Category: Race Reports

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:

 

Guest Author: Gadget

Crew: Lifeline, Skootch, Twisted, Lazysheet, Gadget

We decided to go with the #2 headsail, and as the wind freshened steadily throughout the starts, we were glad we did.  We had a clean start, but were challenged to get to the windward mark ahaead of the fleet.  Some of the stronger gusts on the upwind leg convinced us to forego the spinnaker and head downwind wing on wing.  After rounding, it became clear that it was worth the risk, out came the bag and up went the chute.  The gusts had abated enough that with nearly 7 knots of boat speed, we were able to handle them cleanly.  Unfortunately, most of the damage had been done.  We made up a bit of ground, had 2 out of 3 clean jibes, and a decent enough dowse, but managed to dip a clew in the drink.  The rounding and final upwind were clean, the crew executing crisp tacks and a well judged lay line to the start finish.  We managed to finish ahead of Sandpiper, a nice reward for our efforts.  On the downwind back to the marina, we hoisted and flew the spinnaker with one sheet to dry it out, which worked well, and saved us the humiliation of hanging it in port!

Guest Author: Gadget

The course was set between marker #6 and a drop marker towards the Hamilton side.  A fairly short course. The wind was better at the pin end so we decided to start by running along the line, then heading up at the start, at the pin end.  We had good, clean air. The wind had veered considerably, and for a while, we were making the mark on our starting tack. The leeway slowly pushed us off and we had to put in a quick tack to make the mark.  The boats who had started at the boat-end were able to make the mark, so we had some catching up to do.

The hoist was clean and away we went.  We had gained a spot by the time we started our dowse, but the short course caught us out and we were still cleaning up the foredeck during rounding.  We tacked a bit too early, with lines in the way, and by the time we got the mess sorted out, we had some catching up to do.

Somehow the second hoist was clean, and although Battlewagon had hoisted their kite upside down, we weren’t able to gain quite enough on them before the finish line. 

We kept flying after the finish, overtook the soon to be soused sailors, and gave them the bow of shame, narry a moon to be seen.  Here’s a glimpse from on-board Battlewagon

 

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!

We were in for a big surprise tonight on our approach to the ‘leeward’ mark.  One by one, the boats ahead fell in a hole, turned 120 degrees, dropped their spinnakers, hoisted their jibs and found new wind.  We were a bit behind at the time and steered toward the Burlington shore, hoping to go around the worst of the hole.  No such luck.  When it was our turn, exactly the same thing happened.  And as the hole moved to swallow us, the new wind met the boats toward the Hamilton shore.  One by one we powered up and rounded the mark in about the same order we were in before the hole.

We saw that we might be hoisting again once we rounded and Squirrel had things ready lickety split.  Sure enough, we hoisted again, for a quick hot reach down to the finish.  We made ground on Battlewagon, but not likely enough to overtake them  C’est la vie!

All the action that decided the race happened on the upwind leg.  We had a pretty good start, and held our lane against Sandpiper.  About half way to the windward mark, we found ourselves in a clump with the J35s and Sandpiper.  I opted to tack away for clear air.  When we converged with them all a bit later, we had lost significant ground.  There’s a lesson in there somewhere, that I think I should have learned already.  Stay calm, take a little dirt, stay close to the pack, and pounce on the downwind.  Next time!

Anyway, there are some nice highlights in the video tonight, gorgeous weather, lots of wind at the start, good hoists and some fun overtaking boats on the last leg.  Enjoy!

 

 

Just a stunning evening on the bay tonight!  Yesterday’s thunderstorms cleared out the humidity leaving a bright sunny evening with little popcorn puffball clouds.

And plenty of wind!

Once again from the NWish, and once again lots of gusts.  The race committee set a fantastic course using a drop mark down near Heddle marine, just shy of where the old #12 would have been.  A giant freighter lay parked just northeast of the rhumb line between 6 and the drop mark, but the last beat had us passing eastward of the freighter.  When the gusty wind bounced off the freighter, it accelerated, changed direction and kept us on our toes.

