Comments on Alberg 30 Racing: WNR Race 3: 5/13/09

Hey Glen there is nothing wrong with a little afte...

2009-05-14T16:38:00.000-04:00

Hey Glen there is nothing wrong with a little afterguy malfunction. It happens to all of us...

Wish I could have gotten some pictures though... Next time believe me I will have my finger on the shutter.

Congrats on the ace.

It was a great night to be sailing! Here's a summ...

2009-05-14T16:13:00.000-04:00

It was a great night to be sailing!

Here's a summary from LinGin's perspective:

Thanks to some crew foul-ups on my part we were a few seconds too late to the line for Tim to work his usual magic. But two Catalina's politely tacked away early and mostly cleared our air. We stayed on starboard, and saw some lift?, for longer than most which turned out to be plain lucky for us. I think it put us in a position further out in the river so that, when we tacked onto port, we had more room to go right. So much that we tacked back to starboard on what eventually, after a few dozen oscillations, turned out to be the layline for the windward mark. (With the boisterous sailing I was mostly head-down working on trim so I don't really know how everyone else negotiated the beat.)

At the rounding we went for what might have been an ill-advised gybe set. Ill-advised only in that I didn't have the afterguy set before the hoist and some drama ensued. The good news, in my opinion, is no photos means no evidence. :)

We ate into a good bit of Argo's lead, surfing at 7kts, on the run when they didn't fly the chute. A conservative douse and rounding at the red nun had us within 3-4 lengths of Argo and slightly to windward. We went into that slightly awkward not-quite-closehauled-trim regime and Tim worked the helm and called trim to stay tight with Argo.

Entering the harbor, we both came up tight on the wind. It was shifty and puffy hard to keep the sails filled without falling off quite a bit. Tim applied his finger-tip control to the 9000lb. A30. TC, probably due to shifts and boats, sailed a little lower. At the seawall they tacked and crossed us but the down-speed second tack back onto port robbed all the mo they had left. Tim's high wire tight-rope act at the helm just managed to keep us above the seawall and AYC docks to single-tack it to the line, sliding under Argo to take the gun at the last moment!

It was a great night for a sail.

-Glen

J, We had trouble at the start putting a reef in ...

2009-05-14T15:53:00.000-04:00

J,

We had trouble at the start putting a reef in the main. It was very painful watching the electronic sands drip through the electronic hourglass as my crew wrestled with rigging. The result was a boat end start that was about 1 minute after the gun. However, we aboard LinGin enjoy a challenge and to your point about better to be in clear air than on time, we found ourselves in very clear air with options abounding.

We had watched the previous classes and liked the progress of the boats that went left and did so ourselves. We rounded a good bit behind Argo and once we had our kite up, watched them raise and immediately douse theirs. I'm not sure what the issue was, but I definitely think there was a problem--T.C. would have preferred to fly it.

We didn't pass T.C. under spinnaker, but we caught up and were less than 1 boat length behind at the red nun. We followed closely all the way into the harbor.

The harbor was VERY puffy, with 20+ degree shifts. We were sometimes making the line without tacking and sometime ridiculously low, looking like we would ram the boats at AYC.

T.C. bore off a bit during one of the shifts and we held high, backwinding the jib quite a bit. It paid off, though. T.C. put in a hitch to get around the docks and pass in front. Once he tacked back, though, we had slid by, just barely making the docks.

It was quite a photo finish. Sometimes that trick works, other times we're not so lucky with the shifts.

All and all a GREAT night of sailing. Too much fun.