Author: Rob DeWitte

Yes folks, this season has gone out with a whimper.  The wind that died on Tuesday, stayed dead on Thursday.  So we had a goofy night on the bay.  Some would argue that it was the current (?) that floated us the width of the bay in 56 minutes.  The speedometer read 0.00 nearly the entire time, with a few bursts of speed that got us up to 0.6 knots from time to time.

But what a crew!  These guys will do anything to win!  Weight forward and leeward is important in light air, which the guys really took to heart:  can you work out who is who?

It must have helped, because unlike Tuesday, we actually made curfew, and beat Battlewagon by more than four minutes!

Along the way, the lads showed signs of getting restless.  Before they got the itch to OOTCH, I had SKOOTCH break out the HOOTCH.  A pint of grog and some hard tack, and they were merry men once more!

Thanks for a great season, guys, which we could have gone out with one last tear around the bay….next year for sure!

Wind, wind, where are thou? Wherefore art thou dying so?

Gorgeous day, nice strong wind in slots near Hamilton before the start, bit this wind lacked conviction, and as the sun lowered it died down.  The result?  The race committee set a course that was just too long.  We were almost within hailing distance when we heard two guns:  one was for the first boat to cross the line in a fleet that started 15 minutes before us.  The other was the curfew notification.  It was getting dark, but we finished the race anyway, the mark barely visible.

 

Lots of highlights tonight, though, despite the dying wind, especially the second time we were rounding #5.  All the boats were in slow motion as we crossed paths with our rivals on Sandpiper and then Battlewagon. Up at the mark, another boat had missed the mark and was starting to crawl downwind to ready for another attempt.  Which way do we go? drop below them and them try to climb up around the mark?  hope they make some progress so we can slip between them and the mark.  In slow motion a small hole appeared between them and the mark, and we aimed for it.  It was just wide enough for us when we got there!

And then there was the timpani.  Yes, we brought musical instruments on board this evening, including Lazy Sheet’s set of timpani, which he used to great affect to highlight the mounting tension as we began to gain on Battlewagon in the home stretch of the race.  Despite the fantastic sound track, there was no happy ending in store for this race.

Wait!  Yes there was!  On such a warm night with an early sunset, we stayed afloat until well after dark, ghosting along at very light boat speed, enjoying our snack and soaking up the tranquility of a becalmed bay basking in the glow of the Hamilton city lights.  A fantastic  way to cap off the season for the Tuesday crew.  Thanks for a great summer, guys!

Sublime.  Absolutely sublime.  It’s September and its still above 30C at the start of a race at 6:30 in the evening. It’s still balmy and calm well after sunset.  The glowing clouds above the failing sun have the hue of a tropical sundown.  And we’re out there in it, sailing!

This has been the best summer to be on the water, ever on record, I would assert.  And the lads on PERSPECTIVE savoured every precious knot of wind — and the knots of wind were rationed out tonight like rum on a British naval ship of the line with a frugal captain.

Upwind was a nice leg, actually.  Wind was enough to get us going, and it built to a point where we had four knots of boat speed and a comfortable heel.  During the pre-start I blundered us into a hole the size of Nevada beneath the wind shadow of Eclipse — now I completely understand the meaning behind that boat’s name:  the wind was completely eclipsed!  By the time I found clean air, we were a bit late for the line, and had provided enough room for Battlewagon to slip in between us and the committee boat. (despite my attempts to dissuade them with warnings that they had no room).  Sigh.

So, off we tacked into clear air, but away from the favoured side of the course.  Very nice maneuvers and good sail trim got us as much distance as we could, but even so, when we crossed the fleet we were well behind.  Heading into the better air toward Burlington, we gained speed and held our course until the last moment so that we could take the most advantage of the better wind.  Great move!  We converged with our fleet having made up a lot of ground — dead even with Battlewagon and ahead of Eclipse.  Picture us coming into the layline just five boat lengths below the windward mark on a course to T-bone Battlewagon.  With 20/20 hindsight, I wish I had dipped them and punched through to clear air to windward of them.  Instead I tacked into their lee bow (clever!) only to discover we would not make the mark.  Did I mention that Gil and David had begun to set the pole?  Did I mention a hundred swirling boats rounding the mark?  Did I mention Battlewagon in a controlling position from behind?  It’s a fine mess I got us in, Oliver!

What a relief when Battlewagon also realized they missed the mark and tacked away, giving us room to tack.  Gadget had the pole out of the way in no time (I think he hid it up his sleeve), and we popped in two quick tacks, rounded the mark and hoisted without much delay.  (I think they’ve got a magic want up there on the foredeck).

And now the downwind duel began.  Battlewagon came on strong with a good hoist, breathing down our necks.  We managed to gather boat speed on a hotter angle to cross their bow and avoid being smothered by their bad air, and then headed deeper downwind with them just a few boat lengths behind and to leeward.  Our wind dropped and we struggled to fill the spinnaker.  Eventually we found a mode, but it was intense with Battlewagon breathing down our necks.  We sent everyone to the bow to reduce wetted surface area, and I think this made the difference, allowing us to keep in clear air, despite Battlewagon’s attempts to smother us.