And with three hoists, three douses and tons of gusts to manage, the five of us on board were plenty busy.  I know I’ll sleep well tonight 🙂

• Afterguy was away preparing for vacation coming up.
• Lazy Sheet took the night off to give his hamstring more time to recover.
• Dinghy took the pit job for the first time, and climbed the learning curve quickly — another baptism by fire — but with three repetitions tonight, it was a perfect chance to learn quickly.  All in all a fantastic performance: well done Rob!
• With Kiwi on the helm, I got a lot of practice managing big gusts, and three chances to haul in the spinnaker from the hole.  That more than doubled my experience doing that!
• Four hands packed, repacked, repacked, set, reset, and reset the spinnaker bag for three jibe sets — the first of which we were not prepared for and demanded a real time re-routing of everything.  Fantastic!
• Nonsuch tacked and tacked and trimmed and trimmed and trimmed and kept a keen eye on traffic.  With a short fast course and three laps, there were a lot of boats to avoid.
• And Kiwi, with his classic coolness, found ways to pinch around them rather than dipping, and brought us around a very tricky weather mark without the need for extra tacks.

This is why we sail!

Interestingly, with all that activity on board each boat, no one passed anyone.  At the start, Top Gun, Remarkable and Sandpiper got away, we were next with Battlewagon astern.  And that is the sequence in which we rounded each mark.  We did everything we could to try to reel in Sandpiper, but in the end it took everything we had to fend off Battlewagon on the last beat.

The first upwind was solid, and we rounded simultaneously with Battlewagon, both of us pinching, them with the inside lane.  We were shocked that we made it around, and don’t quite know how they managed to make it too.  We were set for a bear away set, so our hoist was delayed.  under genoa we took the inside lane over Battlewagon, and even though we hoisted at a similar time, we had gained an advantage they never got back.

All was good until the last run.  We had become accustomed to the wind angle which allowed us to sail a hot angle until the part of the course where the freighter changed the wind direction and then soak down to the mark.  But this time the wind direction had shifted and we got caught a bit too high on the course.  Maybe we should have jibed, but the swirly wind wasn’t reliable and boats ahead and to leeward were soaking down to the mark.  We did the same, running dead downwind, nearly suffering a Chinese jibe.  In the meantime, Battlewagon took a lower line and were able to stay filled and fast, eating into our lead.  We doused early, jibed the genoa twice and rounded just a few boat lengths ahead of them.

Somehow in the rounding they managed to grab a line to windward of us just behind.  This was trouble. Typically upwind they can out point us, and I had a picture in my mind of us falling off and ending up behind them after the first tack.  The wind by now had softened enough that we could focus on technical sailing, and gradually we built more speed and pointing ability and Kiwi was able to climb up onto Battlewagon’s line.  We gave up a few boat-lengths in the process, but now Battlewagon was in our bad air and began to fall behind.  They tacked, we tacked to cover and again we focused on pointing.  Gradually they fell off our line, so that when we both put in our final tack to the finish line, we were well ahead.

We just won a pointing battle with a J35!!!

I think there were three contributing factors:

• Much tighter shrouds.  Tonight I dialed them up really high, beyond the settings I thought were for 22+ knots.  I’m testing the hypothesis that we are only starting to make things firm enough.  Tonight was a good indication that we are heading in the right direction.
• Using the flat #2.  Sure, we were overpowered in the gusts and there were times when the mainsail was completely inside out.  But, in the lulls we could power up and point.  Let’s leave the #3 for the extreme nights.
• Focusing on the back edge of the mainsail, and good communication between helm and mainsail trimmer to get as much out of the main while managing weather helm.

So, we’ll keep pushing in the direction of tighter shrouds.  One important footnote:  Kiwi spotted that we had negative mast bend with the initial settings of the shrouds.  We were able to neutralize this with some backstay, but it was a bit troubling.  After the race, using the theory that this was a compression bend, we eased the lowers a few turns and were able to straighten it out.  Now we have a new set point for moderate to high wind, and can start to fine tune from there.