2010 Summer Summary

Well I don't even know where to start! I apologize for not having updated since the Tybee.

It's been quite the season, we started sailing in March and ended in early October, I can count the number of weekends we didn't sail on one hand. I even managed to sneak in a Hobie 16 and an A-Cat regatta. We traveled to sail in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Ontario... my truck isn't very happy with me.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about each event, mainly because it would take a month, but also there really isn't too much spectacular to write about. It was a boring season dominated by light to medium air.

All of our results are up on our site, they were mediocre, mainly because we are a big breeze team. But we had our moments in light air and won more individual races this summer than last. We don't mind light air, but the medium air just seems so tough for us to get the boat moving.

-We ended up 4th in the summer series again, this year newcomers to the fleet John & Pete Guiliano snuck in 3rd ahead of us, these boys are both still in college and they are fast! I can't wait until they start racing on the national level.

-The Joe Manganello Memorial Regatta and Hampton Beach were good... day 1 of Hampton was the breeziest of the year, we had some great battles with Mike & Tripp which resulted in Mike falling in the water and us pitchpoling, both my fault (a story for later). The next day in light air as I was trying to get to the beach to head out all the parking meters went offline and we missed the first start, costing us 2nd place.

-Once again the Statue of Liberty Race plagued us, in my 10th consecutive year we were really hoping for the win (especially with Mike & Tripp at the Worlds) we were first to the Verazanno, first to the Statue then as we're ripping back double trapped with the chute with a good lead we hear a "POP!" our spinnaker exploded, almost 10 feet down on each side. We sailed the last 15 miles with it hanging from the luff and leech tapes... not particularly fast... of course neither was getting stuck on the lee side of a moving barge for several miles. We just can't seem to catch a break in that race.

-F18 North Americans in Wisconsin was a bust... light, fluky winds, fog, and basically just the worst sailing week one could possibly envision, but most there wouldn't even qualify it as a sailing week. However, the parties were good and the regatta organizers did an amazing job hosting the event. The last race was the only good one for us, the only solidly double trapped race of the regatta and we managed a 10th. We ended up 29th overall out of 56, there's always next year.

-Canadian Nationals was the highlight of our summer, 2 days of 20-30 knots in medium sized steep waves. Upwind we felt great, we were just as fast as all the top boats, but while downwind was a blast, we couldn't get in the groove and lost a lot there. We had our one allowed tanker of a race and it looked okay as our throwout to keep us in top 5. But then 2 races later, as we were in the top 3 nearing the windward mark, a silly crossing with situation with Olivier Pilon caused us to crash tack and capsize, the other boat later told us that he was telling us to cross (sure sure.. I believe that!). I'd say our best battles were with Olivier, one race we rounded ahead of him at the windward mark but after setting he sailed lower for a few seconds and got in a lower lane. We jibed to lead him back and he jibed to windward of us. We got sucked up to leeward of him and I ended up having to slow down a bit to get behind and try to roll him, well as we were 2 feet behind him, his tiny Wildcat bows decided they wanted a piece of a wave and the boat went 3/4 underwater. I'm not sure if he broke the wave for us or because we were on an infusion but our boat barely stuffed and we were headed at his transom FAST! Brendon screamed (yea the big guy gets scared) and without any communication he luffed the chute and I headed up missing the Wildcat transom by inches, sheeted in and we rolled them. The last day was 1 race in 3-5 knots and we managed to pull off a 5th, it's a great feeling to sail well at both ends of the spectrum. We ended up 7th overall out of 39 boats.

-The Heineken High Performance DInghy Open was a great event with most of the racing done in 10-18 knots. This was the fastest our fleet sailed all summer with Mike & Tripp being pushed to work hard for this win by Bob Merrick & John Farrar, but the Gangstas won a battle in the last race and took the win. The 2 visiting Canadian teams also turned on the heat, we found ourselves out of the top 4 almost the entire regatta. In the last race we were in 3rd at the leeward mark and finally feeling good but during the last jibe to the gate I threw myself off the boat, I held on and got back on but the spin sheets were under the bow and we had sailed off the course, we recovered to finish 8th but it wasn't a fun way to end the season.

