First race of the 2009 Women Series. Small turnout, we were only 4 boats, 2 non-spin and 2 cruisers. It was a duo between me and Rosanne on Liberty Call (C&C 30) in the non-spin class. It was fun because she’s the only competition I care about this year! We were only 4 on board (Nicole, Andrea and Deva from Skimmer) ok for non-spin. The course was 10.2 nm (start – 7S – 3P – 9P – 7S – finish), with a SW wind between ZERO and 15 kt…

We did an awesome start, first boat on the line for once! Then we called a tight ”STARBOARD” to Liberty call on the way to 7, but she rounded the mark before us. I passed her upwind and gained major distance on her on my way north. The winds were west and light, but they DIED on me on the east side of the river just passed marker 5. She stayed more west and kept just enough wind to catch-up and pass me like I was not even there. I was so mad… damn wind! When the wind ressucitated it was too late, she was GONE! Then the wind picked up pretty good for the last part of the race and everyone’s effort made us gain distance on Liberty Call, but not enough. I owe her so much time (155 vs 180), I was cooked as soon as she passed me.

This series is going to be really interresting, thanks to Charlie for letting Liberty Call compete

What a surprise! The wind died in the middle of the day of the mug race (again). Who would have thought? The mug race is 38 nm long, but NO IT IS NOT THE LONGEST RIVER RACE IN THE WORLD! So they claim… Come on, get out of your coutry a little!

We left the dock at 7:45 am really excited because we knew there was going to be 3 other J30s on the race course!!! A first for us! Our pursuit start time was 9:04:20 same as Showoff, but the 2 others started 2 minutes earlier (Skimmer and Anarchy). We owe them 3 pins for having a class legal genoa #1 (163%), fair enough. The first few hours were slow, the current was against us and the wind was only partially cooperating. I had the bad idea to tack to the east side of the river just before the wind switched to the west side. Bad move. All other J30s were on the west side, going away… bye bye competition… (Erdem was snoring by then).

We were heading to mark B, slowly but surely, looking forward at a bunch of boats who were once sailing, but not really anymore. Skimmer, ahead of the pack, made it around mark B when all of a suddent, the last bit of moving air left us all  floating, unsatisfied. We used our momentum to slip in front of Anarchy through the pack and then dropped anchor like everybody else (while Skimmer was happily floating away in the right direction, probably wanting to moon us all!) It lasted what seemed to be forever… People started to swim while Erdem was stairing at the anchor line, wishing the sky to bring the wind back!!! He could not stand this, and so did I. Oh! A little puff on the horizon! Is it coming our way? No? Ah… This one maybe? Hum… not really hey… Well, we got one puff that was just strong enough to make Eric get his exercice! I thought we were gonna leave him behind! SWIM BACK NOW!!!!! (as Erdem is brigning the anchor back on board) Fiew! He made it while the puff lasted. Then we dropped the anchor again. Poor crew, they worked hard!

When the wind finally picked up for more than 1 minute in a row we hoisted the Rainbow spinnaker! In a sequence of gybes, zig-zag steering and 360s of the wind vein, we finally rounded the damn mark B in 4th position in our class, and 2nd position between the J30s. We tought our efforts towards mark A were good enough to discourage any remaining competition since none of them followed us to mark C. But in reality, they were probably all smart enough to know that they would not make it to the finish on time and called it early. I had no clue of the time, I was so thrilled by the wind being back, I did not care about finishing or not… we were SAILING!!!!!

The following hour of the race can be sumarized by a video :

We crossed all upcoming traffic from the south course, including in order: Ghost, Lilbot and Persistence. Good job all Then we started to see our people already coming back from mark C… Skimmer, Whisper then Risky Business… Oh my… We knew we had no chance to catch up, but hey, did it really matter? WE WERE SAILING! I was still very surprised to see that the committee boat was not at mark C to take finish times like last year. They should have known better with a day like this! Shame.

