S/V MIST Ship's Log http://shipslog.sightinc.com ... a personal journal for all things sailing Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:49:27 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Rolex Big Boat Series 2010 – notes… http://shipslog.sightinc.com/rolex-big-boat-series-2010 http://shipslog.sightinc.com/rolex-big-boat-series-2010#comments Tue, 28 Sep 2010 05:20:35 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=610 Things to remember on the 2010 Rolex Big Boat Series at St. Francis Yacht Club:

We were very competitive going into the RBBS with the division breaks, our main competitor going in was Tupelo Honey, but there were also other boats that could be a threat  such as Hawkeye, who had (Bill Colombo) from Doyle Sails aboard and a J-109, Electra,  from Southern California sailed by Harry Pattison of  Elliot Pattison Sails. Going into the third day of racing, 3 boats tied for first place.  Unfortunately for us, Saturday was a light wind day and we were somewhat under canvased to be able to race effectively despite having great starts off the line.  It took us out of contention for the podium finish, but overall we were definitely a threat to any of the podium finishers.  This log is to itemize some of the key points and lessons from this year’s BBS efforts…

  • Light air advice from Harry Pattison on Electra:  loosen shrouds and head stay to induce sag in head sail and mast should sag in the middle to widen the slot.  After suffering the slows on Saturday’s light-air races where we got 2 fifth place finishes and knocked us off as contenders for a podium finish, we loosen the headstay and sailed fat and fast on the last race of the series.  But Sunday’s condition was not exactly like Saturday, there was a little more wind, so I’m not sure that we have the light air speed problem solved yet.  Nonetheless, our speed using the Doyle jib was very good and we gained in every leg to yield  6:07 elapse time and 3:17 on corrected time ahead over our nearest competitor, Electra.  The light air is definitely a weak point that will need to be shored up before next year.  One way to mitigate this would be to evaluate whether we should enter with a rating that is with the 125% jib and to sail the pre-season races with the 125% to see what the impact would be using the 125% all the time.  Yes, there will be times where we do not need the 125%, but if we can sail without a huge penalty with the 125%, it may be worth it.  Certainly during the year, it would be good to test that hypothesis.

  • Even in late ebb turning to slack this year, it was still advantageous to hug the city front rather than heading north of Alcatraz to catch any residual ebb from the North Bay. This was something of a surprise on Saturday (the light air day) when Hawkeye hug the shore, while Bodacious played the middle of the channel between Alcatraz and the City Front, and we took a flyer out to the north of Alcatraz because we didn’t have the speed and point.  Hawkeye gain considerable distance to Bodacious by hugging the City Front.  Two things I was surprised by this move:  1.) this was light air condition, I would have thought the wind would be blocked closer into the shore, 2.) usually, when it’s slack, the flood comes into shore first then spreading out to mid bay. Timing of this is tough to predict – need to observe this from previous race and monitor closely.
  • The tide charts that were sold for $200.00 were dubious investments.  While it presents to have the current mapped out in detail, in the final analysis, it is a 2 dimensional interpolation and subject to the same flaws as any simulation data.  The best indicators are still visual clues you get as you sail by.  The greatest opportunities is when the tide change direction at different parts of the bay at different times.  Oh…to capture that knowledge on record somehow is difficult.
  • Starts were dialed in this year. The trick is to stay 1-2 boat length below and start pressing for speed 10 seconds before the gun and build speed to 110% so at the gun you can out-point and out-maneuver your opponents that few seconds at the start. Once you have them in your grasp, you have options: you can gas them by pinching up when you have breeze, you can foot off and get more speed to favorable currents… etc.

The one significant skill-set we acquired this year aboard IE is that we can out-point most boats in our fleet with the Pineapple 100% jib in winds above 12+ knots.  The jib is hauled inboard with the barber hauler and the main strapped in tight or travel to weather to induce weather helm, the helmsman drives the boat alternately for speed by pressing and then luff up whenever there’s a puff or pressure.  We find consistently the boat can point 2-5 degrees higher than normal and was able to cause the entire fleet to peel off to weather of us because they could not keep up the pointing.  This was an effective counter to Tupelo’s previous uncontested pointing superiority and we did not see Tupelo attempt to climb to leeward of us as in previous years.

This trimming technique is also a departure from the way the jib was trimmed in previous races and is a potentially contentious point as to how the boat should be sailed. I have trouble grasping the logic in having the jib trimmer setting jib trim independently from the boat’s tactical considerations.  When we are in a tactical situation, every little advantage must be played at the right time to yield a positive result.  It does no good when we are being lee bowed to have the jib trimmer to ease sails – the helmsman has two options, 1.) press down to get the jib drawing maximum, but closing the gap between the leeward boat and us, or 2.) continue to point high and luff the jib, thereby loosing speed while maintaining height.  The helmsman is responding to the jib trimmer for course and direction, it should be the other way around.  The first disconnect I have with this method is when we want to point up, the current practice is to have the helmsman head up, the jib now luffing slightly, then the jib trimmer brings the jib in to flow.  My take is that while the jib is luffing, we are actually not deriving maximum speed from the jib – why would this be an effective manuever?  Contrast that with the move where the trimmer trims in the jib WHILE the helmsman slowly heads up – this allows maximum drive from the jib…  It’s a very slight difference to be sure, but in most tactical situations on a race, it’s these subtle moves that makes the biggest difference between a successful maneuver and an unsuccessful one.

GOALS FOR 2010-2011 SAILING CAMPAIGN
September 19, 2010

Institutionalize 2010 Improvements-

  • Continue to use the Start sequence strategies used in BBS (http://shipslog.sightinc.com/practice-starting).
    • Start NEAR the favored end of the line … even number towards; odd numbers away …
    • Start On Time.
    • Start with 110%+ of upwind target boat speed … 15 seconds to power up
    • Start with clear air to leeward.
  • Expand Starting repertoire
    • Practice Power, Back, Luff techniques.
    • Practice Hover/Go drills.
    • Consider two-boat drills suggested by Robert’s e-mail.
  • Practice Upwind trim modes-
    • Point, Speed, Power modes & settings.
  • Practice maintaining speed on Tacks & Gybes (record transition speeds & times to full speed)
    • Create a Log/Table/Matrix for settings.

Correct 2010 Shortfalls-

  • • Establish light wind sailing techniques-
    • Main & headsail trim settings.
    • Record optimum Sail vertical & horizontal setting at different wind speeds.
    • Crew weight distribution in helping boat heel.
  • • Team discipline (micro-management/ communication, etc.)
    • Establish a common vocabulary amongst crew.
  • Translate past experiences on other boats to an IE specific vocabulary.
  • Expand team’s overall understanding of how IE handles-
    • Enhance tapemarkings for various trim settings-
  • spreaders, forestay, barber haulers, mainsheet, etc.
  • Change/rotate positions at practices/ beercans/ winter series.
  • Sailing without electronics.

Milestone Goals-
• Determine which key races are to be pegged towards the accomplishing of which goals.

Create SMART Goals for each of the goals listed above-
(Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely)

San Francisco Bay Entrance (Golden Gate), California Current

16 September 2010 – 20 September 2010
San Francisco Bay Entrance (Golden Gate), California Current   37.8167° N, 122.4833° W

  • 2010-09-16  09:41 PDT  -0.00 knots  Slack, Ebb Begins
  • 2010-09-16  12:10 PDT  -1.27 knots  Max Ebb
  • 2010-09-16  15:19 PDT   0.00 knots  Slack, Flood Begins
  • 2010-09-16  15:40 PDT   Moonrise
  • 2010-09-16  18:07 PDT   1.70 knots  Max Flood
  • 2010-09-17  07:39 PDT   2.84 knots  Max Flood
  • 2010-09-17  10:39 PDT  -0.00 knots  Slack, Ebb Begins
  • 2010-09-17  13:47 PDT  -1.53 knots  Max Ebb
  • 2010-09-17  16:17 PDT   Moonrise
  • 2010-09-17  16:26 PDT   0.00 knots  Slack, Flood Begins
  • 2010-09-18  08:30 PDT   3.00 knots  Max Flood
  • 2010-09-18  11:26 PDT  -0.00 knots  Slack, Ebb Begins
  • 2010-09-18  14:37 PDT  -1.89 knots  Max Ebb
  • 2010-09-18  16:49 PDT   Moonrise
  • 2010-09-18  17:21 PDT   0.01 knots  Slack, Flood Begins
  • 2010-09-19  09:12 PDT   3.13 knots  Max Flood
  • 2010-09-19  12:05 PDT  -0.01 knots  Slack, Ebb Begins
  • 2010-09-19  15:09 PDT  -2.26 knots  Max Ebb
  • 2010-09-19  17:17 PDT   Moonrise
  • 2010-09-19  18:08 PDT   0.01 knots  Slack, Flood Begins

RACE #1

IRC D
1 USA 28908 Tupelo Honey Elan 40 Gerard Sheridan 1.031 16/Sep/10 – 13:32:53 0:01:37:53 0:01:40:55 1 1
2 USA 28423 Inspired Environments Beneteau, Farr, First 40.7 Timothy Ballard 1.046 16/Sep/10 – 13:31:35 0:01:36:35 0:01:41:01 2 2
3 USA 50444 Hawkeye IMX-38 Frank Morrow 1.031 16/Sep/10 – 13:33:23 0:01:38:23 0:01:41:25 3 3
4 USA 56385 Electra J 109 Thomas Brott 1.018 16/Sep/10 – 13:35:15 0:01:40:15 0:01:42:03 4 5
5 USA 385 Kuai Sabre 386 Daniel Thielman 1.020 16/Sep/10 – 13:36:02 0:01:41:02 0:01:43:03 5 9
6 USA 41001 Bodacious Farr 40 1 Ton John Clauser 1.029 16/Sep/10 – 13:35:23 0:01:40:23 0:01:43:17 6 10
7 USA 38023 Ohana Beneteau 45f5 Steve Hocking 1.053 16/Sep/10 – 13:36:14 0:01:41:14 0:01:46:35 7 18

RACE#2

IRC D
1 USA 50444 Hawkeye IMX-38 Frank Morrow 1.031 16/Sep/10 – 16:27:41 0:01:32:41 0:01:35:33 1 1
2 USA 41001 Bodacious Farr 40 1 Ton John Clauser 1.029 16/Sep/10 – 16:29:55 0:01:34:55 0:01:37:40 2 2
3 USA 28423 Inspired Environments Beneteau, Farr, First 40.7 Timothy Ballard 1.046 16/Sep/10 – 16:28:30 0:01:33:30 0:01:37:48 3 3
4 USA 28908 Tupelo Honey Elan 40 Gerard Sheridan 1.031 16/Sep/10 – 16:32:42 0:01:37:42 0:01:40:43 4 4
5 USA 385 Kuai Sabre 386 Daniel Thielman 1.020 16/Sep/10 – 16:38:06 0:01:43:06 0:01:45:09 5 5
6 USA 38023 Ohana Beneteau 45f5 Steve Hocking 1.053 16/Sep/10 – 16:38:50 0:01:43:50 0:01:49:20 6 6
7 USA 56385 Electra J 109 Thomas Brott DNF 1.018 8 22

