August 10: “Listen to Your Crew!”

In the 7^th race of the Summer Series, Team Grace 107 recorded one of our best finishes all summer, despite a mediocre start and picking the wrong side of the first beat. One of the things we did right last night was to get out early and tune up alongside Helen 181 learning in the process not to pull on too much backstay in the 8- to 12-knot breeze.

My biggest mistake was to ignore the collective opinion of Rachel, Pete and Ted, who all agreed we should favor the left on the first beat for better breeze. Instead, Reed and I set a course to the right for the current relief on the way to Taylor Point. You would think I’d know better by now, given that Pete is a weather forecaster, Rachel is a professor of puffology, and Ted is Ted.

To set the stage, the northerly had died during the afternoon and a modest southeasterly breeze was in the PeteCast—our weekly onboard weather service provided by Pete. We had a nearly full moon bringing with it a heavy flood tide, and PRO Bill O’Hanley laid a nice five-leg course with 1.25-mile beats, starting to the west of Gould Island with the windward mark just north of the Pell Bridge. While 1-mile beats have resulted in pileups at Mark 1 earlier this summer, the longer beat combined with the flood tide effectively lengthened the upwind leg and helped minimize traffic, despite our 25-boat turnout for the evening.

We came off the right end of the line, tacked, and took one stern, heading right with Team Apollo 11 to windward and Team Ultimate Pressure 226 to leeward. The latter gradually came up in front of us as we reached the corner. Both boats tacked out for the mark, and we went closer to the point for current relief, as did several boats close behind us.

We looked super smart until we were headed about 20 degrees by the strength of the current, and with the air lightening up, we didn’t come close to laying the mark on one tack.  Team 181, which had taken the pin-end start and worked the left, rounded first, close ahead of Team 254, the series leader.

Given our poor summer track record of getting around weather marks cleanly, we tacked back to port, overstood, and rounded in about 10^th place with Bill Rommel’s team in Eagle 165.  We noticed Tinky 258 and Karasalet 74 each did a circle after hitting the mark, so apparently our conservatism was justified.

At the end of the run, despite a crowd of boats ahead of us choosing the eastern gate, there was no question about our plan—I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice! We followed the group around and footed for the Newport side of the Bay in their dirty air. Gradually, those ahead of us tacked while, encouraged by our wind team, I kept going. The breeze was easing off across the course, and despite the windscreen of a rather large barge that passed ahead of us , we found great breeze and a good shift as we tacked for the mark.

In the meantime, the right side and even the center of the course had caved in with less breeze, and we found ourselves in fourth place behind 181, 254, and Team Bomba Charger 156 as we rounded the new weather mark, set 5 degrees left of the old one. We were all well ahead of the fifth-place boat.

The final two legs of the race were uneventful, except that we snuck by Mike Toppa’s Team 156 downwind, while they were belatedly striking their ensign!

Congratulations to Team Helen 181 for their bullet and to Team Aeolus 254 for their 5-point Summer Series win over Helen and Tinky. Reviewing the scoresheet afterwards, I noticed that 254 was the only boat to avoid recording a double-digit finish throughout the series…and every other boat had at least two races in double digits!

Many thanks to our race committee for managing the equivalent of a national championship fleet every week!

—John Burnham