We hoisted Rainbow again for a nice and fast ride home. I called the Rudder Club (since the committee boat was not responding their VHF) to make sure the race was over, and sure enough the finish line closed at 8pm. The sunset was gorgeous, the weather was perfect, we were all happy anyway. We got back to the dock around 9:30 pm, talked about going to the RC for spagetti, but when I learned from Ted that NOBODY FROM THE NORTH COURSE FINISHED… I changed my mind. I was pissed for all those in front who made an awesome race regardless of the tricky conditions. They deserved much better. Doesn’t 56 years of organizing the same exact race give you enough statistics to know that when the wind dies for few hours, boats don’t make it to the finish on time? I guess my expectations were too high…

AND FINALLY WE PLACED!!!! 2nd, 20 sec. after Cheetah (J29) and 2 sec. before Skimmer (J30)… This was the J-Day

Looking at the forecast, we knew this was gonna be favorable for the Js. Pretty much a North-South course with an East wind around 10 kt. And the results proved it!

We started the day with about 5 minutes of engine power, then “BEEEEEP” dead. Fiew! At least we were safely out of the marina! I thought I just ran out of gas last week-end, but no. It was more than that… Eric showed me how to drain the primary filter, and yes, it was full of gunk. I think getting the fuel low may have allowed residues to run up the lines and clog the filters. At least I hope it’s just that! Anyways, we had wind so we raised the sails and sailed towards Flemming Y.C. and I called the commitee boat (Allan – Bernoulli) to tell him I would register on the water. (I always have registration forms ready since it’s not the first time that we cannot make the skipper’s meeting! Ooops…)

The other detail we had to figure out was the spinnaker pole (remember, we broke it last week-end!). Tommy from Holland Marine fixed it on time for the race, but since Green Cove spring is not exactly next to Gainesville, I was not able to pick it up during openning hours. No problem for such nice people… They were racing onboard Cheetah, so they brought it with them! (This is why we let them win, they deserved it! haha! I wish I was not kidding…) So first trick of the day, sailing next to them to get the pole handed to us: Success!

Second trick, which we are starting to be really good at, sailing by the commitee boat to hand off our check and registration form! Nice job Ted, they were not even scared!

Third trick, one of those that we were not expecting, Ghost wants to hand Nikki the trophy they got in the first race of the offshore challenge 2 weeks ago. So here we go again, Ghost is trying to catch up to our side, but we were a little too fast (hum…) for their main + engine. We were nice (we kept the mooning for later), we luffed the sails to allow them closer. Nikki got the trophy with the special note on it: GRIND NIKKI GRIND… it was their theme song, I guess…

Ok, the start sequence is almost going to sound, time for me to grab the helm. Ted is supposed to be my helmsman, but he’s too nice of a guy. He won’t push anyone out of the start line if he can!! Even when I tell him to!! What’s up with that? I’ve been pushed out of the line often enough to enjoy a little “up-up-up!!!” with no shame But this race did not give me this opportunity. We had a somewhat good start, but we were a little too far west and behind eveyone else. Not that big of a deal, we got to the first upwind mark (G11) with the crowd… And that’s when we rocked! Right after the mark, every “super primed” spin boat raised their spinnaker. They were trying to go south in an East wind, but Julington creek always makes the wind go crazy, so as soon as we hit the upper part of the bay, it became a close reach! Everybody fell way off in the middle of the river when we could hug the shore (less current) and reach high. We gained on everyone there. We were the lead boat until Boom (Ultimate 24) passed us, maybe half a mile later (hey, no laughing, half a mile of lead for us is HUGE improvement!).

Anyways, we rounded the next mark (G15), came back north for the last time and rounded G13 to port. The last leg was the longest and most interresting one. Just like the wind veered north in the north part of the bay, it also veered south, south of the bay! That is when Cheetah raised his reaching chute and zipped by us. I swear, if we had been a little more confident that the winds would persist in that direction, we would have hoisted the rainbow spinnaker 1 minute earlier and would have maybe beat them too. We held this sail up to 60 degrees apparent, which was really surprising. The conditions were PERFECT… Not to mention the flat river, partly cloudy sky and 75F.

