Month: June 2023

Posted on

Another night of racing

When I joined the local yacht club years and years ago, I was annoyed at the constant push by some of the members to acquiring more racing-type boats. I was interested in cruising. Those racing-type boats are uncomfortable for cruising and without the accommodations for a pleasant trip about the islands. They were always pushing for acquiring another C&C whereas I was more interested in the Catalinas, Hunters, etc.

Somewhere along the line, something went wrong and I find myself owning a C&C and invested in the racing.

Last night was another race, and we took third. That leaves us with one more race in the series and no possible way to move up in the standings unless we win the race, which is possible but so unlikely as not to be even worth considering. In addition, the third place boat would have to take fourth in the race which is also possible but also very highly unlikely. So we’ll likely conclude the series in fourth place. Which, for a first season of racing, with a brand new crew, a boat that still needs a lot of work, using very old stretched out, ragged, sails, ain’t bad!

It was an interesting course last night, basically an oval around two marks, but with the starting line halfway between them. We had a bad start, partly because we had some traffic that got the inside track on us, pushing us further from the start line than I wanted to be, and partly because I probably SHOULD have been at the other end of the start and on a port tack instead of starboard.

As we headed towards the first mark I was debating. Should we fly the spinnaker or not? We’re down a two crew, though we gained one back due to someone bringing their friend. in addition, this crew has never raised the spinnaker before, though our foredeck has only flown an asymmetic (opus has a symmetric spinnaker, which is a very different creature) before. What the heck. Might as well.

Raising a spinnaker requires good coordination between the helm, the line handlers, and the foredeck. As this was the first time doing it, that coordination was… not there. Fortunately, we didn’t do any of the things like hourglassing it.

We raised the spinnaker behind the genoa and that went reasonably well. Then we started to furl in the genoa and that’s where things started to take a bad turn. We should have been more downwind to inflate the spinnaker. Instead, it kept collapsing onto the genoa as we were trying to furl it in and that, in turn, would cause the spinnaker to start twisting around the genoa… so we would have to unfurl the genoa a bit to free the spinnaker, get the spinnaker off the genoa, and then furl the genoa. That lost us a lot of time sorting out, but eventually we did and it turned out to be a good move. Under Spinnaker, we rapidly were catching up to, and then passing, three boats from the pack, catching them about 3/4 of the way to the downwind pin.

Dousing the spinnaker went better as we yanked it down with about 4 boat lengths to go to the turn. Though we still managed to dip it into the water for a moment before bringing it up. Still some work to go on that maneuver! 🙂 We rounded the pin and set up for a close reach to get back to the “gate”. However, this took us further out into the Georgia Strait, which was something we had said we did NOT want to do since the tide was incoming and bringing currents against us. Better to stay in-shore where there would be some protection from that current. Oops.

We made it back to the “gate” at the halfway point (the starting line acting like a funnel that all boats had to cross again) and beat upwind for the windward mark and headed for the finish line, crossing it in time for third place!

Turning around we headed for home, still under sail, while the crew got the boat back together, we held a debrief, then took the sails down and motored back to home tired, sore, but happy.

Posted on

Committee Boat

Most races are volunteer-run, cooperative, endeavours, especially if they’re a “series” like most clubs put on. For instance, we’re taking part in the racing series that happen every Tuesday night at our yacht club. It’s basically a bunch of boats of all shapes and sizes getting out and working on our skills and having a friendly rivalry while still having some level of formalism. As a result, each race, one boat is appointed the “Committee Boat” which basically means you set out the starting line and starts the other boats, and then watch them sail off while you wait for them to return so that you can get their elapsed time, start-to-finish, hand that over to the race chairman to do some black magic voodoo computer program stuff that takes into account handicaps for different size/makes of boats and comes out with winners in different divisions.

This week was Opus’ turn to be committee boat.

The wind predictions were anywhere from 6 knots to 30 knots. In other words, we had no idea what was going to be happening out there and were not looking forward to bouncing and rolling at anchor while the other boats hared off on the same course that we had sailed the previous week, but responsibilities are responsibilities.

1/2 the crew had called in with unable to attend, so we were down to three people aboard this week too, however it doesn’t require a full crew to hang onto an anchor and watch other sail boats, so it worked out well.

The starting line is marked by a float that is dropped by the committee boat at one end, and the committee boat itself at the other end, usually the “starboard” end of the start line is the committee boat. The line has to be long enough to give sailboats a chance to pass it more or less en masse.

