From: nelson.peter
To: koosah
Subject: Duwamish Head
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 22:38:06 -0800
Dave
Great write-up on the race. Good reading! Here is our story. We managed an excellent race and finished 2nd in class and 3rd overall. However, the time on First Edition, 1st in our class, was adjusted because the provided assistance to a man overboard from another boat, so it is tough to know where they really would’ve ended up.
In any case, we started under spinnaker at the dock, away from the cluster fighting at the other end of the line. That worked brilliantly as we worked ahead of our fleet ... until we got to Three Tree Point. By then the wind was so strong that we had to flog the spinnaker and do a controlled round-up just to clear the point. Once around the point, we got the kite going again and had a fun ride doing 9s and 10s ... until the 3/4 oz. blew up in a 41 kt puff. As the foredeck was cleaning up Puget Sound from Dacron, etc., I looked over to see our arch rival, Here and Now blasting past us. It was really cool to see how fast we were going from that perspective!
We got the spin put away and ran the heavy #1 up, poled it out wing-and-wing, put on some backstay, and were still hitting 9s!! Right before we got to Duwamish Head we realized we needed to get the #3 up. So we hoisted as we rounded, and dropped after we rounded. Shortly thereafter the spin pole washed overboard! Oh, no! Now what$ Fortunately, before I had to make the decision to turn around, a chase boat spotted it and plucked it out of the water. How serendipitous was that, losing the pole right in front of a chase boat$!! We quickly put a reef in on the reach to Blakely Rock.
I noticed a bunch of boats with reef points and no reefs and shook my head wondering what was up with that. I mean, if ever there is a time to reef, I would say 35 kt sustained would be a pretty good time!!
We rounded Blakely and Time Warp romped in the breeze with the #3 and reef in. We were doing 6.5 kt upwind which, for that boat, is about .5 kt faster than usual. We let the forestay sag for a finer entry but mostly to give the front end of the boat some softness to handle the blows it was getting from the waves. I think a lot of people think that if it is blowing a gale, they really need to put the backstay on to depower the main. That may be true on a fractional rig, but on masthead like Time Warp, the main was already flogging a little bit, so it wasn’t a concern. We also sheeted the jib off to give it a nice, round entry for power through the chop.
It must’ve worked cuz we sailed under control all the way to Three Tree where we shook the reef out and finished on a beam reach with the #3 up doing 7.5 kt in patches of sun! It was an epic day!!
Something to notice in Sean’s photos: the number of people out there in 30+ knots wearing no life jacket!
Peter Nelson, Time Warp
P.S.
I talked to Jeff Janders, my tactician, today about the loose forestay. It turns out he called for loosening the backstay because he looked at the mast bend and got scared! We have a baby stay that we rarely use, except when it is blowing the oysters off the rocks! Between the normal backstay we put on, and the baby stay pulling the mast forward, I guess Jeff wasn’t used to seeing that much bend in the mast!
So loosening the forestay, while still valid in my estimation, was done for a different reason than flattening the entry and softening the jib through the waves. That said, I still believe it was a good move for the aforementioned reasons.