Things to work on again this year

• Tuning the rig is important. Lowers must be even so that the mast is straight going upwind and not sagging in the middle under load. We spent a lot of time tuning before the race. 
• Rig must rock forward to make sure we get as much projection forward with the spinnaker.The tuning guides say that there should be 18” of mast tip travel fore and aft. However, there should be no inversion of the mast in the puffs. We adjusted the backstay a lot to accommodate that forward movement. Downwind backstay should be all the way to the bridle block.
• Upwind we should have a snug boom vang. Often our vang is not even on upwind. Wrong. The tuning guides also talk of using the vang in bigger breeze to control shape rather than the mainsheet. Since we didn’t see big air on Thursday, we didn’t have the opportunity to test out that approach.
• Kerry re-rounted the sheet leads to get us even more inboard. He thought the shape of our jib was too flat in the lower third and needed the inboard and lower attachment to give it a bit more fullness. I’ll take a look at alternate rigging solutions. If we use his approach, we may end up going to a single sheet lead block.
• Mainsail foot shelf in that breeze (8-ish kts.) was about half max. Tuning guides talk about 1-2 inch travel between max and min on outhaul. I think we should mark the boom and keep some records.
• On gybes he throws off the twings first (both sides) and throws the boom over first. Then he moves the pole. He throws the twings off to get the spinnaker out in front of the boat. He thinks it’s faster than our method. I tend to agree. We should practice and see.
• On the downwind, he tended to stay up on the deck rather than get back in the cockpit. It helped him look for breeze and tactical position. Also, on the set, he reached down from the mast and undid the jib halyard and pulled on the fraculator while staying on the deck by the mast. This leads me to believe that we should re-route the fraculator so that it is next to the jib halyard so that John can stay on the port side deck and just reach down after the hoist and pull the jib down. His approach was only a bit faster than the way we do it, but it kept him on the deck so that we could gybe at any moment when we got a lane. I know that sometimes we want to gybe quickly, but we’re still bringing the jib down from in the cockpit. Again, we should do some experimenting here. A couple of boat lengths can pay big dividends here. Oh, and I happened to be in Water Avenue Coffee on Friday where Matt (Coho) works and mentioned the gybing to him. He said that on the Merit that he races on they throw the boom over first also. Just one more data point. 
• He was not afraid to gybe. I think we had 5 gybes downwind. He didn’t want to stay close to anyone and kept looking more for breeze and lanes than making the inside so important to protect. I was fascinated by the willingness to both tack and gybe to take advantage of the breeze rather than tactically play with other folks. At one point, we were on a port-starboard with Rander and instead of waiting to lee-bow him, Kerry just said tack and stay in clear air. 
• Our start was our problem Thursday. We had good boat speed and tactical position otherwise. The Fred approach of tacking away as soon as possible if we are in the second row is exactly what Kerry called. From this point forward, I will never again suggest sitting behind folks even for a bit. Lesson learned. Cullison has done well taking over early if they are late to the start. Oh, and BTW, I have a new piece of software I want to show you guys. I tracked that race and the software shows wind shadow. It is a big deal more than I ever thought. Again, lesson learned.
• On the douse (windward side), Kerry didn’t care that the chute was all the way in boat. It was more important to him to get the jib sheeted in and be ready for the tack to the finish. As a sidebar, he also wasn’t crazy excited about getting the twing hardened up right away after a gybe. Sure it needed to be put on, but trimming the chute and keeping it full was more important to him. 
• I had my weight on the cabin top upwind and Kerry went back and forth between me and Fred. We might try it with John. Having my extra 60 lbs or so forward like that may help speed. Plus, it was easier for Kerry to go back and forth and help Fred with the main. 
• On the finish leg, Kerry kept urging Fred to scallop up to both make the mark and to give bad air to Don Hamann. That’s not new, but he was willing to tack early on what seemed to be before the starboard tack layline to gain position. As it turned out, we had to shoot the line to finish, but we did push Don to tack away and we gained a position because Don had been ahead of us at the mark rounding. Had we waited to tack, we wouldn’t have gotten Don. In other words, he was willing to take the risk of not making the finish line leeward mark (which would have required a tack at the end) just so that we could get position on Don. It’s an interesting tactical choice.
• Also BTW, my tracking software showed that upwind we were inside the starboard tack layline the whole way up until the last tack, where we overstood the mark. If memory serves me, we had to go a little farther than we wanted because there were starboard tack boats coming down on us and we had to overstand because it was the only safe position to be in. My software also shows that we are generally pretty good on our tacks. We keep our speed up and don’t over-rotate. They take between 8 and 10 seconds to complete. Our gybes were also generally pretty good and we didn’t lose much speed. As I recall, they take about 20 seconds on average to complete. 

