July 18, 2017 VACATION CORRESPONDING AND START LINE PHOTOS

July 18, 2017

VACATION CORRESPONDING

 I was in Vegas this Tuesday night pondering another pair a dice while celebrating our 26^th wedding anniversary. Stefan and my crew were kind enough to provide a report from which I will attempt to write a blog. I apologize for the tardiness of this blog.

   

The wind was a light Easterly about 7 knots so the course B5 was chosen.  It looks like there were 13 boats out again for the fun.  In light conditions like this, how you deal with waves becomes a critical factor in performance.  Perfect sail trim and clean bottoms also become essential when sailing in light winds.  At the leeward mark six boats converged at the same time in orderly fashion. Pair A Dice  sailed wide of the mass of boats at the leeward mark and was able to get clear air.  At the finish  Perfect 36 was first, followed by Guenther on his Finn, Pair A Dice, Nidaros 2, Rosa Nautica, Kicks, Toad, Dreamer, Tara, Freya, Aeolian, Odonata and Rosie. It is good to have so many new participants!

STARTING LINES:

I know that with the new start lines we are using this year, there may be some confusion.  Vern Wallace was kind enough to take some pictures of each of the start lines to help clear up this perplexity.  The first picture is the start line for Blacks point.  From this picture, you can see that if you set a range using the left end of blacks point and the tip of the gable (marked with orange line) on the house directly behind, you can tell whether you are over the line too soon.  In any case the compass bearing is about 352 degrees magnetic from the mark to the left end of Blacks Point (which is white from bird droppings).

The second picture shows the “S” or the white house at the end of Schwan lagoon.  Using the 

 left of that white house, you can set a range with the slight v (orange arrow) in the large mushroom-shaped tree tops behind the corner of the house. The range should be close to 330 degrees magnetic.

The last line is our old standby we have always used and should be about 310 degrees magnetic from the mark.

Please try to observe these start lines so we can all have a fair start, and thanks to Vern and Judy for providing these pictures.

HANDICAPPING:

I know the normal way of handicapping in sailing is to use PHRF.  I firmly believe nobody wants to try to incorporate PHRF in our events on Tuesday and I have no intention of doing this.  I do believe that the smaller displacement hulled boats have a distinct disadvantage and believe we should give them a head start so they at least have a chance.  It gets complicated because our courses all have different lengths and the head start should be greater for longer races.  Each course card has the length of each race. For any heavier displacement hull boat 27 feet and under, lets give a 2 minute head start for any course up to 2 miles in length and a 3 minute head start for any course between 2 and 3 miles and a 4 minute head start for any course over 3 miles.  The “heavier displacement” means any SC27 that care to participate will not get a head start. For your head start, follow the chart below.  This is simplistic, but I know in the heat of the race, nobody wants to do even simple math.

5 Minute horn blows: Two minute head start means you start 3 minutes after the horn.

                                        Three minute head start means you start 2 minutes after the horn.

                                         Four minute heads tart means you start 1 minute after the horn.

I will call over channel 69 the head start indicated and will attempt to give adequate warning of when the 5 minute horn will blow.

PLEASE NOTE: NEXT TUESDAY IS BARBECUE NIGHT AT THE CLUB AFTER THE RACE.

I am looking forward to Tuesday.

Barry Keeler

Sailing Pair A Dice