The Racecourse is No Place for Schizophrenia

I have to wonder if this is somehow related to that "what would Ben do?" thing, maybe the opposite of it. Good sailors know what they need to do, adjust that to what they can do, and then execute, maybe pushing the limits a bit. Through our haphazard Vanguard 15 foray into PHRF racing last week I learned that it is also very important to make your intentions clear to others. Being the dedicated bunch of dinghy sailors who launch every Friday night just down the other end of the marina from Benicia Yacht Club apparently we'd been casually invited to join in the BYC Thursday night beer can races, but (apparently) unbeknownst to that night's race committee. Or, maybe they had figured we'd join in some way other than showing up with our own boats? :-) In any event, the race committee wasn't keen on having us officially entered (something about "liability"), but they hinted that if we were to happen to cross the starting line they wouldn't try to stop us. In my opinion, that was the beginning of a bad idea.

In order to avoid messing with those officially racing, we chose to start one minute after the first class (the slowest of three) and get well clear of the line before the next class started four minutes later. This maneuver plus the fact that not all of our class chose to cross the line "properly" was the beginning of the confusion we caused for all the real racers. "What are those little boats doing out here? They're not racing are they?" I believe this contributed to a couple of right of way incidents following. The first was a simple port/starboard thing except the 15 foot Vanguard on starboard, not wanting to mess with the real racers, attempted to relinquish it's rights to the 33 foot keelboat on port. This just confused the big boaters and it got messy ending in shouts of "Hey, we're racing here!" and "So are we! (sort of)" The second was a clear leeward mark overlap case again with the 15 footer with rights over the really big boys from class A who had by now caught all the slow boats ahead. With an appropriate amount of yelling, the little guys likely could have defended their position without incident, but being insecure about the not-really-racing thing, they just bailed out and didn't bother rounding the mark. OK, still might have been the right thing to do, but I wonder if our big boat friends would have shown a bit more respect for us had it been clear that we were racing just like them.

I hope the nice folks at BYC invite us out again, but I somehow doubt it.

Megabyte Mk II Reaching Fun

Thanks to Mitch scribbling on my Facebook wall, we got out for a little fun time in the racing boats. No high intensity short course racing stuff, just a Vanguard 15 and a Megabyte Mk II chasing each other across Carquinez Strait, stopping in for a blow in Martinez, then down around the mothball fleet only to get chased off by the floating rent-a-cop. A good breeze made for some fast reaching fun. After our Martinez stop, I swapped places with Dean. First time in the Megabyte for him, and he looked like a champ.

It was great to have Mitch along. I could tell that he was thoroughly enjoying himself. It's hard to sail fast and catch up on old times at the same time, but it was all good and leaves me eager to get back out there again soon. Seeing each other once every year or two is clearly not enough.

7 Humans in a 19 Foot Boat -- Perfect

Well, after not having Mothra in the water for 11 months, she's now gotten wet twice in 9 days. This time, she faithfully carried three adults and 4 happy kids for a trip down around the mothball fleet. With Dean aboard, I decided to try the bigger spinnaker. Wow, it's quite a bit broader than the old one. Turned out to be too hard to handle on the tight reach we needed to sail to get under the bridge. Should make for a great ride on a dead run, though.



All in all, a pretty nice afternoon sail with friends. I'm amazed at how many people can find a comfortable place to sit on such a small boat. It's also nice to have such a variety of places to sit and enjoy the ride. Down in the cabin, standing through the foredeck hatch, to leeward with the water sloshing by a few inches away, atop the cabin, on the weather coaming, all the way aft, . . .

Feeling the Start

Trying to get caught up on the sailing log here, and I have to admit that I'm a week and a half behind--not that my bevy of global readers would know anyway. Come to think of it how would anybody know if this blog were really all just made up? If it were fiction, would it still be a blog? Sorry, so much chatter about social computing at work these days, it's starting to mess with my humble blog.

OK, what was I was going to log here? Oh yeah, Fleet 76 a Friday and a half ago--the last one for me before the Benicia boys shutdown for the season? Starting among other aggressive sailors was the learning opportunity of the night. Key learning: don't get to the line too early thinking you can just sit there and defend your spot (especially with a strong current running.) With the small fleet, there was plenty of room to maneuver around, and the aggressive skippers who kept some speed up were able to quickly drive around--above or below--those who tried to camp at the favored end. It made me think back to a particularly poor start at Whiskeytown a couple of months back. I was really tired and just kind of lolled around until about 20 seconds before the start. I had managed to position myself at a good spot on the line, but when it came time to get serious, it seemed like I had lost all sense of timing and boat speed. I was late crossing the line, in a funk up the first beat, and last around the top mark. Intellectually, I had a good start planned, but brain, body, and boat had fallen out of sync. It would seem that knowing how to start was insufficient without feeling how to start.

Creature blog

Giant moths and more bunnies. Remind me. What was this blog about again? Dean's been beggin' for a picture of my new hiking bench. So, here it is. It's an exact replica of the side deck on the Megabyte. Yeah, I thought is was pretty geeky to go to the trouble to make it that way, but I've discovered it offers a significant added benefit. Not only do I get the exercise, I'm also finding my body mechanics are improving. With my fingers behind my knees I can feel the right way to spread the droop hiking load across multiple muscle groups and contact points so that my knees don't ache. Cool! OK, so as you can see in the photo, I do my off-water sailing workouts in the backyard with the bunnies. Is that weird?

And what's a Feraligatr anyway?

Carnage = Fun?

Small boats go bang. Big boats go bang, crunch. Good thing we were in small boats. Fun racers stay clear. Racer racers push the limits. Good thing we had . . . both?

Just another Friday night with Vanguard 15 Fleet 76, well except for the little incident in race 5. It all started when a racer racer pushed it close enough to not leave room for error. Seems his tiller extension decided to lodge itself in his PFD as he tacked at the starting line causing the boat to pirouette and collide broadside at near full speed into the poor sap just to weather on the line. Not a happy time, but thankfully no broken boats or injured sailors. Well, maybe some injured pride for the poor guys in the next boat in line who threw in a last ditch gybe to avoid the carnage and flipped their boat when the boom hit the water! As for my vantage point, I had the pleasure of crewing for Jamie (learned some new tricks!) who had made such a great start that we were well clear of the melee. We did pull up to check on the survivors before continuing on :-)

All-in-all, made for some good discussion over parking lot beers.

Return of Mothra!

I did a bad thing and forgot to take the family sailing for eleven months in a row. What was I thinking? Hard for me to believe, but S/V Mothra hadn't been wet since last September's knockdown episode with my sister. That also happened to be just before I brought the Megabyte home and began focusing so much of my limited sailing energy on learning to sail and race that thing. Well, enough was enough--time to get the whole family out for a nice Summer sail. I took the day off work on Thursday, pulled old Mothra out of the side yard, and hauled her 'cross the bridge to Benicia. Beautiful day: 80 something, 8 to 12, favorable current.

The picture here gives me tingly flashbacks to a time when I was the boy standing at the helm. I particularly remember the family cruise down the coast of Mexico in 1976. I was considered too young to stand a proper watch during our non-stop passage from Newport to Cabo; so, I was called upon to take over at meal time. Like my son now, I was also too short to see over the cabin top when seated. I would stand with the tiller between my legs, scanning the empty horizon, and coaxing the boat down the face of each successive wave some 300 miles offshore. It was just me riding 32 feet of mahogany with nothing but water in sight. My moment was only disturbed by the family returning on deck from their meal.

It's not right to deny my kids the joy of sailing. So, it'll be a little less Megabyte, a little more Mothra . . .