Coronado Yacht Club Sport Boat Regatta

Coronado Yacht Clun Sport Boat Regatta – San Diego, CA

Five Wetas signed up, and four Wetas showed up and raced in the Coronado
Yacht Club's annual Sport Boat Regatta last weekend.

In the past couple years, the CYC Sport Boat Regatta has been injected with
hype by being dubbed (or overdubbed) as the International Sailing Anarchy
Fest (IASF) with a brash middle finger gesture at the Status Quo of Sailing
as part of the spirit of this gathering of fast boats. For some unknown
reason (logistical and calendar conflicts according to the SA team of
organizers) this year the ISAF was practically called off. Within a few days
of that news coming out, the Flying Tigers (FT10) and Viper640 fleets
gathered in solidarity and rallied to race anyway. The folks at CYC vowed to
carry on, and the invitations went out to the masses to join the fun. It
was a busy weekend for sailing on the west coast of the USA, with a large
regatta hosted by the Richmond Yacht Club (East SF Bay) and the Cat Fight II
hosted by the Mission Bay Yacht Club (San Diego) as well as the CYC racing
in San Diego's south bay. Decisions, decisions.not all the West Coast Wetas
could be at all venues at once, so folks stuck close to home.

Last year, the ISAF had over 80 boats show up, racing on two different
courses over three days. Parking was tight, and finding dock space was a
nightmare. This year, with 4 Moths, 8 FT10, 8 V640, 5 505s, and 4 Weta, it
was much less crowded at the club, but dock space was still a premium. Us
Wetas learned to raft up, tying up side by side, and this worked decently
well. Also, we found that having more than one hoisting bridle helped to
make the process of hoisting all our boats a faster process. While one boat
is in the air, the other bridle is getting attached to the next boat going
in or coming out.

We all had a great time in the light and shifty to slowly increasing
winds, and the fleet showed improvement over the course of two days and six
races.

Award for the Road Tripper goes to Tim Corcoran who drove over 2 hours in
nasty Los Angeles traffic on a Friday evening to get to the venue, camping
out in a cruising catamaran bunk generously provided by Kurt Jerman of West
Coast Multihulls. The Rookie of the Weekend award goes to Drew Couto, who
took delivery of his new Weta just about 4 weeks ago. When he launched on
Saturday, it was only his third day in the boat and only the second time
he'd sailed with all three sails. I think Drew had a good time sailing with
other Wetas, and I saw him steadily improve his boat handling. Best Starter
by far was Brian Collick, who was consistently on the line at the gun for
every start.

I think everyone had a good time racing, but as the undisputed leader in
every race, I don't feel really good about it. You see, even over a short
W/L course of about 1 mile, the distance/time between the first to finish
and the last was pretty large. I think we need to have a clinic in SoCal
sometime soon to get everyone on the water together for some close sailing
and coaching so we increase the competitiveness of the regional fleet.
Some might say I was faster because I'm lighter than the others, but I'm not
sure 20 pounds is such a big difference. My starts weren't much to be proud
of, and in Race 6 I turned around 30 seconds after the start and returned to
the line to read the course number on the RC boat. This put me firmly behind
the other boats by 30 to 50 yards, but that was temporary. I think there
are two things that I'm getting better at: sailing up wind, and sailing down
wind. Okay, and tacking and gybing, too. I arrived at the windward mark
much earlier than any of the others in every race. Off the wind, I usually
increased my lead by speed and keeping in the pressure.

The generally light winds (2 to 7 knots) meant it was easy to move around
the boat without getting into trouble, for the less nimble of the fleet, but
the lack of power for the heavier guys was a problem. The Moths were really
hating life for half of each day since the wind took a long time to fill in.
They drifted three to 4 miles out to the course. Once the wind filled in
on Sunday for the last race of the day, keeping the speed through a tack,
gybe, or mark rounding was still important. Doing it all gracefully was the
new challenge for those of us who don't sail often or don't have much
single-handed dinghy sailing experience.

Racing with other boats on the same course had its moments. The FT10s
started first, then V640, followed by 505, and Wetas last. Running on a
rotating 5 minute cycle, we were sailing off 15 minutes after the big boys,
and this led to some gripping moments as we were deep into our starting
sequence when they were descending on our water with massive asym chutes up.
This confluence of bit and small, massive and nimble, was repeated a number
of times during our starts on Day 1. We go the RC to reduce our sequence on
Day 2 to just 3 minutes, and this helped a bit.

I noticed that the gybing angles of the Wetas differed greatly with the FT10
and VP640.. Could've been that the winds were so light that those fleets
were sailing very deep. Their kites are very full, almost masthead
asymmetrical chutes. Ours are oversized headsails. In a real breeze, they
might've heated up their angles a bit. When the breeze really did kick in,
I tracked/chased a moth and found that his angles were good ones for me,
too. What I lacked at that point in the race was another Weta sailing a
different angle on the same tack to compare.

The Windward mark rounding included an offset mark, situated about 40 yards
away from the windward mark, and on a line perpendicular to the wind. I
found that if I could manage to lay the mark, I could start unfurling the
screetcher as the bow passed the mark and then sheet in tight and pop the
boat onto a nice, nail-biting plane to the offset buoy, while hiking like
crazy at the aft outboard corner of the aka. This was very fast, and helped
to stretch my lead quickly at the top of the course. As the wind increased
in strength over the day, pulling out the screecher early like this was more
difficult.

I brought a Speed Puck along for the ride, and I've enjoyed viewing the
playbacks of my tracks for each race. One of these confirmed Brian's
suspicion that I did not sail the correct course in Race 3. Until I saw the
track, I was sure that I sailed course 2 (two windward/leeward laps) but
Brian thought I sailed just one. I thought he was confused and sailed an
extra one! In hindsight, although it would not have changed my overall
standing in the regatta, I regret not notifying the RC on Sunday morning
before Race 5 that I was self-disqualifying (retiring?) myself from the race
in question. It would've been the right thing to do. Gotta love technology
for taking the guesswork out of the situation.

Looking forward to the St Francis YC Fall Dinghy Regatta in San Fran next
month. How 'bout you?!

Aloha,

Bruce

Bruce Fleming

Akahele! #276

San Diego, California, USA