This year for the Smith Point Race at Fishing Bay Yacht Club I sailed on an Olson 911S called Mad Hatter owned by Bob and Lisa Fleck. We sailed in the PHRF-B fleet with close competition form a Tarten 40 and a Tarten 10. The Smith Point Race is a 57nm race starting in the mouth of the Piankatank River heading east across the Chesapeake Bay then North to the the Smith Point Light house at the entrance of the Potomac River and then back to the Piankatank leaving Stingray Point to starboard.
We started out at 2pm with the race expected to take about 10-12 hours. The forecast was for an east wind 12-18 all afternoon/evening with an outgoing tide starting shortly after the start.
On the leg across the bay we were close reaching and we stayed above everyone else in the fleet. When the wind went a little south, this helped give us leverage to round in second – behind only Chilcoot from the A-fleet. On the reach up the bay we were quickly run down by the J-105 Corryvreckan. The short choppy and confused waves made the going a little tough. Towards the end of the leg to Smith point we had the chute up reaching and all of the bouncing around kept collapsing the chute. We arrived at Smith Point just at sun down.
The way back in the dark was almost upwind and the wind slowly eased from 16 to about 12. Halfway back I helmed and we did a sail change up to the No 1. When we got to the Piankatank we turned west, put the chute up and finished the race as the 3rd boat over the line and 1st overall on corrected time by 10 minutes. Results.
With no prospect of wind for the second day of the Fishing Bay Yacht Club Annual One Design Regatta, racing was called off early and yesterday‘s results stand. Being tied for first, it would have been fun to have another race to break the tiebreaker, but we wouldn’t get it and I wound up second after the tie was broken. Congrats to Brad Squires for winning the race that counted and getting it done. Results.
On Saturday I ran the GoPro cameras to do some time lapse around the club. Here’s the video of it all put together:
After awards and sailing we took out a few of the junior opti sailors and their coaches in Lasers and 420s for some fun sailing in the very light winds. I took a friend’s 9-year-old son, who is an experienced opti sailor, out on my Laser and after a few pointers he sailed the boat alone for the first time. He then proceeded in the first race to crush his college-aged coaches. He didn’t do quite as well in the subsequent races, but it was a thrill for him to sail anything other an Opti, even if it was only 4 knots of wind.
We had 8 Lasers out for the first day of the Fishing Bay Yacht Club Annual One Design Regatta in light air for two races before a storm came to the area and sent us in.
In the first race I had a good start at the boat, hit the shifts and just led the around the whole course to get a bullet. The second race was set a bit longer and I messed up the start and wound up behind most of the boats going out to the left. Halfway up the course I made my way to the right while all of the leaders went left, and I caught some good wind and shifts to the right to round just inside Brad Squires. Brad had a gear I didn’t have downwind and got ahead and led the rest of the way to the finish.
We were sent in as a storm approached and were in by 2pm.
I did two video experiments today. One was taking a bunch of time lapse pictures around the club of everyone launching and heading out to the course. The other experiment was mounting a video camera to the stern of the laser with an extension. It was a cool view, but was a little shaky. I’ll have to figure out how to stabilize it a little more.
Saturday’s Cut Channel Race at Fishing Bay Yacht Club had a bit of everything from the weather. Light air, heavy air, storms, chop, smooth seas, etc. Lud Kimbrough, Mike Karn and I sailed the J/70 Nostalgia in the PHRF-B fleet of 6 boats out of 15 total for the race.
The race took us south and east and then due east across the bay before heading north up the shipping channel and back to the Piankatank. We had a great start and did well on the first upwind and reaching legs. On the 2nd downwind leg out to the channel we made a bad bet on the weather and fell back into the fleet.
After rounding the channel marker to head North we could see storms in the distance but with being so far out into the bay we didn’t have reliable cell service to check the weather. We donned our life jackets and battened down the hatch – we really did this – and prepared for some weather. We were also monitoring VHF 16 instead of the race channel so we could hear ships coming up the channel, etc so we didn’t hear any race announcements that the race was being shortened at the next mark.
Most of the storms stayed away and we could see lightning in the distance. One frontal system did come through and as the wind hit the boats behind us, we quickly executed our emergency chute down procedure to get it in the boat just before we were hit with a 25-30+ knot gust. We rode out the rest of the leg under jib and main still making 6 knots and as we approached the mark we saw Mr. Roberts there and saw the race was being shortened.
We didn’t save our time, but we had fun and got to try something different on a boat none of us had ever done a distance race with. Unfortunately for us, we finished at the farthest point of the course from home, which meant we still needed to sail upwind back home. We definitely didn’t have enough fuel aboard to motor the whole way, plus the boat goes faster under sail anyway. 2 1/2 hours later and after narrowly dodging another squall line and motoring from about 6 miles offshore once the wind died, we made it back to FBYC.
The wind started out light for the 8 Lasers at the Fishing Bay Yacht Club Summer Laser Regatta. We sailed 2 races in light air and then waited a short time for the sea breeze to kick in and gave us a little more solid pressure for another 4 races.
I got a great jump on the first race and lead wire-to-wire. Other highlights include several 2nds including a couple races where I had to claw my way up there from 4-5 at the first windward mark. I ended up 2nd overall. Len Guenther was fast and consistent and put up 3 bullets to win the day comfortably. Blake Kimbrough was a fast starter all day – too fast – he was OCS in 5 of 6 races and in the only race he wasn’t OCS he won. Despite the restarts he still sailed fast enough to take 3rd overall.
The rest of the fleet – Brad, Mike, Rob, Frank, Alain all sailed good races and kept it close and competitive all the way around the course. Thanks to Tom, Paul and the rest of the race committee for running races for us. And thanks Lisa Radtke for a few photos.
RESULTS
Saturday was Fishing Bay Yacht Club‘s Summer Seabreeze regatta. We had 7 Flying Scots and 3 Front Runners out. On those Front Runners 4 of the 6 sailors had never been on one before. We did 5 races in 6-9 knots of breeze out of the southeast. Marie Schacht was my crew and we put up 1-2-1-1-2 to narrowly beat out Front Runner guru Matt Braun.
It’s rare that I can get to the river for a weeknight for a sail. Len Guenther was there too and we got to get a little practice in before our races on Sunday at Fishing Bay Yacht Club. What a beautiful sunset!
