Bent

On the Saturday after my return from the UK I headed off to race in the New England Laser Masters at Third Beach, Newport, and was looking forward to sailing with my brand new lower mast section which I had recently purchased from Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island (a.k.a. the boat shop next to the Laser factory in Portsmouth) for only three hundred and twenty five dollars and eighty two cents including sales tax, after breaking my old mast.

The wind was blowing from the SW at 15-18 knots and it was a pleasure to sail on some nice regular rolling Sakonnet River waves instead of those "nasty, unpredictable, monster, cockpit-filling, boat-bashing, short wavelength, square waves" we had at Hayling Island.

I was going pretty well in the first race and finished just above the middle of the fleet. But in the next couple of races I was awful. I couldn't work out what was wrong. I just couldn't hang with the fleet going upwind, I couldn't point, and in both races I slipped back and back in the fleet as each race progressed. The wind picked up a little for the fourth race but I was so ticked off with my poor performance that I decided to skip the final race and head for the beach. What was wrong with me?

Back on land I discovered that it wasn't me that was wrong. It was my new mast. My new bottom section that I had recently purchased from Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island for only three hundred and twenty five dollars and eighty two cents including sales tax, and which I had never used before was now... permanently bent. And not just slightly bent. Bent into a curve of 10-15 degrees.

Now I was really ticked off. How could this happen? A brand new mast used once in conditions that were by no means extreme for Laser sailing shouldn't have a permanent bend like that after one day's sailing.

As luck would have it, the helpful gentlemen from Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island were attending the regatta with their van and had been doing a roaring trade selling clothing and boat bits to many of the old Laser geezers at the event. So on Sunday morning I took my brand new mast bottom section (have I mentioned it cost three hundred and twenty five dollars and eighty two cents including sales tax?) across to one of the helpful gentlemen from Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island and plonked the mast down on his table and said, "I bought this from you three weeks ago and used it for the first time yesterday. It shouldn't bend like that, should it?"

I was not a happy camper.

The helpful gentleman from Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island looked at my mast. I'm pretty sure that he was one of the helpful gentlemen that had sold me the mast but he didn't seem to remember me. Did I have my receipt? Well, no, it's at home, I don't usually bring receipts for every boat part to a regatta. I was pretty sure that the other helpful gentleman from Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island at the regatta would remember selling me the mast and eventually he was tracked down and did indeed confirm that I had bought the mast only a few weeks before from Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island.

The helpful gentlemen looked at the mast. They weren't sure they could help me today. Maybe I could come to the shop on Monday? The company has a policy. Bent masts have to go back to the factory to be tested to see if they are within specs are not. If they are out of spec then I could have a new mast under warranty. If not....

I stood my ground. I explained to the helpful gentlemen at Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island that it seemed to me that I had already "tested" the mast and it had failed the test. You are supposed to be able to sail a Laser in 15-18 knots without giving the mast a permanent bend of 10-15 degrees, aren't you? And, in any case, I want to sail today.

The helpful gentlemen were sympathetic. They would like to let me have the new bottom section that they had in the van but there is that little policy problem. If the factory says my bent mast is in spec then they won't reimburse the shop and so I would have to pay for the replacement mast.

What kind of test does the factory do? The helpful gentlemen didn't seem to know exactly.

In the end I had no real choice but to accept their terms and to agree to pay for a new mast if the bent mast was found by the factory to be within spec (using a test that nobody present seemed to be able to define.)

As a consumer, it seems to me that I bought a consumer product and used it for the purpose for which it was intended in conditions for which it was designed, and it failed to work as expected, and is no longer usable after one use. Naturally I feel that I am entitled to a replacement at no cost to me.

But I can also see the manufacturer's point of view. They build (or sub-contract the building of) Laser masts according to specifications in the Laser Construction Manual which is a document controlled by the designer (Bruce Kirby) and the manufacturers (and which, by the way, is not available to the general public.) If they make a mast section which meets the specifications in the Laser Construction Manual then they probably think that they have met their obligations, irrespective of whether or not the mast breaks or bends on its first outing.

Watch this space. I guess I'll be writing one more post on this subject when I hear the results of the mystery test.

Broken

I am not a violent man.

I am not an especially aggressive or energetic man as Laser sailors go. But on two consecutive outings in my Laser on my home waters in Rhode Island (the one before I went to the Worlds in the UK and the one immediately afterwards) I managed to destroy two Laser masts.

This is how it happened the first time...

