QCYC Series 3, Race 6

On Wednesday night, the final race of the QCYC series went in somewhat rainy and light-wind conditions. There were many on the dock suggesting that maybe they would call it off because there just wasn’t any wind… plus, who really wants to sail in the rain.

Well, we were only one point behind One More Time for second overall, so we were definitely going to go out.  And as for the wind: you just had to look for it.  Frankie, Paul and Astra came out to crew and brought their winning attitude…

Pre-start, the race committee did postpone us for awhile as they tried to figure out the wind direction.  We slowly sailing around, chasing them on just the mainsail.  But as our start was approaching, I noticed that we were sitting in almost no wind close to the city, while at the other end of the start line, boats were actually moving.  We got the gennie up to try and make it out there in time to setup for the start.

I was surprised that neither Blythe Spirit nor One More Time were setting up at the (windy) pin end of the line.  I guess the way the line was going, the boat end was a little closer to the first mark.  Anyway, we timed our start perfectly and hit the line at full speed, a foot away from the pin and right on time.

Somehow we were not awarded the jug, but we definitely had the best start – we were moving!

Following close behind us were the other Niagara 26, Wisterical (a new member near who joined late season: Roel) and Breakin’ Wind out for their first race of the year, after a trying season of boat repair.

We absolutely walked away from OMT and Blythe as they bobbed in the tiny breeze blowing near the city.  At the first mark, Wisterical  and Breakin’ Wind were close behind us, but the others were way back.

It was a triangular course and on the downwind we were catching and passing several of the boats from the start ahead of us, keeping Wisterical and Breakin’ Wind at about the same distance behind us.

Then it was a close hauled leg back to the start mark and we had relatively clear air to sail in, allowing us to separate a little further ahead. The light was starting to fade by this point and the wind was fading with it.  The rain was coming down steadily now.  We saw the RC moving into position to finish us early, so we headed down a few degrees to get a little more speed to the finish… not noticing Zig Zag was right below and ahead of us.  Astra was apparently too busy telling us how great it was on the low side where she was protected from the rain to tell anybody that we were about to run into another boat… We heard some shouts and luckily avoided them last second.  That could have been disaster for our race.

As it was, we cruised across the finish line well ahead of the fleet and knew right away that we’d finally won our first Wednesday night race of the year!  The win also means we’ll be second overall in the series.  High fives all around!!

AHMEN #5

But the winning didn’t stop there.  Saturday was race #5 of the AHMEN series – one that I try to get out to race at least once every year.  The legs are long and the racing more relaxed, but still… we’re racing.

Jay woke up early to join me.  It was a gorgeous day, and nice change from the cold, rainy weather we’d been having.  And the Monarch Butterflies were out in force; it’s that time of year when they are migrating south.  I always take it as a good omen when I see them fluttering around the boat, showing us the way.

Once again, we started well and kinda just went from there.  We had a couple of boatlength lead on Puffin, a C&C30 out of EYC, and we battled to stay ahead of them the whole way around Humber Bay.  Our biggest concern was not really knowing where the first mark of the course was.  Luckily there’s a big handicap difference between boats in the AHMEN races and we’re at the slow end.  We watched fellow QCYCer Nick on Ascend and just followed in his general direction.

Well, it seemed to work out… By the end we felt we were definitely top-3, if not top-2.  When the results were posted late last night, it turns out we won!

Did I mention I love sailing with butterflies?

QCYC Series 3, Race 2

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged a race.  I’ve just been so busy not sitting in front of the computer   But last night was probably our best Wednesday night race all year, so I figured I should make the effort to preserve the memory.  Here goes:

The forecast was a bit scary: heavy storms and tornado warnings for most of southern Ontario starting sometime in the evening prompted a few worried texts from crew.  But the closer we got to race time the more accurate the forecast timing of the storms became.  It looked like we’d get our race in before anything hit.

Dylan came out to join Phoebe, Kristina, Frankie and me.  We made a few jokes before we went out about how awesome it would be if a tornado picked up the boat and then dropped us off at the finish line…  It was definitely breezy when we hit the harbour – probably blowing 20 knots for the start of the race.  We went with the #3 and full main.  Several boats, including Blythe Spirit, were reefing and sticking with larger headsails.

We had a good start in the middle of the line; Blythe was just ahead of us.  I’ve found that with the #3 we can point higher than usual, and that first leg not only were we pointing well, but we had great boat speed.   Even with our new rookie crew learning the ropes, we found pretty soon that boats were crossing behind us all the way up.  We beat everybody to the upwind mark.

The pole set went smoothly and we cruised downwind, maintaining a decent lead over Blythe.  With One More Time away cruising, they were the only other series regular out with us.  We looked back to see them shaking out the reef in their main during the downwind run, so it wasn’t surprising that they started eating into our lead on the second upwind.

