260719 Molly Hedges

Creation: 260717 1907 Last Modified: 260717 1907

Skippers meeting Notes

MacFarlane area start 12:15 start 5 minutes Time limits 14:15 to q6 (note I have this in my NOTES of the skippers meeting - more on this later)

Crew

Position	Person
Helm	Terra Mason
Main	Melissa Ella Warren
Middle 1	Shannon MacDonald
Middle 2	Steve Ellwood
Mast	Julianna Edge
Bow
This was intended to be a weekend race for women - building women’s sailing by providing experience opportunities.
Today much has progressed since the days this race was founded. Women are sailors, men are sailors, together, we are sailors.
The race allows one male on board - a hold over from many years ago. Nonetheless, given the rule, I will be the token male aboard Oh!. I will contribute my abilities (keep me off the bow) to the effort by the Oh! team.

Sailing Instructions

Course

Start then to a mark about .1 nm to windward. From there to Q6, then Q4 Glenn Island then finish line. Easy right?

Ya except the reading part. I thought the course was

You will notice there is QP6 and a Q6 in the bay. So those of us that can read will immediately realize QP isn’t the same as Q. Right, exactly bingo - it’s the “P”. Well spotted! I, for some reason, after reading the SIs several times didn’t spot the difference and had the above course fixed in my head. The actual course was

This foolish error causes our path thru the water to look like this…

The observant reader will notice that we were almost to Q4 before I read the SI’s again and only at that moment noticed the absence of a “P”. The dog that didn’t bark in the night. So we essentially sailed a much farther distance Windward to Q4 instead of Q6, then we added an upwind leg which was Q4 to Q6 before rejoining the race course everyone else was following.

My intention is to return to Dr. Seuss books like “Oh! the Places You’ll Go” and others, and sound out aloud each word until I have read them correctly.

Maybe I can fight my way back to pre-senility reading levels…

Weather

What a day. 4 knots lowest, base about 7-8, with gusts of 15. Clear blue skies. It was shifty, Picton Bay, say no more. The wind was 270, 250, 300, 010, you know Picton.

Race Result

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory! The whole race for Rebel, the fastest boat around the correct course, was 1h 16m hours, uncorrected. The whole correct course appears to have been about 5 nm. My blunder added approximately extra 1.3 nm to the track we sailed, perhaps a little more with the unnecessary tacking. 1.5 nm then. That’s a 30% longer race course for us. We took 1h 31m (91 minutes) uncorrected to run this 6.5nm course. So if we sailed the right course, we would have gone round in 91 minutes * 70% = 67.9 minutes, 1h 8 minutes. Besting Rebels time by 8 uncorrected minutes. Shannon on True North corrected time 1:22:58 and our corrected time would have been 1:11:56. A mere 11 minutes corrected ahead. 11. But instead my execution resulted in a 13.5 minute corrected loss. Ouch. Painful.

Race Review

For the start, we had planned a close reach to the boat, the famous Sue/Lynn slam the door start. We were 1 minute from the line with 300 degree breeze. We made our turn to close reach…and…we can’t get there from here. (a) the wind shut off and (b) what little there was moved suddenly left to 270. We and the rest of the fleet were stuck. We flipped over to port tack and at 45 second after the gun we got across the line - 2nd. Shannon Coull on True North was up at the pin already considering a port tack start so she was able to claw across only 10 seconds late. The breeze came back on sometimes 6 sometimes 14 knots shifting 20-40 degrees - yup in that .1 nm run to the windward mark. We played the shifts better than Shannon, the team executed perfect tacks - 2 or 3 of them in that 500-600 feet long leg. We got around the windward mark about 200 feet in front of Shannon and we were ‘gone’. Gone - I mean I directed the crew to immediately sail off the course toward Q4 as described above… Leaving aside the wrong direction, let’s talk about the crew work and trimming for this whoa begotten leg. We were white sail, so we were reaching with the #1 gennie. No whisker pole was needed. We tied on the light sheet strung outside the lifelines. The goal is to have a sheeting angle that causes the tell tales both at the top and the bottom of the sail to break at the same time. So we moved the fairlead on the outside rail track forward until we got that correct tell tail break. I stood on the cabin with the sheet in my hand while Shannon MacDonald was posed in the companionway with her hand on the winch handle ready to grind on command. I was continuously easing the gennie out and I’d go just too far, then I’d call for Shannon to grind so we could get it in again - rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat. We told Terra Mason, to hold a baseline course of 80 degrees - heading to Q4 Glenn Island.
In the lulls we had Terra head up to no more than 70 degrees to keep the speed on, and we trimmed in. In the puffs Terra could work her way back down to 80, and sometimes 85 but no further. This mutual course change and constant trimming was very, very fast. Terra would call out her course and the boat speed nearly all the time - it helped focus the crew on our goal - go that way and go fast. Melissa Ella Warren was trimming the main constantly. The upper tail was to stall ½ the time, and the other tails streaming back. The luff of the main was to be drawing, not backwinded - backwind happens when the main is out too far relative to the gennie (which was moving all the time). Julianna Edge (Jules) was moving her weight at the shrouds from low side to middle to high side and back again to keep the boat on a 10 degree heel. She will no doubt have some bruises this morning from the fittings she encountered. Everyone was fully engaged. It was the perfect ride.

