Wednesday, September 14, 2011

2011 Rolex Big Boat Series in San Francisco

After a broken wrist kept me from sailing Criminal Mischief in the 2011 TransPac, the 2011 Rolex Big Boat Series in San Francisco would be my first major race on the boat. I was given the position of masthead running-back trimmer, something I had never done before. Not only would it place me the furthest from the foredeck in all of the races I've sailed, but I was now responsible for keeping the mast up through every tack and gybe. Criminal Mischief has been turbo'd with a square-top (as opposed to a regular "pinhead") mainsail, which requires two separate backstays, one for port tack and one for starboard tack. Out of every tack upwind I would be winding them up to almost 12,000 lbs of load on a large Harken winch, usually with the help of a 260 lbs Kiwi sailor Rodney. As well as keeping the mast up, the runners are also used to adjust headstay sag and mast bend, which affects the power of the jib and mainsail respectively. While the swept spreaders and mainsheet would keep the rig up at the dock and through tacks, the runners are essential downwind when the masthead spinnaker is up. The mast failure on XS due to a broken masthead running back block during the 2009 Key West Race Week was always in the back of my mind.

Sailing on a high performance boat like Criminal Mischief requires a very skilled crew, which we definitely had for this regatta. We sailed with 13 people, some professionals and some very advanced amateurs. Everyone had a job, and while our first day of practice definitely showed us what we needed to work on, the second day of practice shaped up to be much better. Unfortunately, during the second day of practice, the anti-chaff covers on both of the running back control lines melted and broke due to the extremely high load and heat from friction on the winch drum. This just goes to show how much load is on these things!!! After replacing one with our only spare, we motored back to the dock so the boat jigs could start splicing up a new set, as well as some spares. From a rigging point of view, a Grand Prix boat like Criminal Mischief is amazing. All of the lines and covers are made from the newest cutting edge materials. We were docked next the TP52 Vesper, ex-Quantum Racing boat and 2 time TP52 world champion, which was even more drool-worthy with carbon fiber/ceramic winches, bleeding-edge technology lines, and an extremely clean and ergonomic deck hardware layout.

The next four days of racing is a blur, but here are some highlights:

-Ripping downwind at 22 knots! Once the spinnaker was up, boat speed jumped faster than the knot meter could handle. 14 knots, 17, 19, 20, 21, 21.7, etc! The amazing thing is how smooth and controlled the boat felt at these speeds. 20 knots sustained became the norm, and 17 knots suddenly felt slow. In comparison, my SC27 Furthur peaked at 20.7 knots surfing down a 15 foot wave in a squall sailing to Hawaii, but our sustained downwind speeds were more like 12-14 knots. The Criminal has almost as tall a rig as a TP52, but is 7 feet shorter and much lighter. While this makes us struggle upwind, downwind the boat is a soaking wet rocket ship!
-Being in the back of the boat. I usually do bow, and was a little disappointed to be so far from the foredeck. But this meant I got to overhear all of the tactics and strategy in the back of the boat. And when Jay Crumb (strategist) and Jeff Thorpe (tactician) talk, you listen. Being the smallest boat in the IRC A division (but owing a 73 foot boat time around the course) and being offshore optimized with a light keel and no grinding pedestal for the mainsheet meant that the strategist and tactician had to put the boat in the perfect position on the bay in order to keep from being shot out the back of the fleet. Jay Crumb answered all of my questions and I learned a ton about playing the tides in San Francisco Bay, as well as the communication in the back of a Grand Prix boat. Plus, it was awesome how Rodney could call puffs, identifying the wind shift with a perfect count down to breeze on.

-Making new friends and reuniting with old ones. Sounds sappy, but it's true. I met a lot of great people and got to hang out with some old high school and college sailing friends. I'll definitely be able to fill up Furthur for her first Santa Cruz 27 one design regatta in October!

And here's a parting shot of Criminal Mischief, with photo credit going to Jeremy Leonard of Surf City Racing. Thanks man!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Where is Team Furthur Ocean Racing now?