Getting closer to the finish, everyone dropped their spis and close hauled (pinching as high as possible) towards Bernoulli. By that time, all boats were pretty much lined up in their PHRF order. Boom (108), Cheetah (114), Salsa Verde (138), Skimmer (141), Ghost (171), Liberty Call (16?). Yeah, I know… Ghost is not in the right order, but let’s not talk about their PHRF rating… Hum, hum… Cal 9.2 on a lift. Let’s just say that we were so happy to beat them that we mooned them (to say thank you) as we were sailing back home and they were coming to the finish

The sail back was just as nice as the whole day. We were even able to sail right in the slip for the first time! Thanks to Ted for leading this maneuver!!! And thanks to Bob on Ox for offering his help once more!

Next week-end is engine fixing time! I really don’t want to miss a SAILING races because of an ENGINE problem. That would be horrible!

Thank you crew, you all did awesome! Now let’s keep it up!

Mag

What else would I want to do for my birthday? Easter sunday forecast: 10-15 from the E-N-E all day, sun and clouds, 75F… Let’s go sailing!!!

But it was quite an eventful day…
We raised the chute as we were sailing out of Julington, gybed and reached a little to head towards the bridge. When all of a suddent, BANG!!!! One of the pole up wire broke loose. Hum… Spinnaker was holding up fine with the pole way down on a beam reach! But we doused the spi in the companionway to try to temporairly fix the pole. When we were done with the knots and all, we realized we would not be able to hoist again, the wind had considerably picked up and we were now upwind. Oh well.
So as we are sailing towards the bridge, I hear the girls inside asking Tanguy (at the helm) to bare off to “stabilize” the boat… I’m thinking “WHAT THE HELL?? Is there a sisi scared of peeing under heal or what? We have to make the bridge guys! Come on!!!” And everyone tells me to just calm down and wait. I really had no idea what was going on. That’s when they came out with a cake, singing happy birthday What a crew, really! The candles blew with the wind as soon as they reached the edge of the companionway… Which is perfectly fine with me. Who needs to make a wish when they already have all they ever wished for?

Birthday cake underway = Easy candle blowing!

So we all ate Nicole and Heidi’s wonderful red velvet cake, which was supposed to be red and green, but the cooks are so health concious, their effort in substituting the fake coloring with health ingredients did not work as planned. The mint for a green icing was a good idea though! Thanks so much

We sailed to Epping forest marina, where we were dropping Graeme, who is another happy J30 owner. His boat, Skimmer, is the newer model. The one where you have an edge outside the cockpit to sit on when you’re healing! This edge also prevents the cockpit from getting wet… As Graeme could experienced yesterday! Although, even if we had been sailing on Skimmer, we would have been very wet anyway. Thanks to those 2 stupid sea-doos who showed us their talent at splashing sailboats. They even got the main sail pretty good.

On our way back from Epping, we saw something on the water… Looked like a bunch of lost surfers on their board. Oh no! It was a flipped catamaran, completely demasted with a broken hull and 4 people sitting on it. Hum… They were waving at us and asked us to tow them to shore. Even if Tanguy tried to convince me it was not a good idea, I decided to take the sails down and try to help. We got their line, but they felt like a rock. It was blowing above 15 kt, with white caps all over the river, and they wanted to be towed upwind to shore. Salsa Verde can barely move herself under power in these conditions. I once towed 2 kayaks, but that’s about all I can do, really. Then we saw a power boat (the “small boat, huge engine” type), so we waved and Erdem whistled really loud. They slowed down and looked at us, but didn’t change their course. We motored towards them and continued screaming and waving and whistling for what seemed to be forever! They clearly did not want to interact with us, but the good side won and they finally turned around, so we pointed at the cat and told them they needed a tow. As we got closer to them, we realized why they did not want to get involved… They looked like a bunch of underaged drunk kids. Sad, but they had more “help power” than we had. Luckily, not long after they got to the catamaran, 2 other power boats showed up to help. We guess they heard Nicole’s call on the VHF. From what we could see, it looked like they took the sailors on board and left the catamaran in the river. From now on, when sailing in the river, we will have to be careful not to run over crab pots AND broken catamarans…

