2014 International Canoe Worlds - Second Race

No blow-by-blow description of Race #2 from Fran DeFaymoreau but Fran does go into some of the damage meted out to the IC fleet by the San Francisco wind and chop:

"Dave Gilliland- broken spreader. Steve Clark - one dinged up daggerboard, One german boat [ed. note - actually English - see video below] got T-boned with a small hole in side. minor cracks on several seats. broken tiller plastic universal extension plus other broken tiller extensions.

"Today [ed. note - Second Race], Swede OLa Barthelson had a broken shroud. Dave Gilliland bent his rudder shaft (about 1/2" solid stainless) which was straightened using a hole in trailer frame and cheater pipe. Steve Clark USA 250 and Michael Costello USA 228 both broke their daggerboards. Of the many others I did not inquire, but the sailors were busy beavers throughout Richmond Y.C's dinghy park.

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From the Internet I pulled the following about Race #2; Mikey Radziejowski (USA) won his second race ahead of Chris Maas (USA) in breeze that had a little more weight than the first race - hanging around 20 knots.

Fran mentions the T-bone incident from race 1. In a situation somewhat similar to my previous photo from the 1993 Worlds, Chris Hampe (GBR) had a bad start and decided to bail out onto port tack. Unlike I, who got away cleanly, Chris, once on port, narrowly missed one starboard tacker but the second one hit him squarely in the side. To show how far technology has come in twenty plus years, Chris has a GoPro documenting his every move. even the dumb ones (thank goodness that technology wasn't available to install on the tiller of my IC in 1993 - today I'd have video that would still keep me wincing in disbelief.) Chris put his T-bone gaffe up on YouTube - he had Monkee repaired and out to do battle to a top-ten finish for race #2..



And from the Earwigoagin archive, more still shots grabbed from the famous VHS video shot at the 1993 Worlds in San Francisco.

Fredo Beers (GER) becomes disconnected from his IC in spectacular fashion. (Hey, this happens on an IC every so often, one moment you are sitting on the sliding seat, the next you aren't - don't ask why!)

John Kells (USA) in spreadeagled fashion, willing his IC upright (not going to happen).

2014 International Canoe Worlds - First Race

Report from Fran DeFaymoreau:

"Sunday September 7, 2014. Race one of the 2014 Canoe Worlds. San Francisco Bay. Wind was in a bit earlier than yesterday, but the usual direction, from 220 degrees -coming down from the Golden Gate -12 knots at the start which got off at 12:35 pm. Start line just north of Albany Hill, south of Brooks Island where it will likely be throughout this regatta [ed. note: One thing about SF Bay, the direction is consistent in the summer/early fall].The fleet (9 out of the fleet of 34 are the old Nethercott one-design, hefting a sizeable 83kilos around the course versus the new rules boats at 50 kilos) splits right and left out of the gate. It wasn't clear which side was favored but the fastest tended to go left. The course is triangle-windward-leeward-triangle with the finish to weather; the legs are 1.1 nautical miles. At the 1st weather rounding Chris Maas (USA) is hundreds of yards ahead. In not so close pursuit are the British duo of Alistair Warren and Robin Wood with Australian Hayden Virtue and another Yank Steven Gay, not necessarily in that order. Many spectacular capsizes in the 9 legs with the eventual winner Mikey Radziejowski (USA) followed by Steven Gay and Alistair Warren.

"The capsize with greatest impact was the hammer blow that befell Chris Maas who, when leading by hundreds of yards at the last weather mark and against all odds, caught the last couple of inches of his main halyard on the weather mark ballast snap shackle! It took Chris considerable time to undo this tangle. [ed. note - He eventually retired]

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"Tacking these boats is very hard."

This was a quote that Swede Olle Berqvist gave to a reporter after finishing second in the 1981 Worlds on Buzzards Bay.

I previously wrote about the 9-point drill of tacking an IC in this post of the 1981 Worlds.

By 1993 I had gotten better at tacking an IC, but not good enough to avoid my fair share of problems getting from starboard to port and vice-versa at the San Francisco Worlds. One rich source of images from the 1993 San Francisco Worlds was a VHS video shot by the support-boat driver for Steve Clark. A copy made it to every IC fleet on the planet and provided much amusement over the winter. One of the sequences that elicited chuckles was me demonstrating the belly-flop tack, a last-ditch desperation move when things go wrong and the only option to prevent a capsize is to throw yourself front-first on the sliding seat, or whatever was extended of the sliding seat.

By contrast the same movie had a beautiful sequence of Lars Guck (who finished third at the 1993 Worlds) executing a perfect tack at the finish line (when most of us were so gassed that any maneuver at the finish provided enough follies to keep the finish line RC amused). Bill Beaver chunked the movie images into a primer on how to tack an IC in a breeze. (Click on the image to get a larger picture.)

2014 International Canoe Worlds - Practice Race

Today's report from Earwigoagin's on-site reporter, Fran DeFaymoreau, at the Richmond Y.C.:

"Saturday September 6, 2014. Practice race. The start line is set west of Albany Hill in the east bay between Richmond and Berkeley. Wind direction 225, velocity 5 to 8 knots. This is a typical San Francisco pattern, with the marine layer covering the entire bay [ed. note: marine layer as in fog]. As the Central Valley heats up and pulls cool ocean air into the bay, wind speed increases and continues to increase as the afternoon progresses.

