We had a very light air race for the Cut Channel Race at FBYC. With only 4 of us on the boat – Todd, April, Tony and Jon we managed the boat in the light air without too much difficulty.
At the start, we set the spinnaker for the mostly downwind leg in the bay while the wind switched on us a couple of times. We had some confusion about the course and didn’t end up too far off course, but got behind the rest of the fleet, and stayed to the north and up current. As a result of being behind the wind filled from the north west and carried us past most of the fleet. We reached back and forth in pressure trying not to get ahead of the puff to keep our momentum. We rounded in second right behind Corryvreckan to head mostly upwind for 4 miles into the Rappahannock.
Again we stayed north of Corryvreckan and Afterthought and made some good gains while the wind filled. Once it started to drop as we entered the Rappahannock, it got squirrelly with current and Afterthought and Corryvreckan slipped by us.
After 5 hours of sailing, as we were going by Stingray Point Light and re-entering the Piankatank, the time limit expired despite doing the shorter course. No boats finished the course and all headed back to the dock. It was a fun day of sailing and did pretty well with only 4 us. We learned some things about the boat and had some good stretches of actually sailing our targets where we really got the boat dialed in.
We had a nice day for the Open House Regatta with a light breeze out of the east that eventually built to the double digits. Jess and I were sailing aboard Todd’s J99 Battle Rhythm with me doing pit and her trimming the main.
The course would take us from Godfrey Bay out the Piankatank near Stingray Point and back up the river around a mark and then up into a finish in Fishing Bay. The first part of the race was mostly upwind while the 2nd half of the race was mostly downwind.
It was a progressive start race meaning the slower boats start first and the faster boast start last. We were the 2nd to last to to start and as we sailed east on the 2nd leg of the course we started to catch up to a group of boats. We hoisted our spinnaker to head from Piankatank 8 to FBYC B and passed most of them. On that first spinnaker hoist we had a sheet run incorrectly and had to just muscle hold it while we re-ran the lazy sheet as the new sheet and didn’t loose much ground.
By the time we got to FBYC-B we had Sting, Wendas and the Thistle ahead of of. We passed them by the time we got to back to Piankatank 8, but were only just ahead of Sting. We split with Sting and went North while they went south and after crossing we went south as we went north as we worked our way downwind to the west up the Piankatank. They stayed in better pressure of Stove point and were just ahead of us by the time we got to 12. We had a cleaner rounding, came out higher and had a little more speed to be just ahead of them at the finish and get the gun.
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.
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.
PHRF-BC start with GOIN’ and Mad Hatter
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.
Paula and Jon doing flags at the back of the boat while Cathy calls time.
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.
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.
We got two days of racing at the Capital City Regatta at Potomac River Sailing Association in cool conditions with plenty of wind on Saturday and not enough at times on Sunday. 9 races were sailed and James Jacob emerged as the regatta winner having won all but one race in the series in the 17 boat fleet.
Saturday saw winds in the mid-teens with gusts into the 20’s and temperatures in the mid-50’s making for a cold day. With 11 boats on the course we started a little south of the club on the Potomac River which had a lot of current that would rip down the course all day.
In the first 2 races I started slow with a bad start, but salvaged a 5th and in the second race I had a great start and stuck with the leaders to find myself in 3rd. While I was out of practice hiking, I did keep the boat moving well most of the time. With the triangle course we had two broad reaches rather than downwind.
When it came to the 3rd race – I had a good start and was just behind James on the reaches. I passed him on the 2nd reach and shortly after turning to go upwind and was leading the race when I put the main sheet in the cleat to adjust the vang. When I went to pull on the vang, the tail of it had been wrapped around the main sheet cleat and was underneath the cleated sheet. As I grabbed the vang the tail lifted up popping the sheet out of the cleat (video). The main instantly went out and I immediately flipped over backward. After a few tries I was back in the boat, but definitely going to be too cold and called it a day and missed the rest of the race and the next one.
Sunday saw some lighter conditions and slightly warmer temperatures with now 17 boats out on the course. The current was still ripping down the course just as much as it was yesterday making it a challenge of knowing when to go right and into it and when to go left and avoid it. In 4 out of 5 of the races I had decent starts and sailed with the leaders anywhere from 2 to sixth place.
In the 4th race I thought we were going to get a wind shift and I could port tack the fleet. The shift didn’t come and Tyler defended it perfectly and after I parked it behind the line, I had to let everyone go. When I finally got started the wind did shift and it was a largely a parade with very few passing lanes.