I recently received a few emails about this blog, the SC27 and what is next for Team Furthur Ocean Racing. After Pacific Cup, Cody and I partied in Hawaii for 2 weeks straight, living on Furthur and eventually staying at one of our college friend's houses. We decided not to sail Furthur back to California due to some rig and electrical issues, the fact that it would be about 3000 miles upwind, and it could take us a month. So at the last minute we decided to ship her home, which entailed getting the trailer to the Pasha yard in San Diego, derigging Furthur in Hawaii, putting her on the trailer and towing it to the Pasha yard in Honolulu. Luckily, our friend Michael was going down to San Diego and towed the trailer to the yard for us. After we rented a U-haul pick up truck in Hawaii and getting Furthur on the trailer, we noticed that the weld of a major support beam on the trailer had ripped off and the whole thing was in serious risk of falling apart and dumping Furthur. Cody and I carefully towed her to the shipyard, where with the help of some very nice Hawaiian longshore men, we found a welder. With the trailer back in one piece, we left Furthur for her ship ride back to California.

After picking Furthur up in San Diego, I got to endure one more long, over-heating Jeep ride back to Northern California. I nearly had another tire blow out on the way up, but got her safely to a storage area. Sadly, she hasn't been sailed since. I went back to Eckerd in Florida for my senior, graduated in May and moved back to California. I now live in the mountains outside of Santa Cruz and it would be impossible to get Furthur up the house. So now I am looking for a dry storage yard near the water with access to a crane, but there is a one year waiting list in Santa Cruz Harbor! Too bad, I would love to race one design with the growing SC27 fleet there. Maybe Furthur will live at Brickyard Cove on San Francisco Bay. If so, I plan to race her in every single and double handed distance race to the Farallone Islands and around the bay I can attend.

Unfortunately Cody still has another semester to complete before he can graduate, so we won't be sailing together for some time. We are also expanding our sailing horizons but getting into skiffs, multihulls, and large ocean racers. I have been racing on Corsair 28R trimarans, F18 catamarans, and was asked to crew on the RP45 Criminal Mischief for the 2011 TransPac. Unfortunately, I badly broke my wrist a month before the start and could not sail with them. Luckily, I am still on their roster and my first event with them will be the Windjammer Race from San Francisco to Santa Cruz in September. I'll try to do a better job keeping up with this blog since it turns out that people actually read it!

Pacific Cup 2010

So it's been a year since the Pacific Cup and I never posted a race report! This blog was for class credit and with school over for the summer and a mad rush to get ready for the race, it fell to the way side. So here is the race report I wrote for Sailing Anarchy:

I woke up around 9:00 a.m. on July 5, 2010 in a blind panic. Cody and I had been working on Furthur until 5 a.m. the morning of our start and a one hour nap at a friend's house became a two and a half hour nap. Now we were seriously at risk of being late to the start. Luckily, we were mostly packed up and ready to go. After crazy drive from Sausalito to Richmond Yacht Club, Cody and I said goodbye to our friends and family, hoisted our new Ullman main for the first time, and set off for the starting line. In true Team Furthur style, we were about 30 minutes late to our start, but with 2070 nautical miles of race course ahead of us we took on the attitude of "better late than never" and charged under the Gate in the wake of our fleet.

As we headed out, the breeze continued to die and we changed from the #4 jib to #1 genoa. After the Farallon Islands, it started looking like a very long race. With a huge low sitting over the California coast, the wind evaporated and we began drifting for Hawaii. The wind got so light at times that the #1 would just collapse and it was faster to tie the clew of the #3 to the mast step and let the boat paddle forward in the huge, long period swells than try to sail.

The SC27 has a very heavy, beefy mast, and each set of waves would make the boat rock so badly any flow over the sails and foils would be lost. As I figured out the weather fax program, it became obvious that the usual "go south for more breeze" route would lead to doom and unmitigated failure. Instead, we would have to head west to pick up a wind band that we would eventually ride all the way to Hawaii. While I was trying to get my head around this and forget everything I had learned about navigating the Pacific Cup, an albatross came out of the no where, circled Furthur three times, then flew west. That sealed the deal about which way we would go.

By day 5 we were reaching with the #3 and a reefed main and on day 6 we finally had breeze at the correct angle for Hawaii and set the "Max Runner" spinnaker. The clouds parted for a few hours, Santa Cruz 27 was sliding down the wave faces in true West Coast style, and we had finally begun our sleigh ride to Hawaii. Our goal was to catch our friends on Moonshine, who we nicknamed the Gypsies (think Borat) for the duration of the race. Even though we owed them time, Moonshine had just launched off the start and was leading the Doublehanded 1 fleet.

