Second Race : Oakland Yacht Club Sunday Brunch series.
(For beginners)
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Danny goes to sea. Today's crew, Andy & Andy, Karl, Brenda, Danny and myself. Danny, you ask? You see, Danny was talking big about doing the sailboat racing thing. So I pressed him as crew for No Tomorrows. Eight is a good age to go to sea says I. Andy & Andy walkin' out to the dock with Danny. Carrying sea bags and all that is nautical.
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The game plan was to practice starts for about an hour before the race. There was almost no wind. I guess we were kinda' lucky in a way. Being so light out, if things got outta' hand the crashes would be small. Little puffs would come in and everyone would start moving about, then the wind would stop and we'd park and drift. At least this time it wasn't raining! |
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Once you stop moving forward, you loose your steering. So sometimes people drifted in really close. We almost collided with this Hobie 33 but we didn't. (See? No wake. Not like it would have been a really big deal.) Much of this yacht racing thing is about right of way rules. Who has rights, who doesn't and how to use them to maneuver yourself in advantageous positions. Its somewhat like chess with 10,000 lb chess pieces. What are these rules you ask? Who has right of way? Who has to keep clear? Here's really watered down working version of the rules..
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Jimbo's right of way rules of thumb : First : Powerboats have to keep clear of sailboats. So in theory we can ignore powerboats. We're their problem. |
Ok, lets say I have right side up and come to a boat right side down. What happens? Typically I yell err, hail "Sarbooord" with the long drawn out nautical sounding 'O'. The other guy must either get out of my way, or hail back "Hold your course". "Hold your course" means that, if I hold my course, he will miss me. If I have to deviate in any way, I've been fouled and he must do a penalty. Maybe kicked out of the race or have to do penalty turns what have you.
Lets say we're going, whatever side up, and next to us is someone else with the same side up. People downwind on the same tack have the right of way. So this is only a problem if the other guy can point high enough to sail up to us. The person sailing up to someone else on the same tack hails "Come up!" And the guy upwind of them has to get out of the way. Getting out of the way may possibly stop the upwind guy's boat. Gee too bad huh? Chess..
That's it in a nutshell. There are, of course, more rules to cover odd circumstances. But this'll be enough for now.
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So here we are, mostly no wind and bunched up in a tight pack trying to keep from hitting one another and here comes this guy sailing around in the pack screaming about sea rules and who fouled him etc. I think he was trying to make people foul him. Oh lord! Imagine Plankton, from the Sponge Bob cartoons, in a diminutive little boat holding a rule book in one hand and shouting stuff at everyone. I noticed most people's attitudes was along the lines of "Ok, whatever." At least it kept us amused. There is a silver lining however.. Remember sailboat racing is kinda' like a chess game. Much of the race is jockeying for position at the start line. This jockeying is all about knowing and using the right of way rules. Well with Plankton running about trying to foul everyone, it woke us up and kept us on our toes. He did manage to get us to foul him once. Brenda let out our jib and the jib sheet swung over and touched his. He pointed and yelled. But the race hadn't started yet so it made no difference. "Ok, whatever." |
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Here's the course we're to race. I added wind arrows to illustrate what the conditions were. You can click the map for a printable version. The start is at X. The first leg is from X to mark #1 at the top of the map. I decide to run from about the mark #5 area to the start line. This is 'cause the wind is filling from that area and most of the rest of the boats are in a clump near mark #6. The wind is light and a little to our port. Meaning right hand side is down. No rights for us 'cause everyone at mark #6 is coming in right hand side up. Uggh! Here we come, the clock is ticking down when the second folly of my plan comes to light. I have almost no control at all over when we cross the start line. No brakes, no rights. Everyone else can sail down the line and cross over when its time. We're pinned next to the docks and do not have that option. Everything works out and we pull off a so so start. A few seconds late, not bad. The wind keeps everyone on a port tack and its basically a drag race into the wind up to mark #1. We put Brenda on the jib and showed her how to trim to the tell tales etc. She did a fantastic job and we outrun the entire fleet! Talk about pumped up! Here comes mark #1 and we're not going to -quite- make it. Hans was up on the bow.. What the heck was Hans doing up on the bow? Anyway, he's going, "Your not going to make it.. Your not going to make..." Go fast and at the last second, point into the wind to coast over and around the mark. We made it! The rest of the fleet has to tack and by the time they do, the chute's up and we're gone!
