June 6 Race Report, and two more accounts

The first thoughts on arriving at the harbor were - Gee I hope they get a race off tonight, it looks awfully light. I have only been a part of Shields fleet 9 for 3 seasons and this is the most breeze I have ever sailed in on our Wednesday nights. I think that everyone on the water will have a story to tell about what went wrong and hopefully right. Certainly mother nature gave us a few challenges and showed once again who the boss is. I have included a few other folks thoughts so open a brew and relax.

Raja-101 got out about 30 minutes before the start and sailed most of the course. The boat felt good with the fifth crew member we had decided to enroll. Ben Quatromoni was our fordeck, Russel Miller trimmed the chute, Sam Howell did main and tactics and Andy Segal, the owner of Raja, trimmed jib and ran the pit. We felt good with five and thought we had better stiffness although it is a "lot" harder to see with that many onboard.

The start looked favored at the pin but a quick dial up at 2 minutes showed a favor to the windward end. We opted for a safe middle of the line start and managed to live just above John Dory-217's hip for a long tack out towards the dumplings. Most boats looked better on the right but by tucking up inside Dumplings gong we seemed to enjoy a bit of current relief. John Dory-217 who had tacked earlier with Chuck Allen on 202 and Bill Shore on 74 played it perfectly and extended their leads. We rounded 4th and had a good bit of separation on the rest of the fleet so we set our sights on catching 74 and 202. 202 slid to the right and played the leg well while we tried to get inside of Bill Shore at the end of the leg. Unfortunately the extra distance sailed plus Bill's experience still left us in 4th. Our rounding was not one of our best with the jib not all the way up, the main not tuned and the port jib car slipping. In addition we decided that the left was the way to go and forgot about playing the shifts. Result was we lost another 4 boats as 59, 138, 107 and 76 all beat us to the windward mark by playing the right side shifts and the cone of current relief from Rose Island. We rounded the windward mark and set our course to the right courtesy of a slow jybe. Once we were settled into the run we moved to the inside of 201 and then started dealing with the monster gusts. Russel did a great job of tuning the kite and Sam called the puffs so we could soak in the lulls with the kite rotated to windward and then ease the guy and trim the spinn sheet and main sheet to survive the gusts with a higher angle. It was an interesting leg as one kite after another blew up. We watched 107 execute a perfect 10 wipeout although we missed seeing their impromptu bottom scrubbing efforts. John elaborates on them further below. 202 also had kite issues although I am not sure exactly what they were as they tried to fly something for a while before giving up. We caught a few of these boats before our own spinnaker halyard parted at the head which was probably a good thing. We got to the leeward mark in 6th and rounded just behind 201 but with a narrow lane just to windward of his line again proving that Shields like a nice slow turn. Up the last leg we held 201 to the starboard layline by keeping just above them so that they couldn't tack. When we finally tacked for the RC boat, which was favored by quite a bit, we ended up catching 202 as well. After the race I debriefed a few folks who trounced us on the second leg. Andy MacKechnie on 138 said it was mostly good fortune that they played it correctly as they were really trying to free their air. When they tacked to starboard to make it around the red buoy off Rose Island Light they were on the layline with a nice righty. Sailing in clear air really does pay off although I suspect that the crafty Chris Withers meant to go that way all along. Bill Shore who stayed cool and collected just stayed perfectly in phase the entire 2nd leg while playing the right side. He credits a new deck mounted Plastimo Compass (just the parts with no plastic fittings) with making the shifts easy to read. His crew Curtis takes the credit for actually watching it and paying attention to it's rotations. Congrats to them on a well earned victory.

I want to thank Peter Gerard, who stepped in for Robin Wallace, and his excellent race committee team for a wonderful and memorable evening of sailing without whom we would just be the pretty boat cruising society.

Submitted by Platt Johnson helm 101-Raja

-- Platt:

I heard you were doing the writeup for last night's adventures. I thought I'd give you the inside scoop on how you passed us on the last run:
I tipped the boat over last night in a big gust of wind, and I went swimming. Our boat (107) was riding about 5th, most of the way down the second run, and smugly gaining on other boats that had blown out their chutes. The boat laid over to leeward quickly in the puff and, with the vang on, the boom self-trimmed as it hit the water and the boat laid over on its side. Perched to windward but trying to pull the tiller in my direction, I got pitched to leeward and stepped for the seat, but it was too vertical to hold me. Judging from the gash in my shin, I hit the coaming and the rest of me kept on going.
As I hit the water I remember thinking two things: 1) I'm glad I have my PFD on and 2) I'm not letting go of the tiller extension. I held on tight even as my body tacked violently under water from leftside forward to right; judging from how sore my right hand is today, I had a death grip on the extension and fortunately the universal joint held up, perhaps better than the joint in my right shoulder, which is a little sore this morning.
The boat slowed down dramatically (taking a big drink of the Bay in the process) and with my free left hand and forearm, I grabbed the toe rail as evidenced by the new bruise on my forearm. I was half back in the boat by the time the rest of our crew realized I'd been displaced; they were busy releasing the vang and trying to figure out how to drop the chute, which had blown through the foretriangle and was flagging to leeward at 25 or 30 knots. Pete, on the foredeck, got banged in the head by the pole as we got the chute down and the process took us several minutes, so when all was said and done, we elected to head for the mooring and lick our wounds, happy to all still be aboard with nothing more seriously damaged except our egos.

John B, 107

-- The view from the front of 101-Raja by Ben Quatromoni

To start out with I would like to point out how important it is to make sure you are properly equipped for anything while on the water. I think the front of the boat learned the importance of carrying spray gear at all times even when the weather looks like a drifter!! Another big lesson was to keep your head out of the boat no matter what. Up the 2nd beat, I think we had our heads too in the boat dealing with equipment malfunctions and failed to notice the advantage going up the right. This let most of the fleet get leveraged out to the right but were still able to round in 9th. The last downwind run made it perfectly clear just how hard it is to sail a shields downwind in big breeze. Some well timed equipment failures on some of the leaders, we were able to pass boats until our own spin halyard broke. Cool heads prevailed and we controlled the situation and managed to round in around 6th. The last beat was short as usual and by slightly overstanding the boat layline we were able to pick off 2 boats at the finish and finish a solid 4th. A great race with some thrilling and exciting moments made for an excellent evening. This race really demonstrated to me the importance of communication and keeping your head out of the boat and on the course. Overall a great race sailed!!

Sincerely, Ben Quatromoni - Foredeck 101 Raja