RACE#3

IRC D
1 USA 56385 Electra J 109 Thomas Brott 1.018 17/Sep/10 – 16:48:53 0:01:51:53 0:01:53:53 1 1
2 USA 28423 Inspired Environments Beneteau, Farr, First 40.7 Timothy Ballard 1.046 17/Sep/10 – 16:46:30 0:01:49:30 0:01:54:32 2 2
3 USA 41001 Bodacious Farr 40 1 Ton John Clauser 1.029 17/Sep/10 – 16:49:20 0:01:52:20 0:01:55:35 3 3
4 USA 28908 Tupelo Honey Elan 40 Gerard Sheridan 1.031 17/Sep/10 – 16:51:13 0:01:54:13 0:01:57:45 4 4
5 USA 385 Kuai Sabre 386 Daniel Thielman 1.020 17/Sep/10 – 16:53:13 0:01:56:13 0:01:58:32 5 5
6 USA 50444 Hawkeye IMX-38 Frank Morrow 1.031 17/Sep/10 – 16:52:04 0:01:55:04 0:01:58:38 6 6
7 USA 38023 Ohana Beneteau 45f5 Steve Hocking 1.053 17/Sep/10 – 17:00:35 0:02:03:35 0:02:10:07 7 7

RACE#4

IRC D
1 USA 56385 Electra J 109 Thomas Brott 1.018 17/Sep/10 – 16:48:53 0:01:51:53 0:01:53:53 1 1
2 USA 28423 Inspired Environments Beneteau, Farr, First 40.7 Timothy Ballard 1.046 17/Sep/10 – 16:46:30 0:01:49:30 0:01:54:32 2 2
3 USA 41001 Bodacious Farr 40 1 Ton John Clauser 1.029 17/Sep/10 – 16:49:20 0:01:52:20 0:01:55:35 3 3
4 USA 28908 Tupelo Honey Elan 40 Gerard Sheridan 1.031 17/Sep/10 – 16:51:13 0:01:54:13 0:01:57:45 4 4
5 USA 385 Kuai Sabre 386 Daniel Thielman 1.020 17/Sep/10 – 16:53:13 0:01:56:13 0:01:58:32 5 5
6 USA 50444 Hawkeye IMX-38 Frank Morrow 1.031 17/Sep/10 – 16:52:04 0:01:55:04 0:01:58:38 6 6
7 USA 38023 Ohana Beneteau 45f5 Steve Hocking 1.053 17/Sep/10 – 17:00:35 0:02:03:35 0:02:10:07 7 7

RACE#5

1 USA 28908 Tupelo Honey Elan 40 Gerard Sheridan 1.031 18/Sep/10 – 14:23:16 0:01:16:16 0:01:18:37 1 3
2 USA 56385 Electra J 109 Thomas Brott 1.018 18/Sep/10 – 14:24:35 0:01:17:35 0:01:18:58 2 5
3 USA 50444 Hawkeye IMX-38 Frank Morrow 1.031 18/Sep/10 – 14:24:48 0:01:17:48 0:01:20:12 3 6
4 USA 41001 Bodacious Farr 40 1 Ton John Clauser 1.029 18/Sep/10 – 14:25:36 0:01:18:36 0:01:20:52 4 9
5 USA 28423 Inspired Environments Beneteau, Farr, First 40.7 Timothy Ballard 1.046 18/Sep/10 – 14:25:59 0:01:18:59 0:01:22:36 5 13
6 USA 385 Kuai Sabre 386 Daniel Thielman 1.020 18/Sep/10 – 14:30:00 0:01:23:00 0:01:24:39 6 15
7 USA 38023 Ohana Beneteau 45f5 Steve Hocking 1.053 18/Sep/10 – 14:29:38 0:01:22:38 0:01:27:00 7 17

RACE#6

IRC D
1 USA 56385 Electra J 109 Thomas Brott 1.018 18/Sep/10 – 17:40:31 0:02:12:31 0:02:14:54 1 7
2 USA 28908 Tupelo Honey Elan 40 Gerard Sheridan 1.031 18/Sep/10 – 17:40:11 0:02:12:11 0:02:16:16 2 8
3 USA 50444 Hawkeye IMX-38 Frank Morrow 1.031 18/Sep/10 – 17:45:47 0:02:17:47 0:02:22:03 3 9
4 USA 41001 Bodacious Farr 40 1 Ton John Clauser 1.029 18/Sep/10 – 17:48:07 0:02:20:07 0:02:24:10 4 10
5 USA 28423 Inspired Environments Beneteau, Farr, First 40.7 Timothy Ballard 1.046 18/Sep/10 – 17:51:40 0:02:23:40 0:02:30:16 5 11
6 USA 385 Kuai Sabre 386 Daniel Thielman 1.020 18/Sep/10 – 17:55:51 0:02:27:51 0:02:30:48 6 12
7 USA 38023 Ohana Beneteau 45f5 Steve Hocking 1.053 18/Sep/10 – 17:59:35 0:02:31:35 0:02:39:37 7 17

RACE #7

IRC D
1 USA 28423 Inspired Environments Beneteau, Farr, First 40.7 Timothy Ballard 1.046 19/Sep/10 – 14:30:21 0:01:45:21 0:01:50:11 1 1
2 USA 56385 Electra J 109 Thomas Brott 1.018 19/Sep/10 – 14:36:28 0:01:51:28 0:01:53:28 2 2
3 USA 50444 Hawkeye IMX-38 Frank Morrow 1.031 19/Sep/10 – 14:36:05 0:01:51:05 0:01:54:31 3 3
4 USA 41001 Bodacious Farr 40 1 Ton John Clauser 1.029 19/Sep/10 – 14:38:05 0:01:53:05 0:01:56:21 4 4
5 USA 28908 Tupelo Honey Elan 40 Gerard Sheridan 1.031 19/Sep/10 – 14:41:20 0:01:56:20 0:01:59:56 5 5
6 USA 38023 Ohana Beneteau 45f5 Steve Hocking 1.053 19/Sep/10 – 14:39:35 0:01:54:35 0:02:00:39 6 6
7 USA 385 Kuai Sabre 386 Daniel Thielman 1.020 19/Sep/10 – 14:47:55 0:02:02:55 0:02:05:22 7 7
]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/rolex-big-boat-series-2010/feed 0 Handicap Chart for 2010 BBS – IRC Division D http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs_handicap-chart http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs_handicap-chart#comments Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:53:21 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=611 This is the handicap chart for the IRC Division D…  At the end of a 3 hour race, we have to be 6:10 ahead of the slowest boat.  We give Tupelo about 2:30 to finish at the end of 3 hours…

]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs_handicap-chart/feed 0 Practicing starts… http://shipslog.sightinc.com/practice-starting http://shipslog.sightinc.com/practice-starting#comments Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:27:41 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=588 I found a nice little write up on practicing starts that I sent to Timothy, but decided that I should save this on the ships log to recall later.  Unfortunately, I didn’t make a note of the author.  But I thought the routines he described makes sense, so I posted here with some minor edits and formatting to make it clearer…  Later, when I have some time to spare, I might make some diagrams to illustrate the maneuvers…

There are 4 primary things you want to accomplish in a start:

  • Start NEAR the favored end of the line
  • Start On Time
  • Start with 110%+ of upwind target boat speed
  • Start with clear air to leeward.

We can get into why but these 4 goals drive everything else. Now at starting lines, things happen fast, because boats are near each other and sailing TOWARDS each other, so the SITUATION is complex. That means your reactions need to follow KISS – Keep It Simple…Stupid! That does mean practice (and I’ll get to the exercises below) but it also means following a couple of general guidelines:
  • Zero is an Even Number… What that means is that if you have identified which area of the starting line you want to start in, in the milling about before the start, you want to be NEAR that area on even clock numbers and away from that area on “odd” numbers” And if you get out of phase on that, adjust your sailing around so that you get back in synch
  • Try to use THE SAME TYPE of approach for each segment of the line.  i.e. use the same technique ALWAYS for the Starboard end. For the Port End be consistent in your technique and same applies for the middle. that doesn’t mean all three have to be the same, but it does mean you keep a consistent pattern for each of those three.
  • Your boat needs AT LEAST 15 seconds of reaching power to get to 110% of upwind speed. your goal then is to make sure that your ‘space on the line’ allows you to do that.
  • A moving boat can adjust its position, a sitting boat is a target.
  • Stay within 5 boatlengths of the line ALWAYS during the sequence.
  • NEVER GYBE within 2 minutes of the start…ALWAYS TACK. Gybes stall the foils and the sails and make you a sitting duck for too long.
  • Always count down the time in steady increments.

Now each of these “rules” gets broken sometimes in the hurly burly of a start, but if you TRY to follow them, you will get ever improving and CONSISTENT starts. Now to practice starts you need 3 people on your boat – no more (4 if your main is so big you need a main trimmer). You need Driver, Jib trim, Bowman and optional main. You can add your tactian if you want, but your tactician should NOT be telling you how to start. its too confusing. I’ve tried coaching green drivers through starts, and it invariably is a cluster.

So then there are two sets of drills you can do – Single boat and Double boat. run ALL of these drills with 2 minutes LESS on your clock than your club’s normal starting sequence. That way when you get to actual racing you will feel like you have loads of spare time to get set up.

You have Three Commands: Power, Back, LUFF.

Your trimmer must respond IMMEDIATELY to these commands. Your trimmer should also call the time in either 10 or 15 second increments, counting down the last 15 seconds. But the intervals need to be consistent, and the trimmer should PAUSE before answering the time to stay in cadence… why?  because a cadence gets YOU in a rhythm. Random intervals knock you out.

Your Bow is responsible for calling two things: Distance to the line and the LAST THREE DIGITS of any boat hidden by your genoa that is on converging course.  The way the bow shows the distance to the line is by holding out fingers behind their back if you are below the line. A balled fist means ON the line.  If you are ABOVE the line then the hand comes up and shows fingers. this way the fingers are in a consistent place, AND when you get up in the competition – THEY can’t see them

Single Boat Drills:

Hover Drill

Find a mark – any mark. AT the “start” of your sequence, be at the mark reaching at full speed. Your goal is to sail at full speed UNTIL 1 minute to go at which point you want to be Fully stopped with your bow as close to the mark as you dare. for the next minute, you will luff you sails. You are allowed to pump them or back them periodically, but your goal is to hover as close to the mark as you can for a full minute. the first time you try this, you will probably last about 10 seconds. The longer you can do this, the better your downspeed boat handling.

The trick to this drill is to be CLOSE to “Head To wind” but not quite. and to have lots of slack in the main sheet and use ALL the parts of the mainsheet for trimming by grabbing the sheets as close to the boom as feasible.

Time and Distance Drill

Start as with the hover drill. But now your goal is to be At the mark, at 110% of target upwind speed, coming up to close hauled at ZERO. Sail until 1:30 from the start. Now rag the sails and coast. NO ADJUSTMENT ALLOWED. At 30 seconds to go, sheet in and make for the mark – once you sheet in, no slowing down is allowed. First few times you try this you will be completely off. Learn to adjust. Now the easy approach for this is coming in from STB. For a more advanced version of this drill, Sail off to the port of the mark and come back on port. coast through the tack once you let the sails go and see if you can still hit the mark.

The trick to this drill is to use a CONSISTENT APPROACH Pattern (notice the reinforcement of my earlier comment). this will get you used to CONSISTENTLY being where you need to be for a given wind condition, and give you an idea of how long your boat takes to accellerate

Sheet In and Go Drill

Start as with the Hover Drill. But now your goal is to hover exactly at the mark from 45 seconds to zero. this will teach you how to accelerate when you are almost pinched off and how to transition from Hover to closehauled without your trimmer dragging your bow down with the Jib. Sail at full tilt until 45 seconds. at 45 seconds you need to be stopped with your bow as close to the bouy as possible. Hover for 30 seconds. At 15 seconds sheet in, but keep your bow “below the line”. The goal is to be “close hauled” at zero as close to the mark as feasibly and still with good speed.
the trick to this drill is that your jib trimmer has to start trimming in the jib gently so that he doesn’t pull the boat down with the Genoa while the foils are still stalled. And you need to get the main on quickly
OK, get good at those drills and you will be in the top 1/3 of your fleet’s starters. But you still will lose out to “Mr Starting Line” as he comes and plants his boat immediately to leeward of you. So you need to learn how to defend “your hole” (the space to leeward of you on the starting line that you are going to use to accellerate into). and you need to learn how to ATTACK Mr Hover (the guy who gets to the start line with 1 minute to go and then hovers there).

