Yee-haw

It kind of dawned on me yesterday that our season is nearly over. Shields fleet 3 has only 1 more day of series racing, which always seems like not nearly enough time on the water. Thats kind of sad, but the good news is Peanut locked up the season championship yesterday with 3 races to spare. We currently have 18 points, dropping our two 4's, 150 is second with 44 dropping 2 12's, and 130 in third with 47 dropping a 9 and an 8.

I started the day pretty nervous, as all the forecasts seemed to be saying things like 20-25kts, and even called for a 7 ft waves at one point. 7 feet?! I've sailed in that only a couple times and it's tough for the RC to stay put, much less Shields to move around. If racing was called it's not exactly the end of the world, except our crew was travelling pretty far! Brian Shaw came in from Urbana, which is a couple hours away, and Bam came in from New York! We had a backup plan (see the submarine at Science and Industry museum) but it would still suck to fly into town for less than 24hrs, to race, and spend the day on shore. All was fine in the end, and the forecast was quite a bit lighter than 25kts. The pumping station met cam said 23, but I don't think I ever felt more than 16. The waves were big and weird, but not more than 4 feet.

First race started with a man overboard, which thankfully was resolved quickly and safely enough to be kind of funny. We tacked onto starboard with about 45 seconds to go, and in the tack Brian did a backflip out of the boat! He held on to the mainsheet, slid back behind the boat, and all I had to do was give a tiny luff to slow down and he was back on board, and got right into position. The front 3 crew were kind of yelling at me for going slow, and didn't even notice he had been in the water until someone said something like "why are you all wet??" Heh. Ok. We had clear air all the way, but got a bit right of phase and 63 and 150 looked good out left. Luckily we were just enough ahead that we converged at the mark and both boats had to duck us lest they foul by tacking inside 3 lengths (they would have had to leebow us which is a dicey move inside the zone) We only gybed once on the whole run, and exteneded a bit. At the leeward mark we were expecting a course change, but didn't see a boat with flags besides the RC boat. This later turned into a protest, as the first four boats that rounded (88, 150, 63 and 90) all didn't see a change flag/boat, but the next 4 say they did. I believe them that they did, but hope they believe me that we were looking, and didnt! We rounded the original windward mark in 1st, and finished first. The protest pretty much sucked as we didn't even hear it until 530, when it happened I didn't even have to say a word though, as it was thrown out as invalid (the protesting boat needs to fly a flag, and inform the protested boats as soon as possible) but I will say it was kind of nice to hang out with the other sailors for a while as everyone usually takes off after 1 drink. Upside to everything! If the jury had heard it, I think they probably would have thrown out the race as the leading group of boats all believed in the original course, and the trailing group said they saw a course change. It was argued that the SI's allow for a change of course without a signal, but reading that rule show it isn't relevant, as it only allows for changes of 5 degrees or less, and even then will use the original mark, which is the one we rounded anyway. I'm not certain, but I believe that mark only really allows for a slight reset of course for things like mark drift or an obstruction requiring a move of the mark. Not a situation anyone is really happy with, but i suppose it's interesting to see how the mechanics of how protests work (or don't)

Next race we made a mistake again going right, and probably tacked too much the first beat. We rounded in 3rd behind 63 and 150, and made tiny gains but not enough to catch up. Rounded the leeward mark in 3rd again, and got left but was covered by 63, while 150 continued right. We escaped 63's cover by tacking while they were working on the spinnaker pole, which is definitely a nice little trick to remember for later. With clear air we headed for the mark, and got the gift of all gifts, as a 20 degree lefty came through, but only for us and 63, and we took 150 lead away. On the run though, while we were chasing down 63, 150 got ahead of all of us by going to the good side of the course again! One design racings pretty sweet sometimes with all the lead changes. We stuck it out and got left of them again, and while 150 and 63 fought it out we passed both, but then got passed again about 50 feet from the finish by 63, we were second followed by 150. An exciting race for all, and it's nice to see the 63 crew gelling for nationals.

Next stop is Nationals, and after having the nat's crew together yesterday I feel pretty good going into it. We're taking the next couple regattas (fall, and Sheldon Clark) off to do other things, but after Nat's theres one more day of series racing. I really feel like this has been the best season of Shields racing I've ever had. In a nationals year everyone steps up their game, and it's showed in super close racing. We've had a good time, and enjoyed having the boat ready a lot earlier than last year! Lots of great crew has come together and I think it's been a ton of fun. Thanks guys!

Edit:

Notes on tune: We were at 48" on the headstay, which seems to be a decent compromise between getting sag in the light and flat spots and being able to tighten it up. The big tune trick I think is in the lowers. We were pretty slack on lowers, which is on purpose to put sag in the mast, which powers up the boat some. My big idea on tuning this boat is to power it up until you cant hike it flat. It's great but requires a lot of effort from the crew. They don't seem to mind me calling hike all day though. Driving wise I was pretty bow down, and never let the windward telltale lift, preferring to be punching through waves rather than pinching over them. The funny thing is that while our bow might point lower, we can climb higher than all the other boats. Thats one lesson that I read all the time but is still hard to do all the time: go fast to go high, which means keeping the bow down to get the boat up. Still weird to me but it works.