Author: Rob DeWitte

 

Boy was this ever a busy night!  Plenty of breeze, a bit shifty, only one guy (person, not line) on the fore deck, and a triangle course with two laps.  That means 2x hoist, 2x jibe at the mark, 2x douse.  Squirrel sure earned his snack tonight!

And we were joined by special guest Bob Duggan (Induljence) who took care of mainsail trim and went forward for the spinnaker maneuvers. Thanks for the great tips, Bob, and for all the work on the pointy end of the boat.

But why do we call this race “Eclipsed?” ?  Well, when you watch the highlight reel you will see it.  On the first lap we fell prey to all their tactics — a lee bow, forced up while flying the spinnaker (they were flying their massive genoa), and getting stuck in their wind shadow every time we tried to pass them to leeward.  After the first douse we lost them, but by the end of the second lap, we were hunting them down to the finish line.  They crossed about 25 seconds before us.  Were we eclipsed?  It’ll be within seconds one way or another, after handicaps are applied.

It was also a night full of highlights:  7+ knots of speed, water over the rail, a fantastic start where we pulled away from the fleet, a breathtaking crossing within a meter of the stern of Black Magic (we never saw them again after that), and water over the rail!  Oh and it was the first race of the year in short sleeves and short pants…great to feel warm out there!

But it was a race won and lost by technical execution, and we’re just not ready yet to win that kind of duel.  The legs were so short there was barely a time for a breather, and each spinnaker maneuver cost us precious boat lengths.  Give us another month of experience and a full crew, and then let’s see how it goes!

But two weeks of racing, and we are still outpacing Battlewagon handily!  Sandpiper was also behind us at the finish.  Black Magic won the race, but were we second or third?  Only after the PHRF calculation will we know if we were eclipsed or not.

Yes it was a twitchy night.  First the start sequence got bungled and restarted, but by then we were confused and guessing.  Then a great big ship anchored in the bay made the first part of the downwind leg very strange.  Add a few lines in odd places on the spinnaker and we had a twitchy night.  Would I trade it for any other night?  Never!

In the end we sailed over 6 knots of boat speed both upwind and downwind in winds that rarely got over 7 knots.  When we found our mode, we were fast!

Final analysis:  we were fourth out of five boats (ahead of Battlewagon!).  Both Eclipse and Sandpiper put in great performances to finish ahead of us, as did Top Gun (of course).

Here’s how it went.

We got completely confused during the race start, when the committee boat started blowing extra horns.  They were following protocol for re-starting the start sequence, but since we didn’t know the protocol it was beguiling.  Thank goodness Kiwi clued into what was going on, and said “I think we have about two minutes”. That gave us enough presence of mind to put in two quick tacks, avoid a trap and burn some extra time.  Somehow, we put in an awesome start, about middle of the line in clear air.

But Top Gun had a strong mode well to windward of us, and seemed to be pointing a bit higher, with Sandpiper 5 boatlengths astern.  After a few minutes, we estimated that we could tack across Sandpiper’s bow — it was a close run thing, but we did clear, and a good thing too because we didn’t have right of way.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t caught on video — we barely cleared their bow!

So at this point we were in second place, but that didn’t last.  Eclipse had tacked early and found some wind none of us caught, and just before rounding the windward mark, Sandpiper had made up the distance, coming charging up to leeward of us to round ahead of us.  Game on!

(We never saw Eclipse again, and they earned the gun.  And I have a suspicion we were faster on port-tack than on starboard.  Time to re-measure the mid and lower shrouds to make sure we’re getting enough mast sag to leeward)

But Sandpiper was slick.  A jibe-set on their first race of the year!  Our lads had the spinnaker up quicker than them, but our bear-away set sailed us toward the wind shadow of the big freighter in the middle of the bay.  Final analysis showed that Sandpiper’s decision  was the better one:  to jibe first and then hoist.  Kudos to them….we never caught up.

Our jibes were good opportunities to learn (read: strange things happened), but we kept ourselves ahead of Battlewagon and found a great mode after the second jibe — over six knots of gurgly water speed heading straight to the mark.

