[Public-List] SURPRISE raced last night...

[Gordon Laco]

So there we were, 

Steve, the tall guy, Clint, the Dane with a Viking tattooed on his forearm, and myself aboard SURPRISE.  In the icebox was a bag of cubes on their third time out to the boat - after all these years of forgetting to put ice on the beer, this summer I got the idea that I could carry the bag of cubes home after the race, throw it in the freezer, and have it ready to bring out next week… that way I only had to remember to buy it once, then have it for several races.

The air was light and Clint commented that we were in for a ‘bob and bake’ as he calls bouncing on motorboat wakes without steerage way on.   We motored out to the start and admired the size of the fleet our club was producing on race nights these days… 19 boats this time.    Humming along at 6.2knots we approached my friend John in his slinky engineless 5.5 Meter class yacht gliding along under sail for the start… we sometimes save empty beer cans to toss into his cockpit as we go by but not this time; doing such an atrocity too often causes it to lose its shock value; and besides, he retaliates.  We just waved.  John is a superb sailor and an old friend… sometimes in light airs we give him a tow back to the club so he doesn’t miss the pizza… and because he is a good sailor I once took advantage of his skill.  Towing him at about 6, I could see him directing his crew to recover the tow line as we neared the entrance of the club.  But instead of slowing down I brought him in at high speed pinned to us by the line.  We cast him off and made a sharp turn to get ourselves out of trouble, then sat back and admired his superb boat handling as he made several sharp turns himself to shed speed before sailing up to his jetty.  He was shaking his fist at us when he finally got in.

Well this time we just waved as we went by.

Near the committee boat we turned our head to the wind and I said to the guys ‘well, no point in putting off the inevitable’ and we hoisted sail.   What ho?  The wind was coming up!  What looked to be a ‘bob and bake’ in which we’d be clobbered by the lighter boats, was turning into a solid 12 knot north westerly… The committee scrambled to move the start to better align it with the new wind… and the start sequence began.  Coming in with 45 seconds to go the whole of B Fleet was a solid mass, bows overhanging sterns, boats near port and starboard, some shouting starting… we were to weather of all this looking for a hole to dive into but none appeared.  I decided to bail rather than barge the start so knocked the helm over and did a sharp 360 letting the herd go by which allowed us to start in clear air right on their heels.  This was very good because while they were all busy screwing each other up, we tacked onto port and walked away from them. Oh how glorious.

We were doing a steady 5.5 knots hard on the wind, and I’d finally seemed to have begun understanding our new genoa.  We were still not pointing like our arch rivals MAID MARION and SUNDANCER, but we were doing better than before and going fast.    What a shock it was when I realized we were on the lay line for the mark already… we tacked onto starboard going in to it and in quick succession took several scalps as the fleet, pointing higher but sailing slower, came up on port. (Taking a scalp is what I call forcing another yacht to tack after calling ‘STARBOARD’ on them.)

MAID MARION tried desperately to get across our bow but realized almost too late she wasn’t going to make it and tacked right in our lee bow… but no matter, we had momentum and speed and with her about 12” to leeward of us we drove over them.   Argh!  

But no ARRGHing yet… coming into the mark and in heavy traffic the wind knocked us and we couldn’t lay it any more.   What to do… tack onto port to climb up a jot was risky, there was traffic up there coming on starboard tack and we’d have to take their sterns… wait, what’s this?  A lift!  Up we went and made it.  I called to my crew and said ‘holy sh*t, we’re gunna make it, a miracle, which one of you went to church last week?’  

Round we went still in heavy traffic… up went the spinnaker without drama and away we went down like a sled.  Traffic was building again as we neared the leeward mark… the course was the #5 ‘sausage’ course… I much prefer the traditional triangle but we weren’t doing that this week.  We were on starboard tack running, which made the turn at the mark a gybe… I went through the sequence of actions that were coming with the guys… ‘Ok, we’re going to hang onto the ‘chute as long as we can… then set the genny… ease the pole forward… pop the tack shackle, dowse the chute… gybe the main, stow the pole to clear the foredeck, then gybe the whole boat and the genny as we round the mark”.    Clint and Steve replied ‘hang onto the spinnaker, we’ll be quick’.   So we hung on till I couldn’t stand the building tension any more then started work.

Just as I heard the pole click into the deck chocks Steve yelled ‘OK you can gybe!’ we were coming up to the mark.  We had a near collision happening in front of us and another developing beside us… and a yacht astern whose bow was only about a yard off our transom… all foaming along at high speed.    Round we went, in came the sheets, in came the main’s outhaul and up SURPRISE swung, perfect.   One lap done and we were in the leading pack climbing back up for the second beat.

MAID MARION was comfortably behind, SUNDANCE, who all this season was usually half a leg ahead by this point was pointing higher but only about 30 yards away…around us above and below were half a dozen boats and A fleet, who started 5 min behind us, hadn’t caught up yet.  Wow, that puts us in first!

We did the same thing on the second beat as the first… as we neared the lay line I said to the guys ‘think we can count on a miracle again?’ they both shook their heads so I contained my impatience and stayed on port till we were comfortably high enough to tack onto starboard for the mark.  And again here comes the fleet on port… and we took two scalps again… haha.

Round the windward mark in heavy traffic… away down toward the leeward.  Course 5 involves a leeward mark somewhat past the start/finish line so we had to charge down, douse the spinnaker, gybe, harden up and climb a short leg to windward to finish… and again we had boats all around us close and charging fast as we neared the mark.  

All went well aboard us, but PREDATOR, a normally well sailed boat, tried to tuck her bow above us as we rounded the mark.  She couldn’t do it and here’s what happened,   I was concentrating on getting SURPRISE going upwind after rounding when I felt a shadow OVER me… we all turned to look over our windward quarter and there was PREDATOR’s genoa over us on our windward quarter… her skipper peeked around his clew and saw us and I heard him yelp… she touched us lightly then he tacked away.  He told me later he’d had his glasses flung off his face by a spinnaker sheet a moment earlier while they were dousing and he couldn’t see.  Well no damage and he did his turns, which put him out of contention so no problem.

Up we climbed to the finish line still in heavy traffic.. .the poor committee tooting the finish horns like they were playing a tune.  What a race.

After, at the club, Matt, owner of SUNDANCE came over to congratulate us.   We finished right on his stern which means given PHRF we clobbered him for the first time this year.  What a great guy he is to race against - what a cleanly fought hard race it was…. ah wonderful.

Then, as my crew were exchanging goodbyes, a funny thing happened.  Have you ever experienced this?  My eye caught sight of a tiny detail up forward.  I walked up to the bow and looked at the swivel connecting the anchor to its chain… the chain end of the swivel has a pin and the pin was completely unscrewed from the threaded end of the fork, only retained by friction on the first link.  The retaining screw had eased and fallen out… it wasn’t on deck so it must have happened while the anchor was down last weekend.  Crazy lucky we didn’t wake up Sunday morning far from where we expected to be (and lost the anchor to boot).

The pin is actually what the Brits call a ‘gun bolt’.   It screws in across the jaws of the swivel, with a counter hole in it’s threaded into which a keeper screw goes from the opposite direction.  That keeper is what had fallen out.

So I started digging through my kit looking for a bolt that would fit the keeper hole… I had machine screws that seemed to fit the diameter but the thread was odd… so I drilled the old threads out to 1/4” and cut new standard threads, putting in a short pan head 1/4 I had in stock with a lock washer.  Perfect, very satisfying.  Away home.

Gordon Laco
#426 Surprise