Surprise's Log Day Sailer 11750

2004 Wednesday night semifinals

I sailed in the CLRA Wednesday night fleet championship semifinals last night with my friends Joe and Jim. Joe's my regular crew on Wednesdays, and has lots of foredeck experience as well as being a tolerably good tactician. Jim is a fellow Day Sailer, Skipper of Cacafuego, and fellow Patrick O'Brian afficionado.

I finished my Lab class at 3:15 yesterday and headed out to Seabrook Shipyard, where Buddy Brown, the organizer of the Wednesday night races had three Sonar class boats waiting for us.

As I was driving to the dock, I got a call from Joe on my cell phone. At the time I thought he called just out of chance, but apparently my cell phone will easily redial the last number called, or sometimes just random digits that are pressed. So apparently Joe was called by my cellphone, and he was treated to the sounds of my CD player playing an audiobook - O'Brian's The Fortune of War. Joe said he thought I was trying to be inspirational, or somehow signaling him or having fun, but it went on and on. So he hung up and called me back. My phone rang and I was oblivious. Joe didn't tell me what was going on until we reached the dock. I think if I were doing something like that I'd play a song instead of the voice of Patrick Tull describing the action between USS Constitution and HMS Java.

The three of us got to the dock, boarded our boat, and made our way into the lake. The first race we had a good start, were on the line at the favored end and had good boat speed. But we weren't pointing well with the other boats, and we were overpowered, the winds being Easterly at about 16 mph, which as I understand it, is a good wind for these boats. I tried what I knew, tightening the mainsheet, cunningham and outhaul, trying to flatten it, but was overpowered, nonetheless. I tried easing the traveller, It helped a little, but we had a big fisherman's reef in the sail. The other guys, a J/24 sailor and a Sunfish sailor who has been sailing J/24s and other keelboats boats all his life, were doing well. We were behind them but not very far.

Then, the tiller extension came detached from the tiller and I was unable to get it reconnected, because I was unfamiliar with that style of extension. So I was forced to sit near the tiller and couldn't hike out which hurt us. We rounded the weather mark and made our way to leeward for the finish line. We managed to gain on them going downwind, but still finished third.

Joe had mentioned his goal for the races was not to finish last in every race. At this time I was a little worried about obliging his wishes. We exchanged boats and began the second race. The wind was more centered, and we were reachng down the line on starboard behind the Sunfish champ. He started to luff us and for a while I thought we would be over early, but he bore off and gave us some breathing space.

Suddenly, I heard a loud metallic bang, and realized that the other two boats had some sort of contact. It wasn't the sound of fiberglass crunching, but from what I could tell, neither boat was disabled. The offending boat had come along on port and somehow they had managed to contact masts above the hounds. It was startling and I had a momentary pang in my stomach because with borrowed boats, you never want to damage them, and Buddy had mentioned we were to be liable for up to $1000 of damage. Fair enough, but no one wants to go there. We came up on a closehauled course and the offending boat seemed to retire, but he ended up finishing behind us, so we got second behind the Sunfish champ.

We changed boats again, and I was not able to see any problems with the boat we were in. No damage was apparent. We had a good start again, But we were still not able to point with them. I had a feeling I was doing something wrong and even voiced it to my crew but didn't know what was wrong. We had our best race, were close to the other boats and even close to being in first during the beat, but we got a bad wind shift at the weather mark and fell just behnd the J/24 champ who was in second. At least we were in striking range. I began shadowing him, and we closed the gap. He began luffing to try to get out of the shadow and we kept with him, gaining the entire time. He jibed, and we jibed to cover. Several times this was repeated and he kept looking back at us, and even made a comment. We continued to close, and finished less than 5 feet behind his transom.

We got back to the dock and put the boats away. I had a message from Kathy on my cell phone who called saying they had watched the race from the beach club, with the owners. They said our attack in the last race was exciting and folks were rooting for us, which I find gratifying. But it wasn't until Buddy Brown showed up that I learned what we were doing wrong.

Sonars have backstays, which are very important for flattening the main going upwind. if we had tightened our backstay during the beats, we would have no doubt depowered the boat and improved our pointing.

Although don't advance to the finals, I'm nonetheless happy with how we did considering I'm not a keelboat sailor and haven't sailed boats larger than the Day Sailer very much. We had good strategy and tactics, but boat handling was the problem. We had good tacks, and crew work was good. I didn't overtack the boat much, which I find I do too often in Surprise. It was very educational. I like the way the Sonar behaves in tacks, it's got good blades, and for the winds we had they responded very nicely. Tacking is smooth, and easy.

From what I hear they cost about $25,000 out of the box, and can be had from $12,000 up to $20,000. I think if I were ever to get a racing keelboat this might be the one.

Thanks to Buddy Brown for running a great series of races, and thanks to the owners from Texas Corinthian Yacht Club for letting us use their boats.

Next week I'll get to watch from the sidelines, or perhaps from the helm of Surprise as a spectator, or aboard a different boat.

September series, Races, 3,4

I'm not going to publish tracks for these races, since they were drifters, and we didn't even finish on the last race - sunset occured just after we rounded the last mark and went for the line. Kind of a sad way to end the season, but it was fun. We finished first in the Portsmouth class, and tomorrow we will sail on Sonars in the semifinals. Traditionally, we've sucked during the semifinals, and stank up the entire lake with our performance. Tomorrow may be no different, but we'll do our best. It's about time we did!

September series race 2

The wind went very light and died in this one. We originally had a reasonable easterly wind which made me think "Great! A spinnaker run home!" As we made our way up the course, we avoided a huge hole (at least it looked like one) in the middle of the course, and kept with Joe C. in his Coronado. we rounded the leeward mark still close, but the wind had shifted and the next windward mark was a fetch. The wind kept dying as went upwind and Joe pulled away from us. About this time we were thinking it would have been good to shorten course. We rounded the mark, and tried to raise the spinnaker. It worked for a little while and then we pulled it down. We almost drifted across the finish, 19 minutes behind Joe.
Paddled home in the dark, drank beer after.