Opus motored out after collecting the “stuff” from the race chairman (float, placards, etc.). Our usual helmsman was one of those that had called in to be absent, so it provided an opportunity to give others a chance at the helm. We dropped the float, backed off a bit and dropped our own anchor, paid out line, “set” the anchor, hung a red “5” on our port side (that tells the other boats that the course is out marker #5 and the red means you must keep that marker on the PORT side as you round the mark), made sure we had our timer set, flags ready and waited. At 18:54 we made our first “recall” sound as a courtesy (as per the suggestion of the race chairman. 18:55 was the “CLASS” flag going up and short sound. At this point boats should have their engines off and be purely under sail. 18:56, the PREPARE flag goes up with another short sound. This means all boats that are not in the class about to start should stay clear of the start area and gives the racing boats a second chance to synchronize their start timers to the official one. 18:59 and the PREPARE flag comes down with a LONG sound signal signifying one minute before start. At 19:00 the last flag comes down, a short sound signal is made, and the race is on! As we approach 19:00, our job is to keep a sight down the starting line for any boats crossing early, which none did for this start (technically, the start line goes from the float, to the mast of the committee boat, so you sight down that line).

About 5 minutes after the boats had started, there’s another sailboat frantically putting up their sails while motoring towards us. It’s another competitor there late. They got their sails up, engine off, crossed the start line, and were off chasing the others.

The winds were up, though nowhere near 30 knots and were the sort of conditions that were just made for Opus. It was doubly painful watching the other boats sail away. We hunkered down to wait, weathered a light rain shower, and watched. at around 20:39, the first boat back crossed the finish line (same as the start line, but in the other direction), to be greeted with a sound signal to signify official end of the race for them. 3 minutes later the second boat crossed the line. These were the only two boats from Opus’ division that were racing. The last boat crossed about 1/2 an hour later.

We took down the information of each boat as they crossed – name of boat, elapsed time – in an email, then it was time to pull up anchor, motor over to the float, pull it up, and head for home. Arriving home, secured, crew brought the supplies back to the shed, we cleaned up, and all headed home.

For acting as committee boat, we get our “average” number of points from previous races added into our cumulative score. in this case, that actually hurt us. If we had raced, the minimum points we would have gotten was 0.33 points but acting as committee boat, we only got 0.28 points. Hey, that 0.05 points might make a difference!

Well, mathematically, it might. In reality, it won’t.

And did I mention that I lost my hat overboard? Darn, I really liked that hat too.

Posted on

Two and a half men

Opus is a fairly large boat at 43 feet long. As a result, her sails, and her gear is also proportionately larger. As she has no power winches, everything is done by human muscle and, of course, involves a bit of motion up and down the decks. Things just are never within reach on her.

Tuesday was another race, or at least was supposed to be. One of the foredeck had said, weeks ago, that he would be unavailable for the race, so that meant we were already down one person. Then the second foredeck had something come up. Now we were down two. At the semi-last moment, another person cancelled. now we’re down three – approximately 1/2 of our crew.

I put in to the organizers that this might be a good time for Opus to do her duty as committee boat, but someone else was already slotted in. Ok ,guess we aren’t racing. It’s going to be maintenance except that the winds are up nicely and…

Oh, heck with it, we’ll race with the three of us.

Things went smoothly for departure as we switched from “maintenance mode” to “racing prep mode”. Hubert took us smartly out of the slip earlier than we usually would as I figured the prep work getting the sails up and squared away would take longer with just the three of us. Safely out of the marina with the wind blowing off shore, we motored further out and then turned bow towards land and into the wind to hoist the mainsail, then add the foresail. Conditions were wonderful with the wind speed in the double digits and little to no wave action.

We saw the committee boat set up and were listening on the radio, but didn’t hear the course call. Still, I was pretty sure how we would start, so started lining up Opus, only to see (almost) all the other boats on the other side of the start line. Quickly we hustled over to that line, concentrating on getting ourselves set up for the start. At the last moment I look up and…

… all the boats are on the side I started at, and we don’t have time to reposition. Once again, a late start as we swung around the committee boat for a proper (non-penalty) start, though now we were well behind the pack.

Still, these are the conditions that Opus likes, and we were overtaking them, starting to think about the tactics of picking our way through the pack. Unfortunately, since we didn’t hear the radio call, we had no idea where the pin was and therefore couldn’t plan strategy. All we could do was play follow-the-leader and hope that it would eventually be clear. Meanwhile we seemed to be heading out to Saturna island.

Eventually we figured out where the pin was located, but once again we were in a bad position and had to do a bunch of maneuvering that caused us to lose ground yet again. However, we came around the marker, giving it a respectful space since the marker was a concrete marker well embedded into the sea floor. Hitting it would be a bad, bad, idea.

