns out #0 was the right choice!

Like a lion’s roar in the steppe, it was powerful and short-lived.  Like a gazelle, we got out of there.  In ten short minutes it was over.  In that time we carried all the way to the west end of the bay, going over eight knots on a luffing mainsail alone.  Fortunately, the new wind was from the south, so we could keep it on our beam and get away from the worst.

And then, just as quickly as it started, it was over.  No one had seen lightening, so we opted to hoist a jib and sail in the light rain.  Besides, we were already wet, and it was nice and warm out.  At the time we were making up our mind, Sandpiper came along and we challenged them to a friendly race to #11 and back (we were near #1 at this time). They accepted the challenge and away we went.

We were more prepared with our headsail than they were, so after a while we put in a few tacks to let them (almost) catch up, and off we went again.  By the time we were approaching #11, there was a steady 9 knots on the beam — we needed a bigger headsail!  Les and I got the #1 ready using one of the guys as a sheet, with the plan to douse just before rounding, jibe at the mark, and then hoist the new sail on the other tack.  It worked pretty well, except that we dropped the #3 a bit earlier than we needed to, and Sandpiper made up several boat-lengths in the interim.

Once the #1 was hoisted and trimmed, we stretched out a bit, but they were able to stick pretty close to us until the wind started to drop toward the west end of the bay.  Les touched mark #1 to claim our win.  Great fun!

 

And it was great to have Ken on board for the first time tonight, while Mark, Alvin and Rob were away.  He taught us a few new things about flaking our sails into the North headsail bags.  Good to know, and welcome Ken!