On the Tuesday before our Thursday flight to England I went for a last blast tune-up on the Sakonnet River launching on the north side of Fogland. I had made a few minor improvements to the way I rig the Laser and I wanted to check they worked OK and just stretch out my hiking muscles a bit before the Worlds. It was a perfect late summer day, about 15 knots out of the SW, with some typical rolling Sakonnet waves.

So there I was tootling along upwind in my ticky-tacky blue and white Laser, hiking hard, when I noticed that the big flappy white thing with the long stick thing through it wasn't pointing at the sky any more but was lying on its side in the water. This isn't an unusual event on the Laser except that this time the hull wasn't on its beam end as per normal, but was still floating right way up.

Hmmm, I thought, how could that be?

At first I thought the mast step must have collapsed but then I noticed that there were a few inches of lower bottom mast, with a jagged top edge, still sticking out of the hull. The lower section of the mast had sheared off at the vang fitting, actually tearing through 3 of the 4 holes in the mast where the vang is (normally) attached.

Hmmm, I thought, this is not a good thing. I had two major concerns...

1. Am I going to die? Probably not. It's 2pm, the water is warm, and almost certainly some passing fisherman or recreational boater will happen past this point before dark and tow me to shore.

2. Am I going to lose the rig totally, along with all the fancy lines and pulleys that I need to take with me to England on the day after tomorrow? Probably not if I'm careful about taking the rig to pieces while always making sure each piece is still attached to the boat in some way.

So I detached the boom from the mast and the sail, pulled the mast on to the boat lying along the center line and wrapped up the sail a bit, so that at least I would be ready when that helpful fisherman or recreational boater passed by. I looked up the river. I looked down the river. No boats in sight.

Hmmm, I thought, this could be a long wait.

It was at this point that I regretted not having a cell phone or VHF radio with me.

So there I was, drifting in my little ticky tacky Laser, about half a mile from either shore, totally immobilized, in no immediate danger, but with no immediate prospect of reaching land in the near future either.

It seemed that the wind and the waves were taking me towards the Portsmouth shore at first. Maybe I could make landfall somewhere near Sandy Point, pull my Laser up on the beach, borrow a phone from someone, call Tillerwoman, have her drive out to pick me up and then drive me the twenty or so miles by land to Fogland on the Tiverton side, and then I would have to drive the twenty or so miles back to Sandy Point with my dolly and my trailer to retrieve my boat.

After a few minutes contemplating this prospect I decided that it would be infinitely preferable to drift into the Tiverton shore nearer to where I had left my car and trailer. So I waggled the boat's bow around with the tiller until it was pointing towards Fogland and willed the boat to drift that way. After about ten minutes I realized that there are certain limits to my ability to direct inanimate objects by my willpower alone.

Hmmm, I thought, what other options do I have?

I experimented. I picked up the clew of the sail, now approximately amidships, and made a sort of long, low horizontal cylinder with the sail. It caught the wind. It propelled the boat slowly towards Fogland. Very slowly.

All was going well until I was about 100 yards from the shore when I realized that the boat would drift north of the Fogland peninsula (where my car and trailer were.) So I jumped overboard and started to "swim" the boat towards the beach. This was an even slower (and more exhausting) form of propulsion but I eventually felt solid ground under my feet and was able to walk the boat the remaining distance around the headland to my launching point.

Phew!

I called my wife. "Ummm, I'm OK, but I've had a bit of an accident...."

I examined the torn mast. I wasn't really surprised or annoyed that it had finally broken. It was 15 years old, the original mast that came with the boat, and it had seen much use in those years. I had already through-bolted the vang fitting once when the rivets started to work loose so I knew that there was some corrosion around the rivet holes. I guess my bolts held and the aluminum mast finally gave way. No big deal really.

So the next day I went along to Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island a.k.a. the boat shop next to the Laser factory in Portsmouth. The two very helpful gentleman at Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island were more than happy to sell me a new Laser mast bottom section for only three hundred and twenty five dollars and eighty two cents including sales tax.

One of the helpful gentlemen at Laser Performance Sail and Sport Rhode Island asked me if I planned to sail in the New England Laser Masters at the end of the month and I explained that yes indeed I did, but that first I was going to England for the Laser Masters Worlds and I wanted to make sure I had a new mast for the New England Laser Masters before I left.

So home I went with my new bottom mast section feeling fat, dumb and happy. Now you may think that three hundred and twenty five dollars and eighty two cents including sales tax is a lot to pay for a few feet of aluminum extrusion with a plastic cap at one end and two stainless steel fittings. But I didn't begrudge the price because I knew that I was buying a finely engineered precision piece of sailing equipment that would probably last me another 15 years.

How wrong I was...

