I'm back!...........Well sort of

Some may have noticed my absence from these pages. Some may have guessed that I was once again helping coach womens spring lacrosse at Wheaton HS. We finished with 3 wins and 8 losses this spring; the wins were by bigger margins over the same teams we beat last year, the losses were by about the same as last year.... there was progress but with injuries not as much as I had hoped. There was some frustration on my part but hey, I'm a volunteer coach and there are bigger things in the scheme of high school life than wins and losses.

I must admit I didn't spend much time on the Internet the last couple of months. I didn't monitor my blog and (sorry) I didn't read other blogs on my blog roll. I did read books and that was a very good thing and (tip of the hat to Tillerman) I did have the first grandbaby to occasionally cart around to look at the leaves and flowers and breezes of spring.

So Earwigoagin is back but not as the consistent blogger of yore. I still have a pile of books to read.

Header Photo: Bahamian C-class Work boat Racing

This photo is of two Bahama's C-class catboats going at it with crew perched on pries (the International Canoes call them sliding seats, the Log Canoes call them boards, the Australian VJ, Payne Mortlock and Skate classes call them planks; same difference). About 20 feet long they carry a huge cat rig. I've posted before on the huge Bahamanian A-class and the Family Island Regatta.

Videographer Onne Van der Wal has posted a short trailer on racing these over-canvassed beasts. Note at the 36 second mark, two unfortunate crew being peeled off their pries by the boom of a competitor to weather and at the 39 second mark, a C-class gets his outhaul caught on the mast of another C-class, with a predictable disastrous outcome. Great fun in some difficult sailing craft. A tip-of-the-hat to these plucky and skilled racers.


Bahamas Family Island Regatta for Vanishing Sail (rough preview version) from Onne van der Wal on Vimeo.

Stuart Walker's Tales of Cars and Trailers and International 14 Destruction

This past Wednesday, Stuart Walker gave a talk on crewing at Fawcetts,the local chandlery, but two weeks before that I sat down at Stuart's table during a pot-luck dinner (non-sailing related event) and, given the two of us, the talk turned to sailboat racing. Stuart, as expected, has a wealth of stories and somehow the conversation turned to sailing dinghies and cars and trailers. I present two of Stuart's stories.

Sometime in the late 1950's, an International 14 team from Montreal, Canada, was trailering their 14 down to Massachusetts for the Buzzards Bay Bowl, one of the premier events during the early years. As they were getting close to Marion, passing through one of the small Massachusetts's towns, they noticed a fire truck, sirens going, in their rear view mirror. They pulled over on the shoulder to let the fire truck go by, but, instead, the fire truck pulled in right behind them. Sixty years ago there were no custom formed bunks on trailers; this 14 team adopted a common practice of placing a mattress on the trailer and then strapping their 14 on top of mattress on top of trailer. At some point in the trip, this duo, rocking down the highway at a high rate of speed, had tossed a cigarette out the window and, unluckily, it had landed on the mattress, where it started smoldering. The smoke from the fire had been blown flat at sixty miles-per-hour but when they slowed to navigate through the towns, it was obvious to bystanders watching them go by that this car was towing a trailer and boat that was definitely on fire, hence the fire truck was called and responded. Stuart dryly noted that enough of the bottom of this International 14 was charred to be a total write-off.

In story number 2, Stuart told of an English gent who, again in the early days, was finishing off an International 14 in a workshop situated in a room at the back of his garage (to save a few quid, the DIY crowd would buy a cold molded shell from the professionals and then build in the interior, centerboard trunk and gunwhales). The International 14 was nearly complete, just short some varnish coats when the builder's mother somehow drove her car through the garage door, through the intervening wall to the workshop, into the boat, through the back wall to the house, depositing the whole mess in a pond in the back yard. Sailing stories become more and more apocryphal with age, so to see if I could corroborate Stuart's account I went back to the list of English International 14 numbers that Tom Vaughn put together in his International 14 history.

Sure enough, K 736, named Delight built by Ian Cox (a very accomplished 14 skipper) was "Destroyed in accident" in 1960. The next year, Ian Cox, had put together K 753, this time, given the anguish and teeth gnashing that must have happened after the first 14 was destroyed, Ian named the new 14 Despair, (just as Stuart had told the story).

Stuart turns 90 years old in little over a month. He still races his Soling at every opportunity, especially enjoying the winter racing. I asked Stuart if he ever kept track of how many races he's done over his lifetime. He said he doesn't have an exact number but he estimates he has over 6000 hours of racing!

Header Photo: British Moth at Chippenham SC

I have posted before about sailing on small water, for example, Cooper River just outside Philadelphia Pennsylvania. But in all my searching on the Internet, I have yet to find another sailing club that sails on anything smaller than Chippenham Sailing Club in England, a club that makes do with racing small dinghies on the upper reaches of the Avon River where the average width is between 17 and 20 meters (at least according to Google Maps measuring tool). So where the winding river would offer up a beat, the British Moth pictured here in a beautiful roll tack, would have approximately 4 boat lengths to go before preparing to tack again. I've never even sailed, much less raced on such a tiny body of water. In such close quarters. it must be a hoot!

Here are the Google coordinates for Chippenham SC.

A comment pulled into the main post from Die Hard Dinghy Sailor:

"British Moths still sail on the upper Thames above Oxford, at Medley S.C. ( I used to sail there), but that was postively huge compared to the narrow reach just a couple of miles upstream, above the famous 'Trout' inn (as featured in 'Inspector Morse' on occasions) and the site of our school sailing club. We sailed Fireflies, and they were pretty poorly maintained, so what with the narrow river, frequent tacking, gusty winds...we got pretty good at handling tricky situations! But I never liked Fireflies after that."