2 Boat Drills

This requires 2 boats, and there are 2 drills with each boat having a different assignment. the “target” is always the boat on STB. This boat on STB ALWAYS starts out in Hover Mode – ie near the Mark, stopped with sails ragged.

Port Attack/Defend Drill

In this drill the Target boat gets 30 seconds to get into “hover mode”. The ‘attacker’ starts out on port 10 boatlengths away. the “Target’s” goal is to drive the defender either behind him, or far enough to leeward of him on the line that the Target can accellerate for at least 15 seconds prior to the start.

The Attacker’s goal is to tack underneath the “target” and get close enough that if the “target” sheets in before the attacker has started to bear away, contact would occur. The Attacker does this by sailing towards the Target from port, tacking below- completeing the tack with ragged sails, and then luffing as close to the Target as possible without fouling the Target.

The Target defends by… pulling the bow down from “almost head to wind” quickly by having the jib trimmer drum the jib on hard for a few seconds (but ONLY a few seconds) to start the rotation. the sails BOTH get luffed completely as the bow is pointed STRAIGHT AT the bow of the Attacker. Remember this “bow to bow” change of course has to be done while the attacker is at least 3BL away, but you don’t want to do it until they are about 5 BL away because otherwise you burn too much distance to leeward.  Once ‘bow to bow’ the Attacker cannot tack closer than your bow. As soon as the attacker starts to tack, dump the helm to leeward to push the bow up, and grab all parts of the main and sheet it in PAST MIDSHIPS. this will cause the boat to weather vane. Now its important to release the main as soon as the boat starts to turn, otherwise you will get too much speed and push your bow across the line OR WORSE, force yourself into a tack.  THIS is the mechanism for protecting your leeward hole from attackers from Port.

Both boats hover until time to start and try to beat the other boat over the line at speed. If Target TIES Attacker, then Target wins. If Attacker pins out Target, Attacker wins. Reverse roles every 3 tries.

Drill 2:

Attack from behind:

Shark Attack
setup the Target as before. Attacker instead starts 10 BL to STB (astern) of Target. But the goal is the same. Sail below Target’s stern and luff up under them as close as possible.  Attacker’s trick here is to delay the turn up as long as possible and use backwinding the jib to stop (but not tack).  This is the one place where your tactician can help you in the start. They can call “Shark coming”. But otherwise when the ‘shark’ is 3-5bl astern (depending on speed) helm calls “Power” until the bow starts down followed by “LUFF”. again the goal is to come parallel to the line with as little fwd speed as possible.
Now the Attacker will start yelling ‘come up’ quite a ways out (this is common practice by Mr Starting Line) but YOU don’t have to react UNTIL their bow overlaps your stern. THEN YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY BEGIN to come up. But Attacker must give you ROOM to ‘stay clear’ that means they have to give you room to pivot the stern of your boat.
what this means is that you put the helm down and sheet in the main (again with all parts agressively) to force the bow up AND THE STERN CLOCKWISE. Attacker MUST KEEP CLEAR of your swinging stern. Because if they don’t they have violated RRS 15 by failing to Give Room To keep Clear.
Now the trick here is that Target swings the stern faster the faster the attacker is moving. if the attacker is moving slowly, then you swing your stern a bit more slowly. the goal hear is to use the swinging stern to keep them from turning up towards the wind until their keep has passed well behind your stern. That way you are guaranteed they cannot get closer than 1/2 BL to you. and that’s enough to start accelleratig at 10 seconds.


Ok do those drills – ideally for 2 weekends prior to the start of your season, and you will see a marked improvement in your starts. I do the “single boat” drills in every new boat I go racing in. Because its the quickest way I have found to get yourself in tune with how the boat handles, and it also gets your crew in tune with how you start.
]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/practice-starting/feed 0 South Beach YC – IRC Invitational http://shipslog.sightinc.com/sbyc-irc-invitational http://shipslog.sightinc.com/sbyc-irc-invitational#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 07:59:13 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=566 August 21, 2001  Race 1:  RC called for a course one which is a simple windward and leeward sausage.

No time to do much except to follow the faster rated boats.  Short race. Shorter comments.  The only notable is that due to shifty winds, I overstood the windward mark, but also over estimated the current.  Nonetheless we finished second..

August 21, 2001  Race 2:  RC called for course 2 which is now a twice around windward and leeward….

We favored the right side of the line because of better pressure.  Tupelo went left but in lighter air.  Looking at the track, we were definitely in a persistent header by the time we were at the weather mark on the first leg.  On the other hand, look at the nice lift coming out of the leeward mark.   We still had that header towards the Bay Bridge.   Some of the fast boats with pro aboard did bang the corners pretty hard and pretty early.  Guess they were hoping to take advantage of the lift by the bridge.  Sure makes it hard to call the layline.

One nice tactical move we made in the third race is to cover Hawkeye as she approached us from port near the windward mark, since we were starboard, Hawkeye fell off to pass to our stern.  We tacked to port to cover immediately after they passed to cover them tightly, not so much because they were our primary competition but because I don’t want them to starboard tack on us if we cover them too loosely.  We effectively pinned them below us and allowed us to control when we want to tack to the layline.  It worked beautifully. By the time we reached the weather mark, they were two boat-length behind.  See photos:

Hawkeye approaching on port almost even with us.  I called for gear #1 build boat speed, so we pressed the boat down a bit.  This had the psychological effect of postponing decision on Hawkeye as they think they might make it and perhaps try to point a little higher which will cause them to lose speed.

Hawkeye realized that they cannot make it pass us, decided to pass to our stern.  We now set ourselves to gear 2:  best VMG mode, not to point too high and maintain speed so we have some reserved power to make tactical moves.

After Hawkeye passed to our stern, we tacked in less than one boat length to cover them fairly tightly.  Our primary objective here is to keep Hawkeye from tacking on starboard because if they tack, they would be tacking on to our wind shadow and we can tack on a close covering position again.  This prevented Hawkeye calling starboard on us and had to wait for us to tack to the lay line.  This also means they have to sail a slightly longer distance as they have to wait for us to tack then tack themselves.  The net result of this tactical maneuvering is that from dead even at the port and starboard point, we gained two boat-lengths in a span of five minutes by the time we rounded the mark!  Yeesss!

August 21, 2010: Race 3:  We finished first!.

August 22, 2010:  Race 4:  We finished 4th.   Race 5 was cancelled after wind died.

Overall results:  Second in series.

]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/sbyc-irc-invitational/feed 0 StFYC: Aldo Alessio Perpetual Trophy Regatta http://shipslog.sightinc.com/aldo-alessio http://shipslog.sightinc.com/aldo-alessio#comments Sat, 07 Aug 2010 00:18:23 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=527 Aldo Alessio Perpetual Trophy Regatta - Friday, 07/30/2010:

2010-07-30  10:52 PDT   0.00 knots  Slack, Flood Begins
2010-07-30  13:54 PDT   2.94 knots  Max Flood
2010-07-30  17:06 PDT  -0.00 knots  Slack, Ebb Begins

The first race of the Aldo Alessio is an ocean race. The RC set up the starting area just west of Treasure Island and set a course for the SF lightship Buoy then to Blossom Rock and to the finish. Winds at the start was steady at 8-12 knots. Given the start time of 11:00, our start will be at slack with maximum flood occurring at 1354 at 2.9 knots at the Gate. Given it’s late ebb/early flood, we can anticipate the current to flow from the north bay into south bay as the early flood will meet resistance from the river current and divert the initial flood to the south bay. So we opted to start at the committee boat end with intentions to tack to port and head over towards Angel Island. Our main competitor, Tupelo Honey, started towards the left side of the line presumably thinking that they will try to use the current shadow of Alcatraz to buffer them from the current, but it was definitely not the right move and ultimately, they tacked over to port but they missed the opportunity and is now playing catch up. By the time we approached northeastern point of Alcatraz, we were climbing up on them without having to point the boat very high. The current on our leebow helped push us higher and kept our speed up. We made a few more tacks mostly to stay windward and westward of our competitors and to consolidate our gains as we tack out the gate.

We followed the “big boys” to Yellow bluff and taken the lifts often occur there – although it was a bit shifty. We took a final tuck into horseshoe Cove then poked our bow out of the north tower of GGB. I wasn’t quite sure where the most favorable current would be but I wasn’t sure that tucking into the Marin headlands would necessarily be the best call, but someone called for a tack and we tacked inshore for a while and found adverse current, so we tacked back out and I decided to head toward the middle of the GGB span and play the right side of the channel. This way we can stay between Tupelo and Point Bonita – given Tupelo is in the same current, at least our position is protected.  When we reached Point Diablo on the Marin side, we sailed into Bonita Cove and found favorable current and we stayed within the cove and gained significant distance from Tupelo.

We tacked out of Bonita Cove close to the light house on starboard tack towards the middle part of the SF entrance.  By this time, the building flood is becoming obvious as there was a definite current line arcing across the entire mouth of the entrance, spanning from Point Bonita to Mile Rock.  We crossed the current line but found that we were not making much headway due to a combination of light air and confusing chop.  In the mean time, Tupelo and Hawkeye are making steady progress in closing in on us and heading to Point Bonita.  I called for a tack to cover but for unknown reasons, our speed continue to drop and our speed fell to 5.5 knots and will not come up.  By the time we crossed Point Bonita to the beam, Tupelo and Hawkeye were both ahead of us.  We gave up nearly 2 miles of distance in that move to the center of the entrance.  Note for the future ocean race:  in early flood, it is still a good idea to hug close to Point Bonita and head north to avoid the flood.  Furthermore, the counter current indicated on current chart is more evident on the eastern cove between Point Diablo and Lime Point (the North Tower of GGB). Despite the fact that we lost ground, I realized that we need to position ourselves north of our competition as when the wind fills, it will fill from the north and we want to be on the inside of the lift as well as getting the pressure sooner.  Indeed, after half an hour of the light stuff, the wind pressure build and we were off to the races again, we did get the wind a little sooner than Tupelo and Hawkeye, and we were on the inside of the lift.  This puts us in good covering position as we did not have to worry about pointing high but merely staying above our competition.

By the time we reached the lightship, we regained our lead by a hundred yards or more.  We set the chute and headed back towards the bay.  During the rounding we sighted a large deep draft vessel taking on pilot, so rather than crossing the channel right away, I instructed the crew to trim the spinnaker to an optimal reach angle without chocking the leach then letting the helmsman to drive to the luff of the chute.  I also request the twinger to be fully released so we are not choking the chute and avoid over trimming the sail, but the trimmer kept bringing it down on the context that it helps the luff to be stable and kept adjusting the luff. The problem with this is that the helmsman never get to settle down to feel the boat’s balance and finding that optimal speed groove while pointing as high as possible on the chute.