The sail back was smoother, we still had the #1 and could have used a reef, but the rail needed to be washed anyway

As we approached the marina, we dropped the sails and started the engine, but it only worked for about 1 minute. Hum… “Guys! Get ready to drop anchor or hoist the main sail!!!!” I started the engine again, it worked for maybe 30 sec. Started it again, worked for 10 seconds… Ok, “DROP THE ANCHOR!” I’m thinking to myself, “Fiew! I have Boat US towing insurance, so I’ll be ok.” But for some unexplained reason, I thought Boat US towing and Sea Tow was the same. No it is not. There is a Sea Tow guy in my marina, but the closest boat US towing was busy and could have been there only in 2 hours. While I’m inside on the phone with these guys, my crew realizes that the anchor is not holding. We’re slipping, and we’re getting close to another boat at anchor… I thought the Fortress Anchor was supposed to be good on ANY bottom? Well not in the muddy St John’s apparently! But my crew are so awesome, they just hoisted the main and sailed away, I didn’t do anything… So when I was done with the telephone bullshit, I came out and thought, screw all this towing stuff, let’s sail in! But Bob on Ox, a C&C 33, came to the rescue and offered to tow us in. He explained his plan, it all made sens and sounded safe for both of us, so I accepted. Since the wind was going to be behind me as I get into my slip, I was affraid to be coming too fast. But the 4’7” depth of the mud in front of my slip quickly stopped my worries and Salsa Verde. We were lucky to be just close enough to the back piling to grab on it and pull the boat through the mud pile. Thanks to 3 strong guys on the bow, I would have had to swim to the dock with a bow line!

I should touch wood right now, but it seems like my only engine problem was fuel. I trusted my gauge too much. It said 1/8 left, and my thought was, if I only used 7/8 of a tank in ONE YEAR, I can use the 1/8 left for few more rides. NOT. I’ll need to check the filters next time to be sure there’s no clog…

This concluded my 28th birthday with excitement. It also concluded Tanguy and Gaëlle’s episode in Florida. I really appreciated having you on board this year, hope we can sail together again somewhere someday!

Mag

Salsa Verde and her 4 only crew (Jon, Erdem, Ted and me) available to race yesterday sailed out to Epping Forest in 15-20 kt from the NE. The sail there was longer than expected and the brown splashes of the St John’s were often over our heads. The clean bottom showed us high numbers on the lock! We were all positive that we would do great in that race! For once…

We missed the skipper’s meeting at Epping, but Rosanne from Liberty Call generously gave us the info. We had the #3 and the full main out. Right after the start, we had to gibe around marker 5… And that was the end of it. The main halyard splicing gave up on the hard gibe.

So we took the main down, the #3 down and hoisted the medium #1 for a fast sail downwind to Julington Creek. On our way south we were looking at the competition being slammed down with their spinnaker in the water when the strong gusts were hitting… Some more conservative went under jib only, still pretty fast! We saw up to 9.8 kt on the lock under #1 only!!! Fun and exausting day regardless of the poor racing performance…

Thanks to Cheetah (John and Bubba) for letting us use their lift while they were out sailing today!

On the way there, Nicole winched me up the mast so I could sand the sides of the sheeve box of the main halyard. It had been shaffing for a long time, and I should have done this before… Before the halyard was too scary to be hoisted on!!! Not smart…

We raised Salsa Verde out of the water to investigate the dirt situation… In brief, there was a lot of “gew”, algue, small blisters and some barnacles. Yes, some of them survived since last summer probably! How great! Nicole and I got really messy (especially me, I have to admit) scraping and scratching while practicing some adventurous climbing manuvers under the boat.

