Author: Jon

Jon sailing the start of race 2 at Laser midwinters

We had some light winds and chop for the first day of the Laser Midwinters in Clearwater Florida. They split the 78 boat standard rig fleet and I was sailing with the blue fleet with the 3rd start of the day. I was one of the last to arrive at the race course and after a quick postponement they got the fleets started. In the first race I had a bit of a slow start and was in the 30s around the first mark. As I got more comfortable in the boat I clawed back a few spots at a time and came back to 27th. On the last downwind leg I was going downwind on starboard with another boat sailing parallel to me on port. Our masts touched so I protested him. I normally wouldn’t follow through with a protest that doesn’t really affect my finish, but I wasn’t a fan of how the guy handled it on the water so he got tossed later that evening in the protest hearing that he failed to show up to.

We sat on the water for over an hour while the wind clocked around to the right and the course got reset. We started the 2nd race in about 8 knots of breeze. I had a good start and was on the favored side of the course. I had better boat speed than the first race and hung right behind the lead pack. Up until the last two legs I held my place pretty well, but by the last two races I made some positioning mistakes and let some boats sneak inside me and ended up 23rd.

All in all it was a good day of sailing. The weather was comfortable and the water is not too cold. I’m sitting in 50th and if I can put up some solid finishes tomorrow, I might be able to sneak into the top fleet going into the weekend. The forecast tomorrow is for more wind in the 10-15 knot range.

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Welcome Laser Midwinter Sailors

The trip to Clearwater Florida for the 2011 Laser Midwinters East was an easy one.  Ted brought brought my boat down last week when he came for Masters Midwinters and so this afternoon I was able to fly down. Once in town I settled into the hotel, got the boat checked in and went to dinner with Bob, Ted and Adam.

Tomorrow will be the first of 4 days of racing in the standard rig.  The forecast is for lighter winds on Thursday with a little more on Friday and Saturday.  There will be close to 80 other boats with me in the Standard rig fleet and over 200 total at the regatta.  This is my first time at Midwinters and I’m looking forward to a great weekend of sailing.

Throughout the regatta I’ll be one of a couple people updating the regatta twitter feed (@LaserMWE) as well as my own twitter account when I’m off the water (@jondeutsch).

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I used Sunday’s Laser frostbite as an opportunity to get some of the cobwebs out.  Last weeks’ frostbite at Hampton was good for getting the boat together, but with little wind, wasn’t much of an opportunity to do the kind of sailing I’ll be doing at Midwinters in Clearwater Florida in a little over a week.

The temperature on Sunday in Annapolis was in the high 40’s and low 50’s with winds 13-16 knots, overcast skies and a water temperature of 38 degrees.  Generally it was good sailing in wind that I had to hike in and I got some of the feeling back in how to sail the boat and make it go.  With boat handling being my priority, results of the 4 races I sailed in were secondary and the scoreboard was not friendly – finishing 15 out of 17 boats on the line including two DFLs.

All in all it was a good day on the water and I’m glad to have gotten that past me now rather than on the first day of the regatta.  This was also an opportunity for me to practice filming with the GoPro.  I had gotten several mounting locations set up and today I mounted the camera to the bow.  Check out the video:

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Edit: A more comprehensive list of GoPro mounts and mounting locations for a Laser can be found here.

Saturday I got my boat ready for Frostbiting on Sunday and ultimately for Midwinters in a little over a week. I also put together some mounts for the GoPro camera.  I had already mounted the camera to the compass mount that yielded this video from last weekend.

GoPro Compass Mount

Pictured above is the GoPro mounted to the compass bracket just in front of the compass.  This works because most of the time when I’m using the compass I’m hiked out and thus looking at the side markings on the compass.  The few times when I actually want to look at the compass head on are usually when I’m checking the wind when I’m not looking and it’s easy enough to just look over the camera.

GoPro Mast Mount

This picture is of the GoPro mounted to the Laser mast just below the goose neck facing aft on the port side of the boat.  The ‘roll cage’ bracket is the right width, but the screws that come with it aren’t long enough to fit the width of the mast.  A quick trip to the the hardware store for some longer screws and nuts fixed that.

GoPro Bow Mount ShortGoPro Bow Mount Tall

To mount the camera to the bow I drilled a hole in the top of the bow eye and took one of the GoPro tripod mounts and used a bolt from underneath the bow eye to secure it.  Pictured is are both the short and tall versions of the setup.  The taller version gives a better perspective back to the cockpit, but being taller, it might vibrate a little more.  I also plan to wrap both in tape to be sure nothing gets caught on them.

