Chelsea Regatta

6/12/10 I decided to try and do the HRYRA C fleet races this year. It started with the Hudson Cove Regatta. That is our club and we do the regatta every year. In order to compete for the overall HRYRA trophy, we had to do at least one day at Chelsea. With that in mind, I decided to take the boat up for just the Saturday of the regatta and hoped to do three races up there. Here is how the day went. 03:15 Woke up, made coffee for the thermos and headed out. The truck was already packed with everything I needed, so it only took 10 minutes to get going. 04:00 I put the cooler and my bag on the boat and headed out of the marina. It was damp and 55 degrees. The wind was mostly calm and the current was ebbing around one knot. I saw one boat outside of the marina and it was still very dark. 05:15 As I approached the Bear Mountain Bridge, the sky was beginning to get light behind the heavy cloud cover. Luckily there was no commercial traffic and I had the river to myself. It was nice watching the mountains light up in the morning haze. Lazy clouds were still strung across the mountains like a necklace. As the sun rose, they changed colors to reflect the new day. 06:30 I finally reached West Point. I was hugging the edge of the river the whole time to avoid the foul current. West Point looked imposing, as the morning haze had not lifted yet. There was a strong current in this area and the boat just had to push through it until I could find some eddies near Cold Spring. 08:00 As I was passing Bannerman’s Island, I saw my first boat since Haverstraw. The wind also picked up here and I decided to hoist the main and sail north. I sailed right by Newburgh and then under the bridge up to Chelsea. 09:30 I arrived at Chelsea right on time. Unfortunately I thought the races started at 10AM, so I was really 1.5 hours early. I jogged into the wind and patiently waited through the rain for the first race to begin. At 11:00 the rain ended, but my start was postponed for lack of wind. Racing: 11:30-15:00 Finally, when it was time to race, I was in a bad position early and was late to the start. Gusto was ahead of me and then covered me as much as they could. I was able to pass them at the leeward mark, but they got ahead for a little while before I finally passed them right at the finish. They would correct over me, as I owed them over a minute for the race. In the second race, I had a better start and was able to keep enough of a lead to win. I was lucky to do well since Jazz usually is very slow in light air. I was hoping for some heavy air for this regatta, so I was very happy to get a first and a second in the light stuff. 15:15 As soon as I finished the second race, I fired up the engine and headed south. This time I would have the current with me. As soon as I went under the Newburgh bridge, I was greeted with a 15-20 knot southerly. I prepared the boat and then unfurled the jib to sail into the breeze. At this point I did not have much of a choice as the waves were high and motoring would have been slow and hard on the boat. That said I was happy to finally be sailing in the fresh breeze. Right when the boat hit its stride, my hat blew off. I was feeling a little lazy and debated whether or not to go back and get it. After 20 seconds, I tacked and furled the jib and headed back to my hat. I retrieved it from the water, unfurled the jib and now it was time to rock and roll. The next 6 miles were great. Nice long tacks and great speed. The boat pounded nicely into the 2-3 foot swells and it was in its designed wind range. I got hooked in and kept sailing down to West Point. It was nice to tack side to side across the river. I would head to the West side and see some people jumping from a rock into the river. Then back to the east side and see some others sunbathing. Sometimes I could smell the life from the woods when I got close enough to shore. It was a very pleasant sail. I have never been able to sail in this area of the Hudson, so I continued down to West Point. The winds were very shifty here, but I was able to continue past West Point under sail alone. The river was pretty narrow, so I was tacking every 5-7 minutes. I kept this up through Bear Mountain and down into Peekskill. Finally around Stony Point I hit a hole in the breeze and fired up the engine again. I ended up sailing about 20 miles down river. It was a tough slog, as I seemed to be constantly tacking for over 3 hours. I was pretty tired from the sail, but I was also very happy that I was able to sail 90% of the way home from Chelsea and not add too much time to the delivery. 19:30 When I finally got back to my slip in the marina, the boat was a mess. I did not have time to clean up until I was in the slip and that took another 30 minutes. I finally got home at 21:00 hours. I was pretty tired, but was happy with the day’s result. I often plan for one thing when sailing and then enjoy something else. The 20-mile beat down the river was the highlight of the day and will not soon be forgotten. What seemed like a boring delivery home was actually more fun than the racing that day and more challenging.