Author: Rob DeWitte

There’s a chapter in Walker’s book on advanced racing tactics that talks about the perils of greed.  Tonight, yours truly learned the hard way that Walker was indeed correct!

It was a very chilly night on the bay.  Temperature was 11C, feels like 8 on land, but with a cold Northeasterly breeze off the frigid lake it was much colder out there.  Add a layer of fog spreading out overhead, and it was spectacularly cold, especially upwind!  Before the race, the cold was seeping into to me despite thermal underwear, but once we were in our start sequence, that all faded away, and we were warmed inside by the action and the fun.

The breeze was really perfect.  An almost steady 8-10 knots, a bit lighter near mark 8 (close in to the Burlington shore), so there was plenty of power, but no stressful moments.  And that was a relief since we were a little short handed with both David and Squirrel doing double duty on our first Thursday race of the season.  These guys flung away their cobwebs quickly though — just compare hoist 1 and hoist 2 in the highlight real and you will see the crew leap up the learning curve!

And our old friends on Big Yellow were out to play today.  So what did I do?  You bet, we tangled with them!  And I got greedy at the leeward mark.  And it didn’t pay.  And after the race, Skootch pointed out that I missed an opportunity on the approach to that mark — we would have been in our rights to push them up and cross their bow to claim the inside lane to the leeward mark.  In summary, a missed opportunity and my greedy blunder cost us about 15 boat lengths — probably enough to claim second.  Instead we’ll settle for a third.

But enough yammering….let’s have the play by play!

Today the start was well timed.  The rest of our fleet went for the pin end, and we took the line near the boat.  It seemed like we were first across the line, and crossed well ahead of Eclipse who tacked to port early. Upwind we found a nice mode after a bit of sail trim adjustments to get speed, but tacked a bit early for the layline.  An easy correction and we headed to the mark behind Top Gun, Eclipse and Take Notice Again.  But not far astern at all.  Our first hoist was fair, but we took our time to make sure everything was set.  We almost immediately put in a jibe and had a great run down to the leeward mark, overtaking Eclipse and making up ground on Big Yellow and Top Gun.

Approaching the mark, we converged with Big Yellow.  We were both on port and PERSPECTIVE was the leeward boat, sailing a hotter angle.  I might have been able to push them up and pull clear ahead before the 3-boat-length circle around the leeward mark, but I didn’t recognize the opportunity until Skootch pointed it out later.  Instead, since I wanted to give us all lots of time to douse, I gave Big Yellow the inside lane.  The douse was no problem, but we lost a lot of speed as Big Yellow’s enormous wind shadow smothered us.

And then I got greedy.

“Stall, David, stall”, I whispered, and we let our sails go slack, slowing the boat as Big Yellow passed.

“Calvin, let me know when I am clear of their stern”, I whispered to the bow.

Once clear I began the turn, planning to sneak into the gap that I expected Big Yellow to leave as they rounded the mark.  I had this picture in my head of slipping in to windward of them, and stealing their air. But they were onto us, and shut the door at the last second.

I had no choice, but to bear up, miss the mark, and put in a 360 to get around it.  By then, Big Yellow was 10 boatlengths ahead and flying away at full speed.  We never caught them.

Greed…one of the seven deadly sins.  Starting to sink in. 🙂

Never mind!  We just had to try 😉

Back up and back down we got more chances to practice our tacking, our trim, our hoist, our jibes, and we made up some of the distance, but not enough to overtake Big Yellow, even though they owe us 10 seconds per mile.

But we all agreed — just add 15 more degrees centigrade and a nice sunset, and it would have been a perfect night on the water!

Hat’s off to Skootch, Squirrel and Lifeline for braving the elements.

 

Nearly indeed!

It all came down to the finish.  We got a knock heading for the pin end of the line.  TopGun and Sandpiper were to windward.  Without that knock it would have been a photo finish for all three boats, but as it happened, we needed two tacks to cross the line for a third place finish.  But never mind, I’m all aglow with the satisfaction of hunting Top Gun to the finish line.  Fantastic!

And it didn’t come easily.  Twice, we lost enough time to make all the difference, and even so, it came down to that last wind shift. Fantastic!

It was a chilly night on the bay, especially upwind into the northeastern breeze.  Wind was 8-10 knots away from the burlington shore, but there were some deep holes near mark #9, and we were almost becalmed at times.  But the western sky was beautiful as the sun lowered into fluffly clouds down at the end of the bay.

Here’s the play by play:

Our start was tragic.  I’m totally out of rhythm.  The lads kept the boat moving fast, and our tacks were really crisp, but I wandered around too long to far below the line, putting in too many tacks.  In the end we managed a port-tack start near the boat end of the line — and that is sort of what I think I wanted — but we were at least 20 seconds late, passing just astern of Battlewagon.