"By start time, 12:25, the wind is at ten knots, at 220 degrees. At the first weather mark Chris Maas [ed. USA and reigning World Champion] is 100 yards ahead of the second boat. By the time they go around the reach mark he has stayed out front and at the leeward mark he peels off and retires back to the harbor having demonstrated that he is still the one to beat. Robin Wood [ed. GBR and winner of the last Worlds in San Francisco - 1993] wins the practice race showing that he is still one of the front runners.

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Everybody to the back of the bus!

One of the things etched in my mind about the 1993 Worlds was how differently we set the International Canoe up to race in the San Francisco breeze and chop. Back then, as it is today, the sliding seat on the International Canoe is on a track so you can adjust the live trim. In the Chesapeake Bay we would crank the seats back for heavy air reaches and move them forward for the beats. In San Francisco, once the breeze was on, the seats stayed back, upwind and down. In 1993, I set my seat forward for the first beat which usually was in lighter winds, 12-15 knots, then pulled it back for the first reach and never touched it again. It was full on - stay at the "back of the bus" sailing.

Similarly when setting the daggerboard. Even though I was using one of the smallest daggerboards in the fleet in 1993, I was "reefing" it by pulling it up a foot or more. I usually had it down for the lighter first beat. After that, as the breeze came up the daggerboard came up, stayed up, never to be adjusted for the rest of the race. Completely out of the norm compared to our Chesapeake Bay racing.

Here is a video of "Big Dave" Gilliland reaching in an International Canoe with the seat cranked all the way back. This is a good approximation of the view I had bombing around the 1993 Worlds courses. (To complete the visualization, add some boats crossing this way and that, plus some marks I had to get around, waves I had to avoid stuffing the bow into, tacks that were a bear to complete...the entire drill of racing an International Canoe in a breeze.)

International Canoe Nostalgia Week

Today, Saturday, September 6, is the start of the 2014 World Championships for the International Canoe Class, hosted by Richmond Y.C. of San Francisco. Twenty one years ago I sailed my last International Canoe Worlds hosted by the same club. There are still some of those competitors from 1993 who are still going at it in these tippy beasts and who will be present on the start line for the first race on Sunday. Some names I recognize are the American's Steve Clark, Del Olsen, Dave Gilliland; the Canadian Bob Lewis; the Brit's Colin Brown, Simon Allen; the Swede Ola Barthelson and the Australian Hayden Virtue. San Francisco Bay always makes for a great windy regatta where sea stories spun on shore after the racing become legend and are told again and again.

For me, in 1993, I didn't cover myself in glory, finishing 44th, but glory wasn't the purpose as the regatta was sandwiched by a cross-country automobile family vacation with enough memories in and of itself. I raced not all the races, but finished enough of them to consider it a success. Participating in a World Championship in the big wind and waves of San Francisco was reward enough.

To commemorate the San Francisco Worlds, the hope at Earwigoagin is to post something on International Canoes every day this week. I also hope to have some reports from the current regatta as I have cajoled another ex-IC geezer to be Earwigoagin's on-site reporter . And you will definitely get some geezer nostalgia from the 1993!

I wrote some on the 1993 IC Worlds in this previous post.

Here is the only known photo I have from 1993. I'm in US 208, center-right in the photo, bailing out onto port tack after a very late start at the Race Committee end. I have a dim recollection of maybe getting a late push-off from the club and not quite making the start, or maybe I was doing an onboard repair (there seemed to be more than enough mucking around in the middle of the IC that regatta, fixing something that had broken). I was using a Kevlar jib back in the early years of mylar sails for dinghies. This particular sail was shedding large chunks of mylar every time I  had it out, hence the large patches of black sail number material. Amazingly the sail never ripped apart, despite large areas where you could see all the way through. I did revert back to a dacron jib later in the regatta.

North American Trapeze in the 1880's?

The history of the trapeze, the device where a crew dangles overboard from a wire or rope attached to the mast, keeps getting pushed back. It is obvious that the Polynesians were hanging from ropes on their proa's and catamarans before the modern industrial era (though I haven't seen any firm dates). The earliest I've seen the trapeze dated in Western Civilization was the early 1900' where crews were hanging off "Bell Ropes" on the large river racers, the British Thames Raters. Peter Scott and John Winter introduced the trapeze to dinghies in the International 14 Prince of Wales race in 1938 (where the class immediately banned them and didn't reintroduce them until 1969, well after every modern performance dinghy class of the post WWII era came out with them).

I was looking at an illustration by C.G. Davis, drawn in 1914, of the racing 88's of the St. Lawrence. The 88's were large racing canoes with two batwing sails in the typical cat ketch configuration. They were popular in the late 1880's, early 1890's. The illustration by C.G. Davis definitely shows the aft crewman hanging off a rope from the mast. Maybe we need to move the date of the invention of the trapeze (at least in North America) even further back. The original illustration:

The aft crewman enlarged.

Header Photo: A Dutch Skûtsje Capsized

I mentioned in my previous post about the the Dutch Skûtsje working scow that they do indeed capsize. In this photo lifted from the InterWebs, it is unclear whether this behemoth is just going over or just coming up! (I'm guessing from the way the mainsail is eased that this one is being righted.)

Music Whenever: "Roar" Yet Another Great Scott Bradlee Arrangement

While I'm on a Scott Bradlee kick, this is another great arrangement I just can't let go. Featuring vocalist Annie Goodchild and the incomparable, frenetic, tamborinist maestro, Tim Kubart.




Click here for "Burn", another great Scott Bradlee arrangement with three fantastic female vocalists.