When we had covered most of what we could get to from the lift structure, I went and got an optimist to float under the prop, rudder and bow for some more yummy scraping. The ride along the dock in the optimist (standing up and pulling myself along the dock) was not as hard to do going than coming back in stronger wind and waves… A generous helper (Walter) came along to the rescue and pulled us all the way to the boat ramp. This unfortunately cost a few more scratches on the poor little boat each time a wave was just throwing us on the friendly barnacly pilings! But without Walter, we would still be there I think! Thank you

Salsa Verde seemed to sail much faster on the way back… Maybe the dark clouds behind us had to do with it?

Good news!!!
This year, we do not pay 3 pins for having a J+1 spinnaker pole! (I have no clue why) So our new rating is 138. There’s also something new to the PHRF certificate. We have a non-spin rating, which is 155.
Prepare for the season!!!! It’s coming soon!
Mag

Salsa Verde got a Corinthian award from FCSA (First Coast Sailing Association) for the 2008 fall series. I did not know what it was for, so I emailed Adam and here’s the explaination:

Magalie,
A Corinthian Award is given occasionally by the FCSA board at its annual meeting to recognize a particularly noteworthy newcomer to the racing fleet.  Even though Salsa Verde had several last place finishes during the year, she (you) was deemed to have an exceptional attitude toward the sport of sailing, and a promising future in local racing.  Salsa Verde deserves recognition by the membership, which the award provides.  Congratulations to you and your crew.
The last time a Corinthian Award was given was at the January 2004 annual meeting.
Adam

Good job Salsa Verde team and thank you so much FCSA for the recognition.
Salsa Verde’s crew had an awesome time this season, every race day was a good day. Even when we lost, we came back to the dock with a smile on our faces, we had learned something and had fun doing it!
I feel very priviledged to race with all of you, local experienced sailors.
Thank you for keeping local racing accessible to all of us!

Magalie

The tide was so low that morning that the bottom of the river was uncovered near the marina. The mud was trying to dry in the early sun. The dock was empty. I knew a few people who were going to do this race, I guess it was too early. I dressed up as if I was going skiing, and started preparing the boat. Installed my proudly home made lazy jacks and started to unroll the main sail into them. Wow, I was sweating after 2 minutes… So I removed some layers, I was not really going to ski anyway! This main is heavy, let me tell you that. Then I removed the intruments cover, the tiller cover and started the engine, with my other hands’ fingers crossed! It worked!!! Yoohoo!!!

At 8am, I was leaving the dock. Stuck in the mud because of the particularly low tide, it was not as pretty as usual. I managed to back up the wrong way (that prop pitch just wins over the rudder when mud is involved…) and u-turn around. That was the start of the adventure.

Winds were 10 to 15 kt out of the north turning to north east during the day. I thought hard about raising the sails to get some practice on the way to the rudder club. But motoring out there in an icesicle position, I had to remove my sailing gloves because the tip of my index and my thumb were frozen. When I put on the big mittains, the sailing option had frozen too. I kept looking back to see if anyone was following… no. The only other boat I saw was Ted, coming from the Navy Jax marina. We arrived at the rudder club at the same time. We were the first ones. Docking by myself at the rudder club was worrying me a little bit, but it went fine. As long as you line up that board against the mean pilling, nothing gets a scratch. Fiew!

Bill, who was in charge of the race, eventually arrived. The other boats too. We were 14 people registered. 3 of which were flying scotts and 1 lazer. At the skipper’s meeting, Bill announced that this was only the second time that a woman participated in the 18 years that this race has happened. The course was announced to be Start (E) – G5 – G7 – G9 – finish (E), all to starboard (approx. 8 miles). So everyone hurried to their boats, and here we went.