On trimming on a spinnaker reach: I believe there is almost always an optimal sail trim when the boat practically sails itself  - it’s not about how the sails look, but how the sails interact with each other and the balance to boat as a whole.  It requires a sensitive touch on the helm and consistent feedback to the crew to dial it in.  In the case of tight beam reach with a chute, it’s about getting the boat to sail hight while balanced.  Generally, the pole should be over-trimmed by 5-10 degrees (approx 2-5 ft from the headstay), keep the twinger loose so the lead is effectively as far back as possible (similar to moving the jib block back so there is plenty of twist and the air is spilled off the top of the sail), then leave it to the helmsman to drive to the sail trim.  Generally it’s about the helmsman finding that groove first and then let the boat sail itself with minor guidance from the helm.  We want to spill the air off the top of the spinnaker on a reach because it generates heel very quickly so we want to minimize that.  We want the helmsman to sail the boat as high as possible on a spinnaker reach, so we set it up like sailing a jib – the helmsman sail by the trim of the jib.   In hindsight, I think this is a common misperception of sailors who do not spend much time at the helm and are not able to feel the balance of the entire boat – they trim simply on the basis of sail shape, not boat balance.  In the end, it’s about the “feel of the helm”, not how the sail looks – sometimes, it doesn’t matter how the sail looks, but how the boat feels (think mainsail in strong wind, think jib luff in light wind).

We continued sailing on a beam reach north of the channel until the deep draft vessel passed us.  Our desired approach is to arrive at the southern part of the entrance near Mile Rock since the wind will shift westerly as the topography of the entrance to SF bay will funnel the wind into the bay itself.  This way, we can have a nice broad reach angle while working the currents in the deeper channel.  We executed to that pretty much as text book and increased our lead to Tupelo and Hawkeye to the next mark to Blossom Rock then hug the shoreline to the finish line.  Unfortunately, we did not gain enough grounds from the light bucket to the finish and we finished 7th out of 10 boats entered.  In our post race review, the crew voiced concerns about disagreements in the pit that I have to take charge more on suggestions and feedback from the cockpit.

31 Sa 0213 2.2F 0509 0805 3.0E 1121 1430 2.6F 1738 2036 3.2E
1 Su 0020 0303 2.0F 0605 0851 2.4E 1151 1510 2.3F 1813 2124 3.2E

Tupelo Honey played the cone of Alcatraz with a twist. After reaching the southern end of Alcatraz, most boats typically sail across to the SF shore, given that is the shortest distance between the two points. Once in a while, a few boats would tack to the west of Alcatraz point to get a little more relief just before crossing the flood. In this race, Tupelo continued on port to sail west of Alcatraz to ply the water in front of Alcatraz until they reached the northwest end of the island. I suppose the theory being that the flood current encounters Alcatraz will both split the current and presents a back pressure where there’s less current – think of this as the bow wave effect.

]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/aldo-alessio/feed 0 NOOD Regatta http://shipslog.sightinc.com/nood-regatta http://shipslog.sightinc.com/nood-regatta#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:41:57 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=468 The first race of the IRC season series took place in conjunction with Sailing World’s NOOD regatta.  WE had missed the beginning of the IRC racing season because of Timothy’s travels and our decision not to do any IRC Ocean races. So it was the first time all of us will be sailing together as a team even though most of us have sailed with each other at some point or the other, but in different roles and circumstances.  The crew consists of Chris at the bow, with Bret at the mast, Pete in pit, David Smith at mainsheet, Edda, Miha, and Joe are in the cockpit with Ted as the pit boss, Timothy as helmsman and yours truly as tactician.  After checking in and verified there’s no new amendments to the SI, we left the docks and went around the breakwater for some crew practice.  As typical when you put a new group together , it’s a little tentitive as crew work goes, it’s clear everyone knew how to do their job but the timing had to be worked out. We set the chute and practiced gybes a few times to get the crew motion choreography down.

The IRC fleet for the NOOD consists of the following seven boats:

1. Timothy Ballard
 Inspired Environments 28423 IRC San Rafael, CA USA CYC
2. Brad Copper
 TNT 43690 IRC Pt. Richmond, Ca. USA RYC
3. Frank Morrow
 Hawkeye 50444 IRC San Francisco, CA USA US Naval Academy Sailing Squadron
4. Philippe Paturel
 CIAO ! 975 IRC Halifax, NS CAN RNSYS
5. Michael (Tony) Pohl
 Twisted 40046 IRC San Francisco, Ca USA ST Francis
6. Gerard Sheridan
 Tupelo Honey 28908 IRC San Francisco, CA USA South Beach YC
7. Daniel Woolery
 SOOZAL 60408 IRC Alamo, CA USA Richmond Yacht Club

Predicted current for the two days were:

26 June 2010 – 27 June 2010
San Francisco Bay Entrance (Golden Gate), California Current
37.8167° N, 122.4833° W
2010-06-26  05:49 PDT   Sunrise

  • 2010-06-26  11:45 PDT   4.00 knots  Max Flood
  • 2010-06-26  15:00 PDT  -0.00 knots  Slack, Ebb Begins
  • 2010-06-26  17:15 PDT  -2.07 knots  Max Ebb
  • 2010-06-27  12:21 PDT   3.88 knots  Max Flood
  • 2010-06-27  15:38 PDT  -0.01 knots  Slack, Ebb Begins
  • 2010-06-27  17:50 PDT  -2.14 knots  Max Ebb

While the number of competitors is small, nevertheless they represent formidable competition.  For instance, Soozal had competed in Key West in January of 2010 with first place finishes as well as competing in other venues.   Then again, it never hurts to have Robbie Haines as your tactician.  She also has a contingent of pro-sailors onboard like Project Manager Scott Easom and Matt Siddens trimming headsails, North Sails’ Pete McCormick on the main.  If you think about it,  Soozal is really a pro or at least a semi-pro sailed boat sailed by the owner.  The other formidable competition: TNT, a custom Tripp 43 is another well sailed boat that won the IRC division B at the 2009 Big Boat Series.  CIAO ! is a new boat, Archambault 40, campaigned by a local sailmaker Sylvain Barrielle (5 time America’s Cup crew and sails developer) to promote the boat and to create interest on the class, so we can assume they have a vested interest to get the best crew around to keep their marketing VP satisfied.  The boats that represents weekend-warrior status like us are Tupelo Honey and Hawkeye.  We generally sail a little better against Hawkeye on a consistent basis, but Tupelo Honey is a handful as Gerrard is a good windward driver and has regularly use the upwind leg to pass us despite his slower rating.  Until we can regularly beat him on the upwind leg, it’s going to keep Tupelo behind us by approximately 55 seconds each hour we sailed.

The courses for the NOODs are mostly windward-leeward courses with the starting line below the leeward gate and the finish line upwind of the windward mark.  The course we race the most is course D: Start -> 1 -> 1-offset -> Blossom Rock -> 1 -> 1-offset -> 3 leeward gate -> Finish.  Given the Flood conditions of the race, it’s a lot of beating to weather in close quarters.

During max flood conditions, we chose the pin end for our start as the current relief is the closest.  The race committee had skew the starting line to favor the committee boat by a large margin to prevent the fleet all starting at the pin end. But because of the strength of the flood, I didn’t think sailing in adverse current for an extra two minutes was worth the trade-off in getting to tide relief.

But in the fifth race, because of the flood, Soozal, TNT, CIAO et al were pinching at the line by the committee boat end, which presented a irresistible opportunity for us to set up for a barge start (given the later stage for the flood at this point, the penalty of current at committee boat end is not quite so high). The key for success in this barging scenario is to have speed coming in to the stern of the committee boat then shoot up (head to wind if necessary) and insert our boat right between the first boat and the RC. Without speed, you have no option to out-maneouver your opponents below you; But with good boat speed, you can do what you like while your opponent is still trying to build speed because they are early to the line. Thus the line between a brilliant tactician and an idiot tactician is about 2-5 seconds of this speed delta.  What helped in this particular start is that Soozal et al. arrived at the line early and had to luff their sail to prevent crossing the line prematurely. This slowed them down right at the critical moment and set us up for a successful classic barge – this is a case of better late than early.   I set up IE to reach in from right side of the committee boat with good momentum about 10 seconds before the start   and dipped at the last moment behind the RC and had a pretty sweet start with about 1-2 seconds late to the gun.  We hung in there with the faster boats for a little while until we had to tack by the shore, then with each tack we lost a little to the faster boats until we are fighting it out with Tupelo Honey mano-a-mano up the shore. Given this is the fifth race we sailed together as crew, our upwind speed and sail trim was not always optimal but much better than Saturday. We were surprised to learn at the end of the day, we finished second in the last race.  The rest of the blog entry is about tactical / trimming lesson learned that should come in handy next time we race the city front.

  1. WHEN TO POINT HIGH: Most notable is the observation that Tupelo seems to always find a lift very close to the shoreline – particularly by the seawall near Gas Hose Cove.  Yet when we sailed near the seawall, we don’t always get the lift.   Then I realized this was not necessarily just a lift from the wind but also sailing technique/tactical move:  Tupelo was sailing high, i.e. pointing mode for a sustained period in an area that has favorable current and flat water.  Generally, pinching or feathering is deployed tactically when you are close to other boats and wanting to get separation/height for clean air, it’s not for sailing for a sustained period because it is too easy to lose boat speed and then you are in a death spiral of slow speed causing less point ability which cause further speed decline…etc. to ad infinitum.  Pinching is also not recommended in a chop as the boat needs power to punch through the rough water.  It takes a really good helmsman who’s in-tune with the boat to be able to decipher all this input and communicate this to the main trimmer and secondary to the jib trimmer. Yet Tupelo was able to sail very hight next to the seawall for a sustained amount of time – how did they do that?
    Well, after thinking about this for a bit, I think I found the answer: they go into high point mode near the seawall.  In that particular scenario, pinching/feathering can be sustained for a couple of reasons:  first, you are in flat water, so you don’t need power to punch through chop; second, the longer you stay in the favorable current, the more you gain and it’s known there is a counter current to the flood near the seawall by the marina green; thirdly, if the helmsman works with the main sail trim to pinch naturally, i.e.  using the boat’s helm balance to induce the point mode rather than just the helm, you can point high for a sustained amount of time and not lose much speed because of the favorable current – that is to say, even if the boat slows down a 0.1 knots because of the point mode, your favorable current can push you forward .25 knot and the fact that your competitor is sailing in either neutral or counter current that the net net is positive.  I can’t say for sure that Tupelo was deliberately using that, but certainly, it will help us to remember this tactic and deploy it when conditions are right.  This calls for a bit of practice to get the helmsman, main sail trimmer to work in concert and to get a feel for the helm balance on the boat – it will certainly be something we should practice and get better at for the BBS.
  2. PRACTICE MEXICAN DROP OR WINDWARD DROP:  The second tactical move that we will need to practice is the windward drop and/or the Mexican drop.  There was a couple of times on the leeward rounding where Tupelo managed to gain an inside advantage on us on leeward rounding (including one that I purposefully allowed to happen in order to keep us from a forced leeward rounding error because of crew work).  Generally, when all else is equal, my preference is coming into the leeward mark wide and pick up some speed, then round close to the mark with good speed and momentum to point higher and get separation from the competition.  But the problem is this works only when you are reaching into the mark unhindered, but when you have a competitor who is closely covering you on the down wind leg, you need to be far more aggressive and proactive about luffing.  The whole purpose is to set up the competition to execute a poor leeward rounding than you.  This is easiest to execute if you have leeward rights (particularly if you are on starbord) and are able to force the competition to approach the mark very close to DDW.  To set this up, it means is that we needed to be more aggressive in approaching the mark and luff the competition as often as necessary to get both boats on a near DDW approach to the leeward mark before three boat-length to the mark.  (BTW, even though the NOOD leeward mark is a gate, given the current and the desired destination after rounding is to the shoreline for current relief, the only leeward mark that is of interest is the south side gate mark, which is why this analysis is on leeward mark rounding tactics).  To execute this tactic, we needed to be really good at windward drops and/or Mexican drops to set up for a good rounding. ..  See the illustration below (click on it to see the animation):

