It was a bit of a drifter for most of the Fishing Bay Yacht Club Fall One Design Invitational.  We had 6 Lasers out for the 3rd of our 4-race series.

After a bit of a delay we finally started a race in about 4 knots out of the west.  The course was just on the outer edge of Fishing Bay and still inside of Stove Point.  The wind proceeded to die to a knot or less. Suddenly what is usually a very light current became a big deal.  In fact – I’ve never even thought to play the current that much in that location so far away from the Piankatank channel.

Luckily I was far enough behind the leaders – Brad Squires and Luke Hayes on the downwind that I could see how they were getting swept out of Fishing Bay and out into the bay.  I played it conservatively by heading up into the bay and letting the current pull me down to the mark.  When Luke was swept past the mark and couldn’t go upwind against the current to get back to it, I slipped in ahead of him and finished the last upwind just behind Brad.

The .6 mi race took us over an hour.  We sat for at least another hour and by 2pm we started to see signs of a sea breeze.  We moved the course out into the river a bit more so the windward mark was just outside of Stove Point.  It was still shifty, but at least we were able to sit out and almost hike at times.  I didn’t have a great upwind and had to settle for a 4.

Since we were past the time limit for more racing and we still had some wind, Mike Toms and Ron Jenkins and I sailed out towards Gwynn’s Island to get a little upwind speed testing it.

It probably wasn’t the best day for racing, but since I haven’t sailed the boat in a month and I’m about to do 3 weekends in a row of racing, it was just what I needed to get back into the boat.

RESULTS (pdf)

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We had quite at match up this weekend with ECU playing Virginia Tech in Football.  I even got into a bit of a fight with the Hokie bird.

In honor of the Hokies – we fried a turkey for our tailgate.

And former ECU player and Super Bowl-winning linebacker Robert Jones stopped by our tailgate.

In the end it wasn’t a game either team could be very proud of.  VT suck by us 10-15.

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name tags for dinner!

This weekend I was the event chair for Chesapeake Bay Laser Masters Championship at Fishing Bay Yacht Club.  This is the 9th year I’ve been the event chair and by now I’ve gotten a pretty good gameplan and a great team of volunteers to help execute it.  And of course it could not have gone more smoothly from the food to the race committee to the social activities – everything went off without a hitch for 42 competitors.

A complete wrap-up of the event can be found here including more pictures and results.  I’ll have some videos of the sailing and the paddle board competition later this week.

Some of my favorite pictures:


watching the America’s Cup on the screen I rigged up.

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9/5 ECU vs FAU

At the halfway of a crazy week – by the end of the weekend I’ll have driven well over 1,000 miles and have never left VA/NC.  Midweek ECU played Florida Atlantic in a Thursday night game. The game was a ‘black out’ with black uniforms, black lines on the fields and all the fans in black.  The game itself was a bit of a routing.  After the first 10 minutes FAU never really mounted any challenge.  Always fun to be in pirate country!

9/5 ECU vs FAU

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Smith Point Race - Course AThis 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.

8/24/2013 Smith Point Race - Bob & Lisa Fleck on Mad Hatter.

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.

8/24/2013 Smith Point Race

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.

8/24/2013 Smith Point Race - Smith Point Light

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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.

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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.

2013 FBYC AOD

Day 1 Results

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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.

RESULTS | PHOTOS | VIDEO

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