Saturday, December 17, 2005

J/120 Great Lakes Trophy - Lets hear it for the crew




Yesterday we had the J120 owners xmas party. At it Bob Kirkman and Doug Scheibner presented me with this hard won trophy. If you look at the plaque you can see year's won by Hot Ticket was 6 years in a row and Merlin got it 3 years in a row. We finally broke that streak. This is quite an accomplishment for the crew and I am really proud of them. Thanks guys (and ladies)!

Saturday, December 3, 2005

Gulf Streaming Video


This was the Sailfish Club's Munroe Regatta from Ft. Lauderdale to Palm Beach commonly referred to as the race to the buffet. The wind started out of the north at about 15-16 knots and we started with a #1. We began by peeling off a little to get in the gulf stream. It is my belief that we were in the stream sooner than we thought and we should of gone straight to weather sooner. When the wind was at 18 knots we went to the #3 but because I had not modified the rig before the start, we had to do a bareheaded change that just took too long. I had kept up the #1 longer than I wanted to because I was anticipating this problem. We also went too far out where the gulf stream was closer to shore and we did

not have to suffer so much from the waves. Out in mid course we were almost t-boned by another boat when they were not able to go behind us (we were on starboard) Chuck was driving the boat and he had enough sense to turn the boat up at the last second. I was on the rail and was sitting in water up to my chest until Karl let the head sail go. The last mistake we made was cutting in from the gulf stream a little to early. That probably cost us another 4 minutes. The crew still did a great job inspite of the problems. We had 8 foot seas with 3 people sea sick but everyone did their job. Another thing learned is that we should of gone to a smaller sail sooner in choppy seas. That way you can get power out of the main. At least the meal was excellent.

Crew: Kevin Thompson, James Maxwell, Jim Dundas, Karl Kuspa, Chuck Beyer, Rob Amsler, Colleen Flanagan, Ken Morrison, Nathan Caspers
Result: 6th out of 8 boats in class B
Link: http://www.geocities.com/getgo444/sailfishresults.pdf