J24 Blog

A Race Report in Three parts with Assorted Trivia

What a night. What do you get when you cross this:

With this

Answer: Sailing nirvana. My apologies to Brian who couldn’t be with us. At least he still has a job.

And now for the race report. We had three races, finished all of them, and were DFL in only two. In other words, we beat another boat and we didn’t totally suck. In fact, if it weren’t for some penalty turns in the second race we most certainly would have beat a couple of more boats. More on that below the fold.

Part I: The Pin End

It has been our strategy in the early stages of the season to always start near the pin. The rational is threefold. From our observations, at our Lake Washington venue, it seemed like the boat end was usually favored. There was inevitable a cluster jam down at that end and whenever we attempted a start there we were pushed around, ending up far from the line going slow when the horn sounded. We figured if we started at the pin end we could at least get clear air and hit the line with speed. And that had become the case. Our starts were good and we got to the windward mark with at least some company. In addition, we would try to take a pratice run at the pin end and get a feel for time and distance. Since we had it more or less to ourselves this was easy to do.

Not so much on Tuesday. The wind kept going left all night so the pin end was the favored end and we had found ourselves in the thick of the action. The first two races of the night we stuck to our guns and attempted a port tack approach towards the pin and searching for a hole to tack into, but each time we missed the layline and had to fall off for a re-start. At one point we ended up stalled with a starboard tacker bearing down on us. What do you yell? Stalled!! Luckily I made eye contact with the other driver and after a look of sheer disgust the he found his way around us. The amazing part of it was our starts were still mid fleet and we were able to get off without too much damage in each case. For the third race we started at the boat. We will have to be a bit more flexible in our starting from here on out.

Part 2: Flags

I was watching the flags this time and paying attention to the sequence, etc. The start sequence was much more predictable. We had a couple of delays when the Thistles were finishing during our start sequence. When the delay flag came down and the horn sounded we knew we had 1 minute until the 5 minute start sequence. Sure enough, a minute later the “class” flag went up. The flag used was this one:

At 4 minutes the “blue shape” went up, something like:

etc., etc. 2, 1, bang.

Part 3: Penalty turns

During the second race at the first windward mark rounding we came in on port into a group of starboard tackers on the layline. We crossed one boat, ducked another and then tacked onto the layline and the lee bow of a starboard tacker just behind and to windward of us. They called foul. I did feel like we had weasled our way in there and accepted the other boat’s judgement, we did our 2 jibes and 2 tacks, and we finished the race. In fact, we finished just behind this same boat. If it weren’t for the turns we might have finished not last.

 As the night proceeded I kept going over the incident in my mind and ended up convincing myself that the turns were unnecessary. After the race I asked a more experienced skipper in the fleet for his take and he pointed out that if the judgement is in doubt it may be better to just sail the race and await the protest, if any. As the night progressed I became less sure of the details of the event. Did we complete the tack outside of the 2 boat length circle? Were we close hauled before the other boat had to change course? Was the other boat close hauled or did they have to luff? Was that relevant? Etc, etc.

Amazingly, I was able to get an answer to some of these questions in a more concrete way. Both boats in question were recording GPS tracks and as fate would have it, both of us posted the tracks to the fleet website. I was able to replay the race! Here is the answer to the 2 boat length question (the green circle is 3 boat lengths):

Our tack to the layline took place about 80m from the mark, or over 10 boat lengths. So does rule 18 apply:

18.1 When This Rule Applies
Rule 18 applies when boats are about to round or pass a mark they are required to leave on the same side, or an obstruction on the same side, until they have passed it.

Clearly 10 boat lengths is not “about to round.” The skipper of the other boat apparently agrees that we were not under the force of rule 18. In an email he explained his call this way:

Basically, you can tack right next to the starboard boat as you approach the windward mark as long as you don’t force them to go beyond close hauled. Of course, this is all outside of the two boat length circle, tacking within the circle invalidates your rights anyway.

So I tried to find in the rules where it says that that you can not force the starboard tacker above close hauled. It is true that when a boat gains a leeward overlap from clear astern she cannot sail above proper course:

17.1 If a boat clear astern becomes overlapped within two of her hull lengths to leeward of a boat on the same tack, she shall not sail above her proper course while they remain overlapped within that distance, unless in doing so she promptly sails astern of the other boat. This rule does not apply if the overlap begins while the windward boat is required by rule 13 to keep clear.

But that wasn’t the case. We were not clear astern of the starboard tacker. We were a more of a lee bow tacker if memory serves. Here is Dave Perry’s description of this situation from “Understanding the Racing Rules of Sailing”, p.111:

Let’s say I’m on starboard tack, you’re approaching me on port tack, and you want to tack on my lee-bow or in front of me. If I could hit you before you passed head to wind , you’d be wrong under rule 10 (port/starboard). If I could hit you after you’d passed head to wind but before you were aiming on your close-hauled course, you’d be wrong under rule 13 (a boat past head to wind must keep clear). However, the moment you get to your close-hauled course and you are either clear ahead or to leeward of me, you have the right of way under either rule 12 (clear astern/clear ahead) or rule 11 (windward/leeward) and I have to promptly take action to keep clear of you.

My recollection is that we were on a close hauled course before the starboard tacker had to change course, and before he called any foul. I haven’t found any limitations on this right-of-way position that would have prevented us from sailing the other guys above close hauled if we wanted. We could have luffed the other boat, taken a tactical rounding, etc. But I had felt like we had weasled in there so the turns may have been appropriate in the end.  I look forward to the day when I know the rules better and can understand these rules situations as they happen!

 Other points of interest:

• Our Genoa leech cord was loose during the first race. Another J24 pointed that out after we finished.
• Another skipper was commenting on how he had lost some pointing ability because his new trimmer had put the jib leads on backwards, making the normal position effectively 2 holes back of normal. We need to pay attention to our jib leads if it’s having this kind of effect on our pointing.
• Thistle drivers are ornary. You would think they were sailing for money or something. Yikes.
• We are collapsing the kite on jibes. Need to figure this one out.
• Our downwind strategy is non-existent. We could benefit from a downwind game plan. What is the optimal point of sail downwind for our boat? When and why do we abandon that point if sail for some other point of sail.

But all in all, it was sailing nirvana. Let’s hope for more of the same next week.