Viper Sailing at Charleston Race Week!

Good day All!

I am just back from Charleston Race Week, where I sat in a RIB each day, watching, coaching and rescuing flip flops, hats and missed beer cans. It is always an interesting time when you are at a regatta and not sailing. Can’t say that I totally enjoy it but you always learn a lot by watching how others are doing things.

I was there supporting Brad and his Viper 640 team of Lee Shuckerow and Eric Vigrass. This is the second event that we at Doyle Boston Sailmakers have done in the Viper fleet and it certainly will not be the last. If you remember I sailed the St. Pete NOOD regatta on the Viper.

For this event we brought a new set of sails, version 2.0 if you will, that we finished just minutes before jumping in the van and heading south. The new sails are a tweak from the sails that I used in St. Pete, we felt that we were close to what we wanted but we knew we had lots of room for tweaking and that is what we did. The new sails are very nice and people on the race course really noticed that Brad was there. The boys ended up 3^rd in the event, not to bad considering the boat they used is anywhere from 75-100 pounds heavier then the rest of them!

Anyway, I wanted to talk more about my observations from the ‘Coach boat’ then how the sails looked or how the team sailed. One thing that the Viper class does that I really like is the top to bottom flow of information between the best of the fleet to the new comers and folks back in the pack a ways. One of the reasons that I went down in the RIB was to help the fleet out with observations and give folks that were struggling some help to improve their position in the fleet and that in turn increases their FUN factor.

The fleet is very open to help and is often rather spongy in wanting more help and more info on how to get better and get up the fleet farther. The Viper fleet, lead by Class President Justin Scott try very hard to have a debrief at the end of the day where the top boats from the day talk about how they were set up, how they sailed the day and what they might have learned. All of this to immediately helps the fleet get better and have closer sailing. I truly wish that more fleets did this!

For this event we only were able to hold one such debrief, on Saturday night, but the information shared was helpful for the fleet and I noticed that many of the things that we talked that night suddenly appeared on more and more boats. This shows that these folks want to learn and want to get better. For the debrief Ethan Bixby and Ched Proctor from North Sails and myself answered many questions and gave tips of what we saw, how they sailed that day from Ethan and Ched’s perspective as they sailed. It is always interesting to see how other teams come to the same solution using a different path.

Some of the things that I noticed from the Coach Boat are as follows.

1) Not trimming the jib hard enough.

Many of top crew have the sail geometry/dynamics set up so that when they are fully sheeting in going upwind in most breeze the clew of the jib is either two blocked or very close.

2) Having the jib tack way up in the air

Setting up with the tack to high in the air changes a couple of important things. 1) It changes the whole geometry of the jib, sheeting and set up. 2) It opens the end plate effect up. You will find that if your tack is up much more then 2” you will be quickly running out of jib track and you will not be able to slide the lead back to open the leech and “out haul” the foot.

3) Not having the main halyard hoisted all the way

Again this changes the sheeting geometry of the sail. It makes your leech appear longer, which with the bridle will not allow you to trim your mainsheet hard enough. It also means that you will end up with big wrinkles in the luff of your sail as the Cunningham will bottom out.

4) Forgetting to pull the outhaul back on before heading upwind

In the big breeze on Friday and Sunday, I noticed many times that as boats rounded the leeward with their outhaul eased way out, they would not hold the lane with the boat that had the proper set up. The boat with the eased outhaul was always over powered, heeled too much and going a bit sideways. All bad when trying to hold that lane either in front or behind the boat around you.

5) Not sailing with enough Vang/GNAV in heavy air upwind.

What happens here is that when you ease the mainsheet in the big puffs your boom raises and actually powers the sail more! Not at all what you want when you are already over powered.

6) Not playing the jib sheet enough in big puffs

With most sport boats, you will find that as soon as the breeze is enough to start washing out/flogging the mainsail you need to start to ease the jib sheet as well. Otherwise the boat loses balance and the jib starts to pull the bow down away from the breeze. The good guys are adjusting the jib with each puff to keep the bow moving forward.

7) Sailing with the rig too loose in big breeze

Again this allows the sails to power back up and makes the boat heel more and go sideways.

8) Great big giant smiles on faces going downwind in 20 knots of breeze!

Only cure for this is to go back to sailing lead mines!

I would like to end this little blog session thanking the Viper fleet for welcoming us into the class with open arms, say thank you to the Charleston Circle 1 Race Committee for running an excellent regatta and thanking you all for paying to attention to this blog.

