Another Wednesday evening race...

[Gordon Laco]

Hello Shipmates, 

So there we were… Wednesday rolled around again and after a last scramble finishing up work, away we went down to the club.  My son Pete is visiting for the week so it was good to have him back aboard; other son Rob and girlfriend Meg would have come but had to cancel at the last moment.  So our crew was the redoubtable Robin on the main, me skippering and Pete doing everything else.

We stripped SURPRISE’s mainsail cover off, both Pete and I trying to appear casual as we flicked off the big sluggish spiders who’d taken up residence under it.  Some of them were real ‘juicers’… gross.   I let the engine idle with the transmission in forward for a few moments to ‘mow the lawn’ as I call making the weeds behind us lie down before backing out over them.  We motored with the rest of the fleet out to the course where the committee had already set up marks and a start.  Our club is hosting the second of the two annual 5.5 Meter Class regattas and they’d been racing during the day.  Some of the 5.5’s were back at the club but several stayed out to race again with us.   

And praise be, the course last night was the beloved good old Course #1, the classic ‘Olympic Triangle’.  Twice around with a windward leeward at the end.  Yippee.   

The wind was NW and at first very light, but as we were hoisting the main after I called out my usual ‘well guys, no sense putting off the inevitable’ the wind came up and once we shut down the mill and popped out the genny, we were bowling along down to the start area at over 6kts.   We saw Rod Symmes aboard his 36' Frigate PERSEVERANCE to windward of the mob; nice looking boat.   He wasn’t racing with us so sailed away home around Midland Point.

There were something like 16 boats out, including our arch rivals in B Fleet, SUNDANCER, WHITE SAILS, SMOOTH and JIBBERISH.  SUNDANCER is our arch-arch rival who we’ve had many joyous battles with, but all too few victories over.   The wind stayed up as the fleet bagan swinging back and forth at high speed.  But shifty?  Oh yes shifty.  One pass convinced me we’d need to try a port tack start… next pass showed bias the other way, then the line seemed square again.  Oh well, that’s yacht racing.  The time ticked down, the flags and horns sounded and away we went on starboard tack in heavy traffic with a pair of Sharks under our lee bow and SUNDANCE on our weather quarter.

As usual, SUNDANCER climbed away from us to windward, and I worried about the Sharks to leeward forcing us up to the point where we had to tack into the traffic off to starboard, but fortunately they were completely preoccupied with harassing each other and that sufficiently retarded their speed so we got away from them.  Soon the boats to starboard of us began tacking and as soon as we could we tacked as well, the whole fleet swinging off to the right hand side of the course.  The wind was still shifty as heck, but speed was good (just under 6kts) so we hung on and did our best to hang on.  

We came up on the windward mark on starboard tack, rounding it behind SUNDANCER but ahead of most of the rest of our fleet.  Round we went, out went both sheets and off went the main’s outhaul to bag it up as much as we could.  This leg was a broad reach and man o man we charged along, gaining ground on SUNDANCER.  In what seemed no time, we got to the gybe mark which wasn’t really a gybe but just a bear away to a dead run.  The distance to the next mark was rather short so we just wung out the genoa and ran down doing what friend used to call ’the leeward loop’ (pronounced ‘loo-ard loop’)  We sailed low for about two thirds of the way below the mob all asphyxiating each other with wind shadows, then gybed the genoa and came up broad reaching around them.  We started the next beat in quite heavy traffic with all our foes in close proximity.

Up we charged furiously minding sail trim and steering and around the windward mark again. Alas this time SUNDANCER had extended his lead. The two downwind legs were gainers for us again and away we went up.  I was counting on the last run to catch up, since we don’t normally gain ground on SUNDANCER beating… but what’s this?  We’re catching him!  SUNDANCER tacked onto starboard and here he was crossing us dead even.  We ducked his stern very close… he immediately tacked to cover us, but we had boat speed and got out from under him.  

Then my son said ‘hey Dad, the committee boat is up at the windward mark!  Yup, they’d shortened the course and there before us lay the finish.  We crossed the line three seconds behind SUNDANCER, which means that due to PHRF we were ahead by a rather large margin.  Glory and delight we were first in our fleet last night.  Matt aboard SUNDANCER called over ‘great race Gord…’  I called back ‘yes, what a battle!’  What is more wonderful in yacht racing than to have such an ethical foe?   The only untoward event was that my wallet got soaked.  I’d thrown it into the galley sink from the cockpit so as to prevent it slipping out of my hip pocket and overboard, which happened once before.  We were subsequently during the race heeled over enough that water came up the drain and wetted everything. Oh well.  At least i didn’t lose the wallet.  Last time that happened I was still in the RCN and getting new military ID issued was dreary.  I had to answer questions from a bored looking kid Leading Seaman at the ship’s office, one of which was ‘describe the circumstances under which it may be possible your lost ID might be found’.   I looked and him and said ‘Well I suppose if Georgian Bay were drained some time in the future, and archaeologists waded out through the muck into what was Severn Sound, and one of them found my wallet, then I guess that is a scenario where I imagine my previously issued ID might be found’.  He stared back at me and then said with a flat voice ’Sir, i think I’ll just mark that as ‘unlikely’.  Indeed, quite.

Back at the club we rehashed the race… I attributed our victory partly to good boat handling by my crew and largely to being very fortunate to be on the favoured side of two shifts during that last beat.

What a terrific evening… 

Gordon Laco
Surprise 426