May 23 Race Report

Wednesday’s night Shields racing By: Dave Doucett This being my second time out Shields racing, I am not sure of the format of this race write up. Last night was also my first time trimming main on Jay Gowell’s Fox (232) so I spent more time looking at the main then at what the winning boats were up to--but I will give this my best shot. Night summary: The best time to be in Newport in my opinion is right after the Salve Regina students go home and before all of the summer residence from New Jersey start collating like an infectious disease. There is a small window that you can truly think, Damn it… I spent the whole winter here; this is my time to enjoy Newport, and it is. This past Wednesday we saw classic SSW 13 -16 kts current was starting to switch from ebb to flood and with 28 boats out. What a great time to be out on the water! On Fox it was definitely a learning experience. For example how to retrieve your spinnaker after it was speared by the end of the boom or how to sail a great first beat only to have it all go to hell at the mark rounding. For us, it was a frustrating night because we think we have good boat speed and a good crew; we just need to put it all together. Race One- Top 5 boats Pos Sail # 1 226 2 138 3 202 4 145 5 101 First start we were very late to the line (too deep in the box) and were very lucky to have a general recall. Second start the game plan was to do a Midline start, hold our lane all the way to the Fort Adam’s header, and tack. This did not happen. We lost our lane and worked out to the right side of the course, which seemed to work well for us at the time but it looked like all of the leverage was on the left shoreline. The error made was trying to get back over to the left. We had committed to the right and should have stayed (I think the winning boats stayed right?). By the time we got over to the left side four things went wrong: we were out of phase, we ended up having a bad tack, we had a really bad duck, and we concluded with a penalty turn. Boy I wish we stayed right! Downwind we hugged the shore and brought a good new puff with us catching some boats but we saw the boats that were sailing in the current lee of Rose Island looked like they were making out. A fairly uneventful mark rounding and a good last leg, but a pretty mediocre finish. Race Two- Top 5 boats Pos Sail # 1 224 2 107 3 202 4 76 5 201 Many thanks to Robin for getting the second race off so fast, and his team for the best-run race committee I have seen for weekday racing. We had a good midline start and a good lane to windward but ended up getting into a fight with the boat directly below us which ended with us both getting spit out the back. We did have a good lane and pressure to work with on the right and where able to stay decently in phase up the right side. It all came tumbling down when we got stuck on Starboard in a right phase puff, which was good, but we were not making the mark and did not have a lane to work back to the right. This fleet is very close and consolidates at each mark rounding. We need to think ahead more. We ended up getting a big wind shadow off the lead boats coming into the mark and a header. Somehow we “stuck it in there” and got around the mark thanks to the ebb tide but let 10 + boats pass us.
Downwind the game plan was to work over to the current lee of Rose Island. It looked like boats made out there on the last race. What ended up happening is we let one boat on our port hip screw the whole thing up. We sailed more than half the leg on the unfavored jibe, eventually we won the small tactical fight with the boat on our hip when we jibed on to the favored Starboard jibe but we lost the war by sailing down whole leg in unfavored current watching as boats on the shore side and Rose Island side make out. The mark rounding was a “doctor crash moment.” We let a boat on port push us too much to the left layline when we should have jibed on to Starboard and not let ourselves get pushed around so much. At the mark, we had a crew mix up with the pole and the human guy, which ended with about 3 feet of the end of our boom spearing the kite. I will be looking in the back page of Sailing World next month to see if anyone had a camera on the water on Wednesday. We maybe caught a boat or two on the last leg.
A very frustrating day because we felt like we had the speed and overall right game plan. We just did not put it all together and execute. The boat of the day had to be Tom and Chuck on 202 with two third place finishes nice job! This only being my second time out, I sure have tons to learn and am looking forward to see you all on the water next week.