Cheers
Tac

Busy Times

Good day all

Well it is a lovely day here in Chicago, for February that is :) I just got back to town after being over in Sarnia for a few days. While there I worked with Brad on a Rig Tune and Sail trim seminar that we jointly gave at South Port Sailing Club in Windsor on Wednesday night.

The talk went very well, all seemed to enjoy it and there was talk from a couple other local clubs about having do one for them. So we shall see. While neither of us are super comfortable doing them I think together we did a pretty good job. Brad is certainly getting more at least and much better at doing them.

I am going to have the loft get it up on the doyleboston.com website in the very near future for all of you to see if you wish. It covers pretty basic concepts on rig tune and sail shape to a bit more techie for those of you that are as well. I hope that you enjoy it and please feel free to contact either Brad or Myself to further discuss it.

On another, while I was in Sarnia I got a phone from John Baxter asking to be the jib trimmer on board Anema and Core the TP 52 from Annapolis. I will be joing the team on Wednesday for the Miami Race Week regatta. I am really looking forward to sailing on this boat, it is one of the old Platoon's from Germany. These boats are the top end of the sport right now and getting the opportunity to sail on one is really quite exciting!

I will try to keep you all posted and give you a bit of an insiders view of these awesome boats.

Anyway that is all that I know for now!

The above picture is the boat is Anema and Core at Key West. (I "borrowed" the picture from Tim Wilkes, thanks Tim)

Viper sailing!

Good Morning all

Well I am back in Chicago after a great time sailing the Viper 640 at the St. Pete NOOD regatta. I wanted to take a few minutes this morning to talk about the Viper and the fleet.

I need to start by thanking a few people for making this happen. Harvey Barnes for allowing me to sail his boat, Mom and Dad for towing the thing down to St. Pete and my Bro for helping get it all sorted, rigged and sailing. Oh yeah and I guess I need to thank DC and Scott for sailing with me and having a great time while doing it. It was great to have part of the band back together.

Set Up.

What an easy to set up, launch and tune. This boat takes very little time to get the rig up and get your ass wet and sailing! Every thing makes sense, remember we had not really set one up before. We got the rig tuned, the boat wet and off for the first sail in very little time at all. Now that we know what we are doing it will be that much simpler in the future.

Sailing

This boat sails very nicely and is quite fast in the light air flat water that we had in St. Pete, but beware! This boat will be very wet in the breeze and bump! Yeah, back to dinghy days :) The boat has a very nice feel upwind, just a slight tug on the tiller when the boat is in the groove. Downwind in the light if you sail too flat you get a pretty wicked lee helm but that is sorted out as soon as you put about 5 degrees of heel in the boat, (either windward or leeward).

One thing that is a bit tricky to get used to is tacking and gybing. As you start to tack or gybe the bridal in the back of the bus inhibits how far you can turn the tiller, so it tacks more like an Etchells then a normal sport boat. So you have to be pretty agressive on the kinetics and time the last hard push or pull to flick the bow through and onto the next tack.

The Fleet

What a great group of people! I have known Brian Bennett, the man behind the Viper, for over 10 years and he has always been a great dude and worked very hard to make the Viper a great little boat. So it was no real surprise that a fleet that Brian is involved with would also be very warm and inviting to new sailors. I found that the class did their turns when they needed to, no real screaming and shouting at each other. Heck, there was even a couple very attractive "sailor chicks" in the fleet! That always makes a class better in my opinion :)

The racing was tight, too tight on the first beat for me, I had a duck turn into a goose! I just misjudged the duck and hit the very last possible spot you can hit on the stern of the a Viper. Sorry Harvey and Jonathon! Check is in the mail :)

The Races

I must say that I was very disapointed in the RC for this event. While I thought they did a great job of keeping us on the dock until the wind filled in. BUT, we always sailed an course that finished us upwind. This wastes so much time on the water. We are here to race so why not race us. Finishing upwind means that we averaged about 60 mins between our finish time and our start time. With the size of this boat that should almost be enough time to get two more races off!

I just don't understand why we did this. Maybe one of you will be able to fill me in on this but it just does not make sense.


Final thoughts.

I look forward to sailing the Viper more and in fact have at least one customer that is really keen on the boat and I am hoping to be introducing the Viper to another potential client if we can find one to Charter for Charleston. That event has over 35 entries at this point! Can't wait to sail in that fleet.