Little Bathtubs

Thanks to Gavin Atkin of intheboatshed.net for passing on this delicious parody of a song which was a hit for Pete Seeger in the 60's, Little Boxes. The new version skewers all those owners of plastic boats in marinas.


Little bathtubs in marinas, little bathtubs made of ticky-tacky,
Little bathtubs at the quayside and the owner in the bar,
There’s a white one and a white one and a white one and a white one,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all have roller-reefing and self tailing winches,
Arid they all put a little reef in in anything above a two,
There’s a Jeanneau and a Beneteau and a Moody and a Westerly,
Aud they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all have weatherfaxes and global positioning,
And a radar and a little screen that helps you to plot,
There are are gadgets and gizmos which show where the wind blows,
And the skipper is just a passenger ’cause the Autohelm does the lot!

And the owners are all builders or accountants or solicitors,
And they all drive down from Loughton on a Friday afternoon,
And they slip into their blazers and their Henri Lloyd moccasins,
For an evening at the yachty-clubby and they all look just the same.

And the owners all have wifeys who hate to go sailing,
Except around the Greek Islands where they get a good suntan,
And they all sit in marinas and drink up their G&Ts,
And they all come out of Billericay and they all look just the same.

And they all have little children who love to go sailing,
But they’re all sent away to boarding school where they never get the chance,
So they read their Arthur Ransome and dream of great voyaging,
In a pretty little wooden cutter, off to Holland or to France.

Little Bathtubs in marinas, little bathtubs on a swinging mooring,
Little bathtubs at the quayside and the owner in the pub,
There’s a Jeanneau and a Beneteau and a Moody and a Westerly,
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.

Half a World

I had been looking forward to the 2010 Laser Masters Worlds at Hayling Island in the UK for 400 days. Unfortunately I did not exactly follow through on my optimistic plans for training for the Worlds that I wrote about in August 2009.

And I paid the price for my laziness.

Tillerwoman and I flew to England on Thursday 9 September, and after a bizarre and lengthy encounter with Avis at London airport (which could well be the subject of a whole other post) drove down to Hayling Island on the south coast on Friday.

Saturday. Check out my charter boat. Select the best set of foils I can find but it is noticeable that every single one of the new style Laser centerboards and rudders has been damaged in some way during the Senior Worlds, with chips in the gelcoat on both leading and trailing edges. The LaserPerformance guys have some story about how there was some error in the manufacturing process for the first batch of the new foils and that it will be corrected in future. I sincerely hope they are right.

Moral: Never buy Release 1.0 of anything.

Measurement is very efficiently organized with a large band of volunteers. Have a fascinating discussion with the Chief Measurer about how it could be possible that my battens which had been measured and passed by the measurer at the Worlds in Australia two years ago and still have that measurer's initials on them could now be too long. Do battens expand in cooler weather?

Moral of story: You can never win an argument with a Chief Measurer bearing a steel ruler.

Go for a bit of a yot just to make sure that my boat is rigged properly and to check out the conditions. Geeze. Strong tides. Chaotic waves. This is going to be "fun."

Sunday. Practice race day. Always worth doing the practice race just to familiarize yourself with how the race committee operates and what conditions are like on the actual race area. I think this might be the only sunny day of the whole regatta. Somehow I seem to make an error at every mark on the course through not thinking about what the tide is doing. Rounding too close and being swept into the buoy. Going too high on a reach and then sailing low and slow against the tide down to the buoy. Overstanding the layline. Thinking I can sneak around on the transom of the inside boat at a classic leeward mark pinwheel without allowing for the fact that the three boats inside the wheel will be jammed into the mark by the tide.

Good job I got all that out of the way during the practice race.

Moral for the week: Think tide.

Monday. Day 1 of the regatta. Someone says it is 22 knots gusting 28. Someone else says 25 gusting 30. Whatever. It is windy. And to add to the fun there is a strong tide and huge, chaotic waves. Not the big Pacific swells that we had in Australia or the nice long rollers we get near the mouth of Narragansett Bay in a south-westerly, but nasty, unpredictable, monster, cockpit-filling, boat-bashing, short wavelength, square waves. I am going OK (for me) upwind, beating a respectable number of boats but downwind on the second run, I lose it. Capsize. Watch all the fleet sail past me while I do my typically slow and careful capsize recovery. Capsize again. Do an even slower capsize recovery.

Somehow I manage to stagger around the rest of the course with the long pointy thing aiming mainly at the sky. Get confused about which is the finish line boat but find it eventually. Amazingly I manage to beat 3 or 4 other boats who presumably capsized more times than I did or were even slower at capsize recoveries than I was.