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Leg three is simply getting from mark #4 to mark #5. Another drag race. No brainer. Leg four and five is back up to mark #1 through the start gate.
On leg five, heading back to mark #1, I notice that the Express 37 has crossed the start line a lot sooner than I'd expected. And, he looks a lot bigger than he should.. Going to weather is our boat's ace in the hole. Nothing beats a J/35 to weather, nothing! That Express blew past us like we were anchored. By the time we were in the area of mark #2 he'd tacked over us, sat on our wind and gassed us. Talk about rude! Then he went off and left us in his wake.
Leg six, downwind to mark #3. Now by this time, I'm all freaked out. My precious J-boat done let me down. Or I'd let it down or something. Chute up we're trying to catch that Express. Not much hope, they're faster n' us downwind. Arrgh! The tide is flowing with us so I stay in the middle of the channel and it seems to help. Yes, we are beginning to catch him..
Then the Express makes a tactical error. At the point where you should swing to the left to head for mark #4 he goes straight. Oh joy! He's going to be in deep doo. And, we're going to have a hot reach to mark #4! Lines whirl about, things are getting set up on our machine for the final chute drop and raising the jib. As we watch, the Express keeps going toward mark #3 "The fool!" Here we are just starting to round the corner heating up into the power reach.. About then we realize who the fool really is.. Me! He's going to mark #3 like he's supposed to. We're all set and committed to round mark #4. Oh no!! I try to swing the boat down towards mark #3 but can't get the rigging switched over fast enough. We have to gybe the boom and almost end up crashing into the shallows behind Red #2 (green area). Pull the chute down, try to re-rig the genoa. What a disaster!
The annoying thing is, we have the best maps of the fleet. The map above is an example of what we use. Here's what the rest of the fleet uses : The original map. We'd made up our own maps for each and every race course covering the entire series. Karl laminated them and bound them all in a notebook. Flip open the notebook and there's your course. All laid out, easy as pie. I guess nothing helps if your not paying attention.
The final leg to the finish line was sad anticlimax. We crossed second after the Express. Corrected out to third place, again. The results for this race was exactly the same as the last race. First gets first, second gets second we get third and fourth gets fourth.. There was some other poor guy but he got disqualified for who knows what. So he wasn't able to beat us as well.
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Getting close to the actual race start. Looks like were forming a battle plan. (Gazing off to port) That's Andrew (Now named Otto) Me n' Karl. Trying to steer 11,000 lbs. of boat through a pack of race starters with very little wind and no brakes makes me all stressful. |
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Andy (Now named Hays, or Hans) gazing to port.. To cut down on cockpit confusion, we'd decided to call Andy & Andy, Otto and Hans. But, as soon as the idea was suggested, they went into this "I am Otto, I am Hans, and we are going to Pump-you-up!" Routine. I donno' if this is going to make anything better in the cockpit, really I don't. |
So what happened on that upwind leg where we completely lost everything? That was the topic of conversation later that afternoon at the "club". Hans thinks we just ground everything in too tight. I don't agree 'cause whenever I get a professional rigger or sail maker on board, they grind thing down tighter then I ever do. Maybe we just didn't keep an eye on the sail shape enough? But then the shape's pretty bad no matter what. It could be that the old sails just can't hold shape when the wind comes up in any force? It was a stronger wind in the later beats than the first one where we did a lot better. Donno', hopefully we'll be able to figure that out before the next race.
 Danny, gazing to port. |
Danny had an interesting take on things. We were doing the debrief after the race Danny chimes in. "I know what we can do to make the boat go faster." I looked over, "Really? Do tell." "Yeah, make a rule that daddy can't look backwards." Daddy can't, huh? What's he going on about? "What do you mean Dan?" "Well, every time daddy looks backwards, he gets all nervous and screws up something." The rest of the crew is cracking up and I'm thinking "Floggings, this is why they always had the option of flogging the crew on sailing ships". Sheesh! |
Note : Just so that the "gazing to port" thing doesn't confuse anyone trying to understand the rules. All the pictures of us "gazing to port" are actually wrong 'cause we're all actually gazing to starboard! I messed up on the first report and the only one that caught it was Karl's wife Autumn. She gave me no end of grief about it. So the "gazing to port" deal kinda' stuck. I wasn't going to mention it but after doing the rules thing I didn't want to make more confusion just 'cause we're jokin' around.
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In the end,we didn't do well, but we had fun! |
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