2nd Place in Red Cross Regatta

Results:  2nd in JAM Class C

Crew:  Judy, Kim, Steve and Andy

It was a breezy day.  We sailed the first two legs with a reef, then we should out the reef on the broad reaching leg, and sailed the final upwind leg with a full main.  We corrected over Infinity by 24 seconds to grab 2nd place.  Everyone trimmed well and we handled the breezy conditions well.

Here’s a picture of the crew with the 2nd place print (that we presented to our sponsor, the Pfeffer Insurance Agency).

Steve, Judy, Andy, AJ, Kim

2nd Place in Doublehanded Class in Transerie Race

Well, we made it.  We finished in a little over 28 hours and got 2nd place in the doublehanded class.  With everything going on it’ll be a while before I post the whole story of the delivery and the race.  We had wind almost the whole way, sometimes gusting to 25-35.  There were storms and there were waterspouts (see the picture below of one of three water spouts that formed about two miles ahead of us on Saturday morning).   The carbon fiber bowsprit snapped off at midnight on the first night.  No one was hurt, and we finished and got a cool flag (see below).

More to come.

Prepping For The Transerie Race

Yes, Red Herring will be double-handing the Transerie Race from Detroit to Erie.  The race starts this Friday, August 21 at 4PM near the Detroit River.  Dave Hyland will sail with me.

Judy Tucci and her neighbor will be leaving Tuesday morning on the delivery with me.  We hope to spend Wednesday evening in Put-In-Bay and then go on to the Grosse Ile Yacht Club on Thursday.

I’ll try to keep a good log of the trip.

Night Lighthouse Race Recap

Results:  3rd in Spinnaker B Fleet (woo hoo — another flag!)

Crew:  Judy, Steve, Kim

OK — so I’m waaaay late with this (and the next recap).  It’ s been busy.

There were light winds during the day, and it was going to be a light wind night.  The winds at the start were from the north (the remnants of the onshore).  We started on a beam reach at the EYC lighthouse at 8PM.  We had a good start.  About 10 seconds before the gun we popped the chute.  It went up both with a twist and with the sheets tangled (and, of course, we had an audience onshore).  However, Venture and Muireann started with white sails so we were able to stay ahead of them while Judy worked at untangling the mess.  After everything was “de-knotted” we held the chute at about 60 degrees apparent all the way to the channel.  We were the 2nd boat into the channel in our fleet, behind News, but still ahead of Venture, Muireann and Lady Jane — all of whom finally flew their chutes, but one thing we can do is close reach in light air.

We all stopped in the channel.  We were probably in there for close to an hour as everyone behind caught up with us.  With the wind to the north, we took the south side of the channel.  Venture and Muireann took the north side.  What little wind there was, pushed us against the wall on south side, and we had to push off several times.  Muireann withdrew.  Venture floated slowly past us, but Lady Jane didn’t quite catch up with us.  We had to temporarily drop the chute near the end of the channel because we kept making leeway and getting pushed toward the wall.  It was dark by the time we left the channel — and the full moon was partially hidden by the clouds.

After we got out we were back in about 5-6 knots of wind from the north.  We reached to G-1, dropped the chute and headed north.   We shaved Gull Point pretty tightly and then headed west.  The wind was still roughly from NW and we once again able to fly the chute on a close reach to the mark.  We saw Venture round the mark — the GPS said that we were about 5 minutes from the mark.  So we had made up a decent amount of time.

Since we’ve had trouble before at the lighthouse mark we took our time, overstood a little and then gybed slowly (still very light air).  We rounded the mark just fine this time!  After about a quarter mile the wind went forward and we started aiming for the breakwalls.  We held the chute as long as was prudent in the dark, but then we finally had to drop it and beat upwind.   By now it was after midnight.  The winds kept going lighter, and we lost sight of Venture after they rounded Gull Point.   About a third of a mile away from Gull Point the wind died, and we floated for about 10 minutes.  Then the offshore kicked in and the wind went South and we were sailing again.  We rounded Gull Point and beat upwind to the channel.  It took a couple tacks to get there.

In the channel, the wind went extremely light again (this time from the south).  We struggled through with a little less than a knot of boatspeed.  Near the west end of the channel were able to fly the chute again and a finally ended up back on a close reach in about 5-7 knots of wind.  As we were exiting the channel we heard Venture radio the race committee that he was approaching the finish.   He profited by being on the south side of Gull Point when the wind died, so he was really able to stretch out his lead on us.

We carried the chute as long as we could because it was adding about a knot to our boat speed, but eventually the wind went too far forward and we had to drop it about a third of a mile from the finish in order to beat to the line.  We finished at 1:37AM — almost exactly a half hour behind Venture.  So we only gave him 5 minutes in the first half of the race, but he added 25 minutes in the second half of the race.

In any case, it was a beautiful night and we finished 3rd, thanks a crew who worked hard on the whole race, trimming constantly and adjusting to the changing conditions.

Recaps Coming

Yes, I’m running a little behind, so the recaps for the Night Lighthouse Race and for the Mayor’s/Governor’s Cup races are not yet posted.  I’m trying to get to them.

In the meantime, here are the results:

Night Lighthouse Race:  3rd in Spinnaker B Division — and a flag.  Crew — Judy, Steve, Kim.

Mayor’s Cup: 5th in JAM / Governor’s Cup:  4th in JAM.   Crew — Andy, Steve, Bob (new guy).

Librarians On The Lake

Last night (Friday, July 31) we took several librarians out for a sail.  They were in town for a conference and Sue offered participants the opportunity to sail after the conference.  16 librarians registered for the sailing, so we recruited three other boats!  Mike O’Neill offered Lady Jane, Ken McCurdy brought Little Mc over from Bay Harbor West, and Kim Yamma took riders on Anam Cara.  It turned out to be a beautiful night for sailing — clear skies, winds 6-10 knots.  All of the librarians enjoyed that rides, and the skippers agreed that we were all happy to be sailing on such a beautiful night.  Here’s a picture of the librarians who rode on Red Herring.

And a special thanks to Judy Tucci for crewing with me for the event!

Hertel and Brown Race #3

Results:  9th out of 10

Crew:  Judy, Steve, Andy

Another very light air night.  The winds at the start were so light that the race committee considered postponing the race.  The race, however, did go on with a short W/L course (to Mark S and back).

We started at the pin on starboard where we wanted because we liked the wind in the middle of the bay, and we were going to start on a broad reach.  Most of the rest of the fleet started on port at the lighthouse end.  We were pretty much alone, except for Endurance.  He was coming up on port and we thought that we stayed on starboard long enough to stuff him and stop him from making the pin.  But he was able to make it, and he ended up sailing above and even with us.   So we got locked in below him for about half the leg.  We were finally able to slow down enough that we could clear his stern and move above him.  We were able to sail a little faster up there, but by then we had given away a lot.  Most of the rest of the fleet went wing-n-wing for at least part of the leg.  We ended up rounding the leeward mark last in our fleet.

After rounding we sailed upwind very well.  We passed Endurance easily, and made lots of gains on everybody else.  If that leg were longer we would have caught more of them.  In any case, it was a valiant effort, but these very light air windward-leeward races are killing us.