  3. MAIN SHEET TRIM ON LEEWARD ROUNDING:  Related to item 2 on leeward rounding, we need to find a more effective way to bring in the main sheet in during these leeward roundings.  The Beneteau 40.7 uses the racing configuration main sheet:  i.e. a 2:1 purchase system led to the front of the boom then split to each side to a winch with a clutch just before it. Trying to bring the main in from a run setting to close hauled is quite an exercise given the 2:1 purchase. This has proven challenging in any wind above 12 knots as the force of the main is far too powerful to bring it in hand over hand technique, yet trying to bring the sail in via winches is too slow.  One consideration is for the helmsman to help by executing the turn fast and essentially luff the main briefly, but that is not always easy to execute as timing is everything.  If the luff takes place before the main trimmer is ready to haul in, the opportunity is lost.  Besides, there may be other tactical considerations at that critical moment to impose that sort of tactic consistently.  So luffing is an opportunistic move that the helmsman should be aware of but not a standard operating procedure.  The alternative is to focus on how to bring the mainsheet in as fast as possible with power.  We have been trying to do that with me tailing and a grinder on the leeward winch while David is on the weather winch.  This has proven to be helpful, but we have essential two crewmen on the leeward side.
    Lastly, I am hypothesizing that we continue to have a crew on the leeward winch, but to have the main trimmer to tail for the leeward winch. At the same time, we grind in the main via the primary winch (using the mainsheet winch as turning block and the mainsheet clutch is engaged.  That way, the crew can help grind in the main on the high side.  We shall see…
  4. UPWIND SAIL AND TACKING: We need to do some additional testing and practice on upwind sailing both from main & jib trim and practice tacks to give us more “feel” for the boat when it’s in the grove. We did some tuning just prior to Sunday’s races going upwind and I think it had a beneficial effect to race 4 & 5.  The major change in that trial is to travel the main sail down more while tighten the mainsheet (to reduce twist on the leach on the main and possibly adding more forestay tension and lessen helm pressure.  This proved difficult as the traveller blocks needed to be rebuilt.  Nonetheless we did the best race on the very last race finishing 2nd – only behind Soozal by 29 seconds corrected time.  Whether this practice takes place in  races prior to the BBS or we schedule a practice just before the race remains to be seen, but the key here is to practice, practice, practice, until we are sensitive to the nuance of the boat and sailing the boat becomes reflex rather than analytical.

….

]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/nood-regatta/feed 0 Bananas will no longer be allowed onboard… http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bananas-will-no-longer-be-allowed-onboard http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bananas-will-no-longer-be-allowed-onboard#comments Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:13:53 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=404 We recruited five unsuspecting crew for this epic down wind race from Richmond to Stockton.  The full crew list for this epic down wind race consists of Aaron, Calvin, Eugene, Janelle, Keith, Mark and Robert.  The Delta Ditch race starts in Richmond then run through the northern part of San Francisco bay, passing the Brother’s Island to San Pablo Bay, through the narrow, twisting channels of Carquinez Straits to Suisun Bay, passed the mothball fleet then snake through the meandering San Jauquin River to Stockton.  We had conceived this race as a fun (and fast) way to tour the Delta for some of the naive, wide-eyed crew that have not been “up the river without a paddle” and to take advantage of the long downwind run to imagine what it’s like to dawdle in the Delta. This was designed to be one part race, one part tour and one part adventure – our plan is to race the Delta Ditch Run then turn around and motor sail back all night back to Coyote Point Harbor.  The key to the success of this (ad)venture is to time our itinerary to transit the Carquinez Straits at optimal current going up the river as well as back down to SF bay. So plans were made to cast off at 07:00 sharp to make it to the starting line at 10:00.  Weather forecast for the weekend was a bit conflicted.  NWS predicted strong Northerly winds at 8-15 knots and hot weather (90°+) for the weekend.  However, the TV forecasters were predicting mild winds from the east and cautioned on record high temperatures. In either case, it’s really ideal sailing condition albeit a bit unusual wind direction for the Delta Ditch.

Bright and early at 06:30 on the fateful Saturday morning of the Delta Ditch, the crew of S/V Mist assembled at the Coyote Point Yacht Club dock with provisions for the weekend for the 10th Annual Delta Ditch Run of 2010.  As we put away the provisions, we noticed that someone had brought a bunch of bananas onboard.  After several denials, we found the culprit and teased the crew member about being ignorant on the sailing superstition that bananas onboard brings bad luck to the boat.  The crew member took the ribbing in stride and attempted to eat as many bananas as possible before departure, but after ingesting two bananas in quick succession, he left the remaining bananas in the galley for later consumption.

We pulled out of the dock and immediately noted the low tide marker at the harbor master’s dock to be  -1.5 feet – not a good sign, but we’ve managed to get out of the harbor before…  Sure enough, as we motored out to the main basin, we started to drag bottom.  As we headed out to the harbor entrance, the depth sounder showed less than three feet below our hull and then, we were firmly stuck at the harbor entrance.   We order all the crew to sit to starboard to heel the boat, but no avail, then we hoisted the main to get the morning breeze to put further pressure to heel the boat to pass the shoaling that had developed gradually at the mouth of the harbor – all to no avail.  So when the going gets tough, the tough gets going:  we call on the heavy weights to get us out of our dilemma: we put Keith on a bo’sun’s chair and cranked up the spinnaker pole to 90° starboard and with the rest of the crew putting their weight on the starboard rail and the main sail drawing from the morning breeze…

Despite the heavy weights hanging out on starboard side, we still had to wait until the tide rose a bit more before we can crank up the engine and power our way out.  By that time, we were at 08:30, the flood current is now building so our course over ground making north is even less.  Originally, I figured it’s two hours to SF and I’d figure another three quarters of an hour to Richmond – hence the 07:00 departure – factoring the current will still be early phase, not in full flood as it is now…  As we motor sailed up the bay, hug the shoreline, our speed over ground is merely 4.5 – 5 knots against the current.  It took a while for me to accept the fact that we were not going to make it, I kept driving as if we might miraculously make it until we reached Candlestick Park around 09:30 and finally accepted that making the start of the Delta Ditch Race is not possible.

A dark cloud loomed over us and discussion turned to what could have been done differently to prevent this outcome again:  We could have moved the boat to another harbor – but since we had decided not to campaign Mist this season, we did not go out every weekend and therefore did not know the harbor had silted so much. Having knowledge of the silting now, we would certainly not make this mistake again.  Then it happened:  someone pointed out the bananas that are still on board…  THAT’S IT!  The reason for our troubles and feelings of doom and gloom is we didn’t observe the ancient mariner tradition of no bananas onboard.  After all, there is got to be more to this than mere superstition – thousands of sailors observe this rule and now, we are living proof.  How else can you explain the odds of extremely low tide, harbor silting over, currents going against us all aligned perfectly to cause us to miss the race?  I had to finally and reluctantly acknowledge our odd of making the race may be nil to none to the crew and after a quick caucus, all of us had no intention of turning back except now we don’t have a specific itinerary.  Bananas are bad onboard – bad things happen on boats as it is, we don’t need any additional incentives, encouragements – superstition or not…

As we continue motor-sailing up the bay, everyone was quiet, deep in thought of where or what we could do since we have clean slate for the weekend for the race and now have no place to go. A number of destinations were tossed around:  we could sail around the bay and moor at Angle Island;  We could join the Encinal Cruise from CPYC and crash the party;  We could continue to Stockton and see most of San Juaquin River;  Or we could explore some of the smaller sloughs branching from the main river – one of my favorite being Georgiana Slough which winds it’s way from San Juaquin River to the Sacramento River and visit the Chinese settlement of Locke; Or we could explore St. Francis Yacht Club’s outpost in the Delta: Tinsley Island; Or we could check out Bethel Island and have dinner at one of the Island restaurants; or…  The choices are endless.  I went down to the navigation station to review our options on the paper charts.  As I evaluate the options, it downed on me that this will be a great opportunity to visit my old friend Chris in his island cabin near Pittsburg.  This was a destination that most of the crew had never been and it is not as far as some of the other destinations discussed.  So I proposed to the crew that this would be my recommendation and everyone agreed.  So I plot a course for Pittsburg and off we go on the “Ditch the Delta Ditch” adventure.

The slog up the South Bay was painful, it took us nearly three hours to make it to Bay Bridge at an average speed of 5.1 knots. Had we tried to make the start of the Delta Ditch Run, we would have been 2.75 hour late for the Delta Ditch start at  Point Richmond.  It was not until motor-sailed past Point Blunt on Angle Island that we finally caught the beneficial effect of the flood current going with us and our speed over ground went from 5 knot average to cruising at an average of 9 knots in San Pablo Bay.  The wind continued to blow from the north, so we motor sailed with just the main up in order to make time to the Delta and perhaps catch up to the Delta Ditch Fleet.  We follow the Pinole deep channel as much as possible to keep our speed up, hitting 9.5 knots at times.  I kept looking for opportunity to set the chute, but the wind was much too north to allow us to set it.  I finally gave up the notion of setting a spinnaker until perhaps when we reached the Carquinez Straits – hoping the topography will funnel the wind through the Carquinez Straits from the West and we can finally satisfy my idealized spinnaker run up the Delta.  As we entered the Carquinez Straits, we saw a few obvious drop-outs from the Delta Ditch Run with spinnaker floating lazily and dashed any hopes for flying the spinnaker up the river for me.  Stupid bananas…

By the time we crossed under the Vallejo Bridge, it’s 14:45, we are in full cruise mode, tracking 8 knots over ground through the Straits.  We saw boats coming down the river that were obviously remanents of the Delta Ditch fleet.  We knew that the Delta Ditch Run was not what it was billed out to be – as all this time, the wind (what little of it) was coming from the east – which means it’s a beat to Stockton.  So, it may just be divine intervention that we did not make it to the race as we sure don’t have the right sails for the light upwind race.  We took turns driving the boat through the Carquinez Straits reaching Suisun Bay around 15:30. I went down to the navigation station calculated the ETA to Pittsburg and placed a call to my old friend Chris Lanzafame in Pittsburg to see if we can tie up to his island dock on Van Sickle Island across from Pittsburg Marina.  It turns out that he and his wife, Nancy, will meet us at Club Lazo (the name of his cabin) after work and we set a tentative roundevous time of 6 PM.