On port we raced out toward Hamilton, where we believed the stronger wind was, and at times we were crusing along at 7+ knots with tons of clear air.  Eventually the breeze began to slacken so we tacked to cross the bay and rejoin our fleet.  It was really cool, all the boats tacked onto the same line as us, and we were all really close, but we were trailing them all — Battlewagon was really flying with brand new mainsail and genoa, and they had pulled quite some distance away from us.  At this time, we could clearly see that we were pointing higher than Top Gun.  In fact, I think we were pointing as high as anyone in the fleet — Oh what a feeling!  But I didn’t like following on the same line, so we tacked away, and this was our second mistake:  I didn’t account for the freighter at anchor, and tacked too soon to clear him.  When we ran out of room and tacked back, we fell into a huge lull, while the rest of our fleet carried on without delay.

Combine those two errors, and we were the last to round the weather mark, at least a minute behind everyone in our fleet.  But then, as so often happens, we hoisted crisply, filled the spinnaker in the light breeze and began to reel everyone in.  After a quick jibe it did not take long to overtake Eclipse and Battlewagon, who didn’t raise their spinnakers.  Sandpiper had put in a jibe set, and sailed high over toward Hamilton in hopes of catching better air more quickly.  Top Gun had jibed earlier than us and were sailing very deep.  We gathered speed and then turned downwind following Top Gun’s track.  Flying the kite in the light breeze was tricky, and it changed directions a bit — but we were really sharp, and made small adjustments to our trim to get the most from the wind.  Slowly but surely we closed the gap on Top Gun, but not quite enough to steel their air — that would have been dreamy!

As we approached the leeward mark, all three of us converged, with Top Gun rounding first, Sandpiper getting by us and just a few boatlengths separating each boat.  Our douse was slick, and we waited to the last moment, rounded and began to power up.

Decision time.  Top Gun pushed toward the Hamilton shore before tacking onto the layline for the boat end of the finish line.  Sandpiper tacked at almost the same moment, aiming at the middle of the line.  We tacked too, hoping for the pin end.  It was looking really good as we powered up and it looked like the pin end was nearer — had we cut off a corner and shaved precious boat lengths?  Alas no!  Just before the line, we got knocked, and had to tack twice to finish.

I guess you could call this the one that got away!

What a fantastic start to the Spring Series.

The boys are back on the bay, and the marina was full of our laughter as we huddled down below out of the chilly breeze for our traditional snack.  Four hands was sitting on the Ottoman (Spinnaker), Lazy Sheet was spooning salsa onto our lime chips, and Afterguy (Mr Clean no longer), spilled it on his precious clean cabin floor.  Wait — I’m talking about snack — I think I left something out.  Yes, I did — we went sailing and put in a solid race for the first time out.

And for those of you who might doubt whether we sailed or just gathered to share a beer and few laughs — here’s proof: Squirrel snapped these from Merlot.  That’s us with the spinnaker up, hunting down Sandpiper to the finish line.

The breeze was perfect — a steady 10 knots or so.  We don’t really know because our instruments weren’t installed yet, so we were running on instinct.  But it felt strong and the boat powered up wonderfully.  Here’s how the race went.

Our start was pretty good, especially considering that we didn’t have a big timer counting down our start — I was using an app on my iPhone strapped to my wrist, and could only check every once in a while.  We were maybe ten seconds late for the line, not quite fully powered up but in a good position near the committee boat and well to windward of the fleet.  (Umm, this is the point when I should admit that only Sandpiper and Battlewagon came out to play with us).

Upwind we pointed as high as Sandpiper.  Let me repeat that:  we pointed as high as Sandpiper!  Shortening the forestay has had the desired effect, and we sailed parallel to them, on a line to windward.  Wonderful!!!!

We fiddled a bit with our sail trim, trying to find a good mode that didn’t have the mainsail backwinded.  As we did so, we lost a few boatlengths to Sandpiper, so that they crossed in front of us before we tacked to the windward mark.  I’m not used to pointing so high, and we almost overstood the windward mark as a result.  Instead we came at it on port tack, sawing off a nice bit of distance.  Great — next time, tack earlier!  The downside is that we didn’t have the usual time to prepare our spinnaker hoist. Usually we set the bag on port tack, then set the pole when we are on the layline, and there is often plenty of time.  Nonetheless our hoist was fantastic and we began to gain on Sandpiper who was now about 6 boat lengths ahead of us.

We tried a few different ways to set the spinnaker pole and managed to close the gap on Sandpiper.  They jibed and then we put in our jibe.  Yup, this maneuver needs practice!  Nothing went wrong, but it wasn’t satisfyingly smooth.  But looking back at last year, jibes were usually a bit rough.  As a result, Sandpiper got us by 36 seconds, or about ten boat lengths at this speed.

And Battlewagon?  nearly five minutes astern.  Interestingly, they sailed without a main sail, and didn’t fly their spinnaker.  I believe they have a new mainsail on the way.

Since the race was short, we stayed out for quite a while and put in ten jibes with the spinnaker before dousing.  With enough repetition, we started to get more organized and put in several nice smooth ones.  We should do that again.  Upwind we played around with the mainsail controls and finally found a mode that removed the backwind from the genoa:  outhaul tight, traveler up high and mainsheet backed off so that the boom was centerline and the mainsail had plenty of twist.  Once we got there, the sail looked great and the cunningham and backstay adjuster did their jobs perfectly.  This will definitely help us upwind next time.  Oh, and let’s remember to get our halyards nice and snug!

Thanks for a great start Tuesday!  Thursday, here we come!