Centerboard Fleet by Rob Swenson (Jacomo)

I took my S16 to PYC for the Commodore's Cup, along with my backup crew Laurie Polette. My main crew was away on a girl's weekend to the Zozobra festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

Saturday, Race 1

We had patchy and light winds for the first race. As usual, I sailed up and down the start line to check if it was square with the wind. I noticed that the wind had shifted quite a bit since the line was set, as is typical on light air days. The pin end was clearly favored. I did my typical Vanderbilt start (wait until about 2 minutes left in the start sequence, sail out a minute, turn around, and sail back to the line). I arrived at the pin end of the start line on port tack just after the start. A lighting sailboat (Black Dog) called starboard on me so I looked and noticed that they were struggling to even clear the pin end of the line on starboard tack, let alone keep up with me, so I jokingly called back PORT! We managed to port tack the whole fleet without incident. I noticed that the wind was shifting about 20° every couple of minutes. I tried to carefully pick my way to windward looking for the fingers of wind showing on the water. We reached the weather mark at about the same time as several other boats, and then a wind hole settled in. I happened to have a bubble toy from a wedding in my pocket, so I was able to blow some bubbles and find a way to set my sails and get us away from the gaggle of boats stuck at the weather mark. I kept looking back to make sure I was keeping our downwind progression in the fingers of wind on the lake. We managed to make it around the leward mark and back up to the finish line, but that pesky Black Dog beat us to the finish by 4 seconds, corrected time.

 

Race 2:

In the second race on Saturday I again noticed that Port tack was indicated at the start. Unfortunately the rest of the centerboard fleet noticed that too. We launched in a tight pack. Unfortunately the lightnings were faster and began to pull away, while the J22 fleet closed in behind me. I was forced to tack to starboard (the headed tack) to avoid trouble with the J22s, but as they began to flip to port I was able to convince the J22 sitting on top of me to tack to port so we could get back to the lifted tack. This race continued with the light winds making it necessary to carefully pick where to sail based upon where there was wind, more than where was a lifted tack or the path to the weather mark. Thanks to some wind shifts I got to put in a couple extra tacks at the weather mark and the rest of the centerboard fleet went on without me (rude). We managed to fight back on the downwind, thanks to my crew laying on the foredeck and hand trimming the jib with her toes (I forgot the whisker pole in the car, dang it! - Thanks to Pat Carr for giving us a whisker pole the previous weekend after seeing my other crew doing the same thing). I kept the vang on to power up the main and tried to keep us on a broad reach as much as my bubble blowing wind detector would allow. This pulled us back up to the fleet, but we finished solidly in 3rd place on this race.

 

Race 3, aborted:

The third race on Saturday started, but was relatively quickly cancelled due to the wind not joining us.

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Sunday

Race 3, completed:

The winds were a bit fresher so it was nice to be able to move around a bit better. We had 10° to 15° wind shifts every 60 to 120 seconds, so there was lots of tacking on the first beat. At this time I noticed that my boat is tacking through 100°, instead of the customary 90° tacks! I'm going to have to investigate that. With the additional wind the 3 Lightnings and the Y flyer were all able to fly their spinnakers. My S16 isn't rigged for a spinnaker, nor do I have that sail (but would like one of you have one sitting around). We ended up falling a little bit behind on the downwind to Black Dog, but the other boats seemed to have some troubles with their spinnakers, so we were able to pull ahead of them on the long downwind. This time we had the whisker pole and were able to sail by the Lee quite a bit, and then a wind shifts gave us a nice broad reach for the second half of this leg. We needed to tack at the finish line to make it between the pin and the boat, but we also blew this rack right in front of the RC boat with my tiller extension getting stuck in the seat. We hung there, precariously close to a broach or capsize, but luckily the wind had a brief lull and we were able to pull ourselves together and right the boat across the finish line. We ended up a solid second place, corrected time.

 

Race 4:

The winds continued to freshen as the day progressed. The RC showed the Y flag so I put on my life jacket, which made my crew a little nervous (this is her first season sailing, and this was the strongest wind she had ever seen on a sailboat). We had sailed over to the Eastern shore to try and get some relief in the Lee under the trees. I wasn't paying attention, but heard some committee boat cannons, and we sailed over to investigate. I asked the committee boat if that horn was the 5 minute signal, but was told no, it was the 1 minute signal. We managed to quickly do a circle and get ourselves on starboard just below the committee boat at the start gun. We managed to get ourselves around the course okay, but saw a couple of the lightning boats struggling with their spinnakers. In this race on of the lightnings had to retire due to a spinnaker related injury, apparently. We again finished second, but my crew indicated that she didn't want to sail anymore. I carefully suggested we have a snack and a drink and see how the wind changed. I had managed to find the last beer in the cooler that morning and slipped it into my drink bag. I suggested she drink the beer, along with her snack, and that helped to steady her nerves enough to continue.

 

Race 5:

We were stayed close to the RC so we wouldn't miss the last start. We got a decent starboard start near the RC, and played the wind shifts pretty hard. I noticed that Black Dog was looking for something on the left side of the course, but it looked to me like the bigger wind was in the middle, so we tacked our way up the center of the lake. We rounded the weather mark in 1st place, and found the downwind was basically a long broad reach. I had powered up the main with the vang, and my crew was able to get the job tells flying with the whisker pole. I was careful to keep us surfing a wave almost the entire leg. About 100 meters from the leward mark Black Dog caught up to us, even though she wasn't flying her spinnaker. I tried to get the inside position for room at the mark, but Kenny realized my plan and adjusted his course. Black Dog then positioned herself right in front of us for the remainder of the downwind. After the leward mark Black Dog stayed on Port tack for a minute to get a bit to the right of the course, while we talked onto the lifted Starboard tack. When Black Dog tacked onto starboard we were a bit ahead, but I wasn't able to fetch the finish line and had to throw in a few tacks to climb back to the lay line. Black Dog finished ahead by less than a minute, so we finally beat her on corrected time. My crew immediately asked that we return to the dock, which we did. I ran up and got a couple beers from the yacht club and brought them back down to the dock for my crew and the people in line next to us waiting to pull out of the water. My crew calmed down a bit, but she said she was still shaking a while later when we sat and had a snack at the yacht club table area.

 

I felt like it was a pretty fantastic regatta, at the end of the day, and I'm happy we raced it. It was great to see some old friends I hadn't seen in years, as well as make a lot of new friends.