During that second lap, the wind eased slightly and probably favoured their larger amount of sail.  But we were still holding them off at the upwind mark.  That second downwind didn’t look that promising for us as the fast grey boat stalked us closely.  Our only real defence was to sail really high and not let them cover us.  By about halfway down the leg, Queen Car  had come into play and seemed to provide a bit of time and space for us as we passed them and left them between us and Blythe.

As we approached that mark, I knew James would be wanting to try to make a close, fast rounding and pinch up above us.  I falsely assumed that between having a couple of boatlengths to play with and Queen Car getting in his way that we’d be safe.  Apprently not.

We didn’t have the best rounding ever, and while I was busy trying to sheet the main in, seemingly out of nowhere, Blythe Spirit’s bow was right next to me.  And they had speed.  After a colourful exchange of words (all in good fun), they ran right over top of us.

The rest of the way they just kept pulling away.  The wind had dropped by that third lap to around 15 knots and was certainly in the range that we’d have benefited from a larger headsail, but the boat just didn’t feel fast, even in the gusts.  We had nothing for them.  What had started out as our race to lose, had turned into just that.

I wish I could blame the crew, but they were great all night.  Dylan’s a quick study.  So leaves blaming me (not desirable), or some outside factor.  I’m going to blame sea weed.

It wasn’t until after the finish (the race was ended after 3 laps) that I realized that there was a vibration in the tiller and the steering was sluggish… so I can’t say for sure when we picked them up, but definitely the rudder was wrapped in weeds by the end.  So we raced a great race and just got unlucky.  That, and a really good, fast boat beat us

Anyway, it was a fun, fast night and the light show we got to watch post-race was pretty awesome.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last blog update.  You may have guessed that I was unemployed for a short stretch, relaxing, playing music, finally starting the garden… and not sitting in front of a computer all day every day.  Well I’m back at a desk this week, so let me catch you up:

The first QCYC series of 2011 ended with us holding onto 3rd place in our division, then new splits were announced for the second series.  We’re back with some familiar competition like One More Time and Blythe Spirit.  The first race, with light crew, featured the dreaded north wind filtering through the city in all it’s shifty, gusty glory… we were constantly busy trimming, tacking and re-trimming.  We raced pretty well, but picked the wrong side of the course on one of the laps and never caught up to the two leaders again after that; we got a third.

This week was another light crew night.  It was Phoebe and I plus Kristina, who made her first appearance of the year.  It was a typical July night with lots of calm spots to get caught in and patches of breeze that would blow in unpredictable directions.

After a brief postponement we were set to race around a short triangular course.  At the start it seemed that we all had the same idea to go for the pin end.  Blythe started yelling early that they wouldn’t let us in.  I was doubtful that they could follow through with their threat as we had decent speed coming in, but we ducked under them anyway.  One More Time made the right call and stayed high of Blythe, getting clean air and a free jug of beer in the process.

With 4-5 boats all fighting for the same shifty bit of air, it was slow start.  Eventually we got going on a port tack that looked promising… until One More Time spoiled our party with the right of way on starboard.  Rather than making a hard duck, we tacked in front of them.  I wish we had ducked.  We couldn’t really get going on the new tack and were heading away from the mark.  They tacked over behind us, so we did the same, but by then Blythe Spirit had taken off on both of us.

Chasing the breeze, a couple of tacks later got us to the first mark well behind Blythe and not close to OMT.  Several of the boats from the start behind us had already caught or (in the case of Dove) passed us.  Undaunted, we took a high line for speed.  For awhile it seemed to be working out great for us.  Sure, we weren’t taking the shortest line toward the next mark, but we were going a lot faster than the rest of them in our pocket of wind.  We passed Dove and seemed to be pulled about even with OMT.

Then, nearing the second mark, we lost our advantage.  Where once we had breeze, now we had calm.  Everybody passed us on the inside (including Serica II).

The mark had about 12 boats rounding it all at once as we held back and then found our spot high and inside.  With a lot of stalled boats struggling under us, we made good progress down the third leg.  We passed by Serica and Dove. (note: we don’t actually race Dove anymore with the new splits, but it still feels good to pass them )  I think it was during this leg that Phoebe took the initiative for the first time ever and was trimming the jib without (much) prompting from the skipper (though there may have been a few corrections suggested).  Very nice.

The fourth leg would be the final one for the race and nothing really spectacular happened… We did stay ahead of Dove though, crossing in from of them closely once on port.  So we got a bit of a moral victory and took third again this week.  It wasn’t until we were back at the dock that we heard that OMT had snuck past Blythe for the win, but obviously it had been a good night for skipper Al.

