On Saturday, I helped Todd deliver his J99 Battle Rhythm from its winter home in Irvington VA to Deltaville for the summer sailing and racing season. Ann was along as well and we had a nice motor down the Rappahannock River and did some sailing when we reached the Chesapeake Bay in the lightish winds.
We had 4 boats at FBYC for the ILCA Spring Regatta on a cool and overcast day. Mike C, Mike M, Todd and myself went out for 5 races alongside a couple Melges 15s. The Flying Scots elected not to sail. Out on the race we had a steady 13-14 knots with some white caps.
In the first race Mike C, Mike M and I all dragged race out to the left. I went a little further left and got some breeze wrapping around Stove Point and almost overstood the mark. I was just ahead of them as we went downwind, but I was able to keep a loose cover on both of them just behind me to finish first.
Race 2 was windy and shifty out of the east at times. The wind had gone a little more left which meant we were a little more sheltered behind Stove Point. I again played the middle left of the course and was able to stay just ahead of Mike C and Mike M.
Race 3 didn’t go as well – I was about to be leading at the top mark, but I missed the cleat after a tack and let the sail out while I was hiking and plunged the boat over me to weather while the other boats sailed by me. I caught up 1 boat to put me in 3rd, but I was never able to catch up to Mike C and Mike M to finish that way.
The 4th race saw a shift to the left, I went down to the pin at the start and almost laid the weather mark with a comfortable lead and finished that way.
For the 5th and final race of the day I knew I had to finish 3rd or better to win first overall. Mike C was ahead as we approached the weather mark and I flubbed the tack allowing Mike M to get by me as well. On the second upwind Mike M would struggle around the weather mark allowing me to sail by him to a 2nd place finish.
All in all it was a really fund day of sailing in a solid breeze and mixing it up with Mike C and Mike M in some close racing. Thanks to the Race Committee for running the race for us and we’ll be back for the Summer Regatta in August.
EVENT WEBSITE | PICTURES | RESULTS | VIDEO
Served as the race committee for the first one design event of the year at FBYC. Ended up with a beautiful day for the Flying Scots and Melges 15. I also got to try out a new insta360 X4 camera.
Got 4 races before the wind died on us.
Thanks to Mason Chapman, Laurie Pierce, Jess Deutsch, John Koedell, Todd Blekicki and Frank Murphy for helping on RC.
EVENT WEBSITE | PHOTOS | VIDEO
As was the case in 2022, the club was short a PRO for the first spring series of the year and so I stepped in last minute to be the PRO. We had a small but mighty team and gave the racers the best we could given the weather, volunteers and equipment we had available.
While it wasn’t windy by windy standards- the conditions were still cool, the wind was up and the waves were a bit lumpy from this direction. We were able to set up a 1.5nm weather leg and ran two races for both fleets on that course. The cruising class intended to do a triangle derivative of this, but through some miscommunication to the RC, we sent them on a triangle that was way beyond what they were intending and weren’t finishing even the first lap of that until almost after the other fleets had done two laps and started their next race.
Thanks to Paula, Cathy, Mary and Paul for their help on RC.
This was also my first chance to try out a new insta360 X4 and here’s the 360 video in 8k of driving the boat out of the Jackson Creek Channel.
VIDEO | PICTURES | RESULTS | EVENT WEBSITE
This weekend the Battle Rhythm crew joined the Race Committee for the Opening Day race. The 3 fleets did a middle distance race out into the Chesapeake Bay and back. The wind was light and took about 3 hours to do the ~15nm. We had a 4-6 knot breeze in the Piankatank the entire time. The boats out in the bay saw much less than that at times and many of them abandoned when the current started taking them faster than the wind.
Being on Race Committee this was a perfect opportunity to get some video of the boats and try out a borrowed 360 camera.
Every time I come back to crewing on big boats I’m always feeling like I have to re-familiarize myself with the electronics and some of the basic operations we use all of the time. I think that’s true of many others and so here is is a quick video reference on how to use the instruments with the functions we normally use. Here is a playlist of the videos or the can be viewed individually below.
They cover:
It was the first weekend in December and the plan had been to race in FBYC’s winter series but fog and lack of good weather on future weekends for a delivery to Irvington for a haul out meant today was the day to make the trip.
With the winter series going on, we left the dock and sailed out into the fog in the mouth of the Piankatank where the other boats were racing. We could see maybe a 1/2 mile at time. We sailed by the other boats and then headed out to Stingray Point and around it and into the Rappahannock. The fog was a little denser out there and that was the only run in with another boat when a 25′ center console fishing boat went buzzing across our bow with barely visible lights.
The rest of the trip was smooth and the fog lifted as we closed in on the bridge.
Once in Irvington we pulled the sails off, did a few other clean up items and carpooled back to FBYC.
FBYC closed the regular season with the Closing Day Distance Race. The weather was absolutely gorgeous with beautiful fall foliage – it felt more like September than almost November. Except there wasn’t much wind. Knowing it was a distance race with little prospect of more wind later and oysters to be eaten this afternoon the RC chose to start us on time and let us make the most of what wind there was.
I was sailing on Battle Rhythm, we were the 3rd fastest boat and thus the 3rd to last boat to start. We were just behind Tradition as we came to the line and ended up underneath a bunch of boats who had parked up just above the line. It took us a long time to sail around them and after 35 minutes to the weather mark – we set a spinnaker and headed due east out of the river to the next mark of the course.
We soon passed a few boats that had rounded the first mark ahead of us. With the spinnaker up, we were a little low and eventually had to drop it and go back to a jib as the wind went a little south. By the time we reached the far mark we were around 7-8th place. On the way back to Stove Point we passed two cruising boats leaving only Afterthought, Nanuq and Goin’ ahead of us. We didn’t catch them, but had a good time to get at 4th and learned some things about how to make the light reaching spinnaker work in light wind and close reaching.
Following the race were oysters and we had a great time catching up with a lot of folks for possibly the last time of the year.
I recently digitized some old Laser Masters footage from the 2000 US Laser Masters. I was aboard the Judge boat for most of the event recoding on a Sony Hi-8 camera. It had been a while since I had seen this footage and it was great to be able to reminisce and remember the sailors who were there at the time and what Fishing Bay Yacht Club looked like with the old clubhouse.
As I processed the footage and spliced this together, I was amazed at the improvements to the software to be able to stabilize what was pretty shaky video at the time as well as the ability to clean up some of the audio.
I was also many years from being a master and yet I’m now older than many of the masters-age sailors at the time. Ooof.
Check out the video and the event results can be seen here.