WET, COLD, and WINDY!
Well 2009 is certainly proving to be an interesting year so far, the theme being cold and windy. It actually feels like late fall as opposed to late spring and everyone is wondering if Summer, let alone Spring, will ever show up.
MAY 27, 2009: Beer Can #1
In the first Beer Can of the summer (May 27th) winds were relatively light and out of the North, but just strong enough to get everyone around the entire 3.5 mile course. Being quite rusty having only sailed together with a spinnaker for the first time in last weeks “practice” race, it took us most of the second leg just to get the pole up and the spinnaker set, and then it was time to gybe. Gybing, we headed away from the fleet so as not to foul anyone with our antics, and once set, headed toward the finish line, happy to have just done it without any incidents. We ended up in 8th place out of a fleet of 11 boats that evening having only flown a small 1.5oz chute to make things a bit easier for us the first time out. Spirits were high and confidence in our abilities had everyone thinking about the next race.
JUNE 3, 2009: Beer Can #2
As I said windy and cold are the words to describe this spring and tonight’s Beer Can was true to form! Winds again were out of the North but blowing between 15 and 20 knots so you can imagine the fetch coming down Lake Michigan. We were about 30 seconds late to our start (captain’s error) and fought our way up the left hand side of the course to Mark 1. The wave action tended to slow us down (captain’s error) as we headed up on starboard but with the left side favored, tacking onto port wasn’t an option as we head to the layline. We tacked to early and the winds and fetch pushed us below the pin but we had just enough momentum to head the boat up and round the mark without touching it. Whew!
Reaching towards the CRIB we gained on the fleet and made up some of our losses, and gybed around the CRIB inside the other boats. By then we had decided it was too windy to risk a chute and instead sailed wing-on-wing with the #2 poled out. Adrenaline seems to be nearly as fast sailing that way (have hit 11.5knts under similar conditions) as with a chute, and given our ‘skill set’ felt it was the safer choice. We gybed our way to the next mark, tacked around it and headed to the finish line with less than stellar speed in the chop. We finished 8th out of 10 boats in our section with the only thing to hang our hat on that we missed 6th place by 2 seconds, and 1st place by 41 seconds. That’s an improvement.
JUNE 10, 2009: Beer Can #3
DNF—ouch! We were jazzed up for this evening with the same conditions as last Wednesday. Winds in the 15-23knt range out of the north—again. We were setting up for our start and went to tack onto starboard when the leech line on the #2 got caught and unzipped the leech of the sail. With scraps of Dacron blowing in the breeze I decided it was better to withdraw with the start less than 1 minute away so as to not cause anymore damage to the sail. Maybe I should have started and then withdrawn as it would have saved us 2 points but instead we got a full 13. Our record was now 8-8-13 — OUCH! Everyone was disappointed but buoyed by the knowledge that we know we can and will do much better.
JUNE 17, 2009: Beer Can #4
Has summer really arrived? With temps in the mid 70s and light winds we headed out for the 4th Beer Can of the summer (I can’t believe that I can actually use that word now) with something to prove. We knew from last summer that we tended to sail better in the lighter winds so we focused on our start—BINGO! With Ryan calling the start and the line we hit it about perfect which was important in the very, very light wind. The wind was between 2 and 4knts for the entire race so staying focused and clear air were crucial. The light winds—mostly around 2knts—were barely enough at times to even make the speedo register, but the GPS showed SOG at 0.1 and 0.2 knts from time to time. We found some wind on the right hand side and head towards it listening to the sections behind us singing and talking in the evenings dying breeze. Tonight the early sections got the wind and made out, while the later ones struggled to find any wind at all. We ended up in the middle, found a few zyphers in the second half of the now shortened course and finished in 2nd place with many of the boats behind us dropping out. Oooh La La, something to celebrate
JUNE 24, 2009: Beer Can #5 and the Yacht Club Challenge
Last night was comfortable with temps around 80 out on the lake. Very light winds saw the first 4 sections start but they postponed ours for 5 minutes due to the dying breeze. Good thing because as we set up for the start, the wind died and we’d never have made it to the line on time. Fortunately we recovered and ended up having a decent start in relatively clear air and for the most part sailed around the fleet to the first mark, rounding just barely ahead of most of the boats in our section. One of our competitors even asked across the water “What’s your rating?” as we sailed past them. They rate 9 seconds per mile faster than us so I know they didn’t feel to good. Fluctuating light wind speed and direction had us constantly adjusting sails and tacking 8 times or so on the headers and lifts to stay on the favored, right hand side of the course.
In heavy traffic we rounding the mark and put up the spinnaker which turned out to be fouled with a couple of wraps (looked like an hour glass) but once cleared, we took off and sailed from small patch of wind to small patch of wind, gybing back and forth all the way from mark 4 to the CRIB. Because of the light winds they shorted the course and on another dying breeze crossed the line in 2nd place. A number of other boats didn’t finish before the 9pm deadline.
After finishing we took down the sails, stopped the boat, and about half the crew jumped in for a swim in the lake before heading back to our slip to clean up and put the boat away.
Adrenaline moved up from 9th place to 5th in a fleet of of 14 boats.
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