If I can't find a boat for my client I will join my Brad and sail with him for that event.

I wish that I had a picture or two of us sailing but they have not posted any yet so I will just add a random shot of a cool boat :)
Cheers for now.

Tac

What's Next?

Hey All

Just wanted to keep in touch and let you all know what is happening in this little world of mine! I got news yesterday that I will be sailing a Viper 640 at the St. Pete NOOD regatta next weekend. I am pretty excited about this. I have my old buddies Dan Cheresh and Scott McNeill sailing with me. Originally we were going to sail our Ultimate 20 but when the Viper chance came up we switched over.

This will lead right into the new job. As most of my close friends know I am going to be heading back to Point Edward and working for the family loft sail loft there. I am really excited about the actual job, still a bit bummed out that I am leaving Chicago I really love it here but home is as they say always where the heart is.

I will be working once again with my Dad and brother, this should be a really great team and we all look forward to taking the loft to the next level. One of the first steps is to start a sail development program in the Viper 640 fleet. So not only will I be sailing the Viper for the first time in 10+ years, we will testing the first set of Doyle Boston Sails. (Man is it weird to say that Doyle Boston again! Who would have thought?)

Anyway, I hope to take some pictures and video of the event and sail tuning on Thursday next week. I will post them as they happen.

Well that is all that I know!

Update post Key Weird!

Good day all!

Well I did not do a very good job of keeping this updated during Race Week, but to be quite honest it is tough to write each day when you have gotten your ass handed to you that day :) I guess it is something that I will have to get better at :) I guess the moral of the story is not to get your ass kicked :)

Anyway I had a lot of fun sailing in the Melges 24 class with the boys on Cujo. We had a tough regatta but never let it leave the boat. Which I feel is really important. We just did not have it upwind last week and nothing seemed to worked. Shit, I even drove a couple legs!

Following KW we did a Match race event down there on Saturday and Sunday. The Cujo team changed a bit for that event as we added Mike Buckley as the driver and Bob Clark as the Spinnaker trimmer. We had a much better event losing to Charlie Enright in the Finals.

Well I am back in the Cold of Chicago and working hard on finalizing what is up next for me. I will be letting you all know by next week I think. It is a done deal in my head and now I just have to figure out the exit strategy for here and the entry time for what is next. I am looking forward to the next phase in my life and I am hoping that it will be all that those involved think it will be.

Anyway, it will be a bit weird this weekend as it is the Chicago Strictly Sail show here and I will not be in a booth this year. I think that I am going to stop by the show for a bit on a couple of the days, just to be there and see many people that I am sure will be looking for me at my old job!

I can tell you that if any of you are looking for good sails at a good deal just let me know. As you all know I have many contacts in the sailing world and I will be able to beat most prices out there, especially those of my old job :) So hit me up for a sail quote! I can promise you that the sails that I will sell you will be of the highest quality and be great sails.

Anyway, I will be talking to you all next week, I hope that you have a great weekend and enjoy the show for those who are going.

PS here are a couple shots from Sara Proctor. She shot these great shots in KW. Check her out.

Just a quick note

Well as some of may have heard I am no long with Quantum Sails effective Jan 1 of this year. This was not my choice and unfortunately the hard work and effort that I put in here in Chicago will go for not and I am going to have to start over again. What is one more time?

I want to thank the many people with in Quantum that I worked with on a regular basis, peeps like Wally Cross, Bob Clark, Farley Fontenot, Scott Nixon and Bary Gately. These are great people and it was a pleasure working with you guys and thanks for all that you did.

There will be some good news coming in the very near future that will surprise some and be exciting for others. For me it will allow me to take the last 10 years of my experience to great use and will really cement the future in a great way.

I am getting ready to attend Key West Race Week, I have been signed on to sail on board Cujo a Melges 24 team from Detroit. I am really looking to this regatta as I have not been to KW in a few years and I have not sailed the 24 in a little while either.

We are then going to participate in the first of the Chicago Match Race Center's regatta. This will be sailed in M 24's down there for their first event. Then the regattas will shift back North to Chicago and 8 new Tom 28's that Don Wilson has bought to set up this new center.

The winter of sailing is looking really promissing, I am planning on attending the St. Pete NOOD, J 22 Mid Winters, Charleston Race Week, Annapolis NOOD and hopefully a trip to Uruguay to sail on the exciting new Soto 40, (That is the ride in the picture). If I go down it is to go check the boat for a client who is very serious about picking one up.

