Surprise's Log Day Sailer 11750

August Series 1

I forgot the GPS, so no plot this week, which is really too bad because for the first time this year we had a gold cup course as opposed to the usual windward/leeward. Kathy crewed for me in Joe's absence. For the first time this year the sky had the feeling of....(cue dramatic music) AUTUMN... The days are getting shorter, you can tell. We had eight boats: my Surprise, Joe Cornelison's Coronado 15, Casey Lambert's Nomad, a second Nomad, Paul Shield's Flying Junior, Tom Kaczmarek's Vanguard 15, Dick Hoover's Lido 14, and Steven McCleery's Thistle.

The second Nomad, poor folks, must not be used to the boat; they went shrimping with their A-sail at both windward mark roundings.

July series Race 4

Here's the plot:

Light, light winds. In fact, no wind. I didn't think we get the race off, but Buddy got lucky and he's good as well. It filled in at the last second. Two boats bailed out.

Southwest Winds.

Oh, this will be nice. Launching from the dock... Maybe the powerboat dock will work. Getting back in will be even more fun. I guess we can go to the leeward side of the pier by paddling around.

Current WX

Looks like storms are approaching from the north. There's a cold front coming this way, but I'm not sure if it will actually come through It's going to be an interesting weather day. I forgot my foul weather gear... D'oh!

July Series race 3

This was a long course. The second windward leg was .924 NMI. We had nice winds - ESE, 12-15. The boat is definitely faster with the new rake setting. The GPS showed our maximum speed as 6.5kts on the first beat, right after a tack - I'm not sure if that's correct.
I've taken the data from the GPS and through the magic of modern computing, I was able to determine the following data. The Ritchie tactician compass I use has a red lubber line on centerline as well as two yellow ones at 45 degrees off. It's marked in 5 degree increments in each quadrant from 0 to 8.5, so the cardinal points are 0's, the intercardinals (NE,NW,SE,SW) are at 4.5. The total time for the race is a little off from the official results. I'm not sure why yet.

		Tactical Indication
		red line	yellow lines
Avg close hauled port heading:	169.0	7.9	3.4
Total Time on port tack beat:	0:14:08
Avg close hauled starboard heading:	81.5	8.1	3.6
Total Time on starboard tack beat:	0:16:08
Time Beating:	0:30:16
Time Running:	0:21:07
Total Time:	0:51:23
Avg Tacking Angle:	87.5
Avg Pointing Angle:	43.8	4.4
Mean Wind Direction:	125.2	3.5

The RC did a nice job. The windward and leeward marks were exactly lined up with the average wind.

Weather Conditions for Wednesday Night Races

No words to the contrary, so I think we'll be sailing.
Assuming we have a pier and dock to use, that is.

Kemah Bridge: ESE at 14mph
JSC: SE, 13 peak 16, seems to be jumping between the S and SE.
Skies: Mostly cloudy, no rain reported in the last few hours.

Claudette arrives...

Okay, so imagine I'm standing at the end of my pier wearing a blue rainsuit and holding a microphone... and acting like Dan Rather. Yeah, right. We apparently have to thank him for all these news bags who stand in the water during hurricanes.

The tide is supposed to peak at the house a little after noon today. The tide was just to the top of the rip rap - I think we will be okay, the storm winds seem to be abating or at least no longer strengthening.

TS Claudette - Will it pass to the south?

Although the weather forecasters seem to say that it will turn and go west, it hasn't happened yet. Something tells me we are going to get the worst of this one. I only hope that the force will be minimal, and that it will not strengthen. I'll make sure the sails and everything important is up off the floor of the storage shed tonight. If it comes to it, I may need to pull her out of there and bring her to higher ground. In any event, There's stuff to do. I hope this won't affect our party this weekend, It seems that the Wednesday night race may be out... Stand by...

Mast Rake changes

Saturday, we adjusted the rake of the mast forward one notch at the base (1/4" perhaps). We tightened the forestay ten turns and eased the shrouds three turns. The results were favorable- we had less weather helm, and the boat was still fast. I think it was a good move. Kathy said the spreaders are now much closer to the jib leech, similar to other Day Sailers. The loos gage showed 13 on the headstay, and 30 on the shrouds.

As a result of this change, the jib halyard needs to be drawn up tighter, which I think means I need to move the magic box up several inches.

Imbedded images and sail maintenance

Cliff from the Shack has mentioned that imbedding images as if they were mine is frowned upon by some. So that no one think's I've got the capability to generate my own hurricane strike probabilities (although it sounds like a fun project for Paintshop Pro), I'll make sure to attribute anything not mine to its source.

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The jib from set#2 seems to have developed a small tear near the first snap hank - time to take another $20 to Cameron Sails, unless it can be fixed by a small bit of tape. It will be a good time to talk to him about putting a spreader window in the #1 main.

