[Public-List] RACE COMMITTEE!

[John Birch]

Love it. Well played Gord.

John


-----Original Message-----
From: Public-List [mailto:public-list-bounces at lists.alberg30.org] On Behalf Of Gordon Laco via Public-List
Sent: August 29, 2018 8:58 PM
To: public-List Gordon Laco via
Cc: Gordon Laco
Subject: [Public-List] RACE COMMITTEE!

Oh dear.

At our club every boat has to take a turn being race committee.  Some seasons I manage to lay low and get missed… some years I get nailed.   I hate doing race committee… well to be more specific, I hate the tension that builds BEFORE doing race committee.  Doing it actually always turns out exciting and fun… but before…   The days and hours before race committee are for me very much like the period of time before leading a formation in a ceremony when I was an officer in the RCN.  One had the prospect of being in a highly visible position - any screw up instantly noted by scores of critical and expert eyes… I always worked out, but the hours before...

So there we were after a race earlier this summer.  Steve, the tall guy, blurts out in the middle of an otherwise pleasant yak with beers in the clubhouse ‘GEE, WE HAVEN’T DONE RACE COMMITTEE IN AGES.”    I could have killed him.   Eyes swivelled to me and sure enough, by the time I was home there was SURPRISE listed for committee duty in September.   Then last week our arch rival/friend Matt of SUNDOWNER phoned me up saying he had a family thing August 29, would I mind switching with him?  Thank heavens he called because I’d forgotten my obligation in September and planned a sailing trip.   I quickly agreed to take the 29th if Matt would do my day in September.

So the 29th came… Tension built.  I made a last round of phone calls to SURPRISE’s crew to make sure they were all coming down to the club early.   Clint, the guy with the Viking tattooed on his forearm, responded with a text saying he had a tooth abscess that blew up fast and he’d had dental surgery.  Wow… that’s pretty dramatic.  If he’d wanted to get out of race committee duty he could have come up with something simpler and less painful. I guess he didn’t want to stop at half measures.  It worked.  He stayed home, clearly preferring dental surgery to doing committee.

Well, that knocked us down to two men… not enough.   So I got on the phone.  To make a very long story short(er) after many people regretfully declined, our friends the Gardners and Peter Teitz, the fellow I bought Voyager Self Steering from a few years ago, all said they’d come so there were five us.   Good.

I checked the weather - we’ve had cracking thunderstorms the last two evenings but tonight the forecast was just rain.  Good, I thought,  If I’m going to do committee, they can bloody well suffer too and sail in the rain.  I put the word out the race was on.

Out we bravely went… the committee pontoon boat plowing like the pig it is,  Steve in the RHIB crash boat bounding alongside.   The wind was a solid 20kts from the NW with light rain… so I went over by Tiffin Bay to set up the start.  We anchored… then sent Steve off with the windward mark.  ‘Give ‘em a long one’ I shouted and away he went.  With a bit of semaphore signalling we gave him the ‘let go!’ both hands up when he was upwind of us, and back he shot to set the other end of the start line.  I was thinking I’d give them Course 4… that’s three laps. 

OK, all done,… 30 minutes to go before the start.  Peter T was ready with Gord Gardner on Flags… Steve clambered aboard to be official timer… Adrienne G was official note taker and I was official Official, working the horn.  The glory job.    

With 20 minutes to go, the wind pooped out and shifted to NE.  Hmmm… we’ll have to move the windward mark and reset the line… I decided to wait till close to the start before moving things so as to minimize the chances of having to do it again at the risk of delaying the start.   X, who I wrote about earlier as our overly aggressive sailor, kept swooping by us shouting advice we didn’t need.  I ignored him.  Finally he came really close and shouted ‘the wind has shifted 25 degrees’.  I looked at him and answered ‘I can’t hear you’.   He shouted again, I answered ‘I can’t hear you’.   At that point, another yacht close astern of him shouted ‘Gord’s being polite; he means F*CK OFF!’    One of X’s crew gave me a thumbs up and they both went away.

So with 15 minutes to go the wind was still light NE so I posted ‘Course 3’ (two laps) and sent Steve up to move the windward mark.  In due course we shifted the start line and with four minutes to go all hands in the committee boat were in their places.  Down counted the last seconds and bang on 1830 we sounded the three hoots for the beginning of the start sequences for 22 boats in two fleets.

All went off without a hitch, nobody was over early (thank heavens) but as soon as A Fleet got away five minutes after B, the wind shifted 25 degrees back to where it was when we first set the windward mark, and from 5knts went up to 15.   Half the fleet was caught flat footed on the wrong side of the shift and the rest of the evening was a drag race close reaching up to the windward mark and broad reaching back down.   The Second beat was enlivened by a C&C 30 punching a spreader through the leach of her genoa, hooking the now exposed leach line on the prong… there they were pinned with a lovely S curve in their sail after they tried to tack.  Oh well, they didn’t hit anybody.

The race was over all too soon… and several boats congratulated us for coping with the shifting winds… and especially for the shorter course which got them in before the rain.  Hrumph I say to that.  I WANTED them to sail in the rain… I only shortened the course when I thought the wind was pooping out… 

So here I am at home again with a glass of Irish Whiskey in hand… Race Committee done for another year… at least… Maybe they’ll forget me and I’ll miss next year… maybe….

Gord Laco
#426 Surprise




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