After the race, the wind came up a bit and we had a great sail around the harbour with still a couple hours of daylight to play with.  It’s not unusual for us to be the last boat on the water… it seems like most people are in a rush to get back for some reason.   Anyway, we sailed until the wind started to die again.   Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Kristina sailed us back in to the slip, saving on gas and impressing a few onlookers on our way down the lagoon.

Again: huge thanks to Pat Whetung and Paul Horne for their help in putting Panache back together again – and better than ever, really.  Without their help, we probably wouldn’t have raced this week.  The mast went back up only a couple hours before race time.  And Jim… I owe you a beer.

After a month of heavy wind, it almost seemed like we weren’t getting ready to race at all this week: there seemed nary a puff of breeze to be found.  Quentin, Astra and Frankie came out for this drifter.  At least it was warm and sunny.

Actually, once we got close to our start we found a little bit of wind and were moving (according to the recently repaired and fully-operational knot meter) at about 3-4 knots.  We had a decent start, right next to Dove.  Not quite a jug start, but a good one in clean air.

The course was a nice easy triangle, so it was one close-hauled tack to the first (west) mark.  On the way there we had The Shadow just behind and above us most of the way and Dove lurking behind the jib, just ahead an below us.  We worked to pinch up as high as we could while still maintaining speed.  I wanted to get in front of The Shadow so we’d have a clear path to tack at the mark.  About two-thirds of the leg into it, we had accomplished that.

Dove crossed us very closely to head toward the mark and we followed in behind, just a bit higher; I wanted to be able to head a little bit off the wind for speed.

We got to the mark just before a slew of faster big boats from the start behind us were arriving, which was lucky.  And the extra distance we’d given up to Dove was made up on the beam reach to the next (north) mark.

We were only four boat lengths behind them heading back to the east mark on a broad reach.  But we were definitely closing the gap… Then Abracadabra passed us on the high side about halfway down the leg.  Klaus apologized for stealing our wind;  I just told him that I was fine with it as long as he also passed Dove on the high side.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the speed to get there in time before the mark, so he had to cut in front of us (behind Dove) there, which forced us to give back the ground we’d gained on Dove as we had to go wide at the mark to give room for Abra to round.

The next leg back to the west mark would be the last of the night.  The light wind was waning.

We were about four boatlengths behind Dove and well ahead of the rest of our fleet, but they seemed to be pulling ever so slightly away from us on the upwind.  There were a lot of boats bunched up on that same tack and since we were a little low on the finish line, I made the decision to try to tack out to the middle for cleaner air.

Looking back, I wish we’d just stayed with them.

The tack slowed us down and instead of going almost directly toward the finish line we were sailing perpendicular to it, or maybe a little bit away from it.  Probably not the best plan.  We were forced to tack back when Messing About was closing on us on starbord.

I thought for sure we’d be able to hit the line, but then Lotus lee-bowed us (tacked right in front, just below us) and we were eating Ken’s bad air and couldn’t hold it.

Nearing the finish line I could see that Gone With the Wind II (who had spent the entire race safely behind us) had gone low, and was parallel to us now.  Unfortunately, we still weren’t going to make the line, so again we tacked and again sailed away from it to get a better angle, and also to try to get away from Lotus.

Somehow GwtW2 managed to hit the line right at the boat end while we were still futzing around and sailing in the wrong direction… ugh.  And Dove, well I think they finished about 5 minutes ahead of us.  In the light air, mistakes can cost a lot because we’re going so slow to begin with.

Oh well… for some reason GwtWII wasn’t scored for the race – maybe he hasn’t provided the club with a copy of his insurance or something.  More likely it was just an oversight.  Anyway.  The lesson here is: always sail towards the finish line.

Like the Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins.  They just wanted it more, kept their eyes on the prize, and dominated

Go Bruins!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Only two weeks after we had a solid regatta at ABYC, we headed out for the RCYC Open with high hopes.  We’d been getting the boat going fast on a consistent basis; we just needed to string together some consistent finishes.  Quentin, Perry, Jay and Paul were the crew for the weekend and the forecast looked like the perfect mid-range wind that we like.

Day 1: The first epic win

On Saturday we got out there and the wind seemed to be building on us.  Just to test it out, we tried the #1, but decided we were overpowered and switched to the #2 before the first race.  We may have been wrong about being overpowered, but the wind definitely slackened off by the end of the race and we didn’t have the horsepower to keep up with the lead boats.  Compounding the problem was that there were some waves to deal with.  We still finished decently, in mid-fleet.