The first night of surfing with the kite up was just a taste of what was to come: constant cloud cover and no moon. It would prove to be a very dark race.

The upside was everything on board was working except for the battery charger, but with such a small electrical load and large batteries we could make it to Hawaii without running out of juice. Our instruments consisted of 2 handheld GPS's, a compass that was almost impossible to read at night, and the Windex which was perfectly illuminated by the LED masthead tricolor. Around 9 knots, the boat suddenly feels like it is on rails. The helm is lightly loaded and precise, almost like it has power steering. The faster she goes, the better she feels, but the steering groove gets more and more narrow. As our top speed records climbed into the high teens, Furthur stayed true to her roots and felt just like a mini-sled. Linking surfs between multiple waves became common, though it was very physically tiring. Before the race, I installed two clutches and cheek blocks for the spinnaker sheets, allowing the guy to be clutched off and the spinnaker sheet cross-sheeted to the weather cockpit winch. As the boat came over the top of a swell, the driver would pump the vang to initiate the surf, then steer down the face while "banjoing" the spinnaker sheet to keep the kite full and give a little more power from a pump (if it wasn't too highly loaded). Steering up to stop the bow from burying into the back of the next wave and keep some some heat on to climb over it, you would have to ease the vang to unload the rudder and help keep the bow up while also easing any banjoed spin sheet as the apparent wind shifts aft. Let the boat climb over the back of the next wave and repeat the cycle. Wave after wave, mile after mile, 2 hours on watch, 2 hours off watch.


Our max speed during the race (the fastest I've ever gone on a sailboat) was 20.7 knots and I was driving in total darkness. Furthur no longer felt like a sled, instead she was bow up and flat out planning like a sport boat. The waves were about 12 feet and the only warning of their presence was the glow bioluminescene and the sound as their crests broke. Then the bow would drop like the start of a roller coaster ride, the bow wake breaking well aft of the shrouds and as high as the boom on both sides, creating a bioluminescent tunnel. Approaching the trough, the bow wake would slide all the way forward to the headstay fitting, spray still flying away from the boat in a giant white-green V. The groove became so narrow there was no way to drive for two hours straight without the risk of a serious wipeout and carnage, so Cody and I decided to downshift to the #3 poled out. We were still surfing in the mid teens and headed DDW straight for the finish. At dawn we reset the spinnaker, knowing we may have lost some ground but succeeded in keeping the boat in one piece.

The only really bad crash we had was between two squalls at twilight. I had been on watch for about 15 minutes when I felt the tale-tale cold air of a squall. Right as the pressure came on, I dropped in on the steepest wave of my life. It honestly lifted my stomach like going over a bump in a car at speed. The SC27 has really low freeboard and a rather narrow bow compared to other ULDB's; we were used to the foredeck occasionally being covered in green water. On this wave we just augered straight into the bottom of the trough. Completely blowing the vang usually unloaded the boat enough for the bow to pop up. This time it had no effect whatsoever. Immediately blowing the spin sheet completely off the winch as I started standing more on the aft bulkhead of the cabin than sitting in the cockpit, I felt the helm go light as a foot of water rushed over the cabintop. The foredeck was 6-8 feet underwater and I assume the rudder came completely out of the water. [i]Furthur[/i] stood on her nose, then fell over sideways in an epic, masthead-hitting-the-water round up. Everything was eased and I tried pumping the rudder to get the boat back under the mast, but I'm pretty sure the rudder was still out of the water. Between me yelling "Fuck fuck fuck this is not good!" and the water pouring over the cabin top, Cody popped out of the companionway right as the rudder caught a wave and we were whipped into a round down. The boom and mainsheet block missed Cody's head by an inch as the boom gybed. Everything was cluster-fucked on the port side of the boat (we were running on port pole), but we gybed back and tried to get the kite under control. This proved futile in the middle of a squall, so we ran under main only and cleaned up the mess. Amazingly, nothing broke during this almost pitch-pole wipeout. This is truly a testament to the design and build quality of the old Santa Cruz Yachts. As newer boats broke and retired or had to limp to Hawaii, this a 30 year old, structurally stock SC27 just took a beating and kept on hauling ass.

