Annapolis Yacht Club Frostbite Racing 11-16-08
November 17, 2008
Every Sunday until the middle of December you can find hundreds of folks, dressed dressed more appropriately for black diamonds than sailboats, packed shoulder to shoulder and racing in the annual Annapolis Yacht Club Frostbite Series.
I coach the J80 Bear Instinct for this series in my ongoing role as a JWorld Annapolis racing coach. Each week three (on in the case of this week four) of my clients jump onboard and race against as many as 11 other J80’s (and dozens of of other boats in other classes). Each week the clients rotate positions and assume responsibility for being the helm, mainsail trimmer and jib trimmer. I ride around flapping my gums about rules, procedures, strategy, technique, and trim. Over the next few weeks I will be doing less and less flapping and more and more filming. In the end it is my hope to help this great group of very capable sailors gain the experience and confidence to race their own races – and still make it to the podium.
Right now we are in third place overall in our class. We have a 2nd, 4th, and a 5th. The whole team is focused on doing better so I bet you’ll see those finish scores improve in the coming weeks. You can find the results for this week and future weeks at the Annapolis Yacht Club site.
Today’s racing was held in what felt like pretty marginal conditions at times – but it was a great time and good racing. The course was started in the Severn River and raced up river to a drop mark near the base of the Naval Academy (Route 450) bridge. From their we reached and ran back into Annapolis harbor before returning to the finish line at the Annapolis Yacht Club. With any luck in the future I’ll be able to post some Google Earth maps of our courses, which may allow us to do some analysis of the races and our decisions. For now my GPS is not working well and my love/hate relationship with Google Maps is firmly in the hate catagory.
The NOAA site for the US Naval Academy (our start line) claims that it was 50 degrees and the wind was about 15kts. It felt a lot colder and I know the gusts were likely closer to 25kts. Fun conditions for sure.
Frostbite racing is interesting racing and a discipline of its own. No spinnakers. No hiking. Weird course formed from government marks, drop marks, and a finish line that extends from the yacht club bar to a flag somewhere near another bar, but definitely just shy of a big bridge.
What IS just like all other kinds of racing (albeit manifested a little differently) is that starts are really put at a premium because the reaching dominant courses don’t allow for many passing lanes. Boat speed and boat handling are also important. There are so few opportunities to recover from even the smallest mistakes means that the whole team needs to be on their game in order to win.
Today was SO windy that keeping the boat moving the whole time was also important. When a boat is over powered leeway increases, heeling increases, helm deflection increases and boat speed decreases. We weren’t really slow – but we were clearly a little off the pace of the top boats. It is a product of our lack of time sailing together and a lack of time in the J80. We are getting better, and I bet if we had another couple of days of sailing in those conditions we would have a much better sense of how to adjust our sails and keep the boat moving forward at full speed the whole time.
For instance when a big puff, and there were lots of them, would roll towards a boat the best way to keep the boat moving would be shift gears in our sails in order to translate the puff into speed rather than heeling. This “gear shift” would likely include adding tension to the backstay, vang, and Cunningham. Maybe easing the main sheet or dropping the traveler. Then as the puff abates and the boat begins to stand up or slow down those controls would be returned to whatever their “base” setting was for the day.
We’re getting much better and today’s wild conditions will make everyone less gun shy the next time an unexpected puff hits the boat. Thanks for a great day of racing!
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