Header Photo: Cape Cod Frosty Dinghy

As Tillerman correctly guessed, the previous header photo was of the diminutive (6 feet 4 inches - 1.93 meter overall length) Cape Cod Frosty dinghy; the skipper deep in concentration, peeking out from behind the daggerboard. The Frosty name fits the function. The Cape Cod Frosty was originally designed in 1984 as a frostbite dinghy and, after a brief burst of popularity throughout Cape Cod, Ohio, and Maryland, is now found (during the winter months) fleet racing in a small lagoon off the fast-flowing Piscataqua River, on the border of New Hampshire and Maine.

I have always been fascinated by, what I term, micro-dinghies; those sailing dinghies less than 8 feet (2.43 meters). Immensely impractical (8 feet length overall is the smallest dinghy that most people can fit into and seems to sail well), I have been enthralled at those who attempt to design, build and sail Lilliputian vessels.

In 2003, on a whim, I drove over to the Maryland Eastern Shore, where there was a Frosty for sale from the now defunct Salisbury fleet. The price was right - $200. I arrived there as night fell and in the dim radiance of a flashlight, checked that the boat had no holes and all the sailing pieces were there. The check was written and off I drove, a proud owner of a 6 foot sailboat on the roof of the car. Only in the daylight of the next day could I see that the builder had managed to give the bow transom a considerable deviant angle from that of the stern transom. Somewhat disappointed at now owning a crooked boat, I nonetheless sanded and stripped the paint off, put a coat of primer on and worked on the mast step before losing interest and moving on to my Maser project. My Cape Cod Frosty remains to this day as a modern sculpture in white primer, perched upright on it's transom in my basement, much to my wife's chagrin.

In 2004, now as a owner of a somewhat deformed Cape Cod Frosty, my curiosity at sailing these craft could not be thwarted. I finagled an invite to the Frosty nationals where they kindly lent me a working (and also completely competitive) Frosty for the regatta. The Frosty Nationals are traditionally held at the end of their frostbite season, around the mid to end of April if memory serves. I finished a creditable 8th out of 19 in my first and only Frosty regatta. To my surprise, where I thought there wouldn't be much speed difference in such a small dinghy, the top six boats had a clear advantage and the leaders could open up 1/2 leg leads on short frostbite courses. Here is a scanned photograph of the blogmeister rounding the weather mark in one of the 2004 National races.

Another strange characteristic of the Cape Cod Frosty is that it sails best with the helm's weight forward; the bow transom is always immersed at least 1/2 way, pushing up an immense bow wave and one feels as if you're always sailing downhill. Race committee is done off a large floating square dock that is towed to the center of the lagoon; the floating dock is large enough to fit 10 Frostys pulled up. There was enormous incentive to finish in the top ten each race as one could pull his Frosty up on the dock, get out and stretch one legs. The tailenders were left to cope with creeping paralysis as they remained shoehorned into these tiny craft, race after race. Finally, toward the end of Saturday's racing, the RC took pity, kept the leading sailors off the dock and allowed the tailenders some respite; some had to pulled out of their cockpits, succumbing to Rigor Frostitus. I had a great time at the Cape Cod Frosty nationals. I would do it again but am now wondering whether my knees or hips would be up to the task. Here is another scanned photo showing the bow down attitude of the Cape Cod Frostys. The blogmeister is in the second row coming up to the weather mark.

A photo looking down on a onshore Cape Cod Frosty klatch, a trio with camp chairs, the scene replete with a quaint New England barn door. One can get a true sense of how small these dinghies are.

The Frosty is one sheet of plywood, stitch and tape construction. The original design didn't have any flotation. As you can see in this boat building photo, the design has been modified to add enough flotation to make them somewhat self rescuing. (I'm not sure how easy it is to climb into these boats from the water after a capsize - I didn't capsize during the 2004 Nationals, the wind being a kind 5-12 knots for the regatta.)

And the obligatory video.....

The Sea Snark and the Archipelago Rally

I haven't posted about the Sea Snark for some time so when I came across this video of that great little 11' foam lateen-rigged dinghy racing in the 2012 Archipelago Raid, I knew I had blog-worthy material. The Archipelago Rally is a small boat fun race out of Rhode Island with an emphasis on kids and parents participating. If you are an adult sailing by yourself, it looks like you are encouraged to dig up or modify something unusual. As a result there is a melange of small sailing boats - right up my alley.

This is a video of, what I assume, are two sisters racing the Sea Snark. In the video you can see various sailing craft such as a Boston Whaler Squall, a C-class open canoe, a 16-30 decked sailing canoe and a traditional flat-bottomed saling skiff, all passing our intrepid Sea Snark sailors!

The older skipper sister asks;

"So how is everybody else doing?"

And the younger sister crew replies;

"Better than us!"

And here is another, longer, video of the 2012 Archipelago Rally with a detailed look at the variety of boats making the trip including some of the history of the Sea Snark dinghy.



Here is a link to a post on the 2010 Archipelago Raid.

Log Canoe Video, #4 and Last in a Series by Bob Ames

Bob Ames, who is a naval architect by day, (and night also when he draws up racing sailboats) is also an amateur videographer of note. The following video is the last in a series of four he put together about log canoe racing and, according to Bob, is to be the last one in the series as he is relinquishing a spot on the log canoe team in 2013 to drive a sport boat next season. No better way to time waste a winter evening on the Internet than watch a series of spills, mayhem and Maryland Eastern Shore culture on one of the oldest continuously raced sailboats in the world.

Log Canoe Fever from B. A. on Vimeo.

To look at Bob's other log canoe videos follow the following links.:

1. Bob Ames Log Canoe Video No. 1
2. Bob Ames Log Canoe Video No. 2
3. Bob Ames Log Canoe Video No. 3