Then the reckoning. I decided I had made a course mistake, subtly mentioned above, and with that decision made the crew simply hardened up to close-hauled, still focused, still enthusiastic. No one but me was contemplating ritual suicide. They were amazing. We performed several clean and efficient tacks. We tacked on the shifts, which were still a big deal and got up to the Q6 mark - with John Vincent and Sue Vincent in Salem, a Nonsuch 26, and Sara the Tanzer 22. Yup we were racing “boat for boat” with boats that had more than a 200 PHRF rating.

The Q6 to Q4 leg was a dead run. Salem, cleverly was sailing their huge main by the lee and they were fast.

We winged out the gennie with the spinnaker pole, and set the main up to be “by the lee”. This way the gennie acted like a spinnaker, the wind was blowing across the deck working to fill it and the main was forced out to the windward side with the boom and wind was travelling from the ‘back of the sail’ (leech) to the front of the sail at the mast, the luff. But we couldn’t catch Salem or the Tanzer (it was using its spinnaker).

We limped to Q4 (again we were at Q4 - nice to return to familiar places… ) At the rounding we immediately passed both boats and we could still see True North, Shannon, and a little bit of Rebel in the far distance. We were close-hauled, and focused. Sail trim continued. Melissa worked the main in constant communication with Terra to keep the boat at that 10 degree heel. I trimmed the jib near constantly. Sometimes from the leeward side and later when the wind came up from the windward rail using the windward winch as a second winch - the leeward winch still had the sheet wrapped on it. Having the jib trimmed so that it is just touching the upper spreader and the tails are breaking evenly from top to bottom is the right setting for full on close-hauled in our flat water paradise. When a puff hits, the jib stretches and the distance from the sail to the upper spreader increases. The increase needs to be corrected, so trim in. Tighter to compensate for the increased wind. And as the wind eases in a lull, now the sail is touching and possibly poking at the upper spreader - the sail is too tight. So ease it out. Every change in wind velocity means a change in the jib trim. “In” on a puff and “Out” on a lull. Jules and Shannon were on the rail, moving in and out as the breeze puffed and lulled. They called the wind and helped everyone anticipate the next change - which was nearly constant.

We worked hard to get around the point at the mouth of Picton Bay without a tack, but we couldn’t. We came in to shore and tacked out - in 2-4 knots of breeze. But the “nothing” didn’t last long. We were back on again, we hit 7.5 knots of boat speed close-hauled, cracked off a little, heading to the finish line. I should not have cracked off even a little since - Picton Bay. We were close-hauled as we approached the finish line aiming right at the committee boat, but we just couldn’t get above the RC boat to cross the line. I alarmed Terra by directing that we stay close-hauled and continue to point at the RC boat, I was hoping for a last minute lift. 3 boat lengths away we tacked ran parallel to the line for a few seconds then tacked back. We crossed.

Lessons Learned

Don’t be Stupid - Have TWO or MORE people read the SIs and agree on what they say - enough said. When the fleet is not following you - insist, insist, insist on knowing why - immediately.

Reaching Sail Trim - Fly the gennie on a reach like a spinnaker - out until it breaks the tails then back in - constantly. Steering the Reach - Drive the course but come up slightly in the lulls to keep the speed on and down in the puffs to get back to the rhum line of the course. Close Hauled Jib Trim - In on a puff to maintain its distance from the upper spreader, and eased on the lull to .. maintain its distance from the upper spreader. The helm/main team are as one. In the famous philosophy school that is Star Trek the Original Series, we have left side and right side opposite but the same.

This is a main trimmer and helm pair. Different but one. Working together they steer the boat with the least drag and greatest speed.

Focus - The crew was amazing with their constant focus. Forget the past and deal with the right now and the soon to come. Focus. There is no substitute.

A great day on the water and a TRIUMPH of crew work - well done to the Women of Oh!.

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