Our only real breakage happened in one night when the wiring for the masthead tricolor at the mast base got corroded and the tricolor went out. This is the only way to see the windex at night, so Cody had to drive through a sqaull in total darkness while I tapped a flashlight to the backstay. Then the wire bridle on our spare aluminum pole broke (the carbon pole's center lashed D-ring was slipping and I was in the process of making it a new bridle), so I just attached the foreguy and topping lift to the pole end. Lastly, the tiller headstock had started slipping on rudder post and it took all my strength to torque down on the bolt with a set of vice grips.

By this point of the race, it was obvious that Moonshine had run away with the bullet in our division and it became a fight for second place between us and the Cal 40 Nozomi. Though 13 feet longer than us, we owed them 3 seconds a mile, which works out to 1 hour 43 minutes over 2070 miles. Nozomi was still leading us; Cody and I knew that we would have to hard all the way to the finish in order to correct out ahead of them. That 30 minutes lost at the start was beginning to weigh heavily on our minds. It was a drag race to the finish and we concentrated on maximum speed and VMG, while keeping the boat in one piece. Coming into the finish at 1 am, we knew it would be neck and neck. Nozomi was still out there, but how far back were they? 30 minutes? 3 hours? We ended up too busy after the finish to even have a chance to sweat it out.

On the second to last day of the Pacific Cup, I noticed about a foot of bolt rope had pulled out of the mast track and the rest of the main was at risk of zippering out of the mast track. Armed with some Dyneema and a climbing harness, I climbed while Cody steered and tailed me up the rig. With the headboard lashed around the rig, the main couldn't pull out any more. It also couldn't be lowered without another trip up the rig. I had this all planned out for after the finish, but I wasn't expecting to finish in the dark and suddenly be so disoriented with some many lights after almost two weeks at sea. Our escort boat was late, but we had our own problems to deal with. After dropping the kite, Cody reached off and I went up the rig one last time to free the main. Right as I touched back down on the foredeck, Cody yelled "Was that a breaking wave?!?" Still tied to a halyard, I dove for the GPS in the cockpit. We were in 8 feet of water on the windward side of the famous Kaneohe Bay sandbar. Cody headed up quickly as I whipped in the mainsheet, but we had to sail out and a round several sets of breaking waves. Once we were able to find our escort boat, we began what seemed like the longest sail up the Sampan Channel. We were required to motor into the harbor as part of the safety inspection, so after wrestling the heavy 6hp Tohatsu from its cave under the cockpit we completed the final leg of our voyage to the dock. Furthur passed her post-race inspection with flying colors, and when Cody and I stepped onto the dock after racing for 13 days and 17 hours I felt like we had just summited Everest. We were the youngest crew to have ever raced in the Pacific Cup and in 2nd place in the DH1 division. Nozomi finished about three hours after Furthur, allowing us to correct out just in front of them.

The 2010 Pacific Cup was the most fun I have ever had sailing. There is nothing better than a 2000+ mile sleigh ride in a light boat with one of your best friends! I'd like to thank everyone who helped Team Furthur achieve this record and podium finish.

Specifically:

My boss and friend Brian Malone, who backed my hair-brained scheme from the beginning and helped me gather support. He is the owner Speed Merchant Services, a mobile rigging company, and gave me the industry discount on parts before I was even his employee. He also taught me almost everything I know about rigging, which was crucial in the refitting and preparing of Furthur for Pac Cup.

His wife Kat is also amazing, she helped organize a fundraiser for us at the Davis Island Yacht Club in Tampa and was my professor for a documentary blog I kept about this project as an independent study at college.

Everyone at DIYC who helped us along the way, whether lending us tools, buying my photographs at the fund raiser, or just giving some words of advice and praise.

Chuck Skewes and the Ullman Sails San Diego Loft. Cody and I met Chuck in Hawaii after doing the 2008 Pacific Cup on a Henderson 30. Almost everything broke, we got last place, but he recognized our accomplishment and what we had learned through the ordeal. When we told him the beginnings of our plan to do the race double-handed in 2 years, he promised us a killer deal on sails. True to his word, he built us great sails at a great price. When our only new spinnaker being made of donated cloth wasn't going to be ready in time, Chuck used the combined forces of several Ullman lofts to build us a kite in 24 hours! Truely awesome! His friend Andy of Northwest Rigging and a fellow SC27 owner also lent us a 3/4oz kite for the race, which we used quite a lot.