By the time we reached to the eastern reaches of Suisun Bay, we started to see a few boats sailing on the Delta Ditch – this was at 1600 in the afternoon!  I am secretly glad that we decided to not race as this year’s Delta Ditch was unlike any thing I had envisioned for this trip.  Some times when life hands you a lemon, it’s better to make lemonade rather than what was originally planned.  Imagining having to tack upwind for another 25+ miles to Stockton was just not my idea of recreation for the weekend.  Instead we motor sailed past a few more Delta Ditch competitors then made a sharp left turn at Spoonbill Slough off the East Reach of Suisun Bay and then lower the rpm of the engine to coast up the narrow slough to Club Lanzo dock (38.058673, -121.903197).  At 1800, a blue-hulled lobster boat putted up the slough and onboard was Chris, Nancy and their son Christopher.  We helped them dock behind us and were invited to their island cabin for some cold drinks and made preparations for dinner / BBQ.  We settle to the Club Lanzo’s patio deck, checked out the island scenery and enjoyed recounting old sailing adventures.  After recovering from the fatique of sailing, we decided to try spinnaker flying, so we went back to the boat to rig up the spinnaker, but unfortunately the wind had mellowed out too much by that time in the evening so Christopher was not able to demonstrate the technique.  Must be the residue of the bananas on boats…

We packed away the spinnaker, went back to the patio to have dinner while watching the sunset fell on the landscape.  While enjoying our nice piping hot lasagna, I thought about the poor Ditch racers who are still beating upwind to Stockton at this time, I am happy for our decision to visit Club Lanzo – it was far better than slogging upwind all night to Stockton.  This worked out closer to what I had planned: to have a sailing adventure up the Delta and to introduce a few uninitiated crew to what it’s like to cruise the delta.  As night falls, the Lanzafames had to go back home for an early engagement on Sunday morning, so they left the cabin open for us and instructions on locking it up and departed.  We settled into relaxing mode and slowly wind down the day.  At around 22:00, we retired to our bunks, with some of us sleeping on the boat while others slept in the comfortable surroundings of Club Lanzo.

At 0500 on Sunday, we got up, round up the crew, and fire up the motor at 0530 for the trip back to San Francisco.  Because it’s summer, the sun rise shortly after that so we did not have to sail in the dark and navigating the Suisun Bay was not an issue as the wind had not come up yet and the typical chop in Suisun Bay has not had time to build fetch.  But as forecast had predicted the wind is now from the northwest, which means that we still cannot set a chute.  So motor sailing is again our choice.  Fortunately we had strong ebb current going with us and we were averaging 9.6 knots and at times the GPS showed over ground speed at 11 knots!  The entire transit from Club Lanzo to the Carquinez Bridge took less than two hours (17.0 NM at 1:53).  We motored past the Martinez bridge while a long freight train was crossing, as we approached the bridge, I realized that the drawbridge was down and as we looked up while transiting, it dawned on me that perhaps it is not high enough to clear the mast.  Indeed the perspective we have on the boat is the mast is going to hit the bridge.  I put the motor in reverse but slowing down the boat going at 10 knots over ground is not an immediate affair, and I braced for the impact…  We transit the bridge with no problem, and later found out that the bridge clearance was actually 70 feet above mean high tide – our mast is about 50 feet above water.  So we had plenty of clearance-but it sure had us worried just prior to crossing under it.

We past the Vallejo Bridge at 07:30 and entered the San Pablo Bay.  This is the transition point from the Delta to the Bay Area.  The wind is from the West, but very mild as it is still early in the morning and the westerlies have not had a chance to build up.   We decided to stop at Tiburon to have some breakfast at Tiburon Tommy’s as sailing straight to the South Bay would have us end this weekend adventure a wee bit too early.  When we arrived to the Tiburon Tommy’s dock at 10:00, the water is still too low for us to tie up to the Guest Dock,  so, instead, we docked at the Corinthian Yacht Club guest dock and walked over to Tiburon Tommy’s.  We had a scrumptous breakfast on the patio and left Tiburon at 11:30 to cross the Bay in order to drop off Calvin at the SF side.  We set sail to cross the bay and arrived at Gas House Cove to fill up the tank and let Calvin off in San Francisco.

We set sail while crossing the bay, there was a light breeze going across the bay and with the flood current, there’s little chop. So it was a very pleasant sail across the bay.  We reached gas house cove and docked behind a Donzi 43ZR speed boat that was getting gas.  His bill totaled $460, while ours were 60.  We motor sailed out of Gas House Cove and continued our return journey to Coyote Point. To our surprise, the wind was rather light in the South Bay, which prevented us from sailing much, but we made it back by about 16:00 and agreed that this was an excellent adventure but we would rather not have bananas onboard in the future.

]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bananas-will-no-longer-be-allowed-onboard/feed 0 The Great Vallejo Race, May 1, 2010 http://shipslog.sightinc.com/the-great-vallejo-race http://shipslog.sightinc.com/the-great-vallejo-race#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 01:07:05 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=369
The Great Vallejo Race aboard TakeOff

The Great Vallejo Race aboard TakeOff

May 1, 2010 – Based on Julie’s request, Joan rounded up a pick up crew consisting of Trevor (Bowman), Caxton (mast), Julie (pit), Calvin & Keith (jib and spinnaker trim), and Shannon, Joan and I (alternating on main sheet and helm).  We met at the Alameda Marina at 0900 sharp and loaded up her Laser 28 with coolers filled with her famous bloody mary’s and margarita and half a dozen bottles of wine and champagne.  Add to this liquid cargo, and add the bags of food she had provisioned, you’d think we were provisioning for a trip to Hawaii, not Vallejo.  We started the motor and headed out the Oakland estuary with bloody mary’s on one hand and spring rolls on the other for breakfast.  We arrived at the starting area near the Berkeley circle about an hour before the race and hoisted the sails to get the crew settled and get used to the light wind conditions.

WEATHER FORECAST:

  • SAN FRANCISCO SAN PABLO SUISUN BAY AND THE WEST DELTA-
  • 230 AM PDT FRI APR 30 2010
  • .SAT…W WINDS 5 TO 10 KT…INCREASING TO 10 TO 20 KT IN THE AFTERNOON.

TIDES:

  • San Francisco Bay Entrance (Golden Gate), California Current
  • 1 May 2010 – 2 May 2010
  • 37.8167° N, 122.4833° W
  • 2010-05-01 06:14 PDT Sunrise
  • 2010-05-01 06:32 PDT -4.90 knots Max Ebb
  • 2010-05-01 08:22 PDT Moonset
  • 2010-05-01 10:33 PDT 0.00 knots Slack, Flood Begins <=== Starting area
  • 2010-05-01 13:36 PDT 3.58 knots Max Flood

While the start should have been the beginning of the flood, it has been a while since I’ve raced in the central bay and I forgot about the fact that in early flood, the South Bay tends to flood first, therefore, there is a current that flows from North Bay to the South Bay that feels more like an ebb and not flood. In the light wind conditions, we strayed too far from the starting area and with Joanie on the helm, we arrived at the starting line two and half minutes late fighting the “ebb current” at the pin.  We started on port and had to tack immediately as a cluster of starboard tacked boats approached us, yelling for starboard rights.  We managed to tack below the closest starboard boat in clean air to leeward and proceeded to focus on building our boat speed.  At the next header, we tacked and realized the strength of the current is strong and made adjustments for the leeway by sighting landmarks behind the weather mark and tried to sail as direct path to the mark.  After ducking a few Starboard tacked boats who have not realized the layline is now distorted due to the flood/ebb current and encouraging them to continue over-stand the mark, we pressed on to round the inflatable weather mark in clear air and proceeded to head to Vallejo.

Given the “flood”, I guided Joan to head toward Richmond channel to get out of the deep water channel into water that is 15-20 feet deep to minimize the current that is flowing against us.  We seem to be the only boat that chose to go right to Richmond while 99% of the fleet is following each other and fighting tooth and nail for windward positioning.  As tactics go, it’s always a little frightening to be the only boat out of sync with the rest of the fleet – there’s immense comfort in playing safe by following the fleet because the crew can’t blame you for taking a flyer.  But given the indisputable flood current from the North Bay to South Bay, it’s hard to ignore the basic rule of stay close to shallow water when the current is against you to minimize its effect.  So we separated from the main fleet and sailed by our lonesome self in undisturbed  air by the shoals of Olympic Circle and not fighting for clear air and current with the fleet. The only danger in this tactical call is that we are taking chances very early in the race, therefore we are taking a gamble, but given that we were already 2.5 minutes behind our fleet, the gains out-weight the potential losses.  As we take bearings to boats in the main channel, we seemed to have kept pace with the faster rated boats sailing in the deep water channel.  By the time we approached Richmond Channel Entrance, we headed up more to get into the north bay flood currents and converged with many of the faster boats abeam.  This was a good sign.

We have not seen any of our division boats in our division all this time  - we were sailing by ourselves amidst boats in other divisions with an occasional Express 27′s near us.  The Express 27 started with our division, but is rated 129 contrast to our rating of 135.  I figured these Express 27′s are likely to be the laggards of the Express fleet and may not be a good gauge of where we stand with the rest of our fleet.  My original tactics was to stay close to Shameless at the start as this was the fastest rated boat in our fleet – as long as we can keep up with Shameless, we should do pretty well given our handicap.  But the best laid plan of mice and men…we were alone by many other boats, but none in our division.  There was nothing else to do except to sail as efficiently as possible and do our best…

The wind was light by the time we passed below the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, we had to contend with keeping our air clean as the boats from astern approached us. At the same time, we had to solve how to pass the boats that are ahead of us that are slower.  Naturally, the tendency is to head up to pass the boats on windward, but the boat ahead always seemed reluctant to let us do that (tongue-in-cheek)  So a series of scrimmages took place with a number of boats in other divisions – one of which was particularly interesting tactically:

PtSanPabloRounding

We were broad reaching on starboard tack with our spinnaker towards Pt. San Pablo Buoy when an express 27, Archimedes approached us from behind gaining gradually. When he headed up in trying to pass us to windward, I naturally headed up as well to defend our positioning and clear wind.  As we approached the three boat length circle, Archimedes claimed overlap with his bow, but I disagreed. By the time we had exchanged our opinions, we are now two boat length from the buoy and he continue to claim room with barely a foot of his bow overlapping our stern.

While I thought it was rather foolish tactically for him to “insist” on inside position after such a stubborn defensive posture from us, I realized that the flood current had pushed us closer to the mark than I had anticipated and our steady defense of heading up to gain clear air had pushed us to weather of the mark and would require us to gybe the boat to clear the mark.  Archimedes follow suit and gybed just after us, but now she is the inside and leeward boat. She called for room again, however the current was stronger than either of us had factored, we both needed to head towards a beam reach to clear the mark – we managed to gybe away from the mark, but Archimedes would have been pushed against the mark by the current.  Wisely, he beared off and narrowly missed the mark but now needing to re-round it on the corrected side.  This means taking down the spinnaker and hoisting the jib to re-round the mark while going against the flood.  That was a costly mistake in judgement by insisting on inside room and losing sight of the bigger objective.

Given the fussiness of my recollection and the rapidly evolving conditions, question remains in my mind as to the relevant racing rules that applied to this situation.  So when I got home I took the time to find the relevant rules in Section C that applied to our Mark Rounding situation with my comments in grey italics following each rule:

18.2   Giving Mark-Room

(a) When boats are overlapped the outside boat shall give the inside boat mark-room, unless rule 18.2(b) applies.  COMMENT: initially, the Express 27 would be the outside boat had she established overlap.  But since it’s debateable, this rule applies only AFTER the Express 27 has proven her overlap.

(b) If boats are overlapped when the first of them reaches the zone, the outside boat at that moment shall thereafter give the inside boat mark-room. If a boat is clear ahead when she reaches the zone, the boat clear astern at that moment shall thereafter give her mark-room.  COMMENT: this rule remains unclear in this incident.

(c) When a boat is required to give mark-room by rule 18.2(b), she shall continue to do so even if later an overlap is broken or a new overlap begins. However, if either boat passes head to wind or if the boat entitled to mark-room leaves the zone, rule 18.2(b) ceases to apply.  COMMENT: this rule does not apply in this incident.

