A STERN RE-VIEW
With my
wife’s grandiose plans for a long vacation, tonight’s sail was going to be my
last for a while. The forecast for wind
looked good with people commenting all day long about how blustery it was
outside. Would the 155 jib be too much? It seemed that I was getting multiple text
messages and phone calls with one question: “Do you have room for one more on
your boat?” I never discourage people
from coming out on Tuesday nights, but when I showed up and we had about a
dozen people looking for rides, I was feeling the pinch. Thankfully one more boat was going out which
lightened the load for everyone.
Barbecue night and finally a night with wind was stoking the crowd. The wind was flowing in puffs basically from
the North.
I have
worked hard my whole life and have followed all the rules so I am not
accustomed to getting stern reviews. Little
did I know what a stern re-view I was in for on this night!
As I fumbled
through the courses, it is amazing anyone understood my gibberish, but the communication
was finally made: Start, Gov, Finish. My mind had slipped off on vacation early I
guess. Thanks to Kathy for calling to clarify that the final mark was to be
taken to port, the way we normally finish on the run from gov to the start mark
finish. Chris Hoffman was kind enough to set a start mark for us which was
basically square to Black point. I did
not count the boats but it seemed like about a dozen.
Everyone was
milling around for the start. On our
first run toward the start we felt we were too early so we tacked back for a
second run. At the start many boats
seemed to be late to the line with Pair A Dice being the latest of all. Variable, puffy, unpredictable winds and
being last in line was not working. We
thought we saw more wind toward shore and tacked over to get inside and to get
clean air and got headed so badly that we were actually sailing away from
Gov. I am sorry, but we were so far back
and so intent on sailing our boat, I did not see who rounded Gov first. Talk about a stern view! We were last to round Gov and then we were
getting our stern Re-view as all boats were ahead of us.
Most of the
boats sailed inside and about three of us decided to gamble on running outside.
On a night as unpredictable as this, anything was worth a try. All of the boats that went inside had to buck
the waves to get back to the mark. Many
people were claiming victory and I am sorry I missed the barbecue because I am
sure there were some interesting discussions.
The guys on my boat said they were going to tell everyone that I was so
humiliated I was selling my boat and moving to Kansas! It was bad, but not THAT bad!
Aside from
being such a stern re-view, losing on a Tuesday night can be a beneficial
experience if you analyze and learn from your experience. So this is my post- race analysis of my
errors.
1) Know your start line! I did not analyze this element at all before
the race. I should have done a line
sight to set up a range to tell when we were on the line. This is the only way to properly estimate
such a long line and one that is new to our group. Another way to do this would be to have
someone with a puck compass knowing the bearing to Black point to give an
estimate to how close you are to the line.
2) When wind is coming in puffs, they
will invariably hit you at the wrong time like when you are trying to start! I should have dumped sails to slow down
rather than tack back as I did.
3) Focus on the race. My mind was obviously not on the race, and my
poor steering showed it. Anyone trying
to follow the course instructions I gave on the radio could tell I was already
on vacation.
4) I believe I was correct in tacking
over for the “more wind” further toward shore.
When in last place you are forced to gamble and go for fliers and this
one did not work to our advantage. In
short this was an unpredictable night for all of us and I just made bad
predictions.
I will be
gone for a few weeks on a different kind of cruise. My boat will be going out and hopefully she
can do better in my absence.
Have fun
sailing on Catalina Tuesdays.
Barry Keeler
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