Shields Fleet 9

Thanks to the Coasters Harbor gang for making us look bad!! Here’s a link to a great newsletter showing us what a good weekend regatta can be like: CHNYC Telltale Supplement August 2008

These are unofficial results copied from the RC scratch sheet:

A thanks to Chuck Allen for some great new photos we’ve uploaded. Click here for the photo albums. Most photos are in the Summer Series album, but I also created a Rigging and Setup Album, if any of you have some tricks of your own, send me the shots and a description, or keep it a secret and wonder if it’s fast…

There is Kendall Trophy racing this weekend, the Museum of Yachting is hosting their annual Classic Yacht Regatta. The Shields fleet is already starting to line up and we should have our own start sequence for Saturday Racing.  Go to www.sailnewport.org for more information and ONLINE REGISTRATION.

Charlie Shoemaker has indicated to the PRO of Conanicut that he would let him know by Friday the number of Shields.   If there are 5 or more they will give us a separate start (may include S-boats.)  For this reason, if you are planning to sail, please call Charlie before Friday noon at 846 3388 or 862 4905.

Please take note, there is also a MOY Around The Island race, which is a separate start and separate registration.

random thoughts from ABIGAIL #76 on Wednesday Aug. 20^th race…

Our Mainsail Trimmer saw it this way…
20 minutes before the start, we sailed up the east side of the beat, on port tack, and saw strengthening breeze further north - the port tack off the line looked good then, but 10 minutes later, we were “seduced ” by a westerly blast south of the starting pin, changing our plan to one in which we wanted the west side - left - off the line.
A bad start forced us to bail right, a good thing, but we had that left hand thing in our mind and checked back left after a few hundred yards.  Misfortune at the start had sent us the correct way, but we “over-rode”  and went left, under the ships.
The fast guys appeared to either “bang” the right corner, or got into some good velocity lifts up the left center.
Current was not really a factor.

Our Driver saw it this way…
Well, it looked like the velocity was stronger on the left before the start so we went left and wandered into the middle after a while. At that point we realized that there was more pressure on the right and we were in the cheap seats.. So we ended up playing catch-up for the rest of the race. It took us quite a while to recognize that our height  upwind was not as good as usual, made some adjustments and finally started to move on the last beat. We are still working hard to figure out west/east, east/west courses north of the bridge.

Our Foredeck saw it this way…

We liked the velocity on the left side of the course and were looking to set up 2/3rds of the way down the line towards the Pin end.  We came back to starboard for the start a little to early and got pushed further down the line than we would have liked, and came into heavier traffic than is good.  Off the line we needed to tack to clear our air, it felt good so we held there on Port tack going off to the right and Off Our Game Plan… so writes the ending of our race story. 

The winds were real “squirrely” in the cone between the two commercial ships.  We would see boats in front and back 10-15 degrees higher in point, then a minute latter down 5 degrees on our course.

BUT we all noticed that #217 got it VERY right for this night… nice job!  From our vantage we heard only the faint report of the cannon…

 I would be remise if I didn’t mention the great job the race committee does, CONSISTENTLY, WEEK AFTER WEEK. Thank you so much - you make this fun.

First Signs of Fall Approaching :

The days are getting shorter , the evenings cooler but the best days of Southern New England are just around the corner . Last night brought us the 2nd day of a beautiful  Northwesterly gradient  wind pattern . First signs of autumn perhaps ? With this wind pattern often comes fantastic Shields racing ; nice shifts , flat water, more than enough breeze, no water on the deck and an awesome sunset . Does it get any better than this ?

We were a little late to the starting area so we did not have a lot of time to do much re-con pre start. It looked like the starting line was about 5 degrees favored towards the pin in the median breeze direction . However , just prior to the start a left puff settled in making the pin more like 10+ degrees favored . Our game plan was to start in the pin 1/3 of the line and be able to tack as soon as possible . Our reasoning for this was that the breeze was already as left as we’d seen it and that the next  shift would be right given the normal attributes of a northwesterly, and we didn’t want to get strung out on the left . Some how, however, we ended up only 2 boats up from the pin by the time the starting gun went off instead of 1/3 of the line away from the pin. Luckily for us  we were able to tack and cross 254 immediately to windward of us as well as all the boats on our hip within less than a minute or so from the start . This was very fortunate as Jeff Gladchun in 108 was directly to leeward of us and were about to squeeze us off . Once we were on port tack the wind was so far left that we were nearly on the layline , for a while . As we’d hoped prior to the start , the wind eventually faded back to right . By that point we were “bow out” on everyone to the  right of us ,so the shifts helped to lever our gains . From there Tim Healy and the rest of the 217 crew of Jeff Dionne, Eric Hanson and Chris Greenman did an excellent job of keeping us in or near the most breeze and on the lifted tack or headed gybe . On the second leeward leg the breeze filled in from behind helping Andy Burton and crew onboard 201 to reel us in quite a bit but luckily for us we were able to hold them off through the finish .

Our rig settings were as follows :

Uppers - 28-29 on the Loos’ Gauge
Lowers - 0-4 on the loos Gauge
Head stay - at our max length which is 49″ to the datum 

Thanks to Robin Wallace and his RC team as well as Peter Denton and the Ultimate Pressure team for doing a great job of race management and providing us with such a beautiful evening of Shields racing on Narragansett Bay .

Respectfully submitted ,

Jamie Hilton
John Dory - Shields #217

Aloha Series This Saturday 

Forecast: sunny, delightful, fun!   Bring your friends and family out for relaxed non-spinnaker fun as we have 3 Aloha races scheduled.   Races begin at 1:00 south of the bridge.

Last time we had 7 very competitive boats, and the Navy’s Ron Oard came away with the Gold Medal. Who will be on the podium this week?

330 4-8 knots Mark, gate, mark, x, finish RC duty 226

Notes