Vallejo Race May 3-4, 2008

(If you like, you can skip down through the prose and go straight to the pictures below!)

We're lucky enough to have some rare (these days) pictures of Islanders under spinnaker. We've also got a fun race view from Luna Sea as told by Dan Knox and the counterpoint conversation by Lou Zevanov. It's a fun read!

Dan Knox:

Saturday:

Second at the start behind Lou. Someone tried the barge the line and I didn’t wimp out as I usually do. I did my best impression of Peter Szasz and told them a long time before the start that there was not going to be any room for them and they should turn around now and save some time. They had to tack around on the wrong side of committee boat. My crew was pretty impressed.

After the start we were right behind Lou but in his dirty air so we tacked away and were third at the mark. Everyone else took two tacks to the mark and we took four. Captain Hooke had passed us. John was a close fourth.

After rounding the mark we did not set a spinnaker right away because we wanted to stay in the deeper water and take advantage of what flood there was. We could not carry a spinnaker at the angle of reach we wanted to sail. Lou and John set their spinnakers but Tom didn’t and looked to be sailing even higher than we were. John made head way on us but we had lots in the bank if we need so we were looking good.

After getting past Angel Island and getting a bit more wind though Raccoon Straits we put up the chute and had a good run all the way to the Richmond Bridge where we did the best gybe of our lives. We free flew the chute and didn’t slow down at all. Cindy did a great job of gybing the boom after the spinnaker. It was so smooth I asked everyone if they wanted to do it again!

After the Richmond Bridge we were into the ebb but it was much less that we expected it to be, so we stayed out where there was more wind. This was against our original plan but we were expecting more than a knot of ebb. Again Tom and us were outside, John went way in and Lou stayed more or less in the middle but closer to in than the middle. John got the most ebb relief and had more than enough wind so his line was best. Still he was not going to catch Lou so Lou’s line was good also.

We needed to sail almost a beam reach with the spinnaker but we were going 8 knots and sometimes just a bit faster. The problem is that we could not sail any higher and the wind was shifting. We could not sail more down wind or we would be in the shipping channel and get a big DSQ! Anyway both Captain Hooke and us had to drop the kites to sail a higher angle to get away for the shipping channel. We got ours down with a bit of problems but they had lots of problems because it was really blowing hard.

After that we thought we had third totally in the bank so we just left up the foresail and were planning to “cruise” home the rest of the way. We looked around and could not see any boats in our fleet except Lou and John and we were not going to catch them. They were in front and they were sailing a faster angle to the Napa River with a spinnaker than we could with the 135.

Then all of a sudden out of nowhere, while we were having a beer feeling good about our third place another boat come zooming by us out of nowhere! Ouch back to racing mode ASAP. We put back up the spinnaker but could carry it because of the angle. So we took it down and sailed out a bit away so we could put it back up. At that time we started to gain on them. We switched back and forth between the 135 and the spinnaker a couple of times and passed them about 500 yards from the finish. It was great! We have had a lot of close finishes but we are usually the one that looses out. They are fun but I have to tell you it is more fun to win!

Sunday.

Sunday we got a very good start and were second and stayed with Lou all the way to the Napa River. A couple of times we got windward of him and were close to getting an overlap and passing him so we were very happy with ourselves. We were many lengths ahead of the rest of the fleet with Tom and John third and fourth.

The first tack after exiting the river we were able to tack windward of Lou even though he tried really hard not to give us any room to do that. So we were looking good and I thought we were going to take the lead at the next tack. We both had to duck some slower boats on a Starboard tack and we did very well with that little maneuver trimming our sails as we fell over to gain a bit of speed and then bring them back in as we returned to close hauled we missed them by about 5 feet, which was probably to close but we hailed to them not to change course.

Then we did a terrible tack. I think we tried to tack a bit too fast and had the foresail way out in the wind and I had to feather the boat to get the sail back in. We lost of ton of ground on that and now we were back to John and Tom and had lost all the distance we worked so hard to gain.