-The boat is currently undergoing a little makeover at JibeTech in Portsmouth, RI because we leave for Florida in just one month! We'll be going down a bit early to do a little bit of training / bask in the Florida sunshine then sail in the Key Largo Steeplechase, fly home, then return in January for F18 Midwinters / The Tradewinds Regatta.

I'll try to tell some more good stories from the summer as I think of them and have time to write about them. Thanks to everyone we race against for making it another amazing summer!

On tap for next summer, probably a few less events, no Tybee, but we are aiming high at the World Championships in Hungary and then North Americans in our neck of the woods Hyannis, MA.

Below are some picture highlights from the season.

Pedal down, downwind at Hampton, in the lead in the last race of Day 1

Maybe a little too pedal down... dammit!

"HAHA there is a God!" -Michael Easton

Hampton

Top 7 at Canadian Nat'ls. Toronto skyline in background

Battling it out with Olivier Pilon

Good sized waves in Toronto

NEW YORK CITY!!!! Leading to the Statue

Dammit Chris get off our ass, he pitchpoled soon after this, giving us the lead back until we blew up our spinnaker

More Toronto

Still Toronto

Us trying to be the New England Gangstas at the Joe Mangenello Memorial Regatta

Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open

Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open

Start at the Heineken High Performance Dinghy Open

Finished the 2010 Tybee 500!

Leg 6 from Fernadina to Tybee was a pretty rough one for us, we finished 10th for the leg but didn't get done what we needed to. We were running with the leaders well for the first 5-10 miles and ahead of Team Pepod, whom we needed to beat by around 15 minutes to move up in the standings. After the start we were just ahead of Team Pepod but realizing it would be hard to beat them by 15 minutes by drag racing them we made the bold decision to jibe in early, one of the first boats to do so. If you watch the tracking on Tybee500.com you will see what we realized 3 hours later as a pack of 5 or so boats including Pepod came into shore a few miles ahead of us, we jibed way too early. The wind was still light when we jibed and making terrible vmg towards shore put us back in the pack. The group that came in later waited for more breeze and had much better vmg on their way in. After jibing back and forth along the desolate Georgia coastline we found the angle we needed to sail to Tybee and held it for the last 40 miles. During this time we ground down Team Velocity 2 and gained on Pepod but couldn't quite catch them as they beat us by about 5 minutes in the leg.
The biggest pain during the day was 1) every time you jibed into shore your vmg was horrible and depressing to look at 2) in the murky brown GA water's we had our rudders kick up 6 times, we know that 2 times it was from jellyfish (amazing how loud the pop is as you make these guys explode sailing at 18 knots) but the other 4 we aren't so sure and it's pretty creepy not knowing what's down there! At the end of the leg we found a quarter size chip in the leading edge of our rudder blade. I'm just thankful for not getting the chance to mingle with a 12' Hammerhead again this year, we only saw a few smaller sharks this year.
All in all we are very happy with our performance at this year's Tybee. Us being there and finishing this race would not have been possible without Team Seacats... Frank, Jake, Tim, Chris, David, Robyn... thank you very much! You have all been so kind to us and we are proud to have been part of such a great team... the awesome team t-shirts that Jake made were worth it on their own! Also thanks to the team groundcrew's Tim, Chris T. and Bjorn for helping out our road crew Chris. B... it was amazing to have a full on NASCAR style pit crew waiting for us on the beach. it was There is no way we had the energy to do everything you did for us off the water. Chris B, thank you for stepping in as the all-star perfect ground crew, you did everything we asked and more making it possible for us to focus on sailing. There is no way we could have done half the things you did for us and still make it through this race, especially after the first 2 days.
I also have to thank everyone involved with this race whether it be RC, competitors, other ground crews, and so forth the camaraderie blows my mind each and every day.
I'll try to update this blog with some more stories from the week over the next few days, i'm a little bit fried right now after driving straight through to CT all night.