Now it was time to head back and here’s where a spinnaker would really have been nice. I made the (incorrect) call to switch over to a broad reach hoping to get some better speed. This course took us out into the channel again, which was a bad call because we were bucking an incomming tide. In retrospect, it would have been better to stick closer to shore where the tide/current was less.

Once again we dragged in as the last boat of our division, though there were still boats behind us, they were a lot closer than they should have as Opus is a faster boat if sailed properly.

Lessons learned:

  • When out in Georgia Strait, hug the coastline if you’ll be fighting a strong tide
    • Become more familiar with the currents, especially where eddies and swirls might form
  • Have someone assigned to listen to the radio
  • Learn the course marking flags so that you can tell the course by looking at the markings on the committee boat.
  • Actually look at the committee boat to see the course
  • The closer to the pin you are, the faster that a course will converge on it. If you are 1 nm away from the pin and traveling 90 degrees to the pin, it takes a long time to change the angle of a course directly to the pin.
  • Clean up the cockpit and get ready for the next evolution as soon as possible.

So why 2 and a half? I turned my ankle on a line that rolled my foot before smashing into the coaming of the cockpit. My mobility pretty much went to zero, which made things difficult.

So we are currently in 4th place in the series. Yes, there are more than 4 boats, so we’re not quite in last place. That’s better than I thought we would do!

Posted on

Third Race

This past Tuesday was Opus’ third race. The first was a few weeks ago. The goal for that race, indeed for the whole season, is simply to get out on the water, work out procedures, shake her up, find what needs fixing, rinse, and repeat. Therefore, it was no disappointment to come in last, with the second-to-last boat finishing nearly 30 minutes before us. On the other hand, it was a pleasant surprise for us to even cross the finish line within the time limit, which I wasn’t expecting.

We would have finished even sooner but I made some bad decisions along the way, calling the lines incorrectly and thereby causing us to be even slower around the course. This was the crew’s first time aboard her as well, and they need to learn her lines and procedures, how she likes to be trimmed, the timing for a tack or gybe, etc. And, lastly, the winds were pretty light, which is not Opus’ best environment. She likes a bit more wind. Of course, the winds were the same for everyone, so it’s certainly no excuse for us.

Opus’ second race was a fun, highly informal, one during a three-day weekend in which two larger boats (Opus and another called Runaway) and two smaller boats from the Lower Mainland Yacht Coop (LMYC) ran. We had brought Opus to the meet with just me and one crew aboard. For the race we had a crew of 6+1 – i.e. 6 active crew and 1 photographer. Notable highlights for this was a our chance to fly the spinnaker for the first time, ever, under my ownership. There is something about that brightly coloured, huge, sail sliding out of its bag to balloon out there in front that is just quintessential sailing.

Early in that race I made a couple of not-great decisions and then made a decisively good one that had us out in the lead. Then we decided to fly the spinnaker which, unfortunately, took us in a bad direction. We then complicated that by fouling the spinnaker halyard in the top of the roller furler for the Genoa, which delayed us taking down the spinnaker even further in the wrong direction. Still.. We Flew The Spinnaker!

We ended up in second place, well behind Runaway who ran away with the first place, and barely ahead of the third place boat,which we should have been well ahead of. Oh well.

And then came our third race this past Tuesday.

We had a fair start, slightly back from the pack (we have to work on our start, though we’re getting better) but we were actually crossing the line a bit higher on the bias, which in this case was a good thing and eventually allowed us to make up some time. The course consisted of the start line, an upwind pin, return through the start line, a downwind pin, return through the start line, and repeat, making two laps around the course.

For once we were within striking distance of the pack and actually ahead of one other boat. It felt like we were even starting to creep up on the boat in third place. Suddenly the boat in second place turned 90 degrees to the course and started bringing her sails down. A bit further in and the boat in front of us did the same. We later found out that the second-place boat had a steering failure and were out, and the third place boat had dropped out of the race to render assistance. However, that left only one boat ahead of us and the chase was on. They were far enough ahead that we had no hope of catching them, but possibly we could whittle down their lead a bit. It should be noted that boat has won every race so far this season.

We crossed the finish line in second place only 13 minutes behind the leader in elapsed time. That’s still a big percentage difference since they finished in 49 minutes and we finished in 62 minutes, but darn it felt good! By comparison, the first race was won in 81 minutes and we crossed in 111 minutes. We are improving!

Next race is on June 6th and we hope to do even better.