One other item to add to your summary is that while sheeting the jib we should try to keep the batten parallel.  This will keep it powered  up but not to tight to back wind the main and not to loose and lose some of our point.  It gives us a real starting point when trying to figure out proper trim. As you said Kerry spent some time working on the height of the fairlead and how far out on the car to achieve power in the jib.

Hot Dogger

A Hot Dogger in the Water

Best Drawing of a man over board ever!!!!!!!!!  Thank you Denny Vangogh.

I really think the drawing needs three Old Stooges stick men on our boat.

Three Stooges had a really good start last night.  As a sidebar, has anyone noticed that Check Ride starts behind everyone right at the pin every race?  What gives? Anyway, off we went.  

Earlier that day I dove Stooges bottom, put up the mast by myself (yeah right, knuk, knuk, knuk), attached the forestay, stolen an engine, all 10 minutes before the leaving dock – we were ready to kick some serious river ass.

After the start, we came into the windward mark and had a decent rounding. Spinnaker up – pole on, starboard bear-away. Textbook. Mo and Curling were talking about gybing as we jostled for position with Ollie’s Hot Dog to leeward and behind. We were in good shape. Curly is an awesome trimmer (by his own admission), and Mo is a man that can drive a boat blindfolded (come to think of it, sometimes it feels that way). I see things they don’t, like the wind and, well, other stuff like MOBs.

Freddy calls for the gybe. We throw the main across, and I go forward and switch the pole. I look back toward the comp Hot Dog.

Me - “Hey – somebody just went in the water – did you guys see that? It’s Hot Dog.“

Me – “Man Overboard – Man Overboard”

Mo – “Yep”

Curley – “Yep”

Mo – “Other boats are close – let’s see what happens.”

Within the space of another 10 seconds the other boats had sailed on by Tom in the water. I had my eye on him and never looked away. When it was clear that none of the other boats has seen the MOB or did not have the capacity to help, we shifted gears.

Mo and Curley – “Spinnaker down – we are going back!”

Immediately we doused sails - all the time I was crowing “Man Overboard, Man Overboard” like a possessed Tourette’s Syndrome sailor.

I kept my eye on the MOB while helping to douse the chute as best I could.  Curley got the throw rope up from below.  Fred kept yelling to get the jib back up so that we had steerage.

Boats from the next starting fleet were sailing down river on their weather leg toward Hot Dog, and we screamed at them to make sure they stayed clear of the situation. None of them had a clue someone was in the water.

Ollie (who sort of inadvertently decided to sail single-handed for a few minutes – knuk, knuk, knuk) did a really good job of dousing his sails.

Curley “Where is our ladder?”

Me “I don’t friggin know. I couldn’t find it earlier in the day.” I had looked for it when I dove the bottom and couldn’t find it. I know we have one. We had purchased it last year when we had our own MOB incident last year. Gremlins.

By this point, Ollie had gotten his boat under control and had stationed himself downriver of the MOB. He brought Tom alongside and had a hold of his arms. I kept yelling at Ollie about using his legs, and even though only a few boat lengths away, he couldn’t hear me. While I yelled, I was also giving him my “pull the man on the boat pantomime” from my Boy Scout training, but my acting sucked. I looked like a Foggy Bottom Bluegrass bearded guy stomping out “I am a Man of Constant Sorrow.”

Curley yelled to Ollie – “Lower the motor mount and have him climb on that.”  It was like a stairway to heaven for a waterlogged MOB. 

