Race Situation Test

This is just a test. Not like anything that happened recently.

Full Moon Poll

I thought I would put up a poll for the full moon races. Due to conditions, only two races were held and participation was low. I was thinking of giving up on the idea, but thought some input on when to hold the races would help. Here are the ideas: 1. Keep it on Wednesday. 2. Move it to the Saturday night of a full moon and start at 8PM. 3. Move it to Saturday night of a full moon and start at 7 with a longer course. 4. Bag it. Please comment on this if you have an idea that is not mentioned here. I left out Friday night since I would not be able to join.

Summer Race #10

Wednesday 9/22/2010 Fluky wind, no race. I was a little held up at work and did not get to the boat until 17:30. We quickly drop the lines and headed out to the course. I finally brought everything I needed to see what was wrong with the prop. The water was comfortable at 72. It helped that it was close to 85 this evening. When I got under the boat and saw the prop, I was surprised to find it completely covered in barnacles. I did not have my metal scraper on board, so I had to use a file to scrape off the barnacles. They were everywhere. It took a good 10 minutes to completely remove the barnacles from the prop and shaft. We later noticed a quarter knot improvement in boat speed due to cleaning the prop. Oddly, the waves were big enough that once or twice the boat hit my head. There was not much force, but I did not feel quite right after I got back on board. Once I got my bearings, I realized there was no wind and we would not be racing tonight. I still held out hope since some weather was coming, but its arrival was too far away. At 18:30, racing was cancelled for the evening. This goes against the letter of the instructions that give an 18:45 hard time for the first opportunity to cancel, but fit within the intention of the instructions. I will see if I can get that changed to 30 minutes past the first signal or just remove it completely. Perhaps instructions for canceling due to no wind should make the RC wait 30 minutes, but in severe storms it would be nice to have the flexibility to cancel 18:15 or even earlier. The RC was excellent in communicating the postponements and abandonment. We headed in after watching a nearly full moon rise over Croton. It was shitty sailing weather, but a decent evening to float on the river. We headed over to Minisceongo for pizza night and enjoyed their hospitality. I may have been talked into racing over there this weekend, but we will see. I would like to thank John Nonemacher for being the force behind putting this Wednesday Night racing together, John Edwards and John Beck for scoring and posting the scores, and everyone who raced for a great season. Wednesday Night races are a great time on the water. It helps break up the week and keeps us out sailing all season long. Our fleet is very competitive and everyone seems to have a good time. I am already looking forward to next year. So with the end of the season will come of the end of this type of blog. I plan to continue posting some information over the winter. Please check back here in another week or two and I should have some idea of what I will write about over the winter. My past attempts have failed miserably, but I’ll give it another shot.