At this point I am totally exhausted and am still facing a 45 minute sail downwind to the club, so I decide to call it a day and skip the second race. I am not the only one, by any means.

Prior to entering the Masters Worlds we were all required to sign a form saying we are competent sailors capable of sailing a Laser on open water in 25 knot winds. I feel like a fraud now for signing that form. Clearly I can't sail in these conditions. At least not in two races a day. I pretty much make a decision there and then that this will be my last Masters Worlds.

Moral

Well, this could be the last time

This could be the last time

Maybe the last time

I don't know

Oh no.

(In hindsight, this may not have been the best mental attitude to have for the rest of the regatta.)

Tuesday. It's 30 gusting 40. No racing today.

Wednesday. Not quite as windy as Tuesday. The RC goes out to the course and checks the wind and wave conditions for a couple of hours and eventually they decide that it's not suitable for racing. They're probably worrying that all the fat old farts like me who came in early on Monday are going to get themselves into trouble again. They are probably right.

There's a "barbecue" at the club on Wednesday night. I only eat some chicken and potatoes and salad but somehow I end up with an upset stomach overnight.

Thursday. Feeling a bit queasy this morning but the winds are only 8-12 knots from the NW so I go sailing. It is pretty shifty and even though I'm not feeling 100% I do complete both races, scoring around my typical place at the Worlds, about three-quarters of the way down the fleet.

Try to be careful about what I eat tonight by having a simple meal of pasta and salad at an Italian restaurant.

Friday. Didn't feel any better this morning, but hey, I'm here to sail so I'm going sailing. Another 8-12 knot north-westerly. The wind is shifting back and forth about 20 degrees leading to multiple postponements and general recalls for our fleet. We have three general recalls with the black flag up and about ten guys get tossed out of the race. It's cold waiting around for the start and I'm starting to get stomach cramps. Eventually our fleet start our first race around 3pm (having launched at 11am). I score my best finish of the regatta (no doubt aided by the absence of the ten dudes BFD'd.) But after the race my stomach is painful and I feel light-headed and distinctly strange so I skip the second race (again.)

As soon as I reach the beach I head straight for the the changing rooms where I experience an attack of uncontrollable shivers. I stand under a hot shower for ages before I feel like I have warmed up. I dress and derig and let Tillerwoman drive me to the hotel. I collapse straight into bed with my clothes on and start shivering again. Then I start throwing up. It was not a good night.

Saturday. Go to the club but I'm not feeling well enough to sail. One of my fellow US team members tells me to, "Take a couple of deep breaths." I guess he's really telling me to, "Suck it up." But my body is telling me that if I go sailing I will feel exactly like I did on Friday. So I wimp out and miss another couple of races. Sounds like it was the lightest wind day of the regatta, with a lot of waiting around for the wind to fill in. Good job I missed it. It was the waiting that did me in on Friday.

Sunday. Feel a lot better and I'm psyched up to go sailing. Only 17-20 knots today but still with those big choppy waves. More general recalls and a couple of guys are black flagged. I have a terrific start and sail pretty well in the first race to finish in a respectable place (for me) right next to a couple of my old buddies from Cedar Point YC in Connecticut. Before I moved to Rhode Island and started measuring myself against "that guy", these two were "those guys". Any day I could hang with them was a good day.

After the first race I'm not as physically tired as I was after the first race on Day 1. (I didn't capsize during the race at all!) But mentally I'm done. I just can't face slogging around the course again in those waves, so I head for home. I capsize twice on the downwind sail back to the club. At one point I lose contact with the boat and have to swim hard to catch it as it's blown away from me. I lose my hat (but a kind safety boat driver finds it and returns it to me.)

So in the end I only sailed five of the ten races at the regatta.

I didn't sail the Masters Worlds. I sailed half a Worlds.

I think I'm right in saying that I finished every single race at the previous five Masters Worlds which I entered. So I feel like I am only half the Laser sailor I used to be.

I was not prepared for this regatta. I was not fit enough. I had not sailed enough regattas leading up to it. I should not be coming to the Worlds if this is best I can do.

Moral

Well, this could be the last time

This could be the last time

Maybe the last time

I don't know

Oh no.

2 Days Until Laser Masters World 2010

What?

Only two days?

I'd better get going.

See you later.

Life Coach

Sam Chapin, the esteemed blogger who writes How to Sail the Laser, has recently been writing a series of posts under the title of Laser and the Life Coach. I'm not sure what a "life coach" is -- it sounds a bit New Ageish to me -- but the series includes some great tips on how to be a better sailor.