Tom climbed on the motor mount, then over the transom with Ollie pulling hard, and we all sighed a little relief.

Things I learned:

Make sure that you have your throw rope, extra life jackets and ladder where they can be easily accessed. 

You may be the only boat that can render assistance. I took a poll of the other boats. Only 2 of them were aware of the situation even though there were at least 10 boats within 20 yards. None of the oncoming boats had any idea of the situation before we notified them after the race. The 2 boats that were aware could not render assistance due to other factors.

I am buying a cheap VHF handheld today – we should have notified race committee – they would have rendered assistance immediately.

I am also going to find that damn ladder.

On a more personal level, Curley is ecstatic about getting rid of his prestigious “Whoops!” award at the end of this year. Unless something changes, Hot Dog has that award locked.

Mr. Damore’s rendition to the Committee for redress.

Tonight, the Cal 20 fleet had a course of XX (S-1-5-1-4-F). After rounding Mark 1 on a starboard bear away set, we continued on starboard with Oliver "Ollie" Kunz's boat Hot Dog SN1509, another Cal 20, several boat lengths to leeward. He was sailing with Tom Pfeiffer. On our boat was Dennis Damore, Fred Hazard, and John Cole. Approximately a third of the way to Mark 5, we gybed on to port. At the time, we were third behind Scooter and Check Ride. After completing the gybe, John Cole looked back to see Tom Pfeiffer being knocked off of Hot Dog by the boom as they completed their gybe. John immediately yelled "Man Overboard" and kept yelling it to the other Cals on the spinnaker run who where closer to them. We could see that Tom did not have a life jacket on and that Ollie was struggling to get his chute down. Other boats either did not see the incident, hear the three of us yelling, or were having their own troubles with their chutes. We immediately made the decision to do a crash douse of our chute. And we turned around to lend assistance.

By this point, Tom had gotten hold of a cushion and was floating down river and Ollie had gotten his boat somewhat under control. We readied our throw line and our floating cushion as well as our spare life jacket to throw to him. While approaching, we continued to yell "Man Overboard" especially to the fleet who was behind us sailing their weather leg so that they wouldn't interfere with the recovery or inadvertently hit Tom who was still in the water. As we got to within about 5 boat lengths of Hot Dog we could see that Ollie had gotten a line to Tom. However, Ollie, who is much smaller than Tom could not get him aboard. As we circled them, we yelled for them to get Tom to the back of the boat, get the motor mount down, and use the motor mount as a boarding ladder, which they did. We circled again within a half a boat length and once we were clear that he was aboard and they told us they didn't need more assistance, we untangled our spinnaker and other gear and resumed racing. Hot Dog retired from the race and we continued even though more than a leg behind.

We would like redress for our assistance under Rule 62.1 (c) "giving help...in compliance with rule 1.1". The redress we are requesting is based upon our position at the time we turned around, third, and the evidence that our previous finishes in this series show that we would likely have finished in the top three. We also note that the average of those finishes over the previous four races is third place. We would like to have our actual position of last be changed to third place.

Tom Pfeiffer, Ollie Kunz, and Benny Quintanilla who was on another Cal but had spinnaker issues and couldn't help, will all provide their verification of these facts if requested.

Required diagram included

The Bitch

Excuse my language.

The bitch got me again.

She gets me all excited because sometimes I can pass her.

Many times she lets me get right up next to her and then I drift away

She is young compared to others around her.

Other suitors try around me.  None succeeded last Saturday when we tried to woo her again.


The race was from Salty's to Sand Island (Atkerman to others).  I let someone else drive and they got the stooges into the middle of the river - always a bad idea in light wind.

It really didn't matter - we all got up to the bitch and could go no further.  She was fickle as usual.

It poured and we all got wet.

All good.

The bitch - the 205 bridge

The perfect Brew

Ahhh!!

The perfect brew - the perfect sunset. (And we got a bullet this night)

How many cops

How many cops?

Went to launch Light Speed on Saturday.  It was about 10:00am.

42nd street ramp on the Columbia River.  It doubles as a Sheriffs station.