So hopefully all of this plus the plan for the future will keep me busy and start to let all the peices fall into place.

As I am my own company again I will try to do a much better job of keeping this up to date. I will also try to get something on here each day of Key West and the Match Event after.
Cheers for now!


Tac

Fall in Chicago! Sorry its been a while.

Good Morning Chicago!

Well it looks like Fall has finally reared its chilly head. What a great sailing season we had here in Chicago! It is amazing to think how many great events this beautiful water front hosted this summer.

I am sure that I will forget a couple but the partial list includes, the Colors Regatta, NOOD, Etchells World Championships, the 100th Race to Mac, the Verve Cups, the T-10 NA's, the Beneteau 36.7 NA's, Windy City Match Race and this last weekend the US Sailing Offshore Sailing Championships.

For our first summer here in the Chicago market we certainly made out presence known with great results in those events. I would like to personally congratulate all of the class and event winners on a great summer of sailing.

We are starting to get into our specials, I will be back with the exact plan in a day or so, but I can tell that this might just be the most innovative incentive plan that I have been involved with!

We are also here for any fall service that your existing sail may need. A little preventative maintenance over the winter goes a long way to ensure that your sails with not have catastrophic issues next season.

I hope that you are able to enjoy the great wind that the fall usually brings! Bundle and enjoy the last few weeks of sailing!
Cheers


Tac Boston

WOW where has the time gone?

It seems like just yesterday I was writing the last post about the regatta in Lanzarote! Now it is almost New Years and I have have done nothing on this for so long.

I can tell you that it has been a bit of zoo around here. I have been in final negotiations with Quantum regarding the sale of my company to them. Well all of that is now done and I am officially no longer a loft owner! I will moved to by Quantum to a new loft in Chicago.

Quantum is currently finalizing the lease of a building and we will be up and running by the Strictly Sail boat show in February. Exciting times I can tell you!

I am not sure what is next for me on the sailing scene but I guess either a Swan regatta or maybe St. Pete NOOD. I will keep you in the loop as it comes.

I cannot tell you all geeked I am to be moving to Chicago. That is such a great town and the sailing community are some of the nicest people and they take their sailing seriously I cannot wait to start building new working relationships with the sailors of Chicago.

I will also post the new address as soon as we have signed the lease. It is in a great spot, easy to get to and while it is nowhere near as large as my current building, it will serve the sailors just as well.

We plan on having a series of talks at the loft over the winter and again a list of those will come out real soon.

Anyway, I will keep in touch on a more regular basis I promise.

Happy Holidays!!!!!!!

PS the picture is of Porto Rotundo, much warmer times!

VI Trofeo Cesar Manrique Recap

Good day all

Again sorry for the delay in writing more. But the last two days have been busy with getting the boat sorted and loaded for the trip back to the Med. It now appears that we are going to ship straight to Italy so I will not be going back to Palma at this point. It also means that I may be home a bit early.

As I sit here in my hotel room and start to think back about this experience here in Lanzarote I am still struck by the amount of work, effort and flat out cash the Calero family puts into this event! The closing nights dinner, show and party were totally unlike anything you will ever see in North America and quite frankly I have never seen it in Europe either. (I will have some pictures from Esa to show at some point).

Saturday was the last day of the event and we had quite a match race going with Better then... We finished both races just behind them which gave us the same points for the event but due to our two thirds on day 2 gave us the 5th place on the count back. It was some great sailing the last day but a couple big crew errors made it much closer then it actually was.

The Blue Nights team is starting to get better but we still lack a little bit of pace most of the time through the lower wind ranges. As soon as the #3 is used we are quite fast and can hold out own. But it is in the lighter breeze when we cannot hold a lane upwind that is causing our biggest issues. We are working on that and I think there are some new sails coming to help out that area.

Tea is working very hard at putting all the pieces together to have a competitive team on the water and to get the budget sorted out so that we have the right tools on the water as well. We still have a couple spaces in our quiver that need to be addressed but that is being handled as well.

This trip has been awesome for some other reasons. I now have some really good friends here in Europe. The Italian "skippers" have been great and I have become quite good mates with Ricardo from Talj the Swan 45. We have been all working together quite well to get the boats loaded, shipped and sorted out.

When I get back to the states, I want to put together a full proper report on this event. I truly believe that we need to get a good US contingent to look at coming here and sailing. The people are awesome, the sailing is awesome and it is half way home by ship anyway!
Cheers for now.