(edit: How could I forget???  At the end of the first race, we caught one of the Sharks racing on our course with us: Amicus.  Obviously that’s latin for arsehole.  I was trying to be the nice guy and pass him on the low side, but then he kept coming down on me; though his boom hit us twice (under the lifelines), and almost took Jay’s head off, the guy claimed – with a shit-eating grin – that he could see from where he was sitting that he was giving us all the room in the world to finish.  We almost hit the committee boat trying to get across the finish line.  What an ass.)

For the second race, we decided to switch up to the #1… then during the pre-race the wind was building again, and playing it conservatively (I think I was a bit spooked from the Wednesday race where we got hammered by an ever-increasing wind), we switched back to the #2 before the start.  We had a great start, forcing Doralla to go over early and seeming to come out in clean air in the lead… until at least 30 seconds after the start (the whole crew had had time to get comfortable on the high side) when the RC announced our sail number as being over early as well.

We disagreed that we were and felt it took them a good long time to make the announcement, but had to go back.  Paul decided that the port tack was favoured, so after we re-started, that’s the direction we headed.  It was a good call.

We had a lot of ground to make up and again the wind slackened during the race, so we once again put the foredeck crew to work and switched to the #1 while we were heading downwind on the spinnaker.  By the end of the race, we’d climbed back up to respectability at least.

For the third and final race of the day, there was no question as to which jib we were going with.  The #1 made us competitive.  The #2 did not.  At the start we got behind Still Knot Working and were able to put the pressure on them to go over early.  This time the RC didn’t waste time in making the announcement, but SKW were the only ones called back so we really did get the great start we thought we had.

The wind had clocked around to make the starboard tack favoured a bit, plus that side had less wave action to deal with, being slightly protected by the spit.  At the upwind mark, we had the whole fleet behind us by a comfortable margin.  The spinnaker run was flawless and we held on to the lead at the downwind gate.  Again, we picked the less wavy side on the second upwind and again we were first around the weather mark.  SKW and Blythe Spirit were the only boats that seemed close to us, but again we sailed a great downwind and they couldn’t catch us… We had won our first race over Still Knot Working and it wasn’t even close.  We had them by about a minute!

Spilled a bit of my celebration scotch on the way back in, but otherwise it was all smiles and a very happy crew that landed back at QCYC that evening.  (oh, and just for good luck, I ran into to the green channel marker on the way back… I blame Jay for claiming there were no boats to worry about behind the sail… oops… good thing it was the plastic one)

Day 2: Epic wins and epic fails

The word we got back from RCYC was that we were sitting in 3rd place after the first day (we later found that they had posted incorrect results, so I’m not sure this was actually true), with SKW and Blythe ahead of us.  But since we had heard that SKW wasn’t coming back for day 2, it seemed like a good chance for a 1-2 QCYC finish.  What could go wrong?

Lots, as it turned out.

For possibly the first time ever, we raced with the same crew on both days of a regatta and it showed.  We all knew our jobs and executed well.  Panache was the only crew member that kinda dropped the ball.

It started when Q went to setup the spinnaker for the first hoist of the day.  The snap shackle had lost its pin and was useless.  Paul was the only other member of the crew than myself who could tie a bowline, so he went up to cut the snap shackle off and tie the halyard on (note to self: have a knot-tying lesson with the crew sooner than later).  After cutting a foot off of “America” (the spin halyard) it was only barely long enough to do the job, but the hoist went fine and we cruised downwind in the thick of the pack.

As we neared the downwind mark and tried to re-hoist the jib, it wouldn’t go.  We tried several times to pull the line up and down but it was well and truly jammed.  From the deck nobody could see what the problem was.  The nearly-new line was coming apart in several spots, so we assumed it just caught on something.  Defective line?

So before we sailed way off course, we were forced to douse the spin and start sailing back upwind on the main only.  Once the spin was stuffed into the cabin, we were able to untie “America” and run it up to the jib.  This whole process went quite smoothly, considering… but it lost us several minutes to the fleet.  We finished DFL.

With no spare halyards, we were going to be forced to sail white sail for the rest of the day.  Frustrating, but what can you do, right?  Well… it turns out that we can do pretty well sailing white sail in a spinnaker fleet.

The crew and boat performed amazing in races 5 and 6.  We started perfectly and took a big lead on the fleet in both races upwind.  Sailing wing-on-wing on the downwinds we’d helplessly watch them catch up, then we’d take off again upwind.  Even so, we managed a couple of incredible 2nd place finishes.  If we’d been able to switch to our whitesail handicap of 195, we’d have blown them all away.  If only we’d had a spinnaker…

Ok, so we weren’t winning, but it sure felt like it.  We are counting those two races as epic wins, anyway.