By 2 o’clock w had sailed 5 races and the wind was getting really patchy at time making it almost impossible to made headway against the current and we headed in.
Thanks to Nabeel and the RC for getting as many races as we could get in over 2 days and thanks to all of the other PRSA volunteers for the food and everything else they did to make this possible. Congrats to James, Patrick and Thomas on a well-sailed event and their podium finishes.
For this sailing season I wanted to add another modern action camera to my arsenal. In reviewing all of the cameras out there – the battery life left some to be desired in the cameras on the market with the best features. While the image quality, usability, mounting, and other features are important to me, none of that really matters if the camera has run out of battery. On a sailboat, oftentimes I can’t easily swap out a battery – either because when we’re on a big boat I’ve got a job to do in the middle of a race and can’t easily get away to get a new battery and swap it into the camera, or on a small boat – I simply don’t have any space to take a spare battery or even keep it dry.
Reviewing all of the specs and reviews online I settled on the Insta360 Ace Pro (buy on Amazon). On paper it got 10 minutes more battery life (100 minutes) compared to the latest GoPro Hero 12 (90 minutes). But the Insta360 Ace Pro hadn’t been on the market very long and none of the reviews really mentioned the battery life other than in passing. I bought the camera and still wanted to settle the question – how long can I expect the battery to last? I had also seen some after-market batteries becoming available and wondered how those compared to the Insta360 batteries.
So I set up some tests for 30 different batteries from 15 different retailers for over 544 hours to answer those questions and I wanted to share my findings.
How Long Does the Insta360 Ace Pro Battery Last?
On average across all of the batteries tested, the camera filmed for 97.6 minutes – just shy of the 100 minutes advertised. In only 26% of the tests did the camera film for more than 100 minutes.
Insta360 has produced two batteries for the Ace Pro- those that came with the original Ace Pro and have a capacity of 1650 mAh, and the batteries that came with the AcePro 2 rated for 1800 mAh. Here’s how both batteries did in the original Ace Pro.
Ace Pro 1 (1650 mAh)
Ace Pro 2 (1800 mAh)
Average Duration
97.2 min
99.6 min
>100 min %
15%
18%
Which Battery Lasted the Longest?
There were 2 batteries of the 15 brands tested that hit the 100 minute mark significantly more than the other batteries test. While that looks like a big difference on paper, the real difference is only around 4 minutes of film time. The NBZZ and REYTRIC batteries lasted much longer than any of the other batteries tested by 4-6 minutes.
Here’s the average runtime for the different brands:
And here you can see the individual performance of each of the batteries. Note the range between the minimum and maximum tests along wit the average. The Insta360 batteries are on the far right and far left.
Using the settings I’d most likely be using for sailing – 4k 30 fps with horizon leveling and HDR on – I set the camera up in my living room to look at my backyard until it ran out of battery. I did this at least 11 times for each battery to get the data. All of the batteries were charged using the same 3-battery charger and the Ace Pro firmware was 1.0.27 or 1.0.62.
To see my videos created with the Insta360 Ace Pro – check out No Quarter Sailing on YouTube.
Disclaimers: I purchased the camera and some of the batteries myself. Other batteries were received through the Amazon Vine Voices Program. As an affiliate in Amazon’s program I may receive a commission for product links.
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.
The second day of the FBYC Fall Open featured a distance race to mark located in the Chesapeake Bay just off Gwynn’s Island called 41a but otherwise known to FBYC Sailors as L. The course was an out and back following the same path back to the finish.
In our fleet were 5 boats – Sting, Corryvreckan, Afterthought, Nanuq an Arcona 46 and us on J99 Battle Rhythm. Aboard were Todd, Len, Ron, Anne and Jon.
We started in the mouth of the Piankatank and sailed out into the Bay on a close reach. Around us were the J109 Afterthought and the J105 Corryvreckan. Winds were 12 – 14 and we were sailing with the jib and full main. After rounding one of the entrance marks to the Piankatank we headed south on a broad reach down the bay.
We arrived at Chesapeake 41a otherwise known as FBYC-L just off the southern end of Gwynns Island. At the southern mark, we doused the spinnaker and came back upwind along the same course we had taken out there. The wind had backed to the north north west making this an even more upwind slog back.
We took a few tacks inshore towards Gwynns island to stay out of the current. Once we were back in the Piankatank we close reached to the finish just off Stove Point.
After the handicaps were calculated our race was good enough for 2nd place beating the J109 by just under a minute on corrected time though we were still 5 minutes behind the Acrona.