(d) If there is reasonable doubt that a boat obtained or broke an overlap in time, it shall be presumed that she did not.  COMMENT: this rule is extremely relevant in our scenario – the burden of proof  rest on the Express 27 to prove she had established overlap.

(e) If a boat obtained an inside overlap from clear astern and, from the time the overlap began, the outside boat has been unable to give mark-room, she is not required to give it.  COMMENT: this rule is also relevant in our scenario – given our respective courses, I question if the Express 27 was able to make the mark when she had established overlap.

18.4  Gybing

When an inside overlapped right-of-way boat must gybe at a mark to sail her proper course, until she gybes she shall sail no farther from the mark than needed to sail that course. Rule 18.4 does not apply at a gate mark.  COMMENT: this rule may be relevant to our scenario as well although I’m not quite clear about it.

By my recollection, I believed I made the right decisions, but just in case my memory was a little blurred by Joanie’s Bloody Mary, here’s some mitigating facts that makes it a tough protest by the other boat.

  1. Ability to judge overlap.
    • As we approached the 3 boat length circle, Archimedes helmsman is gauging the overlap from nearly 25 feet away, while I was on the helm at 2.5 feet from his bow.  Archimedes needs to prove who is in the better position to judge overlap – us or them?
    • According to rule 18.2 (d):  ”If there is reasonable doubt that a boat obtained or broke an overlap in time, it shall be presumed that she did not.”  Archimedes has the burden of proof to establishing the overlap.
  2. Giving room:
    • According to 16.1:  ”When a right-of-way boat changes course, she shall give the other boat room to keep clear.”  Once we gybed to starboard, Archimedes is now the inside, leeward boat rounding the mark. Since less than 10 seconds passed between our gybe and the establishment of the overlap, Archimedes needed to give us room and opportunity to keep clear.
    • As the overlap at any point is less than a couple of feet at most and the separation is 3 feet apart, if Takeoff turned too fast to give room, her stern would have bumped into the Archimedes’s bow in trying to give more room, therefore Takeoff had to steer a more moderate change of course, but by that time, it’s obvious that the Archimedes cannot make the mark without significant course change.
  3. How to avoid in the future:  Remember it’s 3 boat-length, not two boat length circle:  I had forgotten about the rule change, and fallen into old habits – I had mistakenly thought the overlap is  in effect in two boat length circle, but at three boat length circle, I could have luffed him high for a moment then turned down enough to cause the stern to be clear of any overlap, then I should/could have yelled, “no overlap” while pointing across the stern to close the door on any possibility of him trying to come inside.  It would be hard for him to argue about that given rule 18.2 (d).

After rounding Pt. San Pablo, we continued in light air towards the Pinole Shoal, but in a short while, the wind completely shuts off and we were stuck in a wind hole while the current carries us towards Vallejo.  While we were stuck in the wind hole, the breeze slowly built at the west and gradually work its way towards us, but it took 30 minutes for the breeze to actually reach us and in the mean time, we watch in vain as boat 250 yards from us would be sailing in breeze while we sit helplessly with zero wind.  Finally, we got to the breeze, set our chute and thus began a nice long broad reach all the way to Vallejo Channel entrance.  During this long run, we passed quite a few boats by being sensitive to the surf and helm and trying to ride the waves as long as possible.

VallejoChnl_MarkRnding

Once rounded the Vallejo Channel Marker, we had a few tactical scrimmage with a couple of boats, manage to pass a number of them in the shifty breeze.  One especially memorable incident was when we were approaching the green channel marker at the Vallejo channel entrance.  A C&C 35-3 with a PHRF of 117 called “Mesmerize” was overtaking us near the mark, he called for room on the inside, I gave him just enough room to pass to windward.  As he passed us to windward all smug and happy, we headed down to create some separation and to set up a wide and tight mark rounding.  As Mesmerize round the mark close, her turning radius is such that she left a 10 foot gap from the mark for us to slip through nicely and established a windward overlay.  But the key tactical trick here is that while the C&C 35 made a sharp 90° turn which KILLED her speed dramatically, we made a wide smooth rounding with both main and jib drawing fully and therefore maintained good boat speed through the turn.  We were full abeam of the C&C 35-3 before they had enough speed to defend themselves, at that point, I informed the C&C 35-3 of the oncoming pier ahead and that I am calling sea room on a continuing obstruction with RRS rule 19.2 (room to pass at obstructions).  So the C&C had no choice but to fall off and give us enough room to pass to windward.  It was a good thing as the C&C was not terribly agile in dealing with the shifty winds in the Vallejo Channel  - her sails were trimmed too tight and not played as the wind shifted.  Even though she was rated 117 compared to our 135, we were able to pull clear ahead and tick her off the checked list of overtaken boats just before the finish.

After docking the boat at Vallejo Marina slip to avoid the boat rafting jam at the Yacht Club basin, we had a few drinks and snacks to relax aboard the cockpit and later found out that we finished 4th out of 10 boats in our division.  Considering all the incidents that we’ve had with late start, tactical skirmishes, wind holes, and sail changes, we can live with that score until the next time.

]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/the-great-vallejo-race/feed 0 BBS 2009 – Day 3, Race 6 http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs-09-day-3-race-6 http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs-09-day-3-race-6#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:06:40 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=345 Day 3, Race 6

Race six is a critical race.  If Tupelo wins this, it would be mathmatically impossible to knock them off first place as going into the sixth race, Tupelo had 5 points, we had 10 points, and the third place boat had 17 points. Our division started at 14:20 just a little after slack water (13:42 PDT) with possibility of early flood starting to fill into the South Bay. Usually the flood starts by a small counter current close to shore building up wider and stronger from the shoreline out.   Had this been clear in my mind, my tactical choice would have been to sail towards Alcatraz, but given it’s just at slack current,  I called to start on starboard and continued on starboard given it’s slack water.  Tupelo had also started on starboard, but was below us, buried in the middle of the fleet therefore they tacked to port soon after the start as did Bodacious.  What I had not realize at the time, is the left side is the more advantageous side because of the currents.  We continued to sail on starboard and soon noted that Tupelo had tacked over to starboard again to keep us in check.  Bodacious remained on port tack and is the only boat heading towards Alcatraz.  We reached the City Front, and begin trading tacks with Tupelo.  Tupelo was a formidable opponent in a tacking duel.  Her helmsman can tack cleanly and crisply without losing speed.  So with each tack, we were under Tupelo’s shadow as we worked our way up wind towards the weather mark.  In the mean time, Bodacious and Petard was beating to weather near Alcatraz and eating our lunch with the fleet at the City Front as we will soon find out…

Screen shot 2009-09-13 at 6.58.28 AM

Tupelo was trading tacks with us and hugging the shoreline as if there was a positive current near shore.  The real situation is probably either neutral current or with a small adverse current developing close to shore.  Because our knotmeter and GPS is not calibrated precisely as to be able to tell this definitively, we and the entire fleet with the exception of Bodacious and Petard were short tacking as if it had already flood across the entire bay.  This was brought to light when near Fort Mason Buoy, we traded tacks with Bodacious and Petard which usually is way behind because they are rated slower than us.  This means that if the race is finished now, they would correct out against us as well as Tupelo.  This sets up an interest challenge for the fleet leader, Tupelo.  While we are the closest threat to their standings, they have a string of first place finish that they do not want to blemish.  So instead of covering us exclusively as before, they are now trying to cover both boats.  And since we both realized that the current was not what we had expected we knew we had to reassess the current situation. There’s an axiom that your strength going up the ladder is also your weakness on your way down.  This came into play as we sailed up to the weather mark near the Golden Gate Bridge.

So here’s the scenario:  Bodacious and Petard made out tremendously by sailing in the deep waters offshore – they know that the current is not as adverse as the inside going up from the start.  Tupelo realized that it was a mistake to have followed us inshore and now risk losing first place against Bodacious and Petard.  Not wanting to give up their first place streaks, Tupelo decided they need to cover both IE and Bodacious in order to keep their first place winning streak.  So what should Tupelo do in covering a split fleet?  Given the handicap ratings, IE had to give Tupelo time, but Tupelo have to give Bodacious time, so it was important that Tupelo cover Bodacious to avoid any further surprises.  This gave us a little breathing room to tryout different tactics.  We rounded the weather mark in second place with Bodacious following close by.  All three boats gybed outside to pick up more pressure and to cover each other. When Tupelo gybed, we gybe as well – keeping consistent with the strategy of sailing less distance and giving dirty air on the way back to the mark to encourage Tupelo sail a longer distance.  We rounded the Fort Mason mark just behind Tupelo with Bodacious following us closely.

It is now nearly 15:30, nearly two hours past slack water, surely, the flood is now pervasive throughout the central bay including the deep waters.  Is the current relief near shore less than the center of the bay?  No one knows for sure.  Tactically it’s anyone’s guess.  We do know that we should get some current relief if we head really close to shore simply due to shallower water and topographical back eddies.  So we continue to hug the shoreline based on our assumptions and in times of uncertainty, you try to find some basic principals to guide you.  As we rounded the St. Francis Yacht Club, I knew that our best chance to get out from Tupelo’s lead and make distance would be to sail on the inside of Chrissy Fields to take advantage of the lifts and gusts that frequently happens close to shore.  Besides, if there’s any current relief and/or counter eddies, we would likely to find it inshore rather than offshore.  Bodacious on the other hand, had success by going outside and it reinforced the mental model in their tactician’s mind, they headed outside after Anita Rock, with Tupelo Honey covering them.  This left us inside and closest to the shore.  As luck would have it, we had both counter current and tremendous lifts in the form of gusts.  It was extremely difficult to sail in gusty conditions and required us to put Ted down on the leeward side to constantly trim the jib as these puffs would be accompanied by 30° shifts and much too fast to be able to compensate by changing course.  Within a 1/4 mile distance, we went from being third place to being first in actual rounding on the weather mark.  We set the chute and aimed right at the Anita Rock buoy to prevent Tupelo from overtaking us or blanketing us. After we passed Anita Rock, it was a straight line drag race to the finish line.   We finished first with 24 seconds ahead of Tupelo but corrected out to 45 seconds behind.  While it was not an actual win, we took the gun as a moral victory after all the races.

As it turns out, our last and final race was cancelled due to lack of consistent wind the next day.  Today’s standing was the final result of the series.  We sailed a good series with consistency.  We had good crew work, minimal gear failure.  we made our share of tactical mistakes: (2 things comes to mind immediately:  1.) the tack inshore at Angel Island on Race 1; 2.) the windward beat of Race 6 on an early flood.), but overall, I felt we did our best.  Tupelo won the series because they have been sailing as a team for the last five years, their driving upwind is a little more refined and was able to go into power mode or point mode as needed.  Basically, they were simply more “dialed-in” than we were.  We had only resumed racing after 3 months of hiatus from a T-bone crash.  It’s also quite an achievement to have the mast tuned on IE as well as we had, but actual time on water in battle conditions was the critical element that we lacked in getting first in this series. We returned to the dock after the race was abandoned, we went over to Tupelo Honey as a group,  clapped and congratulated them on their well deserved win.  They in turn returned the compliment by stating that we kept them on their toes.  This was a good race series – I felt I learned a little more about currents in the bay and gained some experience in tactical calls.  Given this is the culmination of the summer racing, it will be next summer that I will be racing in the central bay with this caliber of boats and crew.  I am already wistfully wishing it is not over…

]]> http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs-09-day-3-race-6/feed 0 BBS 2009 – Day 3, race 5 http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs-2009-day-3 http://shipslog.sightinc.com/bbs-2009-day-3#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:09:57 +0000 robert http://shipslog.sightinc.com/?p=272

Day 3, Race 5

Sailing Weather Forecast • Rolex Big Boat Series • San Francisco Bay, CA • Issued 0700 LT 12 September 2009
WARNINGS AND ADVISORIES: A SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY is in effect from 1200 today through 2300 tonight. The National Weather Service expects winds of 15-25 kts with gusts of 25-30 kts in the bay, primarily north of the Bay Bridge and especially close to Angel Island. Please continue to monitor NOAA All Hazards Radio on your VHF for the latest warnings and advisories.

