And it seems like everything went well!

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

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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!!!

If we ain’t winning, we’re having FUN!!!!

From Ted after the Armed Force Day regatta 2009…

Thanks soooo much!!!

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