About a month ago I bought a 77 Catalina Tall rig. They have a series of races (Three) on Sundays here and I figured I'd try my luck. I got my PHRF Rating extra speedy (the PHRF people were marvelous!) so I could race, and sent in my entry.
I only had my son and a friend with me and neither had raced before, but I had set spinnakers cruising and had sailed locally. What could be so hard?
I looked at the listing of the race breakdown's and saw that I was the scratch boat, or fastest rated boat in my class. Finishing first, even if I didn't win for corrected times, was a seductive and exhilarating mental image.
I showed my son how to set the spinnaker last week and then just to practice, we set it again on the way down to the race. We were ready to go. I had raced C hydroplanes in APBA so the timed start was not unfamiliar. I didn't do to bad at the start but on the first tack off the line all the other boats were able to point much higher and Cal 25's sailed away with ease. When sailing alone, I had no gauge of how high I should be able to point and only knew she seemed like a rabbit compared to my old Laguna 22.
Well, we didn't know the local conditions and unlike the others who all had 30 races under their belts this year, we sailed directly out to the breakwater, only to find that when we got there the wind had backed around and we had to tack away from our mark which we thought could be reached on our second tack. We fell far behind, but we had a symetrical spinnaker while some had asymetricals and one was sailing Non spinnaker. We would close downwind. We rounded the Mark and hauled the chute up. Something was drastically wrong. My son struggled with what seemed like a cat's cradle of lines for half the downwind leg and then pulled it down and gave up. Furious, I had our third guy take the helm and set the Spinaker, ran about 7 minutes before rounding the second mark and almost broaching as we pulled it down and began our next tack, far behind the fleet, as my son screamed at me that we were rounding the wrong mark.(We were rounding the right mark.) We reached the next windward mark while the rest were beginning to make for the finish line after rounding the downwind mark three miles away. We rounded our mark and again set the spinaker. Right away both the spinnaker and the jib which was out on the wing, luffed and began to wrap around the forestay. My son pulled himself up on the stay, hand over hand, but holding himself aloft with one hand and trying to untangle the Gordian knot was futile. I went forward and pulled the whole mess down. I untangled it all and signaled to haul the spinaker up. It was then I noticed as it wrapped and knotted up again that the sheet went through the spinaker pole and the afterguy was free, or in another way of looking at it, the sheet and guy went to the opposite sheet blocks on the wrong sides of the boat. We couldn't pull the spinaker behind the jib because it was in the spinnaker pole. I signaled to the crew to let the spinaker down and it immediately became untangled...as it layed against the bottom of the boat and wrapped around the keel. The boat came to a "Donkey Stop" and we had to haul and ease lines until we could unsnap the hailyard and guy and haul the chute up on the deck, and into the cabin. We ran wing and wing and were hailed by the comittee boat who told us to forget about the last mark and just cross the finish line, shortening the course and our agony, just for us.
So in one race, we fouled the chute twice, wrapped it around the forestay twice, ran over it once, couldn't point and were so slow that they shortened the course just for us.
There is only one way to look at a failure like this. If we figure out why we can't point, practice spinnaker drills, tune our standing rigging, figure out where the marks are, and find out a little about the local wind quirks, next race we will probably do better!
Jim Green
Lily Pad
I only had my son and a friend with me and neither had raced before, but I had set spinnakers cruising and had sailed locally. What could be so hard?
I looked at the listing of the race breakdown's and saw that I was the scratch boat, or fastest rated boat in my class. Finishing first, even if I didn't win for corrected times, was a seductive and exhilarating mental image.
I showed my son how to set the spinnaker last week and then just to practice, we set it again on the way down to the race. We were ready to go. I had raced C hydroplanes in APBA so the timed start was not unfamiliar. I didn't do to bad at the start but on the first tack off the line all the other boats were able to point much higher and Cal 25's sailed away with ease. When sailing alone, I had no gauge of how high I should be able to point and only knew she seemed like a rabbit compared to my old Laguna 22.
Well, we didn't know the local conditions and unlike the others who all had 30 races under their belts this year, we sailed directly out to the breakwater, only to find that when we got there the wind had backed around and we had to tack away from our mark which we thought could be reached on our second tack. We fell far behind, but we had a symetrical spinnaker while some had asymetricals and one was sailing Non spinnaker. We would close downwind. We rounded the Mark and hauled the chute up. Something was drastically wrong. My son struggled with what seemed like a cat's cradle of lines for half the downwind leg and then pulled it down and gave up. Furious, I had our third guy take the helm and set the Spinaker, ran about 7 minutes before rounding the second mark and almost broaching as we pulled it down and began our next tack, far behind the fleet, as my son screamed at me that we were rounding the wrong mark.(We were rounding the right mark.) We reached the next windward mark while the rest were beginning to make for the finish line after rounding the downwind mark three miles away. We rounded our mark and again set the spinaker. Right away both the spinnaker and the jib which was out on the wing, luffed and began to wrap around the forestay. My son pulled himself up on the stay, hand over hand, but holding himself aloft with one hand and trying to untangle the Gordian knot was futile. I went forward and pulled the whole mess down. I untangled it all and signaled to haul the spinaker up. It was then I noticed as it wrapped and knotted up again that the sheet went through the spinaker pole and the afterguy was free, or in another way of looking at it, the sheet and guy went to the opposite sheet blocks on the wrong sides of the boat. We couldn't pull the spinaker behind the jib because it was in the spinnaker pole. I signaled to the crew to let the spinaker down and it immediately became untangled...as it layed against the bottom of the boat and wrapped around the keel. The boat came to a "Donkey Stop" and we had to haul and ease lines until we could unsnap the hailyard and guy and haul the chute up on the deck, and into the cabin. We ran wing and wing and were hailed by the comittee boat who told us to forget about the last mark and just cross the finish line, shortening the course and our agony, just for us.
So in one race, we fouled the chute twice, wrapped it around the forestay twice, ran over it once, couldn't point and were so slow that they shortened the course just for us.
There is only one way to look at a failure like this. If we figure out why we can't point, practice spinnaker drills, tune our standing rigging, figure out where the marks are, and find out a little about the local wind quirks, next race we will probably do better!
Jim Green
Lily Pad
