Nice pictures! Funny how some people get a charge out racing, and others get
just as nice a charge out of teaching or cruising. I never got that much out
of racing except for the afterward in the club.
Looks like some yachtie karate going on in some of the people pictures.
wrote in message
...
On Apr 26, 10:04 pm, "Capt. JG" wrote:
Had two J-24 with three students per boat with a jr. instructor on the
second boat. Twas the second of a two 4-hour class.,,,,
Great couple of days sailing here, too... just finished the annual
FHYC Wilkerson Memorial Cup
There was almost no wind at all as we headed out to the race area. It
looked very probable that last year's drifter would repeat; but
instead the wind built from the South (sea breeze?) and by race time
we we de-powering with backstay & traveler.
We did a good job preparing the boat, we even had time for a practice
spinnaker set, gybe, and douse, before the start. We had the light air
sheets rigged which we had no way of knowing would be a mistake. In
the future, we may want to think about re-rigging these "on the fly"
since we -do- have heavy air sheets.
The start- small fleet,no real hassle, pin end favored. The slot right
at the pin end was grabbed early in the sequence by 'Pesty' (Morgan
25) and we did not contest it with them since I knew the Santana would
both outpoint and outfoot them going away from the line.... as long as
we started with speed at the gun... and we did.
Photos taken by the Race Committee show us blasting upwind away from
the fleet, but not with anywhere near as much heel as I remember. We
may want to not de-power quite so much in the future. Our close-hauled
speed thru the water hit 5.5 knots which is pretty fast (I think) and
we will want to use that as a target.
The wind was shifting and we got a compass reading early, which told
us we were getting headed early on the first beat. We tacked, taking
that shift, but strategically we should have either looked for a shift
back, or simply eaten the header a while; because this second tack
carried us too close in to the windward shore where the wind was
lighter and flukier. This mistake slowed getting up to the windward
mark (Neuse #17).
The race course was a Modified Olympic, meaning that we had a triangle
for the first lap (around a gybe mark) and a windward-leeward for the
2nd lap. The first reaching leg was a close reach and gusty. I felt it
would be risking a round-up to set the spinnaker and since I had to
flog the main and fight the tiller a bit without it, I am confident
this was the right choice. We talked of holding a higher course and
then bearing away for the mark and setting the spinnaker... we
probably should have done that.... or if we had practiced gybe-sets,
we could have done a gybe-set at the mark. The 2nd reach leg was a
deep reach and even though we had a 2nd sheet run to the rail for the
genoa, we would have been faster with the spinnaker. I don't feel we
lost much time on the first reaching leg since we rounded the
windward mark at 11 minutes into the race an the gybe mark at about 16
minutes. However both 'Pesty' and 'Anasazi Chief' gained on us on the
2nd reach.
The 2nd windward leg, the long one, we gained a lot of time &
distance. It's possible that I am de-powering the boat too soon since
photos don't show us heeling that much. But our tacks were good, we
stayed in phase with the shifts, and we were going 5.5 knots for much
of this leg. We did have to make an extra tack to pass thru the
'gate' (decreed in the Race Instructions) but it did not take us out
of phase with the shifts. On the last section of the 2nd beat, we
stayed out in the river more to avoid the in-shore light & squirrely
wind.
Bowman (Bob P) and middle crew (Ron M) did a great spinnaker set and
we took off at about 7 knots down the run. It as easy to pick out the
'gate' and the leeward mark so we could steer right for our goals. We
got 'housecleaning' done after the set & cranked the daggerboard up.
The wind was clocking to the west so we gybed to be on line to the
gate; the wind continued to clock (a header) and we were reaching hard
on the lower part of the run... no broaches, but we had to start our
douse early and Ron had to really wrestle the spinnaker in a port-tack
leeward take-down.
Our douse-n-round was textbook, except that I forgot the outhaul for a
few minutes... we were tight to the mark, sheet in hard, pointing high
& hauling ass... we don't know our close-hauled speed on the last beat
because the knotmeter had inadvertently been bumped and reset for
'average' speed (4.8 and rising)
The last beat was relatively uneventful, the wind had clocked more
westerly and pretty much stayed there; so we had one long tack right
thru the 'gate' and they kindly blew the horn. We honestly could not
see much of the next boats; but we had slightly over a 6 minute lead
in a 1 hour race....
The Morgan 25 'Pesty' is a good heavy-air boat so 12+ winds with chop
favored them, and they are good racing sailors. Nonetheless they only
corrected over us by 16 seconds.
Here's a link to pics of the race... some good ones of us!
http://picasaweb.google.com/jackson....09?feat=email#
Doug
--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com