Things were going so quickly that the RC decided that they had time to send us out for a fourth race on Sunday (#7 on the weekend).  Once again, we started great.  Only Blythe Spirit beat us to the windward mark.  We had the rest of them.  Then a little ways down on the downwind Q mentioned that the jib looked pretty baggy; he looked up and noticed that the forestay had let go from the top of the mast!!!

For the unacquainted, that’s the wire at the front of the boat that the jib runs up and also (importantly) keeps the mast standing up and not falling backwards.

All I can say is we were lucky to have Paul on board.  I’m pretty sure the rest of us would not have figured out how to save ourselves without the mast dropping on our heads.  We quickly got the uphaul attached to the bow, doused the sails and started motoring for home.  Just for safety, we also ran the main halyard forward...

Our day was done, but that didn’t stop us from wondering what else might go wrong before we got back.  The gas can certainly felt a little light…

We didn’t run out of gas.  We went straight to the mast crane and took the mast down.  Upon inspection it was clear what had happened:  the little pin that holds the big pin in place (that attaches the forestay to the mast) was missing.  Either broken or pulled out (by a halyard, perhaps?)  So that would be an inexpensive thing to replace… several new halyards and snap shackes would be a little pricier – just for the future, I ordered an extra halyard so we hopefully don’t have an issue with running out of them ever again.

Thanks to Pat for being so on the ball and picking up the new gear – it looks like everything will be put back together in time for tonight’s Wednesday night race.

Fingers crossed that nothing breaks… and that Boston wins their first cup in my lifetime!!  GO BRUINS!!!

Ok so the title isn’t my best work.  I was trying to put a positive spin on an exciting night that ended early on the water with a DNF, yet still felt like a win in some ways.  For example, the Bruins won game 4 by a score of 4-0 just two nights after I was in Boston to witness one of the best games in Stanley Cup finals history (at least for Bruins fans)… an 8-1 blowout win that was just insane to be in the building for.

But back to the sailing.

Last night the various wind models were predicting anything from 5 to 20 knots.  On the way over the island, we got hit with a short sunny shower, but the wind felt closer to 5 than to 20.  Back in the lagoon there was no breeze at all… just lots of mosquitos.  I got a couple of last-minute cancellations, so with only Quentin and Astra on board we cast off to get away from the bugs.

Almost immediately after we got out into the harbour, the wind started to build and by the start it was up to 10 or 12 knots.  During the pre-start we got the video camera going on the stern rail (hopefully I’ll have time to edit and post the footage soon).  Also, we noticed the winch handle lock was broken, so we switched to the “backup” winch handle… which prompty got stuck in the winch with the opposite problem: the lock worked TOO well and wouldn’t come unlocked.  While trying to fix it we kinda lost track of time and ended up starting a good 30 seconds behind.

The course was a triangle: N-W-E.  As we were stuck behind the fleet we tacked early toward to the city and beat it right out almost to sugar beach before tacking back at the mark.  You never know with the north mark what the wind will do, but as it happened we had overlayed it by a bit and made it easily.

Dove and Gone With the Wind 2 were just ahead of us on the second leg, which was basically one long close-hauled tack to the west mark.  We had to deal with Kokoro right under us the whole leg and dropped back a bit from the leaders in our division.  At the west mark it was basically straight downwind back to the starting area (east mark).  Quentin got the pole up on the big sail (Q’s maybe a little out of practise with the whisker pole and we had an amusing time watching him try to keep it scoped out…) and we cruised downwind, taking a higher line than Dove and GWtW2,  who were busy shadowing each other down the middle. 

Whatever it was, it worked for us.  The legs are pretty short on these Wed nights, but we had so much more speed than they did that we not only caught up and passed them, but had several boatlengths to spare.  Right at the mark, Candy Cane was sitting not really moving anywhere and seemed like they would cause us a lot of trouble, but lucky for us they started to round just at the right time for us to do a tactical wide-and-close rounding, shooting close behind them right at the mark and coming tight to windward… putting us right on top of them after the rounding.

So we maintained our lead over Dove and GWtW2 all the way to sugar beach and past the first mark.  After Blue Streak passed under us and took off ahead, we got clean air to sail in for the second leg.  Dove seemed to be eating into us only slightly.  But on the downwind they were close enough behind just to make a difference for us and they managed to pull even, just inside us by the mark.

I think it was at this point that we really noticed the amazing, black sky over the city.  The wind started to kick up and we started seeing lightning flashes.  I remember thinking that it would have been nice if the race committee decided to finish us after that second lap… not only would we have won the race, but we wouldn’t have to deal with possible thunderstorms.

Anyway, they didn’t finish us, so we headed back to the beach as the wind started building and stronger gusts began hitting us.  Just as we tacked in front of the beach a big one hit us and rounded us right back over.  We scrambled to get some way on so we could try to tack again before hitting the wall.  The second attempt was successful, but we’d given up quite of bit of distance to Dove, and GWtW2 had just passed us as well.