Up ahead we could see Sandpiper filling on the opposite jibe.  It was time to make a move.  Around we came, struggling to keep the kite filled, and the lads recovered from a dropped guy very quickly.  First a hot angle to gain boat speed, then settling onto Sandpiper’s line.  Battlewagon mirrored our maneuvers and ended up once again behind and to leeward of us.  Not far enough behind for my liking!

We followed fair air all the way to the Hamilton shore, using other boats as a guide of where the wind was, and where it wasn’t.  A solid jibe where we needed it and Battlewagon mirrored us again.  But the way the geometry worked out, they were now to windward of us — in a good position to steel our air.  And we were both on line to the finish.  This was the critical moment.  Playing all our cards, I chose a hotter angle, picked up speed, crossed Battlewagon’s bow within a few boatlengths, using our momentum to carry us through their wind shadow into clear air.  They could have chosen to cover us, but we were in control, by being between them and the finish line.  Instead, they held their course, we trimmed the spinnaker neatly and added distance on them to the finish.

At the end, we crossed the line 2.5 minutes ahead of them, mostly because we put all our crew weight forward, and kept tweaking the spinnaker trim (pole position forward/aft and up/down) to squeeze every bit of boat speed we could.  But also because the wind kept fading, and because we had consolidated our lead into a tactical advantage in the last portion of the race.

And Eclipse? at least seven minutes behind us.  The mood on board was as much aglow as the watercolour sky, and only got better as Nonsuch unveiled a picnic for princes, which we enjoyed on the warmest September evening I can remember.

Sublime!

Yep, we were all doing double duty on this great day of sailing.  Three guys doing the work of five or six, including six spinnaker hoists, two jibes, six douses, five starts (two were general recalls), countless tacks, a bit of confused navigation and some brilliant tactics!  And it wasn’t that we each did two jobs, we flowed to whatever needed doing and could be reached.  At times, Lazy Sheet was on the bow, Squirrel was in the pit or trimming the main, and I had spinnaker sheet & guy in hand while steering with my knees, jibing the main and grinding in the genoa (not quite all at once, but it felt like it!)

Three tired guys, glowing with satisfaction after three splendid races.  And the satisfaction was well earned!  All the spinnaker work went off without a hitch, and we even stuck our nose in a few times at the leeward mark, maneuvering for the inside lane and mark room in a clump of traffic.  Confidence was very high.  So high that we pulled off two port-tack starts among a dozen boats.  We were rewarded with clear air on the favoured tack each time, but we had to pay for it by dipping a lot of boats.  Great highlights!  And once the boat was put away, we enjoyed our apres-sail on the water, the skipper took a swim, and the swell grew into our bones.  On land, our heads kept swaying with the lake’s chop.  I can still feel it a day later!

How did we do?  In a fleet of big, fast boats, we were second or third across the finish line each race, and one of the boats ahead of us was Doug Folsetter in his viper.  In our wake was Big Yellow, Sapphire (a gorgeous C&C 9.9 that parks at Bronte in the slip across from Blue Nun), Stigaro, and sometimes Don’t Panic, who also had a great day out there.  When the awards were given out in the evening, we wondered if a third place was possible, but PHRF got us, and the honours went to our friends on Stigaro.  Don’t panic took second.

But never mind that….check out the highlight reel and judge for yourself — this was some of our best competitive sailing ever.

Its hard to see on camera, but there were some moments of great tactical maneuvers:

• overtaking Big Yellow on the downwind, crossing their bow and maintaining the inside lane through to the leeward mark
• overtaking Sapphire in time to gain mark room at the leeward mark, and passing Cayenne (winner of the next fleet) in the same passage.
• out-pointing all the non-vipers on the upwind legs, which really helped us finish the race well — the last upwind of the day had us out point and out-pace Stigaro to gain the line with two fewer tacks than them… a new experience for us.

And there was a lot of learning!

• Downwind, when sailing quite deep, Cayenne began closing in from behind.  I noticed they had their spinnaker pole set quite high.  We imitated them, gained a knot of boat-speed, and pulled away.  Lesson learned!
• Starting Gear is real.  I’ve read about it tons, but have never felt it.  At this regatta, we found it.  But we learned this one the hard way.  A few times in the race, the boat felt slow, and we just couldn’t pick up speed.  Once the main was twisted a bit (sheet out, traveler up), we started to accelerate.  It happened enough times that I started to get some intuition about when I could feel it happening.  Let’s hope that translates into better performance in our starts.  At this regatta, with the boat in the ‘wrong gear’ at the starts, we began each race behind most of the fleet.
• Watching the olympics is helpful!  Nacras and 470s have retriever lines built into their spinnakers that enable really fast dousing.  So we created a retriever line of our own and that helped us douse 4-5 boat lengths closer to the leeward mark.  Brilliant!  here it is

And we just kept getting better at our spinnaker maneuvers.  Here’s a sequence of all the Hoists:

And here are our Douses:

And for those of you who want to see it all in sequence, here’s Race 1:

And here’s Race 2:

And the first half of Race 3 (camera ran out of room):