Patrick aka Stinky of Santa Cruz Sails for offering to build us a spinnaker for free if we could find someone to donate us the cloth. The dude didn't even know us, but went out of his way to help us before the race. Ultimately, the cloth came too late for him to build us a kite before the race, but he is still putting it together free of charge this winter. Thanks man!

Jeremy Leonard of Surf City Racing for sponsoring us the spinnaker cloth. Even though it came too late for us to use in the race, it was still such a generous offer in this economic recession. Jeremy is a great guy, a true anarchist, and I can't wait to bust out the Surf City Racing kite!

Doghouse, who lent us his satellite phone and all the necessary equipment to make it work and be race legal! Thank you!

Wash, who lent us his liferaft. He even dropped it off to us at RYC on SF Bay, but he lives in Long Beach. We could not have done the race without this crucial piece of safety equipment.


All of my friends, especially Sheehan and Michael. Sheehan put up with a lot of my bullshit getting the boat ready for this race, but she still flew up from her summer job in San Diego to help Cody and I get Furthur ready in the mad pre-race scramble. Tweek has been there for Team Furthur for a long time, from letting us crash at his place, convoying across the country, and towing the trailer down to SoCal for last minute shipping arrangements. Thank you all!

Rob and Rowena of Nozomi, thanks for the great competition on the water and great drinks in Hawaii!

Dylan and Rufus, the crew of Moonshine, who shared as many of their Gypsy secrets with us as they could. If it wasn't for your suggestion of bringing a spinnaker net, we would have destroyed every kite before we got half way.

Synthia of Santa Cruz Sails, for loaning us her storm sails and spinnaker net. She's done several Pacific Cups, from DH on her Hawkfarm 28 to fully crewed on a Schummacher 50.

My parents, for teaching me so much about the water, putting up with a project boat squeezed next to the house for 2 summers, being my shore team, and helping me get to the starting line.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

We made it to California

Cody and I made to California late Monday night in the Jeep with Furthur in tow after leaving Florida on the previous Tuesday. Before leaving, we had to pack our dorm room filled with random stuff in 3 days, and I to pulled the rear axle in the Kappa (our dorm) parking lot to adjust the pinion angle.

Thank you to everyone who attended our send-off party at the Davis Island Yacht Club and we appreciate your generous donations to our campaign! We hope you enjoy the artwork and will come back with more stories and photos in the fall.

I will post a full write-up of the cross-country delivery with photos soon, as well as keep a log of all the prep work we are doing before the race.

Monday, May 10, 2010

SunCoast Race Week Recap

One month ago, Team Furthur Ocean Racing was competing in SunCoast Race Week, a 3 day regatta of point to point distance races between three yacht clubs around Tampa Bay. Our preparations are best described as hectic, but we got a lot of things from the list for Pacific Cup checked off. This included replacing the spectra soft hanks with metal hanks, a new tiller, and mesh bunks. The crew was comprised of Cody and myself, along with three of our friends from Eckerd: Dan, Nigel and Pete. Their sailing experience was minimal, but they were all athletic and quick learners. By the end of the regatta, we were functioning as a tight-knit, competitive racing crew

On the first day, we were the last boat to leave the docks. The sky was gray and looked like rain, but at least there was wind. I hadn't made it to the skipper's meeting the night before because I was delivering Furthur, so we aimed for the Race Committee boat with the 2 horsepower outboard screaming at full throttle. Luckily, they had our packet and handed it to us as we cruised by to check in. With the sailing instructions in my hand, I threw the tiller to Cody and dove below decks to program the course into the GPS. Meanwhile, the crew got the main and #1 jib up and the motor stowed. Finished with the GPS, I came back on deck as the Spinnaker A fleet start gun was fired. Or so I thought.

Realizing that all the spinnaker classes were started together, we gybed for the starting line and crossed it about 2 minutes after the fleet. With the spinnaker up, we were quickly gaining on the stragglers, including our closest-rating competitor, a Frers 30 named Salty Pause. On a PHRF random leg course, they rated 135 and Furthur rated 138. This allows for a 3 second gap
for every mile of the course between their finish and ours. If we finish within that time, we beat them on "corrected time".