Tropical Storm Claudette

I hate it when these show up.
From the weather underground:
Strike Probabilities: Computer models show it going south:
The Shack on the Bayou tropical storm charts

More on Mast Rake

I've convinced myself that Surprise has more weather helm than she should. Saturday I'll try reducing the rake and see what happens.
Here's how I'd do it:

1. Set the mast up like I do normally.


2. Take tension readings on the shrouds, and the forestay with the loos gage


3. Loosen the rig


4. Move the butt of the mast aft one notch setting.


5. Retension the rig to the same tension values from the second step

Series 3 - Quantum sails

So, I got this nice vest from Quantum sails for a prize for series 3. It's really cool. Beats that standard mylar sail bag. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Bryan R. of fleet 89 in Oregon will have a lot of women (well, at least sailing women) come after him in college because of that North sails bag I won....Tee friggin' hee. :-)
Ok.
So here's the track from tonight:

I set the sample rate much higher and I think it gave me a better track. The GPS stored about 700 data points.
We were buried at the start. Not good. Gotta learn not to do that... If I can master that start, I'll be in much better shape when I race with 20+ other Day Sailers...

The other thing is I'm convinced I want to do is to reduce the rake in the mast. Had too much weather helm. I've always had too much. I'm just realizing it now. Hell, if the boat slows down, I'll return it to the current setting. We were really close on scratch to the faster boats in the fleet tonight - we passed the Nomad on the last run, with a tiny margin, and almost got the Vanguard 15. We were actually in front of him during one beat... The poor Thistle, those guys ought to be horizon-jobbing us.

Weather conditions

Winds at Kemah bridge at S at 12.
JSC Bldg 30 - S 12 peak 17.

Mast Rake

The thing to consider is this: Shall I take some rake out of the mast? If so, how will that affect the rest of the rig? I think I would need to tighten the forestay accordingly. Will I need to loosen the shrouds as well? Need to think on this more.

My dutiful wednesday night crew

My dutiful wednesday night crew has crew has notified me that an individual by the name of Jim... there can be only two who are responsible...have reported my Aubrey Maturin bumper sticker to Sea-room.com Which ever Jim it was put a nice little post there. Thanks, Jim.

And while I'm in this self-indulgent mode - Here's two more photos by Chris Brown taken from the CLRA web site: (click for a larger version)

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Last night's race was a drifter... Well maybe not, but it was lighter wind than I care for. Wish I was better at sailing in them, I don't think the rudder modifications I made after NACs hurt, but I'm not convinced they help. I think there's less noise and wake coming from the boat going down wind, but it's hard to tell, since going back there to look sort of ruins it... my vast bulk presses the stern into the water and well there you have it... It reminds me of a thing from physics - something aobut observing the experiment renders it invalid... Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, perhaps? But I digress...
I'm not convinced that reducing the sweep of the spreaders helped me, the boat had a little more power, but it seemed that we had to hike out more, and perhaps there was a touch too much of weather helm. I'm not sure what too much and too little weather helm is.
I'd like to reduce the rake of the mast and see what happens...

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I recall a semi-incident from last night I want to recount. We were beating up the course and were on starboard tack. A sunfish was on port in a crossing situation. I'm not used to someone talking to me out there except for the standard "Starboard" hails... I think the fellow was asking me should he tack or duck? I didn't snap to it soon enough and I chose to duck him. so, I yielded my right of way. Now, I'm not racing him, so I was confused as to why he would be asking me what he should do. All I wanted would have been for him to stay clear according to the rules, not tell him what he should do. I wonder if it was a mind game the guy playing. When I ducked he said "thanks". I'm not sure if it was meant sarcastically, but I can't help but think it might have been. I guess the right thing to do would have been to early on assert my ROW and hail "starboard", and let him deal with it. It's his problem after all. But what would have been the corinthian thing to do?

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Here's the track from the race- Joe C. won 1st, we were second with the vanguard somewhere behind me... good job Joe! and made fewer mistakes than I did! On to next week and let there be more wind!

Well, Unfortunately, it seems the

Well, Unfortunately, it seems the folks at blogger are no longer supporting Active FTP... which my ISP uses. My ISP doesn't support passive FTP. so either I wait and hope Blogger will change or I find another place to do this silly thing from. My ISP doesn't allow CGI scripts so I can't use moveable type or greymatter. And I can't even upgrade to pro in the hope that it works...
So. Either I:
1. Give this up
2. Find a new ISP - Kathy won't like that....
3. Wait for blogger to pull their collective heads out of their collective... well.
4. Something else that hasn't occurred to me.

As for the boat - I hope I can sail tomorrow. Finding crew may be an issue. The rudder is done and ready to go. I really want to see what the mods do for performance. Can I acheive hydrodymanic excellence as Mr. B was thinking at NAs? God know when if ever this and the previous posts will ever be uploaded... Stupid Blogger.