Glen Writes up the Miles River Race

Great post from Glen our Miles River Race success:

http://www.glenbecker.com/2011/05/a-perfect-day-2011-annapolis-to-miles-river-race/

Thanks for all you do, Glen. We all love spending time with you and Emily!

2010 NASS Race to Oxford

From 2010 Oxford Race

For all you loyal LinGin blog followers, I posted a recap of the race to Oxford on the Alberg 30 Racing Blog:

http://racing.alberg30.org/2010/09/2010-nass-race-to-oxford.html

The race back was two gybes and other than the dinky first leg, all under spinnaker. A regular foot race, that we won. Damp and steady around 10 kts, it was fun, but worthy of a write up? Meh.

Wednesday Night Races: No. 1, 2010

A windy, chilly, but beautiful evening greeted us for the first WNR of 2010. It was an exciting evening as we started off by realizing that we were missing the battens for the main. Ugh. We were too far from the dock to turn around and get them and then make the race on time.

I called Mackenzie and being the trooper that she is, she and Andréa drove to Mimi's, found the battens in the garage attic and zipped them out to us via the powerboat. Sounds fun, but not so much when it's 50° and blowing 15-20kts! They both were soaked, but we were glad to get the battens.

We quickly raised the main and as it got to the top of the mast, TWANG!, the rope part of the wire/rope halyard snapped. With 15 minutes left before the start, we looked around and David piped up, "I'll go up, Dad." We grabbed the bosuns chair and had him up the mast in no time.

If you've ever been up a mast, you know it can be pretty scary up there. A few degrees of heel on the deck doesn't feel like much, but 40 feet up, it can translate into 10 feet of motion! In rough seas, like we had tonight, it can be quite difficult to hold on.

David did it like a pro! He went all the way to the top, tied a line to the broken halyard and even checked the sheave. I was very proud.

We ended up starting a few minutes late. It turned out battens were the wrong set and a few of them bust through the pockets...not good. Harry (484) and Mike (550) were the only other A30s out there, but we caught Harry at the Naval Academy sea wall and came in 2nd. Not a bad start to the season.

Now for the NOOD this weekend!

A Very Tight WNR

We had a really fun race last Wednesday.

A nice, light and variable breeze out of the west made for a downwind start. We envisioned starting at the pin end of the line on port tack, setting the chute just as the gun went off. It wasn't to be, though, as we came up to the pin on starboard and quickly became trapped between a number of boats from other classes.

We agonized on an action plan. We were blanketed by these other boats and we were unable to gybe and get going the way we planned. After trying to slow LinGin down for a bit we were able to make a large S turn and get out from behind these boats, gybe and set the spinnaker. The bummer was that we were at the end of the A30 fleet at this point.

We put Scott on the hook to help us catch up and by the first mark, we were chasing Laughing Gull and Argo.

After rounding the mark, we were heading upwind and back toward Annapolis. Laughing Gull went left--far left. We felt the wind was better to the right since it had the chance to funnel down the Severn. Argo went right a bit and then tacked left. We went a bit further and tacked before we could become entangled with the big boats coming back in.

The wind lightened up and became very shifty. Luckily we caught a break one shift and caught Argo on our next crossing by less than a boat length. Laughing Gull tacked out from the far left corner and went far right. Argo followed her.

It looked as though Laughing Gull lost almost all wind on the right side. Argo, it appeared, met the same fate. While we didn't have much wind to the left, we kept moving and coming into the next mark we tacked just inside of Laughing Gull and rounding the mark.

It was not clear whether we could carry a chute coming into the harbor and Argo, though behind, was moving as she took a very high course up near the Naval Academy sea wall. After watching Argo continue to move on us, we decided we had to put the chute up. (Much to Scott's delight!)

We slowly picked up speed and did our best to steer the rhumb line to the finish while avoiding being covered by non-Albergs that were steaming through.

We held off Argo. I think they went too high and had to come down to make the finish--very slow.

Coming into the finish we were right next to a Cal 25 that covered us not 3 boat lengths from the finish. Laughing Gull was on our tail and steaming comparatively--especially since they had clear air. Thankfully we found enough wind to hold them off, but only by the skin of our teeth.

It was a nail biter that at times seemed well out of our reach, but we had a great time fighting till the end. We're all bummed that next week is the last WNR of the season.

Ted Osius Race: LinGin Logs a Solid Second

The Osius race this past weekend was a fun time. Darcy, Garrett, Glen and I had our hands full doing two races that each required two laps around a 1 mile course.

The wind was out of the south and strengthen throughout the day, starting around 5 kts and building to somewhere around 12 kts. There was the standard weekend powerboat chop too. :(

Both races we had good starts and the crew work was on target. Garrett really earned his keep doing all that spinnaker work. He was either setting up, flying, taking down or packing the chute throughout each race. Lots of sweat and hard work. Being a relative newcomer to the foredeck he did an admirable job: we had zero errors and really only one set that took a little longer than we would have liked.

Unfortunately our boat speed was not up to Argo's. Each race Argo pulled away and try as we might, there was no catching her. I've put together a spreadsheet to start tracking our settings in various conditions. Hopefully over time we'll figure some things out.

One thing we didn't do, but that could have helped was move the traveler up to introduce twist in the main to help power us through the waves.

The second race was a bit more exciting because Lanny (Windswept) passed us on the last upwind leg and we had to catch him under spinnaker to get second. It was touch and go for a bit, but we rolled him to windward and once far enough ahead, gybed to get clear ahead of him and headed for the finish line.

Great work everyone, and thanks to Darcy for being a trooper and playing the main in the hot sun for hours. The next weekend race isn't until the fall, so it's WNRs until then.