A beautiful day despite my early morning mistake… (Running aground and disqualifying us by starting the engine) Oh well, still climbing on the learning curve

From Erdem’s iphone, our race track:

View Larger Map

Here’s a few pictures of our “race” back home! Congrats to Passion for their nice lead and welcome to the St-John’s river

The forecast was not that exciting… 100% rain! And for once, the weathermen were right!
I loaded all the rain gear and long underwear that I could find, extra hats, gloves, socks, mits (!) whatever could keep me warm… I did not want to waste any fun! Left the house at 7am after a long but restless night of sleep.

Salsa Verde was patiently waiting on me at the dock. I loaded all my gear, put on the first set of clothing, started the engine and left the dock under a light morning rain and consistent NE winds. Ted was there to welcome me on the other side of the river. Thanks for the docking help! That would have been tricky…

Ten boats showed up, quite surprising for such weather. Also surprising to see very few boats from last year. We delayed the start by half an hour to allow two boats to show up… We were positively thinking “hey, maybe the rain will stop by then!?” No luck. In the meantime though, my cheering crew showed up! Matt and Andrea had convinced a few crazy Salsa Verdians to come sail with them and watch the race. Well, those people are hard core, let me tell you! Eric, Jon, Nicole, Ulf, Matt and Andrea sailed across the river just to dock and chill around all day with the race committee, screaming green and spicy encouragements to me as I was crossing the start and finish line! What a crew…

So the race…
After listening to Ted’s wise advice “better safe than sorry”, I hoisted the #3 and prepared the #1 on deck… just in case. This year I was lazy, I hoisted the main sail at the dock with Allan’s help to save some time and energy. Which was a good thing… you wil read later.
So there I am just before the start with my main and #3 up. I can tack easily and have a better range of visibility. After all, the only rule in that race is: DON’T HIT ANOTHER BOAT! So yes Ted, good idea!

This year, everyone had to do a starboard start since the committee “boat” was on the dock and there is no water nearby! Too bad for me, I could have used a little practice with port starts (Just kidding Rosanne ) Anyway, I somehow managed to hear the start sequence signal and timed myself a decent start; 4th boat on the line (something like that?) because I let the trimaran some room, too scared to hit him! Hey, 30 feet is a long way for a far sighted person like me with rain in her glasses…

And then I hear “GO AVOCADO WARRIOR” from the dock…

(video from Nicole)

So I’m on my way upwind, well in the pack, but I see Skimmer, the other J30 with his #1… and boy, he’s gaining on me slowly. I can’t let that happen! I gotta hoist my #1 too, it’s not that windy afterall. Well one thing I did not do ahead of time (other than not setting up the camera, sorry guys!) is I did not have another set of sheets. So I secured the helm (well, kinda) and ran forward to remove the lazy sheet from the jib and tie it to the gennoa on the port side. To explain the details: I’m on port tack and the genoa is ready to go in the port track of the foil, on the next tack! I think I’ve got it all figured out, I’m gonna tack really slowly so I can hoist while tacking and as soon as my genny will be up, I will take the sheet and just let the jib sit into the genny (because it does not have a port sheet anymore) and then as soon as I’m stabilized and up to speed, I wil take the jib down and tie the other sheet to the genny. Right? Makes sense no? Well… It did not exactly go like that. Some kind of problem occured when the genny was only half way up. Even if I had saved all the energy I could, I did not have the muscles to overcome the friction that the two sails were having on one another while flapping all over the deck and in iron! Actually, I’m not even sure why it did not want to go up anymore. I pulled and screamed and gave it all I had, I really felt like I was missing a mastman! So I looked at my speed: 1.2kt and I thought “SHIT!” I have to keep going! So I ran forward again and took the genny down, untied the stupid single sheet I had on and retied to the jib so I could finally finish that neverending tack. It felt like an hour had gone by, probably because I was more tired than I had ever been after 1 hour of bicycling or swimming. Anyway, enough complaining, the race continued, and now Skimmer was ahead of me. Not by much, luckily!