At the first mark, I tested the skill of my crew with a windward douse. After walking everyone through the steps of the maneuver and what each person's responsibility was, we went for it. The douse went so smoothly that I over estimated the distance needed, and we had to sail with just the main and jib for 50 yards before heading upwind. Upwind, I was finally able to adjust the backstay and vang instantly, which allowed me to keep the the boat in the right groove.
The Santa Cruz 27 has a large foretriangle and is most of the power upwind comes from the jib. I was finding new gears in the boat, mostly from backstay tension affecting headstay sag.

Tacking on two lifts kept us in-phase with the wind shifts, and we maintained our gap on Salty Pause, while keeping a large cruising boat from rolling us. Downwind again, we gave chase to Salty Pause and significantly closed the distance between us. Furthur was right on the edge of surfing; with a bit of chop, the right steering, and a good pump on the spinnaker sheet, she would break loose. Two gybes later, we were dousing the spinnaker at the next mark, right on the tail of Salty Pause.

The next leg was upwind in chop, and here the heavy Frers 30 made its comeback against the ultra-light Santa Cruz 27. Still within striking distance, we rounded the next mark. The next course was a "water-line drag race"; with both boats sailing in displacement mode, the longer Frers would be faster. To add insult to injury, Salty Pause was able to carry their spinnaker on this leg, but the apparent wind was too far forward on Furthur to even carry the chicken kite.

With the wind dying, we turned the last mark and began slowly beating upwind to the finish. In the light breeze, the Santa Cruz 27 was faster and we began creeping up on the Salty Pause. The wind completely evaporated as the sun began to burn through the clouds. I knew that the sea breeze was fighting whatever wind we had, and would eventually fill from the west. Also, the tide was ebbing, and the strongest adverse current would be in the shipping channel on the east side of the Hillsborough Bay. Cody called the last puff on the bay and we tacked into it to head west.

Waiting for the sea breeze, we watched Salty Pause keep going east, chasing the receding pressure. After almost an hour, we saw the water at the edge of MacDill Air Force Base turn dark with ripples from the sea breeze. As the first puff hit Furthur, she jumped forward. We were the furthest west boat by a long distance and the first to get the sea breeze. While we were sailing with the sheets eased and charging for the finish, all the boats on the east side of the bay were still fighting the current in no wind. We finished 9 minutes ahead of Salty Pause, which automatically had us correct ahead of them. This put us in second place for our division, with Semper Fi, a well sailed J/29 in first. They were far enough ahead to finish before the wind died. Regardless, beating a faster boat with nicer sails across the line was a great feeling. After docking at the Davis Island Yacht Club and cleaning up the boat, we started a trek to 7-11 to buy more beer.

With the finish at a different yacht club each day, most boat owners and crew find SCRW a logistical nightmare of driving and lodging. To overcome this, we took advantage of the Santa Cruz 27's cruising amenities, as well as pitching a tent behind some boats in the dry storage yard. Exchanging the three free dinner coupons for plates, I loaded them with food at the buffet for my crew. Over dinner and a few beers, we talked about the days racing, our strong points, and how we could improve. Some friends from Eckerd drove out to DIYC and we had a nice little party.

Team Furthur at DIYC.

Cody and Pete enjoying the buffet.

Pete and Dan guarding the booze.

Sunset at DIYC.

Day 2 brought gusty wind from the north, perfect for a sleigh ride down the bay to Bradenton. We were the last boat off the dock again, but at least we knew where we were going. I started conservatively, maybe too much, but I didn't want to get a bunch of dirty air from the bigger boats. Unfortunately, the 1.5 oz spinnaker was ripped on the set, but we weren't set up for peels and dousing would be too slow. I hoped the kite would hold as we locked into Salty Pause's wake and surfed it to the next mark. They wouldn't let us get around them, so we stuck on their tail. The course to the next mark was deeper and we got ready to quickly douse the ripped 1.5 oz for the .5 oz spinnaker. It was the top of the wind range for the .5 oz, but we needed to fix the 1.5 oz. The sail change went smoothly and we hardly lost any distance on Salty Pause. With Nigel's help, I fixed the 1.5 oz with sail tape, while Cody drove and coached Pete on trimming. The repair was completed, we changed back the 1.5 oz kite, and locked into the groove to catch Salty Pause.

Total concentration.