I motored off and raised my mainsail. Without a mast person, it takes some time and effort! I was able to raise it by hand until the last 2-3 feet, I had to winch the rest. Then the #3 jib, this one was much easier. I was so happy that the winds were strong enough for me to justify using the #3 that day! The #1 is so much harder to tack…

I made a few tacks around the start line area to get comfortable. I was surprised how easy it was to tack that jib. I had learned a trick at the Christmas party the night before the race. Dave Whites told me an easy way to figure out which end of the starting line is favored. You sail on the line and trim your main perfectly, then you turn around and sail on the line the other way around without adjusting your mainsail. If it is undertrimmed (luffing), the end in front of you is favored, if it is overtrimmed (too full), the end behind you is favored. Magic trick, I quickly figured out that the port end (the pin) was favored. Dave had also told me how the port starts are sometimes beneficial. I told him that I was not going to do it on that race because I did not think I would be quick enough at tacking in front of the crowd. Well, I did it anyway, just because there was too much traffic on the other end of the line. And it worked!!! I was the first boat on the line (almost over early, I had to fall off for a few seconds!) and I blew by everybody. I was ahead of the fleet for the first ¼ of the race. Then Whisper caught up with me because I went too close to the middle of the river where stronger currents were against me. I realized it while looking at a crabtrap… I hate them usually, but that day it was helpful! While we were heading towards G5, I was happy that Whisper was ahead, because I was not sure where the mark was. I had a GPS, but it was a little too far inside the boat. Whisper is faster than me on a closehaul. He was going away slowly, but he had his #1 genoa up. So when a good gust came along, he did not reach the main sheet quick enough, he rounded completely! His genoa popped the wrong way around, he was not able to come back. He had to let it go, tack and bring it back around. I’m sure he was not happy, this sail takes a long time to winch! I know because by the time he did all that, I had gotten closer and closer to him! I could almost see him sweat!!! Ok, not that much… but was I happy with my #3? Oh yeah!!! We tacked around G5 and headed to G7, then G9. This leg was a beam – broad reach. Sometimes I think I was gaining on him, sometimes not… It was tight. But the last leg, from G9 to the finish, was a running leg. That’s where he was happy with his #1… And I was not too fast with my #3… So I he gained enough on me to win… by 2 minutes 44 seconds. Not bad for my first single hand race! (Whisper is a C&C 38, with a handicap of 114, Salsa Verde’s handicap is 135. So he owed me 21 seconds per mile…) clic to see results.

Whisper and I sailed back to Julington Creek together on a broad reach under the nice warmer afternoon sun. It would have been fun to wait for the results at the Rudder Club, but the rest of the fleet was so far behind I would probably have had to come back after sunset! And I don’t mind docking by myself, but it’s safer in daylight Plus, why put the sails down, and up, and down again… too much work…

This day was a memorable one for me and for all the little muscles that I feel now and did not even know existed! Thanks mother nature for such perfect sailing conditions. The cold morning just made it a better adventure!
Watch for me next year… I’ll be prepared!

Magalie

VIDEO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Part 1 : Preparation

Part 2 : Racing

Today was the first day in a looooonng time that I spent alone on Salsa Verde. I needed to fix and upgrade some stuff. I changed one battery, I cleaned the engine compartment, I finally installed the new spinnaker halyard that Joey and Marise gave me, I installed home made lazy jacks (for next week’s single hand regatta!!!) and I figured out a simple “auto helm” system… I also tried to install the table top “u shaped rails” under the cockpit, but then I ran into some tecknical problems… So I decided to go watch the Christmas Parade that was going on in Julington Creek! Power boats all decorated with Christmas lights and music, riding slowly in circles inside the “bay”…. It was really funny, they do this every year apparently. Later, to make my evening even more special, I watched fireworks from the galley while eating my chef Boyardee Ravioli What a day! I hope the Gators won…

Sorry for the mess: Lines drying in the sun!