Another great day for Laser frostbiting in Newport last Sunday. (Yes dear reader, you are quite correct, that picture up there wasn't taken in Newport but in another famous New England sailing town.) The navigation marks in Newport weren't quite as bad as that on Sunday, but all of the mooring buoys in the harbor had a healthy coating of ice. The balls had cute little caps of ice and most of the sticks were so heavy with ice they were lying on their sides. The deck of my Laser was covered in ice by the middle of the afternoon too. The temperature was in the 20's, wind chill was in the teens, and the wind was out of the NW at 10 knots plus or minus. Marvelous day for sailing!
I think we had about 30 boats at the start of the afternoon, though a few less when we called it a day shortly after 3pm. Even though I am really enjoying the frostbiting this year I am beginning to think that the cold is affecting my brain. I keep making the same stupid mistakes. Here are just four of them...
- Try and start in the most crowded part of the start line. Yes, I know that the boat end is favored right now but so do 25 other guys and they are all trying to start in the same spot as I am. The one race that I had the sense to find a quieter place a bit further down the line I had one of my best finishes.
- Sail in another boat's bad air. Sure the course is crowded but why don't I check before I tack that I'm not going to be putting myself three boatlengths astern of some other boat on the same tack, forcing me to gasp for air for a minute or two while I slip slowly backwards relative to the other boat all the time wondering if two tacks to clear my air would lose me even more distance? I lost count of the number of times I did this on Sunday.
- Approach the windward mark on the port tack layline in a large fleet on a small course. I did this even though I should have known that I would find it impossible to find somewhere to tack and round the mark cleanly. I only did it in one race on Sunday but why do I find it so hard to remember this? I wrote about it years ago at Duck. I wrote about how it doesn't work in Tacticat either. Geeze I even wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. This week it got really ugly... I'd rather not talk about it. Sorry everyone.
- If there are a bunch of other boats behind me on the short final beat, make sure I go the other side of the course from them. Duh. What was I thinking? I rounded the leeward mark in 4th place (woo hoo!) and forgot to look which way the pack behind me went, so I didn't cover them. I ended up with one of those persistent lifts out on the right side of the course, sailing a great circle course and never quite laying the finish line while six boats who went left sailed the inside of the lift and passed me before the finish. Ugh.
Still, it was fun. I must admit that the NW wind is a mystery to me. I don't seem to be able to figure out how to play the shifts, or which side of the course is favored at all. I expect the race winner will write some Words of Wisdom in a day or two that will make it all clear to me. Then next week we will have different wind conditions and I will be puzzled and confused all over again.
Can't wait.
9 comments:
hola.
you are nuts boss....I could not live in that weather let alone fo sailing a laser...yikes
Antolin, you know what they say... there's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.
I must admit I've never sailed as much in January in the north-east as I have this year, and I think I am enjoying it so much because of the feeling that it's somehow a "stolen" pleasure that you're not supposed to be having at this time of year.
Back when I was a devoted bike crazy, and still living in New Jersey, I went on a training ride when it was in the 20's.
Once.
I came back with ice in my water bottle, and couldn't feel my fingers or toes for hours. I must have had a better hat than you, because my brain told me not to do that again.
There may be no such thing as bad weather, but there's such a thing as better weather.
Well, thank you for stopping by "Joan Stepsen" and leaving that very kind comment and helpful link... but I have deleted your comment. I do not plan to visit Cyprus in the near future and, even if I were, I don't think I would need any of your charming, if somewhat scantily clad, employees to "escort" me on the island.
Cyprus Boom Crotch!
Here's an easy fix: delegate all that pesky tactical stuff to your crew.
Running a little short on crew?
Hmmm, maybe you can start writing reminders to yourself in grease pencil on the deck. If any fellow Laserites ask, tell them you're a writer. That should put a right stopper on them.
Your are not alone. I volunteered my J105 in a SF Masters Regatta which featured the rock stars of yesteryear. The skipper of my boat was an unnamed Olympic champion from Sweden. We approached the first windward mark all alone on the port layline with a picket fence of Js on the starboard layline. I turned to one of the crew on the rail and moaned something about impending disaster. The skipper ducked the first few boats but then thought he saw a gap and went for it. We got T-boned by Bill Buchan of Star sailor fame. Two months in the yard and $25,000 later, the boat was as good as new, though the accident didn't help when I tried to sell it the following year.
So Mr.T.
How do you guys manage to race with all that ice on the boat? My last sail of 2008 in Montreal was in 12-15 knotts and -6C. A few splashing reaches and I couldn't haul in the icy main sheet with my ice covered gloves and had problems staying in the slippery boat. Finally called it a day after dry dumping when the frozen sheet wouldn't run out through the blocks in a gust. Had big problems de-rigging as the vang and all knotts were frozen. The lake was still liquid but reason prevailed and that was the end of the season.
Mirage
Anonymous... I think it may be the difference between fresh and salt water. When I sailed my Laser on freshwater lakes in NJ in the winter I did occasionally get that phenomenon of the blocks jamming up with ice. But I haven't experienced that at Newport... yet.
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