Notes and Results: Wednesday June 17, 2009

Lots o' stuff this week:

Holy Toledo ! It was a Breakaway kind of night! If anybody found the time to take any pictures, please share them with me.

So Wednesday it was supposed to rain and be fairly light air. Well, zero out of two ain't that bad a batting average, is it? When I grow up I want to be a weatherman. No, not a 60s radical, been there done that. I want to get paid to guesstimate what the weather is not going to do and then when I'm wrong, I get paid again tomorrow for my next wrong forecast. To be fair, it looks like those to the south did get dumped on. Was that rain or just Carty letting the good citizens of Toledo know what he thinks of them? But for those of us living the good and pure life on the waters of Lake Erie, we escaped. Apparently the magnetic personalities of all you sailors must be the polar opposite of the rain clouds. Or as Babs would say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAVlk4F2qkw

The good news on the water? No Mayflies this week! If you've been missing them, check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crGQJQHjgaI

So no rain but a pretty steady 15 to 18 knots of wind from the northwest greeted 42 boats full of sailors this evening. Not quite the idyllic conditions we have seen of late but a good change and a chance to look at some of the other sails in the inventory. #3's seemed to be the order of the day for much of the fleet but there were a few boats that opted for larger headsails. Course #5 was deemed appropriate by the gang on Orange Crate, west to east to south to west. Or if you were Jamming it, west to center to south and back to west. An off-wind start to the first mark, a fairly close reach to the south and then a beat to the finish. Made for a good race with a lot of boats on the same water in close proximity to each other, especially on the weather leg. Finishes came fast and furious for the race committee with a number of instances of five or more boats finishing close together. Good, because if the race committee gets to sit around and eat and drink while we are slaving away on the race course, the least we can do is make them work at the finish line.

Abracadabra went blasting by us on the spinnaker leg having made up five minutes seemingly only minutes after the start. With the crew piled on the stern, the jib and A-sail flying, and the bow well out of the water they were definitely trucking. I think I heard tales of 17 knots boatspeed which made our 8 or 9 as they went by seem like we were dragging an anchor.

Baby Clown, the J80 in PHRF B shrimped their A-sail on the hoist at the start but once they got it up and flying showed great boat speed too as did Full Tilt with theirs. Most boats in our class went with symmetrical kites and didn't have problems once they got them flying. We opted for an A-sail we hadn't seen out of the bag yet this year and with which we don't have too much experience. I think we often were over trimming it and didn't allow it to rotate far enough out to weather to escape the blanket from the main. The concepts may be relatively the same as a regular chute but the techniques sure are different on our boat. When we did get it working it was a force and we buried the bow into waves on more than one occasion. Green water rolling over the deck doesn't happen all that often on Foghorn. We also need to work on our takedown techniques for that sail as it can be really powerful when it loads up at the wrong time, although I noticed at least a few other boats who apparently decided to have wash day for their chutes too.

The south mark with Jammers coming in above the spinnaker boats and everyone wanting to go to weather was fun. Fortunately the weather leg was square enough that you could tack out if you found yourself covered after the mark. Good fun and lots of attention required with the faster boats overtaking the slower ones all the way up the leg.

In JAM B, Rich Cherry's Full Ride found the heavier conditions to its liking and took the class. See how much faster that boat is now that you aren't carrying that fender hanging over the side, Rich? Jonathon Vosler's Aftermath2 and Dick Hamilton's La Chiva rounded out the top three.

In JAM A, the Davis 's Orange Crate avoided the fray by being RC and so Bill Sommers' Breakaway, Joanie O'Connell's Tyrannous and Les Lashaway's Mega are listed as the top boats. I just noticed that Rocket Science doesn't have a time recorded and I saw them finish just in front of us. There was one boat that the RC got confused on the sail number on in the landrush to the finishes so I suspect that was probably Rocket Science. I'll refigure the results tonight when I'm at the club and get RS's finish included. Don't know how they will correct out until the scoring program recalculates, but my apologies in advance for not making that connection last night in the hurry to get results announced.

UPDATE (06/19/09): I entered Rocket Science's finish time and also corrected the class assignments for the Etchells and for Mosh Pit. The corrected results are posted on the NCYC webiste and also on the board at the club.

PHRF C saw Rob Fox's Defender out pace the field with Russ Atkinson's Wildcat and the Burgoynes on Flak-Bait hot on their heels. PHRF B was the province of the Greiners' Red Cloud followed by Skip Dieball's Team I-Ball flying under the radar in their stealth boat and Full Tilt coming in third. In PHRF A it was a Hobie kind of night with Tom Andrews' Holy Toledo! and Spencer Norris's Fupastank taking the measure of Abracadabra in spite of Abra's balls-to-the-wall ride on the first leg.

Overalls went to Breakaway in JAM and Holy Toledo! in PHRF.

Hope everybody stayed relatively dry and had fun. It looks like none of the injuries on our boat will prove to be life threatening, but if anyone wants to audition for the role of sacrificial meat, just let me know.

In other happenings in our little world of sail, for those of you who actually plan ahead here are a couple of events to consider. The Sandusky Sailing Club's Sandusky Islands Race/Hospice Cup is coming up on the July 4th weekend. This one always provides a good party and a nice tour of the islands for the racers. A flyer is attached.

And believe it or not, it's not too early to start thinking about I-LYA's Bay Week Regatta. Early registrations have been slow in coming in and so I-LYA trustee Ron Soka (who you will recognize as annually the major force behind the Mills Race effort) is asking that those of you who are planning to come to Bay Week let them know by getting in an entry. If you haven't planned on it yet, Bay Week is one of the summer's institutions on Lake Erie and the site of many a great party and some fun racing. At least that's what my surviving brain cells seem to recall anyway. Attached to this email is the Registration Form and also the Notice of Race for BayWeek. If you have any questions feel free to contact Ron at http://us.mc840.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=rpsoka@coolingtechnologies.com or ask me and I'll try to find some answers for you.

And last but certainly far from least, please keep in mind that this weekend, Saturday June 20th is the Race for Hope, NCYC's annual charity race to benefit cancer research. It a great cause that hits close to home and its a great deal on top of it. Please show your support by coming out and participating.

I can't thank you all enough for your support for the Yachting Activities events this year, thanks to all for everything you are doing to make these programs strong, it makes life at North Cape fun!

Kent