[Public-List] Raced last night...

[Gordon Laco]

Here’s last night’s race as I wrote it for our fourth crew member, who had to stay ashore and so missed it….  Pete is my son, visiting home from Ottawa where he lives now… Steve is the tall guy in the facebook photo.

Well we’re ashore.  Man o man you missed a hum dinger.

Out we went, Pete, Steve and I, wind was a solid 20kts or so from the south east, a little more in the puffs.  Very odd wind.  We were humming along under power at 6kts coming out of the club, but I realized with that wind it would be a nice reach out to the start... we’d be faster under sail than power so I called to the crew ‘no sense putting off the inevitable’ and we rounded up to set sail right off the club’s entrance.

Sails set, we bore off and in no time we were driving hard doing over 7 knots with terrific load on the sheets.  The main’s leach line’s cleat broke, so we hove to while I tugged it down and lashed it to the clew cringle.  Away we went again and joined the yachts swinging to and frow back and forth at very high speed waiting for the start.   There was the usual mob of Sharks in our start… yapping at each other in fury or excitement… they’re a growing tribe with at least two more this year.  Vermin.   And at the other end of the size scale was TO LIFE, our friend John’s custom designed and built Killing 50.   During his working life John was a welder who largely repaired farm machinery… but for himself, he is a sculptor in steel and aluminium.  He’s built two boats designed for him by Steve Killing - who commented to me once that he kept challenging John with more and more complex shapes… and John just built them… fantastic.  Anyway, TO LIFE, being 50’, came charging through the combined A and B fleets sorting out for their starts like a Dreadnought scattering chickens before her… majestic and fearsome.

The horns and flags counted down the start… here we come reaching in toward the committee end at 7.4 knots hammering up to the line.  I yelled to Pete to come aft and get on the main… Steve was doing the genny and I was just trying not to run anyone over.  Then in front of us, with 15 seconds to go, three Sharks got themselves into a luffing match with us driving up their kazoo’s… We dodged around them then bore off so as not to cross early.  Man those were the longest 15 seconds I’ve ever experienced.  The Sharks had got going again and were under us, trying to drive us up over early, I was leaning down on them as hard as I could, but also trying to look like I was responding to their calls to go up.  Other B Fleet yachts were also pressing in hard… it was like the chariot race scene in Ben Hur coming into a turn.

Finally, finally the horn tooted and up we went.  Sheets zinging in…. Peter told me later that when he looked forward from the mainsheet he was handling at the rear of the cockpit he saw me steering with full sudden sweeps hard to port and starboard with both fists on the wheel and lots of ‘body english'… no one finger finessing this time.

Well we didn’t hit anyone.  We got snugged down to beating, rail just dipping, speed settling down to 6.1 knots and boy o boy that’s not bad for hard on the wind with boats all around us.  Our enemies SUNDANCE and MAID MARION were well behind buried in the pack and there was nobody in front of us. Nobody.  I actually felt a yoddle building in my throat… I was going to shout with savage glee  but thinking I shouldn’t… should concentrate on keeping SURPRISE climbing to windward… but I wanted to shout… when there was a huge bang from up on the rig that I could feel through the deck, and the genoa went slack.   Right after the bang, my eyes fixed on the clew of the genny which seemed to retreat forward and to leeward about a foot in each vector… did the sheet break? No… the winch? No...HOLY F*CK, A SHROUD! I thought . (Pete said later I shouted it.)

  He and Steve scrambled up to the mast as I luffed up to take load off the mast.  The genoa thundered and flogged… ‘What broke - what’s happening up there?’ I do recall shouting… Pete yelled back ‘the genny halyard!’  Yes, thats what it was.

The guys got the genoa down and stuffed into the forehatch (no mean feat, it being so crackly and new)  I noticed that we were still doing 4.5 knots up wind under the main alone, so I said we’d keep racing, not wanting to believe our wonderful race was over…but I realized we’d never keep up, we were done, so we retired from the race.   We swooped back down to the committee to report we were retiring, then sailed back to the club.  

We motored over to the mast crane and quickly got the bosun’s chair rigged up.  Up I went and replaced the halyard block’s shackle… the swivel had sheared.  We couldn’t use our #2 genoa halyard because of the way I’d rigged the blocks… we’ve only got one tang to hang halyards on up there so in order to have two genny halyards, the first block is a single with becket… the second halyard block hangs off the becket.  So since the first block’s swivel is what sheared… we lost both halyards.    

The race trickled back, all of them excited and saying to us ‘wow great race, what happened to you guys?’ or ‘where did you go?’  We told our story over and over.  I was really pleased with how well Pete and Steve responded to the little emergency but of course wished we’d been able to keep going. 

One fellow wasn’t so interested in our halyard story, rather he was interested in how we had backed out of our slip.  He’s a new sailor and like us, is assigned to the first jetty in his row so he’s got the end of the channel on one side of him.  The wind was blowing down the channel toward the dead end to our starboard last night.  Normally we’d back out turning the stern to starboard, then when our stern rail is almost touching the bushes, crank the rudder over the other way and swivel the boat to port with a burp of full power forward, turning her in place till we were facing out… then zero helm and slow ahead and away.   Last night, the wind took SURPRISE’s bow away to starboard as soon as we cast off so we came backing out turning the stern to port… so I let her do that until we’d done a 180 and our stern was approaching the sterns of the boats down our row.   With ten feet or so to spare, i reversed helm and gave the usual burp of full power in forward - SURPRISE stopped, then due to the full starboard helm, swivelled her bow to starboard without moving forward… as she belatedly began to gather forward way, and when she was facing out, I zeroed the helm and slowed the engine to sedately motor down toward outwards.   The observer was amazed because he said he couldn’t control his boat in reverse, and had heard that full keeled yachts were worse.   I said SURPRISE is perfectly controllable in reverse, so long as I never try to make her do something she can’t do.  I know that in reverse, nothing will make her turn her bow toward the wind, so I helped her do what she wanted to do, which was turn her bow away from the wind.  Once I had her in a posture where I could use forward, i knew the ample power she’s got could be used to throw her head to windward, so we didn’t try to do it until we got there.    Haha, he thought we must have an electric bow thruster…how satisfying is that?

Anyway, we’re fit and ready to go again… we just need a wind like last night…  I wonder what will happen next week?

Gord
#426 Surprise
www.gordonlaco.com