Big Bummer in Tuesday Night Laser Racing

I haven't done any of the 2010 SSA Tuesday night dinghy series.... until this past Tuesday. Readers of this blog will know that I have been a regular with my Classic Moth at TESOD; however this year I've been a no show.

To race my Classic Moth on Tuesday nights, I have to trailer it down to the club, rig it, race with the faster Lasers, derig it, and then trail it home. Having done this for two years, all that frantic dashing about doesn't seem worth it when you get spit out the back in quick order.....except in very light airs where the Classic Moth is competitive. But drifting racing has lost appeal in my dotage. And it's been very hot recently, even in the evening, so this makes the whole exercise a triple negative.

Well last Tuesday, John Z offered me his Laser which sits on a dolly on the SSA grounds. Combined with the break in the scorching weather and the forecast of some breeze, this looked to be a very good evening to get some dinghy racing in.

I got the Laser rigged in due order, sail up and that fancy multi-purchase vang and cunningham on, only to discover the drain plug was missing. I double checked the board bag; no plug. I called John Z and he said the plug always stayed screwed into the boat and it looked like the plug had been "borrowed". I would have to go out searching into the multitude of SSA Lasers and "reborrow" a plug for the night. Only, it turns out, the Laser can come with three styles of drain plugs and John Z's drain plug was definitely not the popular one. After going through 7 Lasers (and having to cut the ears of one plug that got stuck)..... I found a plug that fit.

All this conspired to make me very late out to the race course. I joined one race at the back after I missed the start. And the next start, I started next to the guy who led at the weather mark; promptly got schooled by these Laser hot shots in light air, rounded mid fleet, slopped downwind until the wind died, quit the race, and sailed for the club having never started or finished a complete race.

Back on shore, I hustled the derigging as my wife, daughters, and close family friend, wife and newborn were waiting for me to have dinner on the club porch. I put the rolled up Laser sail in a black tube bag on my roofracks as I rummaged around the back of my car for a change of clothes. Later that evening, my car had been moved back to the fence line with Eastport YC, out of the light. I drove off and it wasn't until the next afternoon I realized that I had dropped John Z's Laser sail off my roofracks and somewhere on the street in either Eastport, downtown Annapolis, or the road out of town. Six days later, despite walking most of the route, handing out fliers, talking to all and sundry, the sail remains gone.....

I curse my stupidity to the high heavens!

P.S Mr. ..Mrs. or Ms. Schofield; you will pleased to know your "reborrowed" drain plug has been returned safe and sound.

Kibitzing

I haven't been sailing recently; I broke my Classic Moth a couple weeks back and then I decided to modify the daggerboard trunk, so she's been in the shop patiently enduring me hacking and glassing and sanding. The only thing sailing related I've been doing is the kibitzing about sailing; a relative easy thing to do around Annapolis.

Friend Bill Sloan was back in town. He's retired in Florida but comes back once a year to award the Eleanor Ruth Wilcox trophy to the bowwoman for the winning team in the womens Santa Maria Match Race Regatta . I had him and his wife over to the house last Sunday and he related the story behind the trophy....

Eleanor Ruth Wilcox was Bill Sloan's mother; quite an athlete, and she won that trophy at a track meet in Hawaii sometime in the 1940's. Bill remembers the trophy living under the kitchen sink with the detergent, the silver all black, when he was growing up. Upon the death of his mother, Bill rescued the trophy, got a local silversmith to replate the trophy and donated it to the Eastport YC for a "womens competition". When Eastport YC inherited the Santa Maria Cup and turned it into a women's match race regatta; the Eleanor Ruth Wilcox trophy had found a home.

I wandered down to SSA on Tuesday to watch TESOD from the deck and, of course, to kibitz with all and sundry who wandered by.

I asked Ian Burman, Naval Academy Dinghy coach, about the 2010 Intercollegiate Dinghy Nationals held by the Hoofers Club in Madison Wisconsin. Ian was in Madison for 13 days and has never, in all his sailing career, seen absolute calm condition for such an extended period of time. The only way the regatta was completed was they usually got a little breeze just before dusk.....much of the racing was conducted in the last three hours of daylight.

Sean Smith (yes the same Sean Smith that partnered with me on the Nomad sailing excursion ) also sails Chesapeake Log Canoess during the summer. He related how, for the Eastern Shore rowdies/canoeists, the Budweiser 10 oz beers (vs. the normal 12 oz) is the beer of choice. I, never having realized that there was such a thing as a Budweiser 10 oz beer, pressed Sean for more info. According to Sean, Budweiser makes the 10 oz in Houston Texas for the Texas market but it is also distributed (very selectively) in Southern and Eastern Maryland. According to the 10 oz. connoisseur's, the 10 oz Bud tastes better and stays colder longer. More on this story over Here....

And finally, Judy Gebhardt, wife of Laser Grandmaster John (also another boat putterer), related how his shorts magically appear at the washer with epoxy or paint spots all over them. I have the same problem; seeming to forget to change into appropriate "work clothes" when I'm doing some boat work and then, all of the sudden, one of my "Sunday best" has stains here and there. Drives my wife nuts as well.

Amazingly, noone dwelt too much on the slings and arrows of sailboat racing.

Tuesday Night Racing Commences

I raced my first Tuesday night for 2009. It was my varnished Classic Moth again, in and amongst the Lasers at SSA's TESOD (acronym definition - Tuesday Evening Sailing One Design). I did this a fair amount last year as well though most Laser sailors think I'm some kind of nutter. The Classic Moth is slower than the Laser (with one or two exceptions) so I've tried to come up with a slow boat game plan. It's tough when you can't hold your lane after a start, or sail deeper offwind angles like the Lasers with their unstayed rigs. Avoiding bad air, you usually end up early to the laylines upwind, which in short course racing, can be either all right or all wrong. Offwind, my higher angles usually put me also out on the edges. I count it as a good race if I manage to finish mid fleet.

One of the attractions of racing Lasers is getting the Classic Moth closer to Laser speed. Part of the fun is tweaking the Classic Moth in ways completely foreign to the Laser fraternity; new sail designs, different masts, even different hull designs!. I've made progress but since I rank myself somewhere between number 6-8 nationally, there are other Classic Moth sailors that would keep it closer with Lasers.

Well this Tuesday was a good day against the Lasers. Very light air is one condition where my Classic woodie can hang with the Lasers and that is what we had. I had one of those days on the start line where the holes suddenly appear at 10 seconds and I managed to get to the weather mark in 2nd place twice. Offwind usually 5-6 Lasers would go by to get me finishes upper mid fleet.

Not bad, not bad at all.

A video of dinghy launching from one of last year's Tuesday racing.

Laser Racing; SSA Tuesday Night Summer Series

A YouTube featuring the Laser fleet during last Tuesdays weeknight racing at Severn Sailing Assoc, Annapolis MD, USA. Plenty of breeze and lots of action at the leeward mark as most of the fleet were gybing and rounding the mark in one fell swoop. There is also some shots of carving downwind. The level of experience in SSA's Laser fleet is considerable as attested by the small number of capsizes in these gusty conditions.

The fleet was about evenly divided between Radial and Full Rig as the Radial ACC Championships will be at SSA in just over a week.