It was getting to be too much wind for the amount of sail we had up and we could feel the hot air from the storm hitting us.  With only three crew aboard the boat was getting to be a lot to handle.

By the time we started the downwind leg, the harbour was frothy with whitecaps and the ominous black clouds, cool as they looked, were covering half the sky; lightning flashes were more regular and it didn’t seem like a very smart move to try to finish the race.  Better to save the sails and the crew and get back to the club while we still could.

It was a bit frustrating to abandon a race that we’d been doing so well in, but there’s not point in wrecking the boat or losing a friend overboard just for an extra point in the Wednesday night standings.  As it was, we had a pretty hard time getting the main down – the topping lift has this annoying habit of getting stuck on the top of the sail and making it impossible to get it down.

We finally got sorted out and back into the safety of the lagoon; I think about half the boats were DNFs on the night.  Next time I have a free weekend, I’ve got to get the mast down and see what can be done to avoid that issue in the future.

Anyway.  Boston won and we’ve got the RCYC Open to look forward to this weekend.

Back at our end of the lagoon it was typically calm and sunny.  A great BBQ was enjoyed by all.

The heartbreak of the evening came around 10:55 when Boston lost game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals 1-0, allowing the only goal of the game with just 0:19 to go in the third period.

The first of five LORC regattas for 2011 went this past weekend at Ashbridges Bay Yacht Club.  Panache motored over from QCYC on Friday night in caravan with Blythe Spirit.  It was cloudy and cold and not feeling much like late May (a weather pattern that would continue all weekend).  At least I had good company in Dave and Jeanette… and lets not forget that once we got to the club, we watched the Bruins win game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals which sends them to the Stanley Cup final for the first time since they tragically lost the cup to the Oilers during  my 12th birthday party.  Go Bruins!

But I digress.

On Saturday, after a brief shore-side postponement due to the no wind and/or the heavy fog, we (Mark, Quentin, Perry, Jay, Phoebe and Meg) left the dock eager for our first full day of regatta racing.  The forecast was for light winds (~8 knots) and sunny skies by 11 am or noon.

We floated around for a few hours waiting for the optimistic forecast to come to fruition.  By about 1 o’clock, after “DJ Perry” had taken us on a musical journey from Jimmy Buffett, through novelty country, to hip-hop, the sun came out and the breeze seemed to be holding so we started a race.

If they awarded beer at regattas for the starts we would have had another jug.  Man, we’re starting well this year.  We led Still Knot Working, Distant Thunder and Blythe up the course and were pointing well and feeling fast… until the wind died about halfway up the first leg.

We drifted slowly up the course for awhile.  The race committee could have maybe abandoned the race, but instead decided to finish us at the top of the course using an unachored mark boat.  Unfortunately we weren’t drifting in as good a direction as the rest of the fleet and we fell back… ultimately crossing the finish line pretty much nose-to-tail with SKW.  We lost 3rd place by a mere 2 seconds.

So, after only one crap “race”, unexplicably the race committee called off the racing early.  They are supposed to wait until 3pm for wind to fill in… and by about 2:45 a beautiful, steady breeze had finally come up as per the forecast, but they had already sent everybody packing by that point.  They were chatting over the radio about getting back in to use their free drink tickets…

Anyway.  We took heart in the fact that for a rare few moments at the start of the race we were leading and, importantly: holding the lead over some very fast boats.  And then there was lots of free rum to keep us in good spirits back at the club.

Sunday morning, it was again cold and cloudy, with a worse forecast: lighter winds and thunderstorms by late afternoon.  Snacktician Astra showed up in replacement of Phoebe and Meg and we set off, fully expecting to float around most of the day.

It was a welcome surprise to find that the wind, though fairly light, was also fairly consistent all day and we managed to get three races in.  Amazing.  (And no thunderstorms on the motor back home either)

Our first race started well (again) and we were keeping pace with the fleet (minus Distant Thunder who apparently went home).  By the top mark, Blythe had pulled out ahead, but we were right ahead of SKW in second.  The first real spinnaker set of the year went swimmingly (we had practised one the previous day which didn’t go quite perfectly) and we had a great downwind, neck-and-neck with SKW as we approached the gate on the inside track.

