On Sep 23, 2007, at 11:27 PM, Roberta Dvorscak wrote:

Time for a sailing tale!

Fresh on the heels of Mark's tale, a report from the past weekend..... Against all odds, I entered the fleet's fall race. The race is open to all boats at the marina, so I'm up against a bunch of Hunter 28's and 30's, an Oday 32, Beneteau 33,Tartan 35 and various other smaller boats. I'm the smallest by far. Ten boats in all. Race is on a Corps of Engineers impoundment.....narrow channel, surrounded by woods. Lake is currently low, so relative to the wind, you are down in a hole....winds of any kind are typically fluky and swirling, coming to you over the trees and complicated by coves and cuts in the shoreline. For the race, wind forecast looks promising and for the hour or so before the race.....8 to 12 knots. Hey we are racing.......full main and genny. If not for the fact that I'm single-handed, I'd contemplate the asymmetrical spinnaker. So the race starts and I'm first over the line. I'm on a starboard tack going right by the committee boat, on a beam reach cooking along at 4 1/2 knots, windward to the fleet and headed directly for the first mark half a mile away. About half the way there, I sail under the wind shadow of a bluff that a few minutes before had a good chop showing. No longer. I slow considerably, allowing a San Juan 24 (two highly skilled racing skippers...they won the race BTW) and the Tartan 35 to pass me about 100 yards to port, where they still have wind. I finally kick it in again and start moving. Looking back, I'm about 50 yards ahead of the Beneteau, which from my vantage point, looks something like an aircraft carrier.....but I'm keeping up and staying ahead. About 50 yards from the mark, the wind dies. I drift to a stop, but the rest of the fleet are those bigger boats, and their momentum, along with masts 2x to 3x taller than mine still catching air, allow them to close. I'm still ahead and as near as I can tell by all rules of the road I still have the right of way, but I'm definitely the stopper in the bottle neck. I'm now only 10' from the mark and moving at maybe half a knot......evasive maneuvers break out behind me to avoid crunching glass. But eventually, I round the mark and like magic, catch a puff. Seconds later I'm broad reaching down the channel at 4 knots and quickly open a lead of 200 yards or so.....and I'm in wind, so I even catch the two lead boats and I'm in front once again. My strategery in the light winds was to do the downwind legs on broad reaches....tacking downwind. With good wind, I maintain speed for nearly a mile of the 3 mile run.....until I get near a shoreline, which was parallel to the wind, so I thought it might funnel some wind along it, extending the ride. It didn't. The wind shifted to an offshore angle, leaving me in dead air. Suddenly, I'm at a dead stop with sails hanging loose. Looking back, most of the fleet has now rounded the mark and is in the middle of the channel, meaning the channel is clogged full of sailboats. It's also full of powerboats. To avoid the sailboats, they go around them......to my side. So not only am I sitting in light/dead air, I'm now enjoying something upwards of 20 powerboats all slowing to wave and admire the sight as they go by.....thereby doubling the size of their wakes. My mast now looks like a windshield wiper and my sails.....a matador's cape, flogging in the chop. No motion, no steerage, no nothing.....but more powerboats. So I get to watch helplessly as the entire fleet drifts by. Looking down the lake, I see the leaders....now maybe 400 yards away, clear of the shoreline and heeled over in a nice breeze.......heading for the horizon. By the time I drift clear.....I'm dead last. By the time I get to where the wind had been......it's gone. So the rest of the race was a series of puffs and lulls with 30 to 40 degree wind shifts. Somehow I get to the downwind mark ahead of about 4 other boats, turn and head home. Same thing. Weird and wacky wind. At one point, I'm headed off and drifting sideways to port, watching the Oday 32 scream by heeled over on a port tack....(exactly opposite directly tack from me) and no more than 50 yards away. Eventually, I make it near the last mark and again, the wind dies. I'm one of about 4 boats that drift aimlessly for 5 minutes, no more than 50 yards from the mark. We spent the time having a nice conversation. But out of nowhere, a puff and we are off. The final sprint of 200 yards takes about 20 minutes.....I'm screaming along at half a knot, tacking and playing every wind shift I can find......leading 4 other boats......and then 50' from the finish line......6 powerboats and two jet skis blow right through the middle of us. Windshield wiper again. I limp over the line dead even with a Hunter 28 and ahead of two other boats. I finish for 7th. I sail around for a bit waiting for the fleet to drop sails and clear out.....and suddenly the whole arm of the lake has enough wind to blow up a nice chop....but still fluky. In a 10 minute span, I twice found myself on a 90 degree heading. Once on port tack....the other on starboard. Later on, we all have a nice dinner and the boat gets a lot of compliments. I drink enough cheap beer to make Jerry proud. Second day, I decide to sail about 15 miles up and back to a set of bridges. The first 3 miles takes 3 hours in light wind. But out of no where, the wind shifts and starts building. Just moments before that, I watched in amazement as the windex pointed to wind from 4 different directions in less than 30 seconds. Flat calm, glassy water. Moments later, with no indication of wind at all (water still flat glassy calm), I'm heading off on a port tack doing 4.5 knots and sailing dead flat. It was like I was being towed. Ten minutes later, I'm in a nice chop and doing 4.5 knots. Breaking out into the large channel free of any shoreline, I cover the last 6 miles doing 5 knots and sailing almost flat doing it. By the time I get to the turn around point, I've got whitecaps showing. Sensing the wind is building and will continue to do so, I drop the genny and hank on the 110 (leaving it down for now) and head home. For a brief while under main alone I'd doing 5 knots on a beam reach. But that eases, so I hoist the jib and most of the way home I'm doing 5 knots plus. At one point on a broad reach the GPS shows 6 knots.....water is boiling under the rudder. Back in the home channel, I start passing boats right and left, until I get to the same place near the marina where the race had concluded. That is now directly in the teeth of 12 to 15 knots, but gusting to 25 knots plus. Even trying to anticipate the blast from those gusts, I'd still get caught and would round up.....heeling to 30 degrees plus (stuff below flying) in the process. After the 3rd or 4th one of those it was either reef way down or motor in. As I only had a mile to go, and I was tired I motored in. A fun weekend for a small boat sailer. Frustrating from a wind standpoint, but fun just the same. Howard M17 #278 Audasea