The next exciting moment was soon to happen!! When I tacked again on the port tack, surprise surprise… my genny was all over the deck and was catching like an umbrella in the wind! “SHIT” again, I ran forward to try to minimize the mess. I pushed and pulled peices of sails under the only sail tie I had, but everytime I tried, it would rather pop in the wind than stay calm on the deck… of course! And needless to say that time is precious with a bungee cord type auto-pilot! So I gave up again and continued on torwards the upwind mark. Just in time to dodge the trimaran who called me a “starboard”… that was a close one… if my heart was not pumping fast enough by then, this would do it!

Windward mark. I rounded just in front of the trimaran, maybe 30 seconds after Skimmer. Now I’m straight downwind… with my #3… This can’t be. Let’s give this #1 another chance to behave. Luckily, I hoisted the #1 ALL THE WAY UP this time, with a little winching help at the end. I had always wanted to do this: Keep both front sails wing on wing. I thought about it last year on the last leg behind Whisper. If I had had my #1 ready to hoist, that might have been enough to win the race, but I did not have it last time. NOW! YESSS!!!!! I did it I kept them both flying while Skimmer was desperately trying to get some speed off his funky spinnaker, hoisted by the clew! Ha! Back to his roots, that’s the way it’s supposed to be hoisted down there in S. Africa! I was happy to see that other people do this kind of thing sometimes!!! Thanks Tommy!!!
Ok, but the rise of happiness did not end here. It got even better when Tommy almost rounded marker 11 while taking down the dizzy spinnaker. It was my turn to say “bye bye” and take off! At this point we had our own little race, all the faster boats were gone, and Benedek was chasing them with his, properly set-up asymetrical spi… And we were watching from behind, as far as the rain would allow us to see.

At some point later I had to drop the #3 and jibe the #1 to reach a little more towards the last mark, 13. Before jibing G13 the winds pick-up a little, and I knew in the last upwind leg I would be overpowered with that sail, but it was short enough to handle. I had the main out, the backstay all the way in and let the genny drive me back to the finish line. Keeping an eye behind on Skimmer… I finished 4th in my class, 2.5 minute in front of Skimmer, which is my little personnal victory

Then I hear screaming again from the dock “WOOHOO GUACAMOLE!!!”

Benedek finished 1st overall after an awesome race, shaving everybody with his asym! Good job!!!!! Clic to see results

The rest of the day was awesome, like it is so well said in the movie “in the wild”: happiness is only real when shared. Thank you guys for being there, rain or shine! 2009 would not have been the same without you all!
Mag

And it seems like everything went well!

Reunion – first spinnaker hoist! from Magalie Laniel on Vimeo.

`

PS: I finally found a place to post my video with music!!! Yoohooo! vimeo.com

What are we ready to get into to go cheer for Sanya and her secret plan? Rain? Thunderstorms?

On our way to downtown, we had a unique Florida summer thunderstorm experience. For about 20 minutes, we were in the middle of it, and even on that relatively narrow river, we could not see land anywhere around us! We had to sail with the compas… ON THE RIVER!!!!

This is a special race where each club of the region select 1 boat to compete in the spinnaker class and 1 boat to race in non-spin class. There were 10 boats total on a short start line ready for 3 races of 2 times around the windward-leward marks. All the most agressive racers were out there and the distance between the hulls was often reduced to the minimum. I wish I could have gotten more of it on tape, but unfortunately, since my poor camera got soaked in iced tea, it has not been very cooperative. Anyway, here’s what I got for a video :

Skimmer is the J30 that shows up to most races in Jacksonville. There are 7 (SEVEN!!!!) J30’s around the area as far as I know, we could have a class!! PEOPLE!!!!! COME RACE WITH US!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, he wanted wind for his birthday, he got more than what he asked for!

An image is worth 1000 words, so what about another video?

If you wondered why we were so far behind, it’s because both our spinnaker and spare halyards snap-shackles blew open when we hoisted the spinnaker… So after fishing the sail out of the water twice, we had a hard time re-hoisting the jib, but finally made it… And everybody else was broaching, but well ahead of us…

This season has been filled with new ways to loose a race, but since we always learned something, we are winners

Thanks guys, I love you all!!!!

