Category: Updates

I’ve been corresponding about our PHRF rating, and learned that each season, the PHRF-people do something called a race analysis where they evaluate each boat’s performance relative to their PHRF rating as compared to the boats they compete with.  Here’s the analysis for us for last season (the comments on the right are my own).

 

				PHRF					Performance
Year	Event	Name	Class	Rating	Relative Performance	Races	Dev	Diff	vs Rating	Consistency
2016	THURS	SABOTAGE	VIPER 830	60	-11	9	25.2	-71	Well Above	Variable
2016	THURS	PERSPECTIVE	J-100	70	70	8	16.9	0	At Rating	Fairly Consistent
2016	THURS	TAKE NOTICE AGAIN	X-Yachts 1 Ton	63	64	6	20.4	1	Near Rating	Mostly Consistent
2016	THURS	ECLIPSE	C&C 41	72	74	5	15.7	2	Near Rating	Fairly Consistent
2016	THURS	BATTLEWAGON	J-35	72	80	11	36.3	8	Underperformed	Highly Variable
2016	TUES	TOP GUN	J-35	72	41	12	21.2	-31	Well Above	Mostly Consistent
2016	TUES	SANDPIPER	BENETEAU 1ST 36.7	78	67	9	10.4	-11	Outperformed	Consistent
2016	TUES	PERSPECTIVE	J-100	70	70	7	17.7	0	At Rating	Fairly Consistent
2016	TUES	ECLIPSE	C&C 41	72	74	6	4.4	2	Near Rating	Very Consistent
2016	TUES	BATTLEWAGON	J-35	72	105	13	38.1	33	Well below Rating	Highly Variable

What you can see is that we essentially performed at rating, and were fairly consistent relative to our competitors.  Not surprisingly, Sabotage and Top Gun performed well above their ratings (ie: faster).  And clearly Sandpiper outperformed their rating.

This is a good new/bad news story.  On the positive side: it means that we are sailing PERSPECTIVE as well as the average crew among our competitors!  That’s a big step forward from the past, and something to celebrate.  We’re also fairly consistent (as a comparison, Coyote’s deviation is 11-15, just slightly more consistent than us).  Next step:  outperform like Sandpiper did in 2016!

The flip side that I think it is unlikely that we’ll get an adjustment in our rating this year (but I haven’t given up).

Couldn’t resist a little bit of fun…let’s do more of this in 2017!

 

You hop in the car, glance at the clock. “Do I have my water bottle?  Am I on snack duty?”  Traffic.  Again.  Check the clock.  OK, it’s moving. Glance at the lake.  Is there wind?  Yes!

Park.  Through the gate. Your senses awake.  You can feel the sun, sense the breeze. A spring forms in your step – whitecaps! Butterflies!

Climb on board. Greetings. Bag below. Uncover the main. Lower the jib sock.  Cockpit bags.  Battery switch. Start the engine. Cast off.  Motor out.  Fenders away. Hoist the main. Bear off.  Kill the engine.  Ahhhh!

Do you miss it?  I do.  This is the magical moment as we surge away from the clamour ashore.

Open the jib.  Now the wind grabs us!  Set the genoa cars, tweak the halyards. Put in a few tacks to shake out the cobwebs.  Check in at the committee boat and start planning the race while we dance with the elephants in the pre-start.

By now we are chatty, enjoying the camaraderie.  A meeting of old friends, reluctant to focus on the race but no longer strapped into the cares ashore.  It’s a perfect transition; an overture to the drama about to unfold.

Start the clock, unfurl the jib. It’s all focus now as we become one smooth unit.  Timing.  Tacking. Positioning. Going for the line. “Harden up!  Up & out, lads!”  A hundred decisions in five minutes and now we tweak and adjust, look for wind, manage gusts and judge our next move.

A few tacks and it’s time to set the bag.  One more and we are on the layline.  Set the pole.  Pre-feed the guy, and – all together now — “CLEAT THE GUY!”  Hoist!  Made!  Sheet on!  Whoosh!

(It’s not always whoosh, but we have this maneuver nailed.  Jibing?  We’ll nail that next season).

Time to douse.  Open the jib.  Drop the pole. Haul the guy. Down the hole. Blow the sheets. Pay out the halyard. Round the mark.  Harden up!

When we cross the line, we are younger than when we arrived at the marina.  Our lungs are full of fresh air.  Our minds are clear of to-do-list-items.  We notice the beauty of the glowing sky in the west.  This is a contagious sensation.  As addictive as any drug.  And all the more powerful because it’s done together.

Calmly now we furl the jib, flake the main, cover them both, stow the cockpit bags & deploy the fenders.  Like a well-oiled machine we slip into the slip, secure the lines and still the engine.

