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