Crying babies for crew

OK, this post is a little out of date--been a super busy week. March 2nd was the annual Sail-a-Small-Boat-Day at Richmond Yacht Club. A great event designed to get more people into more small boats. Volunteers add their boats to a list (I put up the Megabyte) and interested skippers signed up for a ride. We had a good crowd and a whole range of interesting boats: U20s, FDs, C15, Finns, 29ers, I14s, an MX Ray, a Hoot (are those guys still in business?), and others. Seemed to be a fair amount of interest in my Megabyte from "hey, what is that?" to "can I take my kids out in it?" Actually, a couple of dads each took two little kids out with them for a ride. I think the youngest was about two--she came back wet and crying. ahhhh. The bigger kids all seemed to enjoy the ride--they came back wet and smiling. The Megabyte has a pretty decent forward cockpit for a medium sized person to ride along. All was going well until I let the "I'm a Laser sailor" guy try it. He flipped. Luckily, no babies on board with him.

Esta Susana en casa?

Wow. Google that. Seems a lot of seriously messed up people have that introductory dialog stuck in their brain and it's driving them crazy. What's this got to do with sailing? I have absolutely no clue, but after a couple of Singha's after a couple of hours "sailing" with no wind in a couple of small boats, Dean and I spontaneously broke into, "Esta Susana en Casa?" "Si, Esta con un amiga." And, so on. That's creepy.

Sailing was interesting. We had about 2 knots of current in the river and about 4 knots of wind. Then, about 2 knots of wind. We were actually sailing backwards despite trailing a wake behind us. Provided a good chance to play with sail settings in light air--this time, with the old standard Megabyte rig. I had everything set loose. Off the wind, this produced a big crease going from the tack up and out to the end of the top batten. Very ugly. Pulling the vang on pretty tight bent the mast and cleaned that up. It's apparent that this sail is cut for when the mast is bent a lot. Upwind, I played with the traveler, vang, and cunningham. what I found looked good was no vang, traveler all the way to weather, and enough cunningham (quite a lot actually) to pull the draft a little farther forward in the sail. I tried using the vang upwind, too. Overall that improved the shape, but took all the twist out. In any case, one of the things that's so cool about this boat, old rig and new, is how easy it is to tweak. Now, figuring out just where to tweak it to, that's the hard part. Interesting stuff.

"Ay caramba! Cuando arreglan mi quarto, no encuentro nada!" No idea what I'm talking about? I guess you didn't take high school Spanish.

Less Fussing More Sailing

One of the joys about small boat sailing should be the ability to chuck it in the water and go. Less time futzing with all the gear and setting things up means more time sailing (and practicing those high speed gybes!) Well, I finally finished futzing with my trailer. Now all the gear stores in, on, or under the boat on the trailer. All I have to do is hitch it up to the truck and go. The boat stays mostly rigged under the cover, and the launching dolly is strapped on top fully assembled and ready to go. When I get to the water, I can rig it in about the same time as it takes to get naked and pull on the wetsuit and all the other get up.

From Megabyte Trailer

From Megabyte Trailer

We Can Learn

"I can't do it. I can't do it!" My little four year old hollered yesterday as I tried to help her along on her bike without training wheels for the first time. "Of course you can, sweetie. We just need to practice a little more." I was struck by how little confidence she had and then remembered my own recent experience being pressed into a situation for which I had little prior practice.

Last Sunday was the third edition of the monthly Small Boat Midwinters at Richmond Yacht Club. As was the case last month, Sunday came on the tail end of some Winter storms, but this time we had some lingering strong winds and rain. When the heavy squalls rolled in, I was hurtin'. This boat is a bit too big for me when it's blowing like that. After a really bad start in race 1, I managed to finish second about a boat length behind a 17 foot Daysailor--a boat that is supposed to be slower than mine. It was really blowing hard for the second race, and I had a hard time keeping the boat moving well to windward. The Daysailor and a Flying Junior had a nice lead over me at the first mark. Then as I rounded, the "MonsterByte" leapt onto a plane and went screaming after the more stable and modestly canvassed boats. As I approached the leeward mark, I had the lead, but was freakin' over the impending gybe. "I can't do it. I can't do it!", my mind was hollering. I guess I coulda chicken gybed it (spinning all the way around and tacking), but went for it instead. Ended up spinning out but lucky not to capsize. Then, the rudder cavitated as I tried to get her pointed downwind again. Needless to say, the DS and FJ got past. Anyway, that was it for me. It was really starting to honk, and I didn't feel like going swimming in a "fun race." Went home and watched the Superbowl instead. What a wuss.

I was personally bothered all week by that poor gybe and early retirement from the day's racing. That is, until our little bicycle lesson yesterday. I realized that gybing a boat like this in a lot of wind is really hard if you haven't done it before. But with a lot of practice I should be able to pull off a planing reach to planing reach gybe and blast on past that Daysailor next time. And that will be thrilling, not scary. Kinda like learning how to ride a bike, I guess.

TunaMegabyte

Flat, fast. Weight aft, slow. No hands, fast (and fun.) 3 knots, hard Cunningham, fast. 6 knots, hard Cunningham or none, undetermined . . .

Yesterday, I finally had the pleasure to meet Steve Berger after a couple of months of online exchanges relative to setting up the new Mk II rig on our Megabytes. He had invited me out for some boat-to-boat on the water tuning. I'd never done this before in any boat--it was great and surprisingly fun despite the light and variable winds. I think we both came away with a better feel for our boats, how slight changes in hull and rig trim can affect boat speed.

Next on the agenda as I learn to work this boat around the race course? Basic boat handling--maintaining speed through tacks and control through gybes.

Small Boat Midwinters!

The weather was pretty dang good in Richmond this past Sunday considering the storm that blew through here a couple of days earlier. We got 8 to 10 kts. with no rain and nice flat water inside the breakwater. I pulled off 6 bullets, but that's not saying much considering the only other boats in the Open class were FJs and CFJs which rate slower than the Megabyte. They could just about hang with me upwind, but I smoked them going downwind.

Although not in the same class, we shared the starting sequence with the three-boat Snipe class. The Snipes seemed to be well sailed and made for closer competition than the FJs. I was able to beat one of them each race and another a couple of times out of six. Upwind, they were markedly faster than I was. I certainly couldn't point as high as these sloop rigged boats. Downwind, I gained slightly but not enough to catch them.

Hopefully we'll see a few more Megabytes from Fleet 3 at the Feb edition to make for some closer boat to boat racing.

Three For Five

Last Thursday, I got the Megabyte wet for the fifth time and managed to go swimming again--that's three for five. This time was particularly embarrassing as I capsized at the dock while trying to belly my way up the foredeck to the dock. A couple of nice kids on the dock where pretty confused by the old guy swimming in the bay. They helped out by retrieving my floating hat and water bottle, but unfortunately the handheld VHF which I had just unclipped went straight to the bottom. Bummer.

Prior to the dunking, the sail was quite nice, though. Very light wind made for some good practice time snapping the full battens when tacking and getting my weight well forward. One thing I noticed is that this boat is too light (and probably too wide) to ghost through the lulls. When the wind stops, it sticks.

RYC Small Boat Midwinters this coming Sunday.