Some of Sam's advice is pretty much the same basic material you would hear from any sailing coach...

Set goals

Run

Get strong

Use your head

But he adds a few New Age-y and Life Coach-y thing such as...

Have friends

Don't get angry - forgive - be happy

Drink green tea - have flowers around - listen to music - floss

Hmmm. Flowers? Floss? He was beginning to lose me here.

But wait, it gets worse...

Eat lots of veggies and fish

What? No hamburgers? No steaks? No pork pies? Come on Sam.

But wait, it gets even more worser...

Don't drink alcohol

Yikes. What kind of sailor are you, Mr. Chapin? Alcohol is part of sailing culture and history. I was pretty much ready to give up on Sam's advice but then he redeemed himself with....

Have sex. Have more sex. Have lots and lots of sex.

According to Sam, sex increases attentiveness, ameliorates depressive symptoms, ameliorates pain, reduces stress hormone production, and improves immune function. The more sex you have, the harder you can hike, the longer you can hike, the faster you can sail. Woo hoo!

...

...

Ummm, come here dear. Have you seen this interesting blog from the life coach chappie?

Hurricane Party Songs

What are the best songs for a hurricane party? Answers in the comments please.

Storm Prep

One Hundred Mommy Boats

A few years back, Tom Paxton recorded a CD entitled One Million Lawyers and Other Disasters. The full lyrics of the title song One Million Lawyers are here.

I have to be careful what I say here because I have two lawyers in my immediate family and some of my best friends are lawyers. But here is a sample of the lyrics...

Oh, a suffering world cries for mercy.
As far as the eye can see,
Lawyers around every bend in the road.
Lawyers in every tree.
Lawyers in restaurants.
Lawyers in clubs.
Lawyers behind every door.
Behind windows and potted plants,
Shade trees and shrubs.
Lawyers on pogo sticks.
Lawyers in politics.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?

You get the idea.

I've written before about an even worse scourge than lawyers... Mommy Boats, those dratted "coach boats" that seem to be everywhere at major Laser regattas these days. Even worse in my opinion than one million lawyers would be to go to a regatta with one hundred Mommy Boats.

And it has happened. Although not to me. Yet. Read on...

In his report of the sailing on Day 2 of the Laser World Championships at Hayling Island, Clay Johnson commented...

It was a very tough day of sailing with some painfully light legs. The chop from 100+ coach boats doesn't help the situation either! I'm praying we get some more breeze for the rest of the regatta!

I think a better title than Light and Lumpy on Day Two for Clay's post might have been One Hundred Mommy Boats and Other Disasters.

Yikes. One hundred Mommy Boats! Can you imagine it?

It is to be hoped that there aren't that many Mommy Boats at the Masters Worlds in a couple of weeks. Master sailors are REAL Laser Sailors. We don't need no stinking Mommy Boats.

Shift

Some times I amaze myself with how much I have forgotten about sailing. If only I could remember now to do what I used to remember to do before I forgot to remember to do it... I would be amazing.

Tuesday night sailing a couple of weeks ago was a case in point.

There was a nice steady breeze out of the SW of around 10 knots when I launched around 5pm but it died away quickly to around 5 knots shortly after racing got under way. There were six of us. Mainly the usual suspects.

On these short course windward-leeward races in a comparatively steady breeze I have a very simple principle. I look on every tack or gybe as an opportunity to lose distance on the opposition. Good sailors will say the opposite. They say that they look on every tack or gybe as an opportunity to gain. But I know what I'm talking about here, people. If you saw how bad my tacks and gybes are you would agree with me.

So the game plan is very simple. Try and sail in clear air without putting in too many tacks on a short course.

My theory didn't work very well in the first few races. I was almost last in every race. I did find one strand of weed on my rudder after one race, so I rationalized that that explained everything. It wasn't me officer. It was the weed.

But then I got frustrated. How come almost everyone else was beating me to the windward mark in every race? What were they doing differently? Were they just applying my "minimize the tacks" theory, or did they have a different plan?

Then it dawned on me. The wind was actually a bit shifty. And these dudes were tacking on the headers. And I hadn't even been checking for shifts. Stupid boy!

How could I have forgotten to remember what I used to always remember? In all those early years of my sailing career on little lakes it was all about tacking on shifts. Just because the shifts typically aren't so big on a bay doesn't mean they don't matter.

So for the final two races I started concentrating on the shifts and tacking on headers and always sailing the lifted tack. I was second in both races, just behind our resident world masters champion.

Duh!

Laser sailors, "Look for the shifts!"