Bastards!

I thought I had totally exhausted Murphy's Law of Laser sailing. Everything that could go wrong had already happened to me... surely.

I had broken a mast on Rutland Water and broken a boom off Cape Cod. I had broken down on the way to a regatta and broken my gooseneck when I was winning a race. I had capsized to leeward and capsized to windward more times than I could count; I had capsized by hooking another sailor's sheet around my bow and capsized by hooking another sailor's sheet round my neck.

I had done it all. Right?

Wrong!

On Saturday afternoon, Murphy found another way to make things go wrong while Lasering.

It was a perfect day for sailing. Sunny. Hot. 12-15 knots out of the south.

My son and I launched our Lasers out of Weaver Cove in Portsmouth and headed upwind on port tack in the general direction of Newport Bridge. It was champagne sailing conditions... hiking hard... busting through the waves. After a mile or so we cracked off on to a close reach bouncing up and over the waves. The spray was flying everywhere and I could hardly see where I was going for the salt in my eyes. Then we hardened up on to a beat again, blasting towards Conanicut.

After a while we tacked on to starboard and stopped about 40 minutes after leaving the ramp for a breather and a drink. Gatorade not beer. We were just upwind of Halfway Rock.

"Ready to go downwind?"

"Sure!"

We rode the waves downwind on a very broad starboard tack reach. I carved up and down and tried to catch a ride on the downside of each wave and blast through the next crest. I was in the zone. Lasering doesn't get any better than this. We surfed to the west of Dyer Island and then headed back up on the wind towards Melville Marina and the launch ramp.

A perfect hour or so of Laser sailing. Looking forward to going back home to dinner with the grandkids and a glass of wine or two watching the sunset.

The ramp was busy with a queue of motorboats waiting to use it. No problem. We sailed in to the beach just south of the ramp. I held the boats in shallow water while my son went to retrieve the launching dollies which we had left at the top of the ramp, as usual.

He seemed to be taking a long time. Eventually he shouted, "Someone has stolen three of our wheels!"

What?

I've never had this happen before. Someone stole our dolly wheels while we were out sailing? Incredible.

We worked out how to transport our boats to our road trailers without dollies. Pull the boats up on to the beach. (Ouch for the gelcoat.) Derig the boats on the beach. Bring a trailer to the ramp. Carry a boat on to the trailer. Repeat. Not a big deal except for a lot of huffing and puffing and maybe a few scratches in the gelcoat.

The parking lot was crowded. There were guys fishing on the dock. We asked around. Had anybody seen someone messing with our dollies? Apparently not.

The irony is that my son and I probably have the oldest mankiest dolly wheels in the world. If anyone is hoping to sell these pieces of shit then they are going to get laughed at. It's significant that they only stole three; they left the fourth wheel because it was rusted to the axle of my original antique galvanized English Laser dolly (now handed down to my son), perhaps the oldest Laser dolly in the world still in regular use. We concluded that the thieves were probably some kids wanting some wheels to throw around and play with. Still annoying.

Some kids in Portsmouth stole our wheels.

Bastards!

Kill Da Wabbit

Sailors and boats are arriving for the Laser World Championships in Nova Scotia. Bloggers are starting to blog about it...

Even the two guys responsible for all the charter boats, Brent and Josh, have a blog. Check out Brent and Josh Go To Laser Worlds to read about their adventures.

One of the US sailors went out to train yesterday and somehow got confused about the drill his training buddies were doing in Unknown Customs.

Yup, Brian tried to kill da wabbit.

I'm sure Brian knows how a rabbit start is supposed to work but, for anyone who doesn't know, here are the instructions (shamelessly stolen from NIH Sailing.)

A rabbit start can be run using no floats or marks, only the race boats themselves. The racers agree to have one boat serve as the “rabbit”. All other boats keep downwind of the rabbit prior to the start. At the agreed starting time, the rabbit crosses the other boats on a port tack. The line sailed by the rabbit is defined as the starting line and its stern is the windward end of the line. All other boats cross the line defined by the rabbit’s course and once across, have started. Once all the other boats have started, the rabbit is free to tack to starboard if the skipper so chooses.

Got it? You have to go behind the rabbit - not hit it. Don't kill da wabbit.

Matunucks

The Cat is Dead. Long Live the Cat!

The cat is dead.

There will be no multihull class in the 2012 Olympics.

The IOC President Jacques Rogge wrote today to ISAF: “Whilst the IOC Executive Board fully recognises the value that Sailing brings to the Olympic Games, it decided to maintain its decision of 2005 regarding the overall quota of sailors and medals. As a consequence, Tornado Multihull shall not be on the programme of the Games of the XXXth Olympiad in London.

Oh well. Multihull fans will just have to be satisfied with watching the America's Cup next February in Ras al-Khaimah.



Long live the cat!

Paradox

I believe you should live every day as if it were your last.

That's why I'm not writing a blog post today
because who wants to waste their last day
on earth writing a blog post?

Tomorrow is another day.

Hmmm.

Best Regatta Blog Post of the Year

I read a lot of blogs about sailing. I read about folk racing all sorts of top class regattas in all sorts of swanky sailing venues all over the world. This summer, for example, I have been following with great interest blog posts about the Star Worlds in Sweden, the Radial Worlds in Japan, and the Laser US Nationals in New Jersey, to mention just a few.