Then we noticed that two J22s, also racing on our course and who had started a good SIX MINUTES ahead of us in the previous start, were coming in on starboard for the same gate.  We doused the spinnaker as the first J crossed in front, but the next was not going to.  Steve (SKW’s skipper) yelled over asking me what the J was doing.  I replied that I had no idea, but he was on a starboard tack to my port gybe (i.e. the first rule of right-of-way is starboard over port), so I made the snap decision to make a hard duck behind him.  We came awfully close to a collision.  Unfortunately, we also missed the gate as a result.  so there we were with the spinnaker pole still up, the jib unable to cross over and we’re sliding sideways past the gate on the wrong side.  No ideal… And what was that J22 doing there anyway?  He should have been there and gone long ago.  (a post-race debrief with Dan on Blythe confirmed that at the gate I only had to give the J room to get around the near side of the gate, so I shouldn’t have had to duck…. oh well: chalk it up to one more rule learned the hard way).

SKW and the J22 both got through the gate ok; at least I assume they did… we had our own problems.   By the time we got straighted out, sailed back up to the gate and gone through it the right way, we were well behind. 

Then we just sailed a flawless rest of the race.  I’m sure we made up time on them.  Not enough to catch them, of course.  But enough that we felt we could get them next time.

The second race was sailed really well with no major screwups.  For some reason we were pointing low for part of second lap and started losing ground.  Probably the skipper’s fault.  Then on the final downwind we just didn’t have the speed of the other two and again settled for third.  Again, the crew was working great; tacks, gybes, sets and douses were all going like we actually knew what we were doing.

After a short delay, which allowed us to polish off some snacks, they started us on our third race of the day.  We knew that meant that we’d pick up third overall for the regatta, no matter where we finished, but we always want to win, right?

Once again, we won the start and led the other two, right on our tail, up the course.  The crew was working like a finely tuned machine and we didn’t give up an inch.  It was great All three boats basically shawdowed each other’s tacks all the way to the windward mark.  We were first around by about a boathlength and a half .

We popped the chute in front of the close-trailing SKW and right away were caught in their wind shadow.  They passed us on the outside, but then we slid in right behind them to try and return the favour.  Both of us had put a little distance back to Blythe; All the way down the course we played a little game of cat-and-mouse with Still Knot Working.  We were so close behind them that we could literally see the whites of their eyes.

Now, it’s important to note that by mid-day we had grown tired of listening to the constant chatter of the race committee on the radio, so we shut it off during the second race for the sake of peace and quiet.  Then again, after the start of the third we had done the same.  Unfortunately that meant that we didn’t hear them chattering about shortening the race to just one lap (the wind was fading).  And in all the fun of our little cat-and-mouse game downwind, I didn’t look up to notice the shortened course flag was flying on the mark boat that was sitting next to the gate.

So, in preparation for a second lap that was never to be, we doused the spinnaker 50 yards before the gate/finish line.  Only then did it become apparent to me what was going on… too late; the damage was done.  With the spinnaker down, we slowed down just enough to give the race away.  We lost by four seconds.

The extra unfortunate part is that by giving SKW the win, we also gave them the regatta over Blythe Spirit.  Ugh… sorry guys… :-/

Oh well – we just had to laugh.  Twice we had lost a position by less than five seconds.  But really we raced better than ever… we’ll get’em next time.  It’s going to be a good year.

Another early season race, another rainy weather forecast, another windy night…. another FREE JUG of BEER!!

The attendance picked up boat-wise for the second race of the season with five boats in our division (up from only two last week).  Crew-wise, we lost Dave and Perry, but gained Jeremy.  Phoebe and Frankie were back.  Quentin was a no-show after “the man” made him stay late at work.

We got off the dock pretty late, waiting for a late-arriving (unnamed) crew member.  As we sailed over to the starting area, we had to avoid a couple of Stars who had already started racing.  There was not much time before our own start, but we managed to get organized, assign jobs and get the stopwatch going at the right time.

As mentioned off the top, it was a pretty windy night, blowing about 15-20 knots; we went with the old #2 and a full main.  Coming into the start was pretty busy, but a couple of quick tacks got us in pretty good position.  I was slightly concerned about having Gone With the Wind II under us as we squeezed in at the boat end, but Bill didn’t force us up; though the wind started to round us up just as we got near the committee boat, as it always seems to do…  Anyway, we didn’t hit them…

Jeremy counted down and we ended up with a pretty clean start.  Nobody was called over early, though there looked to be about 4-5 boats piled up below us near the pin end that started before us…. but apparently not

It was Frankie’s second sail and she was pressed into jib grinding duty with Jeremy tailing while also trying to learn mainsail trim.  On our first upwind on that old #2 I thought it could have been trimmed tighter, but not having raced much on the sail I figured it wouldn’t hurt us too much…  In fact, we were pointing terribly and giving up a fair amount of ground to the fleet on that first tack.

The second upwind tack was a little better and by the third (our run at the upwind mark) I think we finally got it right.  Of course, by this time only Elan was still behind us.  Dove and GWTW2 had taken off, and to a slightly lesser extent, so had Moxie.  Our pole set on the downwind took a minute or two; it was the first pole set of the year seeing as we hadn’t bothered trying it on the #3 last week.