This was the Women’s #2 race of the year. Nicole, Andrea, Helen, Joan and I left Julington Creek around noon to have time to scrub the hull on the way there. Well… The storms just came out as we did, so we thought: ” it might not last, let’s just do it at Epping later”. Conditions for the motor-sail were a little rough for even thinking about getting in the water. We were completely wet anyway, but in our foul weather gear!

We docked at Epping, registered and looked around to see when Liberty Call would show up… Hum… Unfortunately, no Liberty Call this time around. We were the only all female crew to race, therefore the only ones in our class. 4 other cruiser showed up: Kara Vela, Lothlorien, Incommunicado and Bernoulli. The rain and strong winds continued to beat through the marina as we were ”supposed to clean the hull” while waiting for the skipper’s meeting. Having no competition made us feel good about our lazyness.

The dock felt just like “home” since I was next to Lothlorien, Diana’s Baba 30 who is my neighbor at Mandarin Holiday. The difference is, because of the outgoing tide flowing through our slips and her full keel, she had the hardest time to get out of there and get to the race course. So we were stuck behind until the dock master came with a power boat to turn her boat around and free her from this docking nightmare. Fiew, nobody touched anything!

Good thing we had no competition, because we did not make it to the start line until 1 minute from the start! Oups… Oh well! Even with the barnacles still well attached we passed Kara Vela early on and led the race regardless of our bad tactical moves (ok Dave, we got it!). Rain, wind, more rain and more gusty winds made us take a reef. We were hauling ass upwind at above 8 kt and the main kept dumping more and more water on our faces in the cockpit. We could have shook the reef out on the last leg, but why the struggle when you just want to finish and get dry. Still, Salsa Verde got her first first place overall !!!

Epping forest dock master was kind enough to allow me to leave her there for the week, since the weather was horrible and we were racing out of FYC the following week. Thank you so much!!!!!

PS: no photos of this race… the camera would not have survived!

The week-end of May 30-31 at the Jacksonville Landing, in parallel to the tall ship festival was the HEART OF SAILING!

I was invited to participate by Graeme from Skimmer (J30) earlier in the week. I had no sailing plans, so I was happy to now have a good cause to go sail for! Luckily Ted volunteered to help me sail Salsa Verde Saturday… (While everyone else was gone camping!)

I motor-sailed Salsa Verde to the Landing Friday night, where I got a warm welcome from George and Graeme who waited for me after setting things up for the event. My ride with the tide, the genoa #1, my “now happy” engine and Ted’s chart plotter GPS (Thank you!!!!!) was the fastest of all the week-end, peaking above 8kt I left Julington Creek just before sunset and “landed at the Landing” 2.5h later.

It was nice to share pretzels with everyone and hear their stories! I also met Skip from the Schooner Mistress, the prettiest boat out there! The rest of the evening was loud… and so kept being the middle of the night! I thought I could go to sleep at 2am when the band stopped, but no, the radio came on for another hour! What do you do when you can’t sleep… You clean the boat!

Saturday morning while George and Graeme were being famous doing a TV interview, I had breakfast at the Landings and wondered around the heavy crowd and the big boats. When they came back, we had one family for the 10 am sail, so we went all together on Skimmer. There was not much wind at the rendez-vous but we managed to play the current to stay out of the way of the bridge. After a good long lunch we had 3 families for the 2 pm ride, so both boats went out for 2 hours. Then another tour was planned at 4 pm, but the people did not show up, so Salsa Verde took the first family available from the crowd. Everybody seemed happy about their experience, even if the wind was not giving its best exposure. All day we had the captain’s hat traveling from heads to heads, on whoever was at the helm… small hands to big hands! Water bottles and cookies were shared all afternoon while kids were wandering around exploring every little corners of my sailboat.

Clic here for tons of picture of the event

Bottom line, Congrats George for putting this together, and let’s do this again in the fall!!!

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…