Gold Cup review

Well, I am now back in Holland and starting to get over the jet lag, the cold and 30 hours of hell that I went through to get home. Oh well, this is the life of a pebble star right?

While the results are not at all what any of us had hoped for the time spent with the crew of Blue Nights was quite enjoyable. The Fin's are a bunch of fun and we are all better sailors then the results showed. Bill Abbott did an amazing job coaching Tea and getting us set up in good spots, but when the dog don't hunt, the dog don't hunt.

I had a bunch of things occur for the first time when I was over there. 1) 7 straight days of rain. 2) had a "I wish I could reef the main" thought. 3) Had a man over board, first time on a big boat! 4) ate proper English Fish and Chips. 5) Saw an actual pub brawl, blood and all. 6) Finished last in a regatta.

Of all of things listed above the one that I would like to focus on is the Man over board. It is scary to see happen and we were lucky in the fact that it was broad daylight and relatively flat seas! We had just completed a gybe, well almost, when the boat wiped out and when the pole skied the guy got real tight real fast and flicked our bow dude Ville over board. He briefly held onto the spinnaker pole, which was now on the wrong side of the boat and in the water, until it dunked him under.

Ville was quite smart here I think. He just pushed off away from the boat and all the lines that were dragging, he was worried about getting tangled and having something bad happen. Good call I say. His inflatable life jacket worked and a bobbing he went. As he bobbed past the stern, he gave a thumbs up and that allowed us to settle down, focus on getting the kite down, lines in and motor on so that we could go back and pick him up.

One other thing that allowed Bill and I to focus on the job at hand on the boat, was that there was two chase boats that went immediatley to Ville's aid. He would not let them pull him out, but it was comforting to all three of us that if we could not get there fast enough he had a plan B.

I would say that when it was all said and done, Ville was in the water for 5-7 minutes. We were able to fish him out of water on our first swing back by. Once we got him back and found out that all was well, we rehoisted the spinnaker and started to race again. (Yes we called the RC and notified them that we had used the motor in order to pick up a man overboard. We also went down and read the racing rules to ensure that we did not break any rules.)

When we hit the dock, Bill went and filed a notice to the Jury that we had used the motor to fish Ville out of the water, made no gain by doing so and then returned to racing. After a short deliberation it was deemed that we did exactly the right thing and our score was held.

I want to thank the crew for A) not losing focus or control of the situation. B) for getting the job done in a timely fashion and getting the boat back to pick Ville up. C) for the productive debrief after the fact where we talked about how we can make this manouver even better in the long run.

Things that I think we did wrong in this.

1) As soon as we saw Ville over board, one person should have focused just on smoking the Spinnaker Halyard. 2) Because of the fact that it was day light, there were two boats around, we did not keep a full time eye on him. We focused too much on getting the sails down and getting back. 3) I am a bit concerned, though I do understand, that Ville was willing to push off on his own. This could have been disaster, especially if it had been at night. 4) because his life jacket went off and he gave the thumbs up we never threw him the life ring. Again, only because of the circumstances.

We were lucky that he went in unharmed and that we did an acceptable job getting him back. It was an eye opening experience for sure.

So people practice your man over board drills more often and really talk about it when days look like shit maybe able to hit the fan!!!

PS, as more people will now know, thanks to Scuttlebutt, I have a post below about a Letterman style Top 10. While we are still sorting it out, I would like to say that those comments came from 7 straight days of rain, a really bad cold that I had as a result of 7 days of rain and a lot of frustration. At the end of the day, Cowes is an interesting place to sail and the amount of boats on the water every day is amazing. Everyone should go there at least once in their lives to sail. Just make sure that you ask me if I am going first. If I am, change the dates that you go! You will get sun and good breeze.

PSS, the picture is of Ville "Flipper" Pietarinen

Cheers

Tac