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Race Recap for Rick Van Mell

Rick--

We had a great weekend of sailing.  The conditions were great and although I am sorry to report the results were the same for us but we have reasons to be happy with our sailing.

By the way we went with the 135 for both races and the wind never did get above 20 knots.  No problem with the sail selection.

The first race we had a good start and took a very similar path at the start as Windwalker.  We tested the line before the start so we would have exactly the correct heading to take on a close hauled course to make the line on a starboard track.  The is different type of start than most of the other I36's take as they usually all come from a ream reach a couple of boat length from behind the starting line and then head up at the end.  This longer close reach start is the type of start Windwalker has been using as they try to keep out the bargers which really is what everyone's tries to do.  This type of start is a good strategy but I don't think I will use it all that often but it worked well today.  It takes time to line it up and you can be missed up with a wind shift.  So it is a bit risky.  Anyway our start surprised a lot of people and I think it surprised Windwalker and may have played a roll in them being over early.  (They restarted and did fine by the way but they were not to happy with us and probably were not too happy with Captain Hook either, as Tom took two bullets today!)  We were in the middle on the first windward mark and we set our pole very well.  Better than we have ever done.  However when we went to take it down we fouled the pole and lost a few places but we were still near the middle.  After rounding the windward mark we set a close hauled course and our loaded jib sheet failed!  This sheet was only a few months old.  So we immediately tacked to give us time to correct the problem.  But none of our crew could tie a bowline under the pressure of the race.  They of course all can tie one but I had to leave the helm and tie the line to the clue and it took me a bit longer than it should have too!  We lost a few places because of that and found ourselves in last.  At the windward mark however we made up some ground on one boat and they were only about 10 boats links ahead.  Again we set our pole without problems and they could not get thief's set.  We were blocking their wind and we were catching them.  At the finish we were overlapped but still about half a boat length behind but with a bit more space we would have passed them.  Can you believe it we lost because a gib sheet failed?  I am sure we have the newest gib sheets in the fleet and it failed.  What is the odds of that:  About a million to one shot?

The next race was started with a major error by me.  After a one hour delay because they could not get the starting line set because the marker kept uninflating, they finially got it blown up and the changed the starting order.  Our fleet was now first and I thought we were second.  Accordingly we had a terrible start and started four minutes after everyone else!  We were going to try the same type of start so we were not in the beam reach starting position with everyone else.  But we didn't give up and we sailed our best race ever with the Olsen 30's!  And by the end of the second leg we had caught and passed one Islander after starting four minutes late!  With about 500 yards to go we were in next to last and were sailing wing on wing and were actual having thoughts of catching another boat!  Then I though better.  I told the crew we were just going to keep our position and sail between the boat in last place and the finish line so that nothing could possible happen to keep us from beating that boat.  The last place boat and we were sailing at a wind angel of about 150 degrees and we had about 5 minutes more to go.  They were not wing on wing and we were.  They changed course to about 120 so I instructed the crew to take the pole down so that we could keep them between us and the finish line.  But we really didn't need to do this.  We could have sailed though the finish on our pervious point of sail wing on wing.  But you guessed it ;  When we took the pole down we had big problem fowling the pole on the lazy sheet and we could not set of foresail for a broad reach.  We lost by about 3 to 5 feet!  Very near the finish line I could have luffed them outside of the finish line and I did that for about 10 seconds but the boat we had passed didn't seem to realized what I was doing so I backed off which I think was the correct thing to do given that we were battling for last!  We never got closer than about 6 feet from them and they nosed us out.  We were all petty down for a few minutes but then we got over it.  But the folks on the other boat were pretty happy so at least someone was happy!  Really except for the mess up at the end it was the best we had ever sailed.  Our crew did great and it was just mistakes by me that kept us from our goal.

Anyway we meet up with Freedom Won and Tenacious later at TI and had a wonderful evening.  Michele was also there.  The people at the Treasure Island Yacht Club were very hospitable and really it was a wonderful weekend. 

You know one of these days we are not going to finish last.  It is amazing how many strange things can go wrong for us.  But I have to say
we really are making progress and I thank we are all doing our best.  It is hard not to be satisfied when everyone on board is improving and
doing their best.

--Dan


 

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