GoPro Masttop MountGoPro Clamp Mount

GoPro Top of Mast View

These photos show the clamp mount I made to fix the camera to the top of the mast. I used another tripod mount and bolted it to a hole I made on the side of the clamp.  This mount could be used at the top of the mast, the aft end of the boom, or even on the rudder head during training.

GoPro Dolly Mount

The final location I mounted the camera to is the dolly.  Normally the dolly rides upside down on top of the boat, so by mounting the camera to the side of it I can video scenes on the way to regattas to help frame the location.  When the boat is on the dolly the mount can also be used to film while moving the boat around.

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Made a trip to the ODU sailing center on Sunday to Frostbite with the Hampton Roads Laser Fleet. This was the first of two frostbite outings to tune up for the Laser Midwinters East Regatta in Clearwater Florida in a couple weeks.

The day was fraught with very little wind and thus we were only able to get in two short races before calling it a day. The video below shows just how light it was. This was also my first experiment mounting the GoPro camera to the Laser. It turned out pretty well and I can’t wait to try another mounting location next week when I’m frostbiting up at SSA in Annapolis.

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I’ve finally gotten my photos from Key West Race week posted.  Many of them come from screen captures from the video cameras we were running.  Hopefully in another week I’ll have the video completed.  Some photos of the boat by the professional photographers are here and here.

Jon aboard Lucky Dog during Key West Race Week 2011

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With racing complete, I had one final day in Key West for sightseeing before my flight out at the end of the day.  I visited the Hemmingway house and saw the 6-toed cats and the studio where he wrote most of his books.  I also visited the Key West lighthouse and walked up it to see the views of the area.  I made another stop to the shipwreck museum.

Hemmingway House

Key West Light House

My trip to Key West wouldn’t have been complete without more problems with flights.  All week the winds hadn’t been over 10 knots which didn’t make for great race conditions.  But today there were high wind warnings and so the plane flying in to fly me out wasn’t able to land because of it.  My flight was cancelled and Delta didn’t have another seat on a plane out of Key West until Monday.  So they put bunches of us in cabs and drove us 190 miles to Miami where I was put up in 2-room king bed suite at Embassy Suites.  My trip goes on another day…

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Friday was the final day of racing and having had a day with only 1 race, the race committee bumped up the start time so that we could try and get in 3 races.  Out on the race course the wind was light and out of the same direction as it was on Tuesday.  In the light sloppy stuff we just didn’t have the horsepower to keep up with the fast boats.  By the 3rd race there was weather on the horizon and we played the side we thought the wind would fill in to, but it didn’t come in time and we were hung out there.  We ended up going 9-8-9 for the day putting us into 8th for the week.

After racing we had a few of our crew needing to catch a 5:30 flight so we got the boat completely packed on the water so that we could dock and dash.  Tal and I were the only two left so we caught up with the crew from Solaris and went to the regatta party and dinner.

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Today was a rough day on the water.  It started out with an intense fog that limited visibility to only a couple hundred feet.  We were postponed on shore for 30 minutes before finally being sent out.  Initially the fog was lifting as we were heading out of the channel, but once out in open water it came in even thicker.  We didn’t have a chart plotter onboard so we ended up using a plotter app on my iPhone using coordinates radioed by the race committee to find their position.  One unlucky Melges 24 ended up several miles away on the Division 3 course.

Fog surrounding the signal boat

The Race Committee postponed us on the water until the fog lifted and then got racing started.  The wind was light in the 6-8 knot range and by the time we were actually racing it was rarely over 6.  At least the water was pretty flat so we weren’t bobbing around.

I can’t say much else about the racing because I didn’t see any of it.  To best position our crew weight while sailing upwind, Lud and I sat down below.  Being out of the sun with a slight breeze was more comfortable than being on deck.  If only we hadn’t tacked so much causing me to switch sides, I could have actually caught some zzz’s.

At the last minute before the mark rounding, Lud and I would spring onto deck and raise the spinnaker.  We’d be on deck until it was doused and then we were back below.  Results-wise it wasn’t the best day for us.  We put up an 8 and a 13 in two races dropping us into 8th.

After racing we did some packing at the condo as many of our crew are hoping on a plane immediately after racing tomorrow.  We hit up the regatta party, grabbed some sea food for dinner and called it a night.

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