Pump Nigel!

Dan takes a turn trimming the spinnaker.

Lunch break.

In sub-planning conditions, the Frers 30 is faster than the Santa Cruz 27 downwind because it is longer and has more sail area. Knowing we couldn't beat Salty Pause if we just followed them, I called for a gybe and we headed to the middle of the bay in search of more wind. We found more pressure and swell, and Furthur began to surf. Everyone had been taking turns trimming, while Cody and I traded driving. Knowing these were our conditions if we sailed right, I took over driving and Cody trimmed. Cody pumped on each wave and I drove down every face I could surf. Our efforts were rewarded with boat speed; Furthur was pushing 10 knots on every surf. We were ahead of Salty Pause going under the Sky Way bridge; our next goal was to beat Semper Fi on corrected time. Watching them finish and douse, I figured it would be close, but wasn't sure we would make it.

A little surfing action.

Getting the inside overlap on two cruising boats as we rounded the last mark, I knew the last leg was make or break for us. With the pole just off the forestay and everyone hiking on the weather rail, Cody and I worked together to keep Furthur charging for the finish. We finished ahead of Salty Pause, but none of us knew if we got Semper Fi on corrected time.

The J/29 Semper Fi finishing 11 minutes and 10 seconds ahead of us.

Team Furthur charging for the finish.

Salty Pause, the Frers 30.

At Bradenton Yacht Club, we mingled with our competitors and enjoyed the free beer. The crew of Semper Fi joked with us, asking where we went during the race. Pete just responded with "We'll see." They left before the results were posted, and we beat them on corrected time by 5 seconds! This put us in first for our division and we kicked the party up a notch. Our quest that night was for whiskey, rum and fried chicken at Publix. With the supplies back at the boat, we celebrated our first win on Furthur before everyone passed out from exhaustion and sun burn. Any interesting observation is that crabs must love fried chicken; we threw the bones overboard and could hear the chatter of crab claws under the boat all night.

The next day, it was fun to watch the crew of Semper Fi check the results. They didn't seem too pleased. The wind was still out of the north, so after a short reach and downwind, we would be beating upwind all the way to the finish. Not great Santa Cruz 27 conditions, but we were ready to give it our all.

We got the the starting area with the rest of the fleet, sailed around with the #1 jib, then switched to the #3 as the wind built. I nailed the start and we stayed on Salty Pause's hip all the way to the first mark. The wind on next leg was too deep an angle for Furthur to be able to surf, and the Frers pulled away slightly as the wind got lighter. Realizing the #3 wouldn't have enough power to keep Furthur moving through the chop, I called for a change to the #1. Dan worked the bow and did a perfect job changing the jibs before we rounded the next mark. We had a good douse, now it was up to me to sail fast to the finish.

This was a perfect opportunity to sail Furthur at the top on the #1 genoa's wind range and tweak the trim for power and control. Jib cars back, vang on, playing the traveler and backstay, and driving the waves kept us charging. At the Sky Way, we were even with Salty Pause, but sailing a shorter distance to the finish. As we got closer, they fell behind and we finished ahead of them for the third day. I knew that Semper Fi got us, the J/29 loves sailing upwind in chop and deep angles downwind, but we locked in second place.

Finishing Day 3 after a long upwind beat.

SunCoast Race Week was without a doubt, one of the most fun regattas I've ever sailed. It was great to be skippering my own boat with my friends as crew. Everyone had a great time, we learned a lot, and finished very well.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

DH Sailing

Up the rig flying the spinnaker

Don't worry mom I have a harness on!

Self portrait

Cody at the helm


The new deck hareware setup. Note that almost of the control lines aim at the driver so they can be adjusted without anyone else on deck.
The sun over St. Pete

The view from above

Peace man

Sailing toward Egmont Key

Leading the charge, bagel-in-hand

Space Commander reporting for duty

More downwind practice

Photos from the mooring field

Here are some photos I took while living on Furthur. The first 3 are long exposure night photos I took for my Studio Critic class, the rest just give you an idea of what life is like onboard.

On the foredeck

Eckerd in the background.

Looking out my back door

Chart table and the Captain's Quarters

Breakfast of Champions

View from my bed

Sail storage

Furthur with Arthur's boat Platypus off the bow and Eckerd in the background

Jujubean the dingy!