By the time we started sailing downwind the boats ahead of us looked to be most of the way down the course and it felt like we’d just be trying to hold onto 4th with Elan actually quite close behind us.

At the downwind mark we had to give room to a Star, but had had a good pole douse and solid rounding.  The cockpit crew got the sails trimmed in decent time and we were pointing well upwind.  Jeremy was starting to get the hang of mainsail trim, despite the traveller not cooperating much and that made it much easier for the skipper to just sail a straight course.

We had what seemed like a good upwind, overlaid the windward mark by quite a bit, but then Phoebe got a great pole set and when we looked up at the other boats sailing downwind, we were closer to them than expected.  Panache always seems to do well downwind, and maybe it’s just an optical illusion, but we seemed to be gaining on them… Maybe we still had a chance at a podium finish!

The third time around the crew had gotten into a groove and the boat really felt fast.  The mainsail trim was steadily improving (or maybe the wind gusts were less intense… ok, maybe a combination of the two), but we were cookin’.  We judged the upwind mark perfectly and had another great pole set for the final downwind.  Lo and behold, Moxie was not far ahead.  The downwind again seemed nice and fast, with only one minor screwup when Mark was telling a story (he tends to go on and on and get distracted) .

We put the stopwatch on Moxie and figured that they crossed the finish line about 1:10 ahead of us.  They owe us 15 points, so a third place finish seemed well within reach… Back at the clubhouse it was confirmed, with the rather unexpected bonus of a free jug of beer to celebrate with.

It wasn’t all good news though… Boston lost the hockey game.

It’s good to be back! After a long, hard off-season, Panache launched on a sunny April 14. Since then it’s been difficult to find nice weather, but she’s been sailing a handful of times. This week, the rain didn’t look like it would ever let up, but almost as if mother nature loves QCYC Wednesday night racing as much as we do, we got a few hours off for the first race night of 2011.

Despite the dire weather predictions, Phoebe, Perry, Dave and Frankie all came out to crew. It wasn’t raining, but it was really windy. It didn’t take long to realize that we’d want to reef the main and we sailed with our little #3.

We’ve been moved to a new division this year, which will make things interesting… no longer are we racing the guys on Blythe Spirit, nor One More Time. We’re racing with the big boys now. Literally. There’s an Alberg 37 in our fleet now… it’s about three times the size of us. It was a pretty poorly attended night overall – the fair weather sailors might start coming out next week, but so it was a good night to shake off the rust of 6 months of winter.

Before the start I remarked to Perry that with so few boats in our start, it would be a good night to try to win the jug… sometimes I impress even myself

Frankie counted us down and Dave urged me up as we crossed the start line just ahead of our good friend Bruce on Bandoleer and a couple boat lengths ahead of past-champion Eric on Alpha Omega. Right from the start we were dealing with new, bigger, faster boats in our start. It didn’t take long for Bandoleer to pull ahead and Alpha Omega to run over us… and then we saw an old nemesis, Skeena skulking around to windward. It was unexpected because they were supposed to start 5 minutes ahead of us, but either didn’t realize when their start was, or more likely just wanted to get in our way. I’m more convinced than ever that they race just to screw with us…

So even with so few boats on the course, we still had some traffic around us, but actually only one other boat in our fleet that we were racing against: the aforementioned Alberg 37 Gone with the Wind II. By the end of that first upwind leg, we had fallen in just behind them. Since they owe us 9 points, I figured that wasn’t bad, especially with the big winds favoring the heavier boat.

On the downwind we were flying, even with just a reefed main and tiny jib that was mostly flapping around, and we kept up with them it seemed.

That is, until we got to the downwind mark and tried to head back up.

It had happened once before, in a race last year: the jib, while flapping around, had wrapped itself around the forestay… not usually a huge problem. Except our #3 has battens which prevent it from being easily unwrapped. So instead of being able to head back upwind with the rest of the racers (i.e. going the right way), we had to continue downind (i.e. the wrong way) for a minute or two until Phoebe and Dave wrestled the jib back into the right orientation.  About a four minute round-trip?  Not great.

After that, we tried a little different strategy on the next down-wind, going on a broad reach towards the city before gybing into a broad reach at the mark… that didn’t help at all.  Probably hurt us even more, but we had nothing to lose at that point.

At the end of it, we finished well back of <em>GwtW2</em>, but again… I think it would be really difficult for us to compete against such a heavy boat in strong winds.  Also, it didn’t rain on us at all, AND we won the free beer for being the first over the line in our start.  Nobody went overboard and nothing was broken.  All-in-all a successful start to the season