While some people were battling hurricanes, we had a regatta and
sailed in our first real race in the Santana 23. The crew was
relatively inexperienced, the winds varied from light to not-so-light
(about 2~3 knots up to 12 knots & back), the regatta was Fairfield
Harbour Yacht Club's 25th annual Oar Race.

The story of the Oar Race is interesting, there was a founding member
(John Walsh) of the FHYC who had sailed for years with an English
friend on his yacht, the CLARA. The CLARA was not only a classic, but
had been one of the "little ships" of the Dunkirk evacuation at the
beginning of WW2. When the English friend passed away and CLARA was
sold, the FHYC member was given one of her oars as a commemorative.
Years went by and then john Walsh passed away himself. The CLARA's oar
was made into a memorial trophy which hangs in the community center
with a brass plaque explaining the history, and a series of small
plaques with the names & boats of the winners over the years.

No, we didn't win it. But I hope to one day.

First of all, I made several mistakes which cost us time. The start
sequences was not clear and I misjudged both the time & distance it
would take to circle. That cost us a bit less than a minute. The wind
was light and we got the boat accelerated & up to a close-hauled
course, on a long port tack. This was the favored side and the wind
gave us some luck, before long we had a pretty clear lead but I could
see patches of no wind, ahead & to leeward. It looked to me like we
were sailing out of our wind streak. So, even though it meant pointing
the boat about 90 degrees away from the mark, I tacked the boat and we
went about 4 or 5 minutes on starboard, out to the middle of the
river. Yes the wind was a bit stronger, but in a less favorable
direction... and the lulls I saw did not affect the other boats that
stayed on the same tack very much. The result was that we lost a place
and could not gain it back on the spinnaker run, we ended up in 2nd
place by about a minute corrected time. The winner was a San Juan 30
which was very well sailed.

The next day, we had some short round-the-bouys races and again I did
not get us very good starts. Still, we got up into the pack and the
rookie crew learned everything pretty cleanly. We did not do anything
fancy, no tacking duels, we didn't even pull the daggerboard up on the
short spinnaker runs. We ended up with a couple of close seconds and
one first. We were definitely first in our class for much of the first
two races, since we were ahead of all 4 boats that owed us time and
the one we owed time to was quite far back.

We need to work on some basic maneuvers, our tacks were not very good
and I always called the spinnaker douse early so as to get it down
clean before getting around the mark. At one point, the genoa wincher/
trimmer kept getting the sheet clinched (over-ride) on the winch and
they were ignoring my advice about how to avoid this problem... a
trial of patience for all concerned. At the end of the day, everybody
was talking about how much fun it was, so it couldn't have been too
bad.

The boat needs work too. I have a very fancy carbon/mylar 155% genoa
which I actually don't think is such a great sail, an equally fancy
kevlar scrim blade (about 110%) which does seem like a great sail, a
plain-jane dacron main (probably about 15 years old but has great
shape), and a blown-out red spinnaker. At some point we will spend
some money on new sails but in all honesty, I have other priorities
like rebedding all the deck hardware and building a new fore hatch
right now.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King