Little Traverse Regatta Day 3 - Schizophrenia!

The start of this race was delayed until we had adequate wind. In this race I wanted to get to the right side of the line since it was favored. I had to tack when Bounder tacked to starboard and I did not see any holes behind him. This race finally had some heavier air from 16 to 20 knots. We managed to put away Ihnsanity and Jayhawker from leeward. Merlin and Perseverence tacked in front of us but we hung in there. I went to a #3 on the second upwind leg but it turned out to be the wrong choice. We seemed to be doing well with the other J120's with #3's but could not keep up with the ones with #1's upwind. We switched back to the #1 on the next upwind leg while doing well with Perseverence and Merlin. We passed Merlin while even with her on port on the downwind leg and Merlin came over on starboard to take us out to the corner for the pin. When they jibed back they put an hourglass in their chute and we passed in front of them. On the same leg we passed Perserverence because they had already blown their .6 oz spinnaker and were flying their .75 oz chute. At that point we stayed in front on the next upwind leg and overstood a little the mark in order to control P and not make an extra tack. On the next downwind leg Merlin was right behind us and we did a leeward takedown early to stay conservative. I figured if Merlin pulled down their chute well we would still be on the inside of the mark. Merlin had trouble pulling it down so we left them in the dust. At that point we just covered to finish first. We took our spinnaker down early and overstood the windward mark a little bit. I figured in both cases if the boat behind us caught up they would still have to go through our air. This race was won by near perfect crew work and the good advise of Art Le Vasseur. We managed to finish dead *ss first in PHRF D and the entire fleet. Totally opposite of yesterday. Like I said it was Schizophrenia!

After all was done we found out by this race if we beat Hot Ticket we would win the J120 Great Lakes Trophy. Unfortunately they had the forestay seperate and lost their rig. Not the way to win it but this was a wonderful race for us.

Result: 1st of 7 J120's, 1st of 16 PHRF D, 1st of 43 in entire fleet
Link: http://www.ltyc.org/regatta_results/2005/2005Fleet.HTM

Little Traverse Regatta Day 2 - Ugh!

We started this race in about 3 knots of air. We started towards the left side of the line. I had a couple of boats that were over early so they managed to gas us at the start. Hot Ticket was on our left so that forced us into Hot Tickets lane. From there it went from bad to really bad. We could not seem to catch the whiffs of air in any of the bay. We kept trying different lanes from the boats in front of
us and it just put us further and further back. In any case they pulled the finish line right after we finished. I think it was the worst race of the entire year.

Result: dead *ss last in the PHRF D

Little Traverse Regatta Day 1

This was a series of three races. The wind most of the time except the last one was under 2 knots.

The first race I tacked the boat to starboard soon before the start and it put us behind the line. I saw Perseverance tacked to port to get the left side of the line and he put him self way ahead of the fleet. We managed to get only a 6 out of 7th because we could not just get the wind.

The second race we were over early. I should of jibed the boat when over early to come back on port to go in the other direction. By dipping and staying on starboard all we did was kept us under 2 other boats. The only uplifting part of the race was on the last downwind leg we kept way to the lake side of the course were there was more wind and we managed to carry it in a half circle course to finish ahead of Jayhawker who was stuck in a hole in the middle of the course.

The third race we had a reasonably good start on the committee boat side of the line. We had agreed before hand that we would go to the right side of the course to get lift off the shore. We tacked under two boats to our right and went up that side. When all the other boats tacked back on port we were ahead of all of them. We should of covered Perseverance since he was the lead boat but did not because it was decided that we would cover the left boats. When we tacked back Perseverance managed to tack ahead of us where we were the second to round. Capers tacked back on starboard with us but we managed to get a little ahead of them to force them back. The next two legs we kept our position behind the red boat. On the last downwind leg we got behind Perseverence maybe a 1000 yards before the finish. He came up in anticipation of us rolling him. I saw that he was nearly parallel to the line and I ducked him and we jibed the main. We managed to finish in first by a few feet.

Results: 1st race 6 out of 7
2nd race 6 out of 7
3rd race 1 out of 7

Bayview Mackinaw Race - ver.21.6!