Steep drop down off the dyke.  It was constructed after the Vanport flood.

http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/vanport/#.V0hqXPkrKM8

The entire basin is regulated and we paid for the dams in Canada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Treaty


But I digress.

It takes 4 cops to watch (not help) a couple of people to launch a Cal 20.  They had their ticket books out and ready.  Kerry had made a cradle for the mast and we stepped it quickly and were away before they could ticket us.  Last I saw - 2 of them were running down the dyke.

The way I sees it

 The way I see it

From: Fred Hazzard [mailto:fshazzard@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2016 7:38 AM
To: Dennis Damore <dennisdamore@comcast.net>; Cole_John <cole@lumber.com>
Subject: Race last night

Poe sailed with us last night and we were fast .  we won the first race by at least 100 yds.  Second race with nice lead at leeward Mark we shrimped the chute.
Good winds. 12 gusting to 18. Upwind in gust he would count down the seconds to the gust and be prepared to ease the jib to keep us on our feet and allow us to work up in the velosity lift.  We always tacked at the start of a gust.  Better boat speed thru the tack and a velocity lift.
Tight main and jib sheets.  Heavy  back stay.
Chute set with no pole.  Gybing main first.  Gybing chute with pole left on till last.  Pole off with chute coming down as we came into the mark. Always looking for gust.  Keeping wind clear and separation from other boats. Staying to leeward of other boats.  Trying to max speed at all times.  Constantly working sheets.
Very  busy and always fast.

Moe

The way I sees it

What Fred did not say.

We always tacked at start of gust but not every gust.

We came into the last mark of the second race.  We weren’t first but we were dang close to first.  Everyone gathered at the Mark (including a few Rangers).

Back of the boat – “Get ready to douse the chute” – I always hear the same thing from both people about pole, halyard, etc etc

Pointy end - Me – no comment – I got the pole off and flaked the halyard so it would not foul.

Back end of the boat screamed – “Dump the Chute” – I dumped the chute – not release the halyard type but a “Dump” dump

The back end was in no way ready for me to dump the chute and by the time I looked back – it was in the water.

I later got a lecture that Dump doesn’t mean dump.

We lost 3 places because of Salmon we caught in the chute and then another 2 places because we left the halyard underneath the boat for the upwind leg.

Got a call later from Denny - Dump means Dump - get your hand off the halyard and let her run.

Love the main first gybe!

John “The real deal” Cole

Well done is better than well said.

Benjamin Franklin

Went out with Commander Mike

Went out with Commander Mike of the US Navy on Sunday.  Funny thing - most navy guys I know don't know how to sail.  Mike thinks that because he has helmed a 533' navy boat of some persuasion he should know how to sail.

Went out to beat the bitch - the Glenn Jackson bitch.  Always hate sailing past that thing.  The winds die, swirl and screw me up.

We started out with a West Wind.  Went to a East Wind.  Then light and variable.

Once we passed the bridge it was a true easterly and we cruised.


“May the bridges I burn light the way.” 

First Race of the year

First race with Stooges for the year last night

Light wind

T course

Start 1-3-Finish

Started about middle of the pack.  Had good upwind leg and rounded the mark around 3 - had a quick  uppage and I mean quick jibe and saildouse.  Within 30 seconds fast for all activity.

We were about 3

Couple went to Oregon and made out really well.  Current was strong - really good idea

We went up the middle because that is where the wind was.  We jockeyed around on the downwind leg and were actually DFL for awhile

Denny stomped his feet a lot.  Inaction as far as tactics is hard sometimes.

We rounded the mark around 6 and finished around 6.  Great takedown.

Always next week.

Mo called later in the week.  Didn't feel like was anything short of something drastic to improve his position and that is why it was best to hang tight.  I agree with that tactic even though it hurts at the time.

The fact that there is a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven is an indication of the traffic.

Rules

Had a rules meeting last Wednesday.

It was the first one of the year and it had to do with starts.  It always interests me on how some topics evolve into others.  One of the diveregencies was when is the committee boat becomes an obstacle.  At what point do you call a protest to prevent the committee boat from becoming an obstacle?

Then comes all the discussions about obstacles.