Like brothers, we share a moment and toast another glorious night on the bay.  “CLEAT THE GUY!”

Thanks for a great season guys!

 

Well, would you look at that!

On the left, from the summer series joint with Royal Hamilton: third place on Tuesdays and second place overall!  (Battlewagon took first overall, even though we beat them most of the time we both showed up!)

And on the right, for the BSBC participants:  second place for Spring, Summer and Fall.  (Yep, behind Battlewagon).  I think we know our goal for next season:  Yellow, my favorite colour!

Oh, and er, speaking of yellow….we did lose a tie-break for third place with Big Yellow for Summer Thursdays.  That one sticks in my craw a bit.  Game on!

 

I’m sure you’ve noticed something missing for a few weeks, especially if you were hiking on the high side.  But now, friends, thanks to the toil of our very own Squirrel, we will all be styling in comfort!  Yessirree, PERSPECTIVE is all dressed in reconstructed lifeline covers including an extra four to cover the “up and out lads” section of the boat.

Calvin rebuilt all the old ones to fit precisely in their sections, and designed them all in such a way that the guts (sections of hose and pipe insulation) will no longer spill out.

So, let’s gain an extra couple of boatlengths by hiking like the pros.

And let’s thank Squirrel each time we go home afterwards without grill lines on our chest!

Here’s our beloved Skootch lounging on the foredeck on an easy cruise to Newport.  Thank goodness for spinnaker shade!

Yes, much deeper than we’ve been sailing!

Today, Skootch, Gadget, Lazy Sheet and I went out for a technical practice — two hoists, half a dozen jibes and two douses.  Good practice!  By the end, we were getting much smoother.  Some of the learning:

• Mastman should face forward, beside the mast starting with the pole directly in front of him
• The people on the sheet and guy need to watch the mastman to ease enough line at the right times.
• Whomever is securing the guy, needs to bring the sail all the way to the pole to control it
• Mastman should walk the pole forward to the desired angle as soon as it is made on the mast.

And between each jibe, we sailed at three or four different angles to the wind, playing with the pole position (forward/aft, up/down) at each angle to optimize boat speed.  We were looking for the best VMG downwind. (VMG is Velocity Made Good, and really means how quickly are we getting to our destination — the leeward mark)

Out on the water, it is fun to sail hot angles — lots of boat speed, and a great feeling of power with full sails and a bit of breeze coming across the boat.  But once I brought all the data home, and crunched some numbers, it became apparent that this is not the quickest way to get to the leeward mark.  What is?  The answer (for wind speeds in the 6-10 knot range) is somewhere around 160 degrees of apparent wind.

And there’s more to it than that — the pole should be brought quite far back (between 2:00 and 3:00) and raised up above horizontal.

What will it feel like?  Here’s a summary of data at approximately 8 knots of true wind speed:

Observed Results			Computed
BS	AWS	AWA	TWA	TWS	TWS Range	VMG
5	5.9	90	130	7.7	8	3.2
5.8	6.4	90	132	8.6	8	3.9
4.9	5.8	100	136	8.2	8	3.5
4.7	4.7	120	150	8.1	8	4.1
3.3	4.5	150	163	7.5	8	3.1
3.5	4.7	150	163	7.9	8	3.3
3	4.4	155	165	7.2	8	2.9
4.3	3.8	150	166	7.8	8	4.2
3.8	4.3	155	167	7.9	8	3.7
4.3	4.8	155	167	8.8	8	4.2
4.3	4.4	160	170	8.5	8	4.2
4.7	4.2	160	171	8.7	8	4.6
3.4	5.1	165	171	8.3	8	3.4

Comparing the two bold lines, you can see that the boat was sailing much slower (BS=Boat Speed) at the apparent wind angle (AWA) of 160 degrees, but the VMG was 18% faster.  On a downwind leg of 24 minutes, that would save us over three minutes!  This is a good comparison, because the true wind speed (TWS) was about the same for these conditions.

There’s another important insight here:  the True Wind Angle (TWA) is about 170 degrees, which means our jibe angles will only be 20 degrees — in other words:  Jibe before the mark is at 11:00am

Next step — confirm this in a race, and keep collecting more experience on trimming the spinnaker, and more data!

And an important note:  we will still sail hotter angles, but we will use that mode for tactical and strategic purposes:

• to get away from other boats,
• to get into clear air,
• to get into and stay into more breeze

And to build boat speed before heading deep.

Check out the Nonsuch regatta on Burlington Bay last weekend…bonus points for anyone who spots our own Mark Reed out there racing in Heer’s Summer.