Summer Race #9

Wednesday 9/15/2010 Inconsistent North wind from 8 to 18 knots. Current flooding, but changed shortly after the race. A&B sailed from H to C to 22 and back. C sailed from H to C to F to 24 and back. I went up to the boat early to get some small repairs done. I had blown my outhaul the previous week and there were some lingering issues to deal with. I was happy to see that Samalot Marine had fixed my outhaul earlier in the week. They did a great job with it. This is the third or fourth time I have had a breakdown and they were able to patch it up without having to miss a race. It is a great benefit for us to have a full service sailing facility in the marina. Since the major repair was done, I was left to clean up a few things and repair some of the woodwork below. Frank and Kevin (the greenhorn) arrived right as I finished up and we headed straight out to the course. Along the way, I tightened the shrouds, as the mast was way too loose. This brought some extra tension on the forestay. As we arrived at the start area, I was happy to see the RC on station. A great line was set. It was an appropriate length with the boat end a little favored. We sailed around in a nice heavy northerly and got the course. I decided to start near the boat and get there a little early to avoid the crowd. As I was sailing away from the line on port tack, I noticed other boats were setting up early as well, so I tacked after them and figured I would get to the line right on time. Coming back on starboard with less than a minute to go, the early boats started to luff. They were not in the best spot as they were luffing while being too far to windward. This allowed me to sail below them without any concern for not being able to head up to the line. We settled into a nice controlling spot with no one below us and a few boats above us. I was thinking about shutting the door on the windward boats, but opted for a clean start at the RC boat. At the start, two boats were over early down the line. Up at the boat we were all clear. We sailed for a minute or two before tacking onto port. Further up the course, we were close to the port layline when an A division boat crossed us and tacked right on top of us. We are not in the same division and there was no reason to tack directly on top of us. It is not like we were on the lay-line, just close to it and they could have sailed a little further and not hurt us as badly. This slam move ended up killing us for the rest of the leg. I should have tacked right away to clear my air, but instead I sat in the bad air until we got over to the right side of the course. We rounded the mark and the wind lightened. This made it tough on us since we do not have a spinnaker. Four boats in our division passed us on this leg. The leg was 3 miles, but with the current, it seemed like it was forever. We finally rounded 22 and knew that we had to pass Gusto to keep our position in third place for the series. We tacked out to the left side for a minute to clear our air. We were behind Gusto and another boat, so the tack allowed us to sail in clear air. Once out there, we were able to sail our optimal upwind angle which is lower than most boats. We got ahead of Gusto and felt good up on the left side. Then Gusto tacked to the left side and we were late to react. We could see them making a gain above us, so we tacked back and then tacked right on top of Gusto. Let’s pause. Seems like I did the same bad move that I was complaining about earlier. Well, I did. The difference here is that I needed to put Gusto about a minute behind us to correct over them. We are in the same division and whenever we race against each other it is always close. ALWAYS. So I made a competitive move against a boat that we are locked into a tight battle with. In the earlier example, the boat that hurt us gained no advantage in affecting our wind. In this case, we gained an advantage, as we needed to put a few seconds between them and us. We crossed the line right behind A Line Up from C2 and just ahead of Hard Attack. Gusto was about the exact handicap time behind us. In the end, I think we beat them by one second. It was a thrilling last leg and a great challenge right up to the line. Every second counted and that is about all you can ask for in PHRF racing. With the mix of C and A/B boats finishing together, the RC did a great job with the course. It is ideal to have everyone finishing around the same time. The RC made the line, course, and management superb. It was a great race for all. After the finish, the wind was on the higher side and we reached around for a while to enjoy the last bit of evening. After a few beers, the sun set, the wind got lighter, so we headed in. It was nice to see a couple of boats sailing around as well. As long as the wind is up, it is great to sail on the river during the twilight. There is one race left in the season. Depending on the times for Gusto and us, third place could come down to the final race. It is nice to go head to head against our closest competitor once more.

