2007 Fall Dinghy (and a little more swimming)

Yesterday, Dean and I raced his Vanguard 15 in day one of the Fall Dinghy Regatta at St. Francis Yacht Club. A building breeze throughout the day countered by a simultaneously increasing ebb tide made for some interesting racing. With just 8 boats in the fleet and a rather large and true starting line, it was pretty easy to find good lanes off the starting line resulting in nice crowded mark roundings and tight bunches down wind. In a couple of races, all 8 boats were spread out abeam of each other on the downwind legs as each skipper tried to discover the best combination of high wind (outside) and low current (inside).

We were tied for 4th after six races, but due to other commitments today, aren't going back for day two. Oh yes, there was more swimming involved. Coming out of a rather rolly roll tack in race 4, I missed the hiking straps and went flying backwards out of the boat. Dean waited patiently while I got my legs untangled from the jib sheet and clambered back aboard. Dropped from 4th to 6th because of that--bummer.

Here's a slideshow of some GPS plots of the racing:

Involuntary Swimming

Put the Megabyte in the water for the first time today. Chose San Pablo reservoir as a low key place to go where I couldn't get into too much trouble first time out in a new boat. Hmmm . . . two minutes out from the dock with a nice puff filling in across the lake, I slid my butt over the side and loaded up the hiking strap. Bazaaang! back flip into the water. I'm sure I had checked the knot on those straps! Luckily the boat stayed upright and I was able to haul myself back in before the lake patrol hit me with a citation for "body contact" with the "drinking" water. (They still let fish swim in there, don't they? And birds . . .)

So wait a minute, what's this Megabyte thing? Well, racing the Vanguard with Dean resurfaced my passion for racing small boats. I decided to get a one person dinghy that I could tool around in for fun and go racing once in a while. Happened to find a really nice Megabyte dinghy while visiting Seattle a few weeks ago. Bought it. Shipped it home. Sailed it today. First race is the Turkey Shoot Regatta at Lake Washington with Megabyte Fleet 3.

Knockdowns!

My big sister came to visit this weekend, and we went sailing for the first time together in a very long time. We had a great time, albeit a crazy one on account of some rather extreme conditions. So, first time aboard Motrha, and my sister gets to experience a couple of wild knockdowns where we managed to twice fill the cockpit with water. We managed to do it two different ways, actually. First a little bit on the conditions. We were sailing in the Carquinez strait which is where the California Delta (fed by three big rivers) empties into San Pablo Bay. The river is tidal here and was near max flood (couldn't make headway against it in the middle of the strait) with some interesting eddies near shore. We also had an unusual wind direction
with a front moving through which had the wind coming down over a bluff across the strait rather than the usual blowing down the strait.

Knockdown #1: We were near the bluff and just about on the eddy line. The wind had almost completely shutdown (my masthead fly was spinning 360's!) Mainsheet was cleated. When the wind did come back it came in a big blast and I quickly noticed that the main swivel cam
had swiveled down to leeward causing me to have to shift my weight over there to go get it. By the time I had it popped out, we were on our ear.

Knockdown #2: This was another case of near no wind to max wind and complicated by being out in the max flood current. With the true wind shutdown, the current was strong enough to create an apparent wind from the opposite direction, and with almost no boatspeed through the
water, I had no steerage. Mainsheet was uncleated this time (didn't let it out of my hand after the last one!) When the blast came, it hit us beam-on. I let the mainsheet fly, but the jib was still
sheeted in hard. With no steerage and a strapped in jib, I was unable to round up, and the gust knocked us over just against the jib (yeah, it was a big one.) My poor sister, unfamiliar with the boat, didn't have the instinct to pop the jib sheet free. I was able to leap forward and pop it loose before we took on any more water.

whew! what a day. and luck would have it, today is a most beautiful California day with mild 10 kt. breeze. Looks like I picked the wrong day! All-in-all, some good lessons learned on boat handling in difficult conditions. Getting back in the harbor was interesting, too. We played it extra cautious by dropping the jib, reefing the main, and limping in nice and easy.