Tides:

  • 2009-09-12  10:51 PDT  -1.39 knots  Max Ebb
  • 2009-09-12  13:42 PDT   0.00 knots  Slack, Flood Begins
  • 2009-09-12  16:53 PDT   1.78 knots  Max Flood

Going into today’s race, we are now two third of the way into the regatta, and we are in solid second place.  In our morning debriefing, we talked about taking greater risks in today’s races in order to dislodge Tupelo Honey from their first place position.  We are in a good place to be aggressive as we have enough points ahead of the third place boats to be able to afford some risks.  We know that Tupelo Honey will be camping on us quite closely as we are the only threat to them at this point and we need to do everything we can to throw them off kilter if we were to have a chance to win a race.  Therefore, for the next three races, we need to sail with a contrarian point of view – if Tupelo goes to the right, we will find reasons to go left, if Tupelo rounds the left gate mark, we will round the right.

We started on the North Course Area at 11:55, we were about 10 seconds late to the line on the Committee Boat end as we wanted to head to the right side of the course. (GPS tracking)  We were just behind Kuai and tried to work up their hips to get clean air, but decided to head to the right early and tack over to the other tack as Hawkeye crossed over on port ahead of the fleet.  Tupelo Honey was on the other end of the line pinned behind several boats and had to wait until the boats above them tacked before they can tack over to port.  After a few more minutes, everyone is on a port tack heading towards Angel Island.  Boats that are in deeper channel has better current pushing them out to the weather mark, however, the boats on the left is positioned to be on the inside of a lift should that develops – which is right?  One thing is for sure following our strategy:  we are on the opposite side of the fleet with respect to Tupelo Honey.  We worked our way up from the leebow position to eventually climb forward and inline with Hawkeye.  When Hawkeye tack towards the weather mark, we waited a few seconds then tacked over as well, using Hawkeye as a blocker for us so we don’t have to watch out for port tackers and worry about them tacking under us or tacking ahead to leeward.   Tupelo managed to cross ahead of us by two to three boat-length  and rounded the weather mark ahead.   We followed suit rounding the weather mark behind Tupelo and set our chute for the downwind run.

Screen shot 2009-09-13 at 6.55.15 AM

We camped close to Tupelo all the way down wind, gybing when they do, but always staying inside to make Tupelo sail a longer course and when they gybe, we are always ready to give them dirty air.  When we approach the leeward gate, we made a last pass at getting their air and then gybe to round the port mark to get away from their cover.We camped close to Tupelo all the way down wind, gybing when they do, but always staying inside to make Tupelo sail a longer course and when they gybe, we are always ready to give them dirty air.  When we approach the leeward gate, we made a last guesture at getting their air by luffing up to starboard for the last time on this leg then gybe to round the port mark to get away from their cover.  By reaching to the port gate, we had a nice speed going to the mark, we actually rounded the mark before Tupelo, even if the left gate mark was slightly down wind from the right gate mark.  The rest of the fleet split on the rounding as some followed Tupelo and the other followed us.  We sailed on port tack until we reached the deeper part of the channel and tacked to consolidate any gains.  When we crossed track with Tupelo, she was ahead by a couple of boat lengths. We sailed past Tupelo’s wake for a minute or so then tacked to port to keep them in sight.  In hind sight after reviewing our tracks on Tractrac archive, I realize that I should have continued to the left for much longer time to stay consistent with our strategy of contrarian tactics, because if we had continued to sail to the left, we could be on the inside of a possible lift and had far more leverage for the gain.  By tacking close to Tupelo, we negate such possibilities and the consolidating tack just satisfies our emotional need to keep the competition in sight and reduce risks.

We kept close to Tupelo until they called the layline, we followed suit after a boat length and rounded the weather mark just after Tupelo.  Tupelo headed to the North side of the course, we followed them for a while to cover, but decided to gybe over because it doesn’t make sense to head into stronger ebb current.  After we gybed, Tupelo followed suit by gybing over as well. Because we were on the inside and sailed a shorter distance, we gained quite a bit, by the time we converged at the leeward mark, we were right on Tupelo’s stern and as in previous leeward roundings, we picked the left gate mark while Tupelo picked the right.  As in previous upwind leg, the right side had initial advantage of current, but at some point tacking to the left of the fleet to be inside of any potential lift is an important consideration on this course.  We were picking up bearing from Tupelo as we sailed to the right, but when we tacked, the bearings dropped.  Post race review of the tracks shows Tupelo has an uncanny ability to scalloping upwind and pick up windward gains.  You can see it particularly well when IE tacked to starboard and converging with Tupelo: Tupelo suddenly shifts into high point mode and managed to crossed ahead on port tack.  They tacked on top of us and gave us some dirty air and kept between us and the finish line.  Tupelo crossed 43 seconds ahead of us and corrected out to 2:08 under handicap.  The next boat after IE is Hawkeye and Petard by about two minutes corrected.  So ends the fifth race with yet another second place.

Day 3, Race 6

Race six is a critical race.  If Tupelo wins this, it would be mathmatically impossible to knock them off first place as going into the sixth race, Tupelo had 5 points, we had 10 points, and the third place boat had 17 points. Our division started at 14:20 just a little after slack water (13:42 PDT) with possibility of early flood starting to fill into the South Bay. Usually the flood starts by a small counter current close to shore building up wider and stronger from the shoreline out.   Had this been clear in my mind, my tactical choice would have been to sail towards Alcatraz, but given it’s just at slack current,  I called to start on starboard and continued on starboard given it’s slack water.  Tupelo had also started on starboard, but was below us, buried in the middle of the fleet therefore they tacked to port soon after the start as did Bodacious.  What I had not realize at the time, is the left side is the more advantageous side because of the currents.  We continued to sail on starboard and soon noted that Tupelo had tacked over to starboard again to keep us in check.  Bodacious remained on port tack and is the only boat heading towards Alcatraz.  We reached the City Front, and begin trading tacks with Tupelo.  Tupelo was a formidable opponent in a tacking duel.  Her helmsman can tack cleanly and crisply without losing speed.  So with each tack, we were under Tupelo’s shadow as we worked our way up wind towards the weather mark.  In the mean time, Bodacious and Petard was beating to weather near Alcatraz and eating our lunch with the fleet at the City Front as we will soon find out…

Screen shot 2009-09-13 at 6.58.28 AM

Tupelo was trading tacks with us and hugging the shoreline as if there was a positive current near shore.  The real situation is probably either neutral current or with a small adverse current developing close to shore.  Because our knotmeter and GPS is not calibrated precisely as to be able to tell this definitively, we and the entire fleet with the exception of Bodacious and Petard were short tacking as if it had already flood across the entire bay.  This was brought to light when near Fort Mason Buoy, we traded tacks with Bodacious and Petard which usually is way behind because they are rated slower than us.  This means that if the race is finished now, they would correct out against us as well as Tupelo.  This sets up an interest challenge for the fleet leader, Tupelo.  While we are the closest threat to their standings, they have a string of first place finish that they do not want to blemish.  So instead of covering us exclusively as before, they are now trying to cover both boats.  And since we both realized that the current was not what we had expected we knew we had to reassess the current situation. There’s an axiom that your strength going up the ladder is also your weakness on your way down.  This came into play as we sailed up to the weather mark near the Golden Gate Bridge.

So here’s the scenario:  Bodacious and Petard made out tremendously by sailing in the deep waters offshore – they know that the current is not as adverse as the inside going up from the start.  Tupelo realized that it was a mistake to have followed us inshore and now risk losing first place against Bodacious and Petard.  Not wanting to give up their first place streaks, Tupelo decided they need to cover both IE and Bodacious in order to keep their first place winning streak.  So what should Tupelo do in covering a split fleet?  Given the handicap ratings, IE had to give Tupelo time, but Tupelo have to give Bodacious time, so it was important that Tupelo cover Bodacious to avoid any further surprises.  This gave us a little breathing room to tryout different tactics.  We rounded the weather mark in second place with Bodacious following close by.  All three boats gybed outside to pick up more pressure and to cover each other. When Tupelo gybed, we gybe as well – keeping consistent with the strategy of sailing less distance and giving dirty air on the way back to the mark to encourage Tupelo sail a longer distance.  We rounded the Fort Mason mark just behind Tupelo with Bodacious following us closely.

It is now nearly 15:30, nearly two hours past slack water, surely, the flood is now pervasive throughout the central bay including the deep waters.  Is the current relief near shore less than the center of the bay?  No one knows for sure.  Tactically it’s anyone’s guess.  We do know that we should get some current relief if we head really close to shore simply due to shallower water and topographical back eddies.  So we continue to hug the shoreline based on our assumptions and in times of uncertainty, you try to find some basic principals to guide you.  As we rounded the St. Francis Yacht Club, I knew that our best chance to get out from Tupelo’s lead and make distance would be to sail on the inside of Chrissy Fields to take advantage of the lifts and gusts that frequently happens close to shore.  Besides, if there’s any current relief and/or counter eddies, we would likely to find it inshore rather than offshore.  Bodacious on the other hand, had success by going outside and it reinforced the mental model in their tactician’s mind, they headed outside after Anita Rock, with Tupelo Honey covering them.  This left us inside and closest to the shore.  As luck would have it, we had both counter current and tremendous lifts in the form of gusts.  It was extremely difficult to sail in gusty conditions and required us to put Ted down on the leeward side to constantly trim the jib as these puffs would be accompanied by 30° shifts and much too fast to be able to compensate by changing course.  Within a 1/4 mile distance, we went from being third place to being first in actual rounding on the weather mark.  We set the chute and aimed right at the Anita Rock buoy to prevent Tupelo from overtaking us or blanketing us. After we passed Anita Rock, it was a straight line drag race to the finish line.   We finished first with 24 seconds ahead of Tupelo but corrected out to 45 seconds behind.  While it was not an actual win, we took the gun as a moral victory after all the races.

As it turns out, our last and final race was cancelled due to lack of consistent wind the next day.  Today’s standing was the final result of the series.  We sailed a good series with consistency.  We had good crew work, minimal gear failure.  we made our share of tactical mistakes: (2 things comes to mind immediately:  1.) the tack inshore at Angel Island on Race 1; 2.) the windward beat of Race 6 on an early flood.), but overall, I felt we did our best.  Tupelo won the series because they have been sailing as a team for the last five years, their driving upwind is a little more refined and was able to go into power mode or point mode as needed.  Basically, they were simply more “dialed-in” than we were.  We had only resumed racing after 3 months of hiatus from a T-bone crash.  It’s also quite an achievement to have the mast tuned on IE as well as we had, but actual time on water in battle conditions was the critical element that we lacked in getting first in this series. We returned to the dock after the race was abandoned, we went over to Tupelo Honey as a group,  clapped and congratulated them on their well deserved win.  They in turn returned the compliment by stating that we kept them on their toes.  This was a good race series – I felt I learned a little more about currents in the bay and gained some experience in tactical calls.  Given this is the culmination of the summer racing, it will be next summer that I will be racing in the central bay with this caliber of boats and crew.  I am already wistfully wishing it is not over…

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