Summer Race #8

Wednesday 9/8/2010 Heavy NW wind from 15 to 30 knots. Current was ebbing hard in the middle of the channel, but significantly less on the east side. A&B sailed from H to C to F to 24 and back to H. C went from H to C and back. Tonight was the first night of the early starts. Things started out rough for us. I have docked in my slip over 200 times and tonight was different. While easing out of the slip, the bow was held in and the stern swung out the wrong way. Our reverse had little bite to it, so we could not turn the boat the right way to motor out of the docking area. We ended up having to reverse the whole way out of the docking area and it was a little slow. Once we had the room to move in forward again, the boat was not moving at its usual speed. Having not taken the boat out for two weeks, I thought the problem might be a stuck blade on the folding prop. Unfortunately, my 2-year-old daughter dropped my only mask in the water this summer, so I was not able to dive and see what the problem was. After motoring a bit we heard a thump and things felt better. We arrived at the start area and the committee boat was already on station. The RC was on the port side of the line. This is not the best place to be setup and I explained it in the Spring Race #6 blog. Since the line was longer and the starboard end favored, the RC position did not really play a factor in the start. We chose a Vanderbilt start for tonight. This is basically a timing run from the end of the line. We reached on port with 4 minutes to go and then turned back with 2:15 left. We knew we would be a little late, but this was on purpose, as we wanted to be able to tack immediately to port after we crossed the line. The right side seemed to have equal wind and we knew there was less foul current. After the start, there was one competitor way ahead of us. We figured they decided not to race, but apparently they were racing. They were over 3 minutes ahead of us. When we caught up to them, we asked if they were racing and they said yes. I believe they started early and did not know it. Since I was not sure what they did, I had no interest in protesting. The weather leg was very windy. At times the whole main was flogging as we chugged upwind. Boats were rounding up and at least two of them had jib problems. We rounded the first mark in second place helped by one of the top boats in our division tearing their jib. After the rounding, we heard the RC call for the race to be shortened. This really got me fired up. Our boat sails best in winds over 20 knots. 25 knots is the ideal condition for us. It is rare to get a fresh breeze on a Wednesday night and I was not happy with the prospect of a 4-mile race getting shortened. Then the race committee explained that they were shortening the race because of a 35-knot wind reading. At this point, I radioed back that the wind was not that strong. I should not have done this. Radio communication should be free of opinion and feedback from competitors and I went against my better judgment. After the RC realized they could only shorten C division, I radioed back again that this could create a hazardous situation, as boats would now be finishing from opposite sides of the line. Again, I was wrong to air this on the radio and should have kept off the airwaves. More on this at the end. Back to racing, we held even on the blast reach to F. Boats were rounding up here and there, but no one was in distress. The leg from F to 24 was downwind. We had Mad Mad Hatter right next to us. They put up the kite. It did not help their position, but it was a gutsy move to fly the kite in those winds. I applaud the effort. It is great to see a competitor that will test their skills in heavy air. From 24 to the finish was a one tack beat. We were able to foot most of the way and that helped us pound through the chop to the finish. Coming into the line, a C2 boat was coming down to finish from the other side. We had to hail “leeward” to them as we both wanted to finish in the same spot. The C2 boat was forced to avoid us at the finish. This was somewhat dangerous as they were having trouble handling the boat in the breeze. We were the first B boat to cross the line and got our first bullet of the series. Since the breeze was up, we continued sailing. We tried our best to keep a little air in the main and not flog it too much. Once we got close to Haverstraw, our outhaul blew out. It also broke the webbing holding the main clew to the slug in the boom. We immediately dropped the main and continued to sail under jib alone. I was able to rig the reef line to the clew and tied the clew to the slug using a sail tie. Sail ties are great for quick fixes on the water. In no time we had the main back up and continued to pound to the north. This was good practice for a breakdown in a race situation. After the sunset, the wind settled into the 15-20-knot range with huge shifts off Stony Point. We reached across the river up there and worked our way back to Haverstraw. The engine was working fine when it was time to dock, so we had no more issues. When I got home that night, someone sent me an email with the wind graph. The graph is in MPH, but does show a 28-knot puff.

Now the wind graph has been posted on the website. Not sure if that is some sort of message or not (my paranoia issues are well documented in my blog from years past). I deserve any criticism for acting like a jerk on the radio and arguing with the race committee. It was wrong and I hope I never do that again. But let’s get some facts straight. 1. I was wrong. No doubt about it. I should not have communicated anything over the radio. The adrenaline mixed with being pissed off resulted in my poor judgment. 2. The graph shows that the wind hit 26 knots right before the start. It was not until 30 minutes after the start that the graph hit 28 knots. This is only 2 knots more that the wind before the start. It was not as if some huge increase in breeze came along. It was just a couple of knots more than what we had immediately before the start. 3. It is up to each competitor to decide if they can race or not. If a boat cannot sail 4 miles in 25 knots of breeze, they probably won’t be able to sail 2 miles either. They should withdraw. 4. If the breeze is too strong for boats to sail 4 miles, it is probably too strong to have boats finishing in opposite directions. We had a finish issue with another boat and we were fortunate that no one lost control. 5. The wind graph is in MPH, not knots. Max gust was 28 knots, max average was 24 knots. You can get the conversions here. The above reasons are no excuse for my radio blunder. I am embarrassed by my gaffe. At the same time I want to get my thoughts on heavy air out so I will not feel compelled to lose my cool the next time a race is shortened or abandoned due to a good breeze. Ever since the America’s Cup left the 12-meter design, sailboat racing has retreated from sailing in heavy air. We see lighter boats optimized for 8-14 knots of breeze. It is becoming more common to abandon or shorten races on great sailing days. Sailing world has a great article on the subject from June. Quote: “A 25-knot breeze isn’t a viable excuse to cancel racing. It is a reason to go out and test your skills against the elements as well as the competition. Wind is our friend. It’s what makes our sport great.”