The next tack was OK but then we had the ship issue. Everyone short tacked and we couldn't figure out why because no one was looking behind. When we figured out why we had to tack backward for a couple of minutes and that was that. We never make up the distance and in fact got more behind because we had too much sail up and trying to make up the distance.

But in any event it was a great weekend and we are very happy with our finishes. Plus now we look behind a bit more often especially when people short tack!

Lou Zevanov:

The Great Vallejo Race provided all that we could ask for as far as sailing and the kind of party fun always found with Harry, Carol and Michele on Pacific High.

This year we had some special conditions, such as spinny reaching for 12 miles on the edge, in 20 to 25 knots AWS. See Mariah's Eyes Photography Vallejo race...start at page 40 for the light wind part.

Sunday we beat in winds gusting over 40knots AWS. Diana wore her 110% jib and a first reef, tucked in 45 minutes too late! But once done, she stood up enough that most crew could stay below for warmth while freight training at 6.3 to 6.5 k.

We were happy that Kit's excellent hull strengthening and G-10 mast support system had been completed because some backstay gauges showed that PSI settings doubled with dynamic loading. This loading is one source of stress failures we found on I36s and other designs.

Zachary Sunderland (age 16), http://zacsunderland.com, plans to sail around the world in a rebuilt 1970's I36.His parents have been using some of our data to strengthen their boat.

Dan's Reply:

Hi Lou—

We should have reefed and gone with our 110. It was a mistake to go out with the 135% . We were on our ear the entire day but it did make for a wild ride. We were all on the rail totally wet (abet with our smiles on our faces) and we still not could catch Diane when you were all warm and toasty below. I guess we have a way to go. Lou it is always good to have Diane out there. It gives us all something to shoot at. Please try to come out more often.

We did notice a couple of things that may add to the database of knowledge concerning reinforcing the boats. We set our backstay pressure at 2K pounds before the race begin in the Napa River. Our instruments also indicated winds gusting to just over 40 knots but we showed mostly in the 30’s. When we fell off one wave I looked at the backstay pressure gage and it showed more than 4K pounds of pressure for just an instant. It was going up and down with the pounding we were taking. (I tried to look at it a bit more often but if I ever look at anything other than the wind angle, the telltails on the front sails, or the waves our crew is ready to toss me overboard and it would have been a long swim home.)

Luna Sea has not yet had the “repair” but we are “in line” to get it. When we got back to Pier 39 we were not leaking and I left the backstay on 1500 pounds for a few hours just to make sure.

It appears however that this is not a static loading problem as the dynamic loads from sailing in heavy weather just put a much greater load on the boat than anything static.

What does this all mean? I don’t really know because I have no idea how the entire structure responds to the changing loads. But it certainly shows that the static loads are just a faction of the dynamic loads. In flat water we are now going to increase our backstay tension a bit more that we have been. But maybe we should go and see Kit first!

--Dan

Pictures by Charlie Bergstedt and Carol Williams. Click on images to enlarge, click "Back" to return.

Diana leads.	Freedom Won leads Luna Sea	Ok everybody ...	smile!	Gybe time
Now what?	That's better	Amante has ...	a fun chute ...	comes abeam and ...
slides past ...	wave!	Pacific High gets ...	wind shadow.	Vitesse is ...
looking good.	Amante flying spinnaker	Amante	Bob drops by to say Hi	Capn Hooke & Vitesse in the channel
Cheers !!	Dan and Lou opine	Freedom Won Looks good	Happy Fella	Harry & Holly review the day
Holly & Dan confer	John directs traffic	Luna Sea & Capn Hooke headed to Vallejo	Luna Sea Crew is happy	Margaritas draw a crowd
Michele & Chris	return trip for Freedom Won	Steve & company	the shades have it !!	Time for socializing
windy Sun start	Windy Sunday

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