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Racing.. or why am I doing this?
Race 1
Well
it appears my new friends at the Amelia Island Sailing Club like to
race. You might even say they are possessed, when it comes to racing.
Well I have never participated in sailboat racing so I decided I might
as well give it a shot.
The 1st race is an ocean race, 13 miles from St. Mary's Inlet to the buoy off of Nassau Sound and back. A total of 26 miles.
The
starting gun, okay so it was a whistle, sounds and we are off. Now I am
sitting in a 7 ton sailboat with a fractional rigged head sail, that
has spreaders sweeping back 120 degrees, preventing the mainsail from
reaching a full hauled out position. The wind is blowing abut 2 knots
from the rear if you count the gusts. There is no worse point of sail
for this boat. We barely hold our own against the current and watch the
rest of the fleet fly large 150 jibs, sailing wing on wing. Others,
like "Cheese Boat" open their spinnakers and slowly begin to pull away.
We open the bar!
It takes about 45 minutes to an hour before
the wind builds to any substantial number (8-10 knots). Soon we are
hauling ass at 3 knots (remember compared to sitting still, 3 knots
seems fast), which as the wind builds increases to 5 -5.5 knots.
Thirteen
boats started the race, and we are in last position. With a stronger
shifting breeze we are soon on a reach which allows the immense
mainsail to start doing some work. Soon we begin to over take a couple
of the closer boats. We pass the 12th boat, he drops out of the race.
Although we move up one, we are still last.
In sequence we
pass the 11th boat, then the 10th. They both drop out. We have now
moved up three positions and are still last. I'm getting annoyed.
The
9th and the 8th boats soon fall astern, and you guessed it, as soon as
we pass them, they drop out. I'm no longer annoyed, I'm pissed! Here I
am having caught up to and passed five boats and I'm still last.
To
make matters worse, they leading boats in the fleet are already turning
around the sea buoy about 1.0 miles ahead. As they turn they are now on
a beat and pick up speed. One by one they pass me going in the opposite
direction. Because they are beating they have gained speed and are
putting more distance between us. They wave as the go by. Now I know
why they no longer allow cannons on sailboats.
Finally we
turn around the buoy and accelerate to 6.5 - 6.8 knots a great sail.
Unfortunately even though we gain on the fleet we never make up the
distance and we cross the finish line 8th of 13 boats. Okay so 8th
turned out to be was last, but at least we finished.
We did not even get honorable mention at the pizza party back at the dock.
Race 2Okay
as if the humiliation of the 1st race wasn't enough, we entered a 2nd
race two weeks later. This race was an around the buoy race in
Cumberland Sound.
At the Captain's pre-race meeting at
8:00 AM, I stood with my chart waiting to annotate he course. The race
committee chairman said something like, "Okay this will be a 7 mile
race. We will start between buoys 3 & 4 go north-east to the spider
tower, leaving it to port, head west to buoy 9 leaving it to starboard,
south to 12, leave it to port, etc, etc........ and finish between 3
& 4."
He continued, "remember the numbering on the
charts may be wrong because they changed the buoy numbers in December,
yeah but you guys know that. Oh by the way, if a submarine enters the
channel we will issue other instructions on channel 69." The Captains
then all ran to their boats to plot the course on their GPS's.
I stood there with my chart flabbergasted. What the hell was the course, and where was the submarine?
On
board are my son John and a colleague from work. As it turns out, John
took good notes and has all the course information. (I guess it was
worth all that money to send him to college). Between us we plot a
course and leave the dock.
Again the race starts in winds,
no zephyrs of less than 2 knots. For a description of the start, read
race 1 above, with one additional minor incident. John asked, "Dad, why
are you sailing away from the starting line?"
I answer, "I'm waiting for the 3 minute warning."
He replies "It sounded 15 seconds ago."
"Oh," I reply, and make a mental note to look into at getting my hearing fixed.
We turn the boat and believe it or not, we are almost the lead boat across the line. Even made the local paper.
I
won't bore you with the details of the race. The missed buoy, multiple
tacks, (would have made even Dennis Conner proud), upwind/downwind
strategy, etc., all added up to us crossing the finish line 5th. Hey
it's better than last! Well it was, until I found out the 6th boat had
a larger handicap, which on corrected time, put him 5th and me 6th.
Losing sucks!
But Mast Confusion made the local paper when the results of the race were published.
Thank goodness the cruising season is upon us and racing is over until the fall.
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