But I hereby award the 2009 Proper Course Award for Best Regatta Blog Post of the Year to the account of the Hickling Broad Regatta 2009 by "Mondale", a story about how Mondale and three of his mates spent the weekend "sailing, drifting and drinking and eating bad food."

This is not exactly the Star Worlds, but it was clearly a wonderful experience for all concerned...

All regatta posts should have photos of how the boat is set up for racing...

Your host, Will with Woodcut's extensive bar

And, of course, we all like to read exciting accounts of the sailing action...

"I normally object to such things as mobile phones when sailing but it was nice to be able to text the race committee and let them know of our progress. It was also nice to receive their sarcastic responses."

Personally, I also like to read about what top sailors eat at major events...

We chose the black pudding option.

And then the climax of every good regatta post is the awards ceremony...

Ross (regatta organiser) presents Will with his
'longest distance travelled to visit regatta
but not actually enter a race' medal

Much more in the same vein at Hickling Broad Regatta 2009.

Regatta Coaching - The Next Dimension

Sailing coaches, take your game to the next level.

Have you ever felt confined by your Mommy Boat at a regatta? Have you ever wished you could get a better view of the sailing area? Have you ever imagined how much more effective you would be as a coach if you could hover 30 feet in the air, and see what the wind is really doing?

Now you can, thanks to the JetLev Flyer.



With the JetLev Flyer you can ascend to 30 feet in the air any time you want. Spot all the shifts and gusts that the other coaches can't see and tell your sailors what you have seen. Hover over the race committee boat at the starts and get the perfect view. Follow your sailors around the course and take superb video footage from your aerial vantage point.

Stop Dreaming! Start Flying!

400 Days until 2010 Laser Masters Worlds

It's been a quiet year in Lake Wobegon...

After competing in two Laser Masters Worlds in the fall and winter of 2007/2008 followed by my (failed) attempt to sail my Laser 100 days in 2008, I haven't sailed much at all since my final outing of last year, a brilliant sunny winter day on Bristol Harbor which I wrote about in If I Had a Boat.

Oh sure, there's been some Lasering. A blast or two with my son, a SailFit seminar in March, informal racing once or twice with the Laser dudes at Lake Massapoag, sailing with Mark and his Force 5, and a dozen or so solo practice days. But no regattas. It's probably been my least active stretch for a very long time.

Don't worry. I'm not going to write a long whiny post about why I haven't been sailing much lately. Suffice to say that sailing is not my whole life and I have preferred to spend time on other rewarding aspects of my life in the last 6-8 months.

But it's only 400 days from today until the first race day of the 2010 Laser Masters Worlds in Hayling Island in the UK. The last few days I've been thinking about those 400 days a lot and have formulated the outline of a plan of how I'm going to to use that time to prepare for the Worlds.

It seems to me that 100 days - approximately 3 months - is a nice convenient chunk of time. Long enough to achieve something worthwhile; short enough that the end date is close enough to give a sense of urgency to the endeavor. So I've been thinking of my training program as 4 separate periods of 100 days. What should I do in each 100 days? How should I change activities in each 100 day chunk in order to keep things fresh and stay motivated? What targets should I have for each 100 days? More on that in some upcoming posts.

I've also discovered a terrific resource about what to do when practicing alone... which I do a lot. My mind is buzzing with ideas for a whole series of posts on that topic.

Stay tuned...

Clay Johnson

A coach who used to race against Robert Scheidt the one-time superstar of the Laser class once told me why Scheidt was so special...

It wasn't that he won every start, though he certainly won his share.

It wasn't that he always chose the right strategy for the first beat, though he often did.

No. The reason that Scheidt was so dominant in the Laser class in his day was that even when he had a bad start or went the wrong way on the first beat (or both) and as a result was way down in the middle of the pack after the first leg... he had the determination and the smarts and the skills to work his way through the fleet and still end up among the leaders by the end of the race.

Now read Clay Johnson's account of his racing this weekend at the Laser US Nationals at Brant Beach in Tricky Westerly on Day One of US Nats and Great Second Day. In four of the eight races sailed so far Clay didn't get things right at the start or on the first beat and rounded the first windward mark in around 35th, 30th, 15th and 20th places. Yet, every time, he recovered from his mediocre showing and, as a result, his scores for the eight races are 7,1,5,4,1,5,2,4.

Now I'm not saying that Johnson is the next Scheidt. I am saying that he is a damn fine Laser sailor and that his ability to recover from a bad start and sail up through the fleet is one of the keys to his success.

No other sailor at the Nationals has all single digit scores.

Indeed, every other sailor in the 103 boat fleet has at least three scores of double (or triple) digits.

Clay has a 21 point lead on his nearest rival, a lead which means that he doesn't even have to sail the final day of the regatta.

Congratulations to Clay on his first national championship. Watch this guy. We will be hearing a lot more about him in the coming years.

Caption Contest

Several people had fun at the expense of a couple of Star sailors in our last caption contest. Now's your chance to have a dig at those super-fit hyper-active go-getter Laser dudes. This photo was received via Twitter this morning from the site of the US Laser Nationals at Brant Beach NJ.