J24 Blog

Filed by: Brian

Yesterday it was midsummer weather in Seattle. But just for one day. It’s back to late-winter conditions. It was 80+ degrees and clear unobstructed sunshine at the start of our race at 6PM. By 6AM this morning it was about 55 degrees with a thick blanket of light gray marine layer where the sky is supposed to be.

A quick recap of the wind conditions of the last three weeks of racing: 3 weeks ago - Wind so light that you could see the crystal clear mirror reflection of the boats around you and we literally had to “will” our way towards the finish line. 2 weeks ago - Survival conditions with sustained 20mph and gusts close to 30, struggling to keep the downwind lifelines out of the water and all hands on deck. Last night - HOT weather, but nice and breezy (for the first race). Spring sailing on the lake is wonderfully unpredictable.

We had some juggling around of crew due to some vacations and last minute work conflicts, but filled in a couple of great alternates and ended up sailing with a full crew of 5. We’ve stopped our practice of rotating the 3 co-owners through Driver, Trimmer, and Bow each week and have kept locked in one role for each person for the entire season so far. We had our friend Aaron out as a coach for us a couple of times last season. His quote was “Rotating crew positions may be democratic, but it is surely slow.” So Peter has been our driver this season, Bill our trimmer, and I’ve been on bow / tactician. Chris and Nate are our normal middle positions, though Nate’s had enough experience and practice to take on the bow position full time and move me to Pit to really focus on strategy and tactics and keep our driver’s head “in” the boat for now.

The learning curve has stayed steep even with keeping us in fixed positions. Part of the issue is that you lose the luxury of the excuse that changing positions each week supplies you. Now the mistakes are more obvious and the small gains are hard fought. I’m convinced that it’s the right approach for us to improve, and it’s certainly forcing a more racing oriented, and less sunset cruising oriented vibe on the boat.

Last night we had Weston filling in for Nate as our mast man, and Jenn filling in for Chris as our Pit (wo)man. Both of them did a great job in their first time racing with us.

Now to the report -

Pointing problem solved?

I got to the boat early and, armed with another gem of insight from our tuning guide, marked out 1 inch increments from the black band on the boom. We setup the main with a 1″ off the band setting for the night and left it there. The theme for the night was “No Fiascos”. We must sail a clean race without tangles, mishaps, or gross mistakes.

Click to find out if we had any fiascos…

In the first race we had a confusing start. I was certain that I hit the countdown on time, but midway through the starting sequence the committee boat blew a couple of short blasts on the airhorn. We suspected that a restart of the countdown might have been called. At any rate it looked like many of the other boats were confused as well. Everyone swirled at the line in case it was a real start. The countdown ran out on our clock and no one started racing across the line. Then about one minute later another horn blew and everyone launched off across the line.

Essentially we started about 2 boatlengths behind the line, port tack start, at the pin end. We crossed the line ahead of 4-5 other boats who were all crowded in at the boat end of the starting line. Jenn had marked the course for us on deck: A Z A C. Another no-brainer refinement that we need to do EVERY time. It’s simple and serves to reduce the overall confusion and stress factor on the boat.

We started nice and clear, tacked over to starboard and ran up our speed for 2 minutes or so while watching our pointing relative to boats ahead and keeping an eye to starboard for a clear lane to develop. We’re trying to avoid situations of being alone on one side of the course with other slower boats when all the really competitive boats have gone another way. I know, not exactly a complicated strategy, but believe me it’s happened a few times before. “Who’s around us? Pretty much all the other boats that finish near the bottom of the fleet. Where’s everyone else? Over there.” So we decided to tack across when the rest of the speedy boats did.

Once we got the boat shifted up in gears on the new tack we concentrated on the mainsail trim and pointing. I was anxious to test my outhaul theory. We found that while the boatspeed through the water is noticeably slower in pointing mode than speed mode, we weren’t losing ground to other boats. Check out the graphic at the bottom of this Dellenbaugh article to see what I mean: link. We discussed it later and agreed that we were able to point up that extra 5 degrees or so that we had been lacking. Part of it is the right mainsail trim, but part of it is the new approach to reading the telltales. We pretty much had been in speed mode all season when we thought we were in point mode. Now we know how to use both modes.

The boat end of the start line must have been favored because we ended up out on the layline just behind those last boats to make it through the crowded end of the line. We came up to the windward mark well lifted and were able to reach down a bit. We made a too-wide rounding, then had a bit of a tangle getting the spinnaker to fill. Damn - Fiasco #1.

We jibed to match the course of the speedier boats, and ran a nice fast reach to the Z mark. A Snipe from one of the other two classes that race with us on Tuesday nights, was capsized near the mark with the Committee skiff heading over to assist. We stayed wide, rounded uneventfully, and started back upwind.

After the next lap, on the second downwind takedown we had another spinnaker hangup and it caused us to drift wide around the downwind mark for a minute or so without the genoa up. Fiasco #2

We were able to pick a reaching line to the finish while two other boats in front of us were coming in close hauled. This faster point of sail allowed us to reel in 2-3 boat lengths on our way into the finish. If not for the pair of fiasco’s we might have been able to knock off one or two boats in this race.

The next start was delayed a LONG time, I think due to the committee skiff towing the capsized Snipe into the Marine. Not sure about that. At any rate, by the time the second race sequence was starting the wind was really dying and the racing was cancelled.

Last note - About a quarter of the boats broke out their outboards and each towed in a chain of 1-4 other boats each. But on the way in we saw an amazing site. We were a bit far away, so it could have been an optical illusion, but it looked like Tundra Rose was sailing in, AND towing 4 other J24’s in a chain behind her. Is Keith really THAT fast? He can find enough wind to tow other boats while others are resorting to motors? Wow.