A very smooth dowse, jibe while rounding and we were away and flying to the finish line on one tack with a solid lead over Battlewagon.  For the third race of the year, I’m thrilled with how much went right while we were out there.  You could hear the gears of everyone’s brains learning!

But of course, with The Cunning Ham on snack duty, we promptly forgot about all that and enjoyed an impressive epicurean spread.  As Spring has reluctantly begun, none of us were shivering, and we lingered long under a twighlight sky.  See ya on Thursday!

What a great night! What a great crew! What a great result!

This whole race was tremendous fun.  There were only two of us in the fleet tonight, so it ended up as a match race between PERSPECTIVE and Battlewagon, and it started out as a tough battle on the upwind leg, but some good decisions, great maneuvers, terrific focus from everyone and a massive lift made all the difference.

Here’s how it went.

At the start, I thought we were in trouble, coming to the line on a beam reach with Battlewagon coming up quickly to leeward to close the door on us at the committee boat.  Only at the last moments did I realize there was room for us so we hardened up and went for the line, crossing just one boatlength behind Battlewagon, and to windward.  Not bad timing, but a horrible position as we were stuck with them at our lee-bow, a notorious spot of bad air.

We tacked away quickly to escape the lee-bow, but Battlewagon responded immediately to cover us.  Even though we put in a crisp tack, they were just as nimble, and we were in their wind shadow again.  Time to try a page out of all that winter reading:  we sailed a slightly lower course to go a tiny bit faster and sure enough we pulled forward out of their shadow into clear air when we could harden up again.  The intensity on the boat was palpable as we tweaked everything to get every last ounce of boat speed.  But it paid off in spades when we pulled far enough ahead to tack across Battlewagon’s bow.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget that sequence.  Full credit to the crew for really crisp tacking with the new big genoa (first time out with the big sail!).

And then something marvelous happened.  Battlewagon held their line, hoping to tack on the layline for the windward mark, but as we split away from them, we began to notice boats ahead of us getting lifted.  Sure enough it began to happen to us, and the lift progressed until we could pinch our way to the windward mark, cutting off a huge corner of the course, and avoiding two extra tacks.  This sequence put Battlewagon quite a way in our rear view mirror as we approached the windward mark.

Still plenty of time to blow it though, and it was time for the spinnaker hoist.  By now, we were all pretty keyed up, but managed to keep calm and sail on.  Four hands and Squirrel got the spinnaker bag attached, the pole hoisted, and sure enough, the chute went up clean first time!  There was certainly a lot of chaos in the cockpit as we fumbled around sorting out which was the guy and which was the sheet, but once the jib was furled and the guy was cleated, we found a good mode, sailing a hotter angle than the other boats heading downwind.  Soon an end-to-end jibe that was almost flawless, and once again we were on the line to the mark.  We tweaked the pole position and found ourselves on a broad reach going over six knots.

At the leeward mark we gave ourselves a bit of time to douse, and it all went flawlessly.  Then we opened up the jib and started gobbling up sharks on the way to the finish line, riding that same awesome lift all the way to the finish line after just one tack.  The sound of the gun as we crossed the line was a great reward for a great crew, and further confirmation that all the adjustments are paying off.

The spirit on board was ebullient as we cracked a cold one and toasted each other on a job well done, especially up there on the foredeck. And three cheers for the wind and weather: no thunderstorms, only a few drops of rain, and what threatened to be a drifter turned out to be a thrilling night on the water!

I wish I took pictures on day one, but here is a summary: Calvin and I removed the old track, bored out the holes to get to clean wood/fibreglass and filled up the holes with epoxy. Worked like a charm (except we bored the holes by hand with a single spade bit, which got duller as we went: blisters!)

On day two, gadget, squirrel and I lined up Both sides of the track, drilled all the holes and trimmed up a backing plate. It was an all day job and we burned through ten drill bits and one knuckle (Gil's), but we went home tired and proud of 66 new holes perfectly lined up, and ready for installation. That will be day 3.

So, every time we are sailing the big Genny, thank and Gil and Calvin for their expertise and days of effort. I basically vacuumed and brought lunch.

Oh and Lazy sheet popped by with coffee in the afternoon. A well times perk!

In Album 3/26/16