More Vanguard Stunt Sailing

Don't try this at home. Dean let me skipper his V15 for the last Fleet 76 Friday night racing of the season. It was really interesting to see what the boat looks like from the other end--it's much bigger! Also got a good feel for how the boat really handles--should help me be a more in-tune crew member.

So anyway, what about the stunt sailing? We had just crossed all the other boats on a very nice port tack lift and were setting up to tack onto the layline for the windward mark. As I opened my mouth to say, "Let's go!", Dean hollered, "whoa we just lost a shroud!" Glancing to leeward I see the turnbuckle swinging back and forth in the breeze. If we had tacked, the rig would have dumped over the side just like that. Luckily we had plenty of searoom to sail on on port tack while Dean re-purposed a chunk of hiking strap line and managed to tie down the wayward shroud (the pin had disappeared in the drink.) We managed to get back into the harbor with a rather sloppy rig, and then swapped a shackle off the boom vang to make more appropriate repairs. 10 minutes later and we were back on the course!

Small Water, Big Sail

Two new things today. Had Mothra in fresh water, and tried out the genoa for the first time. We decided to give Lake del Valle a try which is just a few miles South of Livermore. Very nice lake with a 10mph speed limit which keeps things quiet for us sailors. The wind blows mostly straight down the narrow lake, but being basically a dammed up puddle in the bottom of a canyon, wind speed and direction is constantly switching about. We quickly found that having to short-tack up the narrow lake made the big overlapping headsail impractical. So, we just dropped it and had a very nice relaxing time making our way under mainsail alone. Will have to try the genoa again when we have a bit more sea room as it did seem to draw very nicely in the light wind.

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V15 National Championship

Three boats from the nascent eight boat Benicia fleet entered the Vanguard 15 national Championship regatta this year. We all had a fantastic, if a bit crazy, good time. World class competition, big wind, and on The Bay before The Gate. Wow. My skipper Dean posted a nice summary of the event which I quote here:

Vanguard 15 Nationals Recap:
Beating more boats would have been a bonus, but there were no slackers out of the 29 crews. One wrong maneuver or screwed up tactic would likely cost you several boats each race. The fleet had some really high caliber sailors with resumes that were rather jaw-dropping. Twelve races in anywhere from 10 to 25 mph winds meant for sore and really tired bodies.

Jamie showed serious signs of brilliance. He had a "12" in the first race and placed in the teens several times. On one of Sunday's races he was in 5th place at one point! If he would have had another 50-100 pounds of crew weight, he would have easily been many places higher than 21st.

Despite my heavier-than-average crew weight, Dave and I were only one of two boats that didn't finish with a race in the teens. We fought to the end to hold on to 22nd place overall. We didn't ease up until our nearest competitor in the standings death-rolled in the very last race. I think that we may have been in the top 10 at one point during a race on Saturday, but one of our two driver-induced weekend swims put an end to that.

Joel and Jorge also showed signs of serious speed when they got rolling (e.g. that 19th on Sunday). Joel still hasn't figured out what "too much wind" is despite being most likely the oldest skipper out there. And Jorge, six months after buying a boat despite not knowing how to sail, found himself in the thick of a national regatta. Like me, they also caught the capsize bug. I didn't realize until looking at pictures that we were swimming just about 30 yards from each other at one point on Saturday.

Trying to remember how to race

Back on the Vanguard 15 tonight. Dean and I are entered in the Vanguard 15 Nationals next weekend, and we need some practice (I've only been in this boat twice.) Teamed up with the Benicia fleet for some more short course racing. Dean and I have both been trying to brush up on our boat tuning, racing tactics, etc. after having not raced in a proper regatta for almost 25 years now.

Overall, I'd say we were pretty much discombobulated. trying too hard to think about the right things to do instead of just doing them. Should be fun next weekend!