Thursday, May 10, 2007


Day 2 Rig now set to base rake.
Race 1. Don't remember too much about this start. Had an awesome 1st leg and rounded with Smokin'. We'd learned the previous night that Kevin's team had been sailing together for 7 years. They typically are 1st or 2nd in the Bay fleet when they compete. So it was a Smokin' leg for Team Nothing Ventured. First leeward leg was also good. We were in displacement mode and working the middle as the fleet was compressed and split. In the clear air we made gainers on the Personal Puff folks and rounded right by them as well. Then disaster! We snagged not just a little kelp, but enough to stop us fully. It took 30-40 seconds at least to clear the mess off the keel and rudder, but at 6 knots that's nearly 200 yards. We went from middle of the B fleet to middle of the C fleet in that sub-minute fiasco. Rounding with the C fleet, we rounded inside of our scrub competition. I wanted to jibe to out of their bad air and over to the breezier side of the course ASAP. The leeward takedown was so awesome that I thought I could push the crew. Mistake. We weren't ready, totally screwed up the jibe -- twice and now we were battling it out for DFL with 140. They beat us by 1/2 a length at the finish -- we could have bet two other boats but they took us up and both of us lost those boats.

Race 2 So after seeing Nick Pullen our Laser Fleet Champion cross us repeatedly 10 lengths ahead seconds after the start we decided to take a page from his book. Side note on Nick, Nick is a Canadian National Laser Champion and obviously a hell of a starter and driver. So we decided to set up past the pin boat and come in on port and tack into a hole. We set up a bit too early and wound up taking into Shark's hole. His crew was pissed ;) We got pushed up and probably early -- luckily general recall. Second try, we were still a bit early, and got a fair start. It worked out much better than the other option, as soon as the fleet thinned we had pretty clear air as one of the left most boats. Worked to the right and had a solid mark rounding. We (and the whole fleet by the way) have been cronically overstanding the marks. So we're getting better at picking the layline and not banging the right corner so much. Can't remember too much about the leeward legs on Race 2, other than we had previously learned that jibing 3 times just before the gate, then coming in DDW is slow! So we jibed right in front of the port tacking leaders and came in as hot as possible for the right gate on starboard. It works. After two laps we were right behind Flyer and Mad Boat. They are now our goal to beat each of these boats in one race. We were really struggling to make BS improvements the whole day. Will try to talk with Madrigali tomorrow am. Anyway, we split from Flyer after the first third, and they made a pretty big gain on us. So we decided to stick closer to our competition on the 2nd+ laps. We just sail better when we're closer to other boats. We finished to windward just behind these guys. This is the performance we know we can accomplish. If we can get our speed issues tweaked we can do even better!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tom - hate those keels - totally felt your pain with the kelp. I've had to use it to cut through a lobster pot...not fun.

Can't wait to read the rest.

Cliff.