J24 Blog

So Bob, our mast guy, says do you ever do downwind starts. I say I haven’t in the three years I’ve been racing.  And so after a douse where the spinnaker ended up in the lake, and I’m madly re-running the sheets, and we are going to be late to the start, I look up and the entire fleet has spinnaker set, charging to the line. Too funny. Sort of.

We were caught off guard, didn’t get the spinnaker set before we had to reach to the leeward gate under genoa. That is sort of our night. Many highs and lows, wrapped spinnakers, a torn leach cord, a crash gybe that nearly dumped the crew.

On the high side we were dialed into the puffs and made nice work of the beats. It makes it a bit more painful to see the spinnaker in a un-recoverable figure eight when you actually have a fighting chance in a race. But the breeze was up and mistakes get magnified. A character and experience building exercise for sure.

One lesson was learned on the downwind start. When we made it to the windward mark all boats were leaving it to starboard, which we have never done before. Here is the relevant section of the Lake Washington GSIs:

9.3   Start between the starting buoy and the orange flag on the race committee boat. Pass each rounding mark in the order displayed and on the same side as the starting mark. Finish between the finishing buoy and the orange flag on the race committee boat. When a number, such as “2″ or “3″, follows the course letters, it signals a multiple-lap course. Sail the course as many times as is indicated by that number, crossing the finishing line at the completion of each lap.

Since we started downwind with the pin to starboard, all other marks must now be left to starboard. The leeward mark was a gate so this rule didn’t change anything there. Lesson learned.

When we got back to the dock we did some practicing with the spinnaker pole to sort out some of the issues we are having with douses. I wish we had more time for practicing, I know it would make all of the difference. But it’s hard enough to field a crew one night a week as it is. This is really the biggest challenge for us right now.

All in all, it was a great night on the lake, our crew is getting deeper, and everybody lived to sail another day. 

During the second race last Tuesday we had another incident rounding a mark where a boat called foul on us. Approaching the leeward mark we noticed that two boats rounding ahead were stalled at the mark and there was enough room to pass between them and the mark. I called for room, although I’m now sure we weren’t entitled to room. It was not an attempt at deception, just a lack of real experience with the rules during mark roundings. Significantly, neither of the other boats contested or refused my request.

We came through the gap between the leeward mark and the two boats and drifted a bit due to the course being above close hauled. As soon as we could we tacked and completed our rounding. We neither hit the mark nor the other boats, but one of them did call a foul on us.

Again we had the benefit of hindsight in the form of gps tracks. In the following animation we are the blue boat and the boat that called foul on us is the green boat. I’ve left another (yellow) boat in the animation to help indicate the leeward mark location, which is an educated guess. The red circle is roughly the two boat length circle (16 meters). What this animation shows is that we were not entitled to room:

[kml_flashembed movie="wp-content/uploads/2007/06/rounding.swf" height="460" width="460" play="false" /]

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Last Tuesday we had some confusion at the start. We miss judged the horn and timed our start about a minute too early. We later realized that when the postponement flag which had been flying was taken down a signal was fired off, and it was this that we took for the 5 minute warning signal. One issue was not knowing the start flag sequence well enough.

The starting flag sequence is given in Lake Washington Racing Program General Sailing Instructions:

10. THE START

Races will be started by using RRS rule 26 except a blue shape will replace flag P. [Note for web version of racebook: This link to RRS rule 26 is to the 2001 rules. Rule 26 is unchanged in the 2005 rules, but US Sailing does not have the 2005 rules available individually.] The race committee may give a hail to the next class whose warning signal is about to be made.

Which refers to the RRS:

26 STARTING RACES

Races shall be started by using the following signals. Times shall be taken from the visual signals; the absence of a sound signal shall be disregarded.

Start Flags

So this is what the sequence should normally look like (with a “blue shape” replacing the P flag):

At 5 minutes:

At 4 minutes:

At 1 minute:

Recognizing these flags will give a more consistent pre-start countdown.

Who’s fault is it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b10dCyIPTZw[/youtube]