[Public-List] Raced again last night...

[Gordon Laco via Public-List]

Hello Gang…

 

Surprise was out last night… for a while it was iffy due to crew issues… Steve had the effrontery to put a family obligation ahead of yacht racing, and Clint managed to injure himself (his wife pointed out ‘if you can’t go to work, you certainly can’t go sailing!’).   Both my sons live out of town now, so it looked like I’d wash out due to lack of hands on board.   Luckily my elder son Pete stepped up and out we went double handed.

 

Wolfing down our submarine sandwiches (do you folks have those in the States?) we shot out of the club doing a cool 8.4 knots making hardly a ripple on the water (the knotmeter head is not replaced yet)   Out on the course we saw 21 boats, including a couple new B Fleet competitors for us to race with in addition to the usual Shark vermin and MAID MARION our arch rival… wonderful.

 

To let Pete finish his supper, we jogged along under the main before the start.  I commented to Pete that single sail sailing was very nice and relaxing… and best of all, I didn’t really need any crew at all… only one string to pull… no crew issues….  He snorted “OK, I’ll leave.”  

 

Ten minutes before the start we uncorked the genny and started paying attention.  The line was rather short, which always makes for tension, and the air was a nice steady north westerly 8-10 knots.  Oh if only it had kept blowing!

 

SURPRISE made a perfect start – clear air, not barging anyone for a change, nobody near us… hey… we’re EARLY!  DAMN.  So there we were 15 seconds early… we ended up running the line then shooting up on the horn… still clear air but no longer on the favoured end of the line.   

 

We tacked onto port and crossed through the middle of the fleet (quite exciting) getting over some, ducking sterns of others…  tacked on the lay line and made our shot for the pin.   No dice… headed badly and ended up tacking again but got around right on MAID MARION’s tail, and with jabbering jostling Sharks all around.  The new boat whose name I forget was close behind us, and the other, same type of MAID MARION, didn’t make it to the start.  Instead, they chose to cross the starting fleet on the course side of the start line, on port tack, fender down on one side, while the fleet shouted and dodged around them.   Something tells me they’re not experienced racers…

 

So, now we’re around the mark on the first run back down… this time the committee gave us the much despised ‘sausage’ course… start/finish sort of in the middle with turning marks directly to windward and to leeward.  Why can’t we just use the proper triangle?

 

Because there were just two of us, we didn’t pop the chute… we could have but didn’t.  It was too relaxed an evening a guess, and we were well up so didn’t have any impetus to bestire ourselves I guess.

 

Round the leeward pin… up we come climbing on the second beat.  Hurray we’re gaining on MAID MARION nicely… but the new boat is coming up astern.  Hmmm.  Got headed again near the pin and while in the process of making our short tack up to the lay line, we were nicely on Starboard tack and here comes the leaders of A fleet, who had started five minutes behind us and were just catching up.  EXPRESSION is coming on port, we hollered ‘starboard’ but they didn’t tack till they were in position to savagely lee-bow us…  damn.  Then, here comes the new boat in our fleet, which for no known reason decides to tack onto port right in the way of one of the 5.5mtr class yachts that joined A Fleet as a warm up for the big North Americans our club is hosting on the weekend (more about that later).  

 

To make a long story short, picture five boats including us all jostling and luffing up trying to avoid each other and get around the mark which is now only a few boat lengths away…  we had to do three tacks we hadn’t counted on but got around at last.  And Maid Marion?  She got away ahead of the shmozzle and we were never hear her again.

 

Away on the run… the air extremely light now and much to my satisfaction we kept right up with a pair of 5.5’s.  I think our great weight was helping us glide when there was no apparent wind.  Anyway, we rounded the leeward pin in close company with them.

 

The air came back 180 degrees from what carried us down, and we found ourselves reaching up to the finish, which should have been a beat, at over 7 knots (well that’s what the knotmeter said, more like 3 I’d say) 

 

Back at the club we had the usual beer in the cockpit, and were treated to a visit from the huge beaver that is living in the harbour this summer.  It’s certainly the largest beaver I’ve ever seen… looks like a wet brown carpet sliding through the water.

 

That was the end of the fun.   An incident developed.  Here’s what happened.

 

There are a couple of American 5.5’s here for the Regatta, and they have US stars and stripe flags on their sterns.   One of our members, in the course of chatting with one of the visitors, suggested that if they’re flying their national flag, as visitors they should fly Canadian courtesy flags.  This is true of course, but 5.5’s being racing boats don’t have such halyards…it’s not easy for such a boat to fly a courtesy flag…and  all would have been well but the visitor made a retort about Canada which our member took exception to.   He responded saying “if you’re not going to fly a courtesy flag, take that Trump flag down now’.   You can imagine that wasn’t received well.

 

So now, the next morning, there are hurried conversations happening to make peace between the visitors and our members.  I’ll tell you how it turns out.

 

Gord #426 Surprise