Perfect sailing for leg 5 to Fernandina

The start of Leg 5 was in about 8 knots from the Southeast allowing for a spinnaker run. This was a big advantageous once again for the 20's. We had an amazing start, even though we started 1 minute behind on second row we got up to the lead pack almost immediately and hung in with them for a while and then jibed into shore. When we came back to some of the lead 20's we had caught up a lot and only lost a bit to them over the course of the day.

We saw some new types of sealife today including a manta ray the side of our trampoline, a few more turtles, and a couple small sharks. It's really cool to see so much sealife through this race.

Team Pepod had a 33 minute lead on us going into yesterday and we've now cut into that lead by about 18 minutes. We have been going lower and just as fast as them downwind the last two days and hope that can allow us to gain another 15 minutes on tomorrow's 120 mile leg which start has been moved up to 8AM.

We picked off 1 boat right before the finish today while we were double trap spin reaching the last 15 miles and finished 7th.

Off to dinner now!

We made it to Daytona

Not in quite the best placing as we have been the last few days, but not too bad, 12th place. It was really ideal Nacra 20 conditions with light winds upwind and dead downwind and a low jib reach around the exclusion zone that was too low for us to carry our spinnakers.

We battled it out all day with Team Pepod, the other F18 Infusion and ended up being them by 9:59, for the first time so far this race.

After being dropped off Cape Canaveral we decided to keep going out, we were too far behind to see that the leaders had jibed in and didn't feel like it was the right move. We ended up going nearly 20 miles off shore, we lost sight of land for several hours. It's really hard to trust an arrow on a GPS when you look where it's pointing and there is nothing there! Going around Cape Canaveral it was very light winds and it slowly picked up as we got closer to Daytona. Unfortunately we found out upon arriving on the beach that the wind had filled on shore much sooner.

Unfortunately our teammates on Team Seacats White have retired from the race due to damage... this is very dissapointing as they are great guys and this is the 2nd year in a row this has happened.

Tomorrow we are off to Fernandina, one of my favorite stops of this race. If the conditions are like they were at the finish today it will be a great run.

Below are pictures of our finish in Cocoa Beach Yesterday.

6th place again into Cocoa Beach

The day started off with a launch through pretty big breaking surf but perfect wind to get through it flawlessly. We started off double trap 2 sail reaching and eventually the wind shifted allowing us to put the spinnaker up and sail single trapezed. At these angles, for the first half of the leg the 20's were at an advantage and we lost a couple of them.

Halfway through the leg we were jib reaching out and spinnaker reaching back in as long as we could as the 20's were powering through on a jib reach parrallel to the shore. We were holding off Team Seacats Orange but they were coming on strong, in an attempt to hold them off a bit longer we launched the spinnaker and double trapezed, this didn't last long as our hull buried sending us both around the bow in what the guys on Seacats Orange claimed was a "9 pointer" with both rudders way clear out of the water and everything!

We righted the boat in about a minute and started to grind back at them but in that little time they had already pulled way ahead, almost to the horizon. Later in the day the wind clocked a bit favoring us for a spinnaker double trap tight reach and it allowed us to grind down some boats in front of us. The last 15 miles or so we used the lifts off shore to our advantage and hugged the coast on a very tight and on the edge spinnaker reach allowing us inside of an ahead of Seacats Orange and Team AHPC who was jib reaching as they had broken their spinnaker halyard.

We pulled into Cocoa Beach at 4:20, 6.5 hours from the start, amazing speed for 90+ miles especially when last year we got in at 2:30AM!

BIG thanks to Harken's Scott Norman who showed up to the start today and supplied us with a brand new lower mainsheet block to replace the one which the ratchet had gone out on on day 1!

Tomorrow we're headed to Daytona, this leg will drop us about 15 miles offshore and possibly out of site of land at points after rounding Cape Canaveral.