This race started to weather coming out of the Northeast at about 8 knots after a 40 minute delay. At the beginning we got a reasonable start. I went in on port at about 4 minute before the start and turned to starboard when the boats turned to starboard. I managed to get the favored right side of the line and was about 10 boat lengths at the gun half a boat length behind it. This allowed Flyin Irish and some other J120s to go to weather of us. This allowed Capers to get up to our windward side. We stayed a little to left of rhumb to stay away from the Canadian shore a little later on. Unfortunately some in our class stayed a little to left of us before Southhampton and we rounded in 5th with Hot Ticket 15 minutes ahead. After we rounded we went to .75 oz and code 0. We were averaging 11 knots when the wind picked up. About 25 miles out from Spectacle Reef we got gusts up to 26 knots. I was down sleeping when I heard a bang that did not sound good. Our 3/4 oz. chute blew and the crew was beginning to gather it up. Once cleaned up we went to our code 0 again. The wind picked up even more. When I was driving we got Carinthia up to 18 knots and I was estatic. Mike took over and we then did 21.6 for at least for a minute and a half. Previous to this the fastest I ever had the boat was 16! I guess after 21.6 that just does not seem as fast. 15 minutes later our halyard blew so I dialed the boat down to a headsail. When the wind slowed down a bit we went back to the code 0 where at this point we could see Hot Ticket to leeward. This reinvigorated us to really work on boat speed.
We stayed even with Ticket for a time but the loss of our 3/4 hurt us and they pulled slowly ahead. At that point the wind came out of 260 degrees and we were tacking with for miles and miles. Finally about 8 miles out we tacked towards Canada and Ticket did not cover. I knew that the wind coming our of the west the best place to approach the island would be from the north. Ticket chose to tack along Boblo. We kept waiting for HT to announce their finish but it did not happen right to our finish. Some one looked behind and saw Merlin finishing just ahead of Ticket. Apparently Ticket thought Merlin was Carinthia. This lucky break allowed us to sneak in.

One thing of note. The entire crew stayed up the last fifteen hours and did all that was neccessary to keep the boat moving including huddling on the windward rear quarter to keep the boat upright. Great job guys!

Crew: Rod Weston, Colleen Scoville, Lynn Kotwicki, Baker Keeler, John Harvey, Mike Badendiek, Nancy Caldwell, Ben Thorsen, Nathan Caspers

Result: 2nd out of 9 boats
Link:
http://www.byc.com/mack05/results-south.cfm?Class=J120&Class2=OD

Runup to Bayview Mackinaw

Rodney sent me an email regarding Robs Amsler's comments in the freep. I guess you can't win anything in the paper. Its got to be on the water!

"Merlin, owned by Robert Amsler of Clinton Township, won the J-120 class last year and will be a contender this year. But it will have some tough competition. "Our standard best competition has been Hot Ticket up through the years, but this year, there are two big guns that are coming on strong, Carinthia and Night Moves," Amsler said. "If I weren't betting on me, I'd be betting on the two of them and probably Carinthia, because they are both doing great jobs." "All are Detroit-area boats."

Here is an excerpt from the Detroit News -

"Lynn Kotwicki of Royal Oak will crew on the 40-foot Carnithia, which will sail on the Southampton Course. She said the women who sail the Mackinac race make their teams stronger. "You'll find that the boats that have women perform better, in my opinion," Kotwicki said. "I think there is a better chemistry on those boats. The women help level out the macho-ness of the guys. And plus, people don't realize what a deep experience this is. You're with a group of people, racing in sometimes tough conditions, night and day. You really get to know people, and I think that's a very special experience. "It's like going away to adult summer camp. The sailing is great, the people are even better."

Grosse Pointe Sail Club Regatta

This was a series of 2 windward/leeward races. The first race was started with the wind only blowing maybe 3.5 to 4 knots. It was apparent that the committee boat side was heavily favored. On top of that the top pin placement boat said on the the radio that the wind was already at 90 degrees even though the course had been setup at 70 degrees. It was real important that we get on the committee boat (right) side of the course. There was a large opening on the committee boat side of the course but Night Moves also saw it and turned on our leeward side and filled the hole. I immediately put our boat to windward to slow us down so I would not be caught barging. This was enough for NM to get a boat length ahead of us on boat lane below us. Fortunately most of fleet was spread out on the line so they were already behind at the start. NM was eventually able to drive up into our lane so we had to tack. From this point on they covered us the rest of the race to win and we took second by 44 seconds.

The second race the committee boat was still favored in 6 knots of air and the rest of the fleet grasped this by coming in from the committee boat side. I decided early to stay more on the pin side on port and tacked to starboard when the first starboard tack boat reached us. This worked really well. We were on the line at the gun the left of all the boats. By doing this it also bottled up some of the boats that were coming in from the right. Starboard tack was favored by a little bit but the largest problem we had was Hot Ticket was to our right on the same step of the windward ladder. We came up to their line by alternately going a little low and fast and then punching up to get up a lane at a time. I was very concerned if they stayed there they would take us out past the layline and would make us follow them in to the windward pin. We managed enough to start back winding their sails and they were forced to tack early. They went through to leeeward of the the other 3 boat fleets so when we crossed again we were able to round ahead of them. The next downward leg we had all 4 J120's on our wind so I decided to jibe to get clear air. We were able to come in hot at the leeward pin and do a Mexican takedown. At this point coming out on port we had a NA40 Montombi ahead of us slowing our acceleration. We tacked and we just started covering Night Moves who we felt was our closest competition. We were able to hold him off the rest of the race and finish 40 seconds ahead of them in 1st. I think between strategy and crew work it was nearly a perfect race. If you take our total time for both race NM beat us by 4 seconds but the rules read if you are tied in points the last race takes precedence. Next race....Mackinaw!

Result: 1st out of 5 J120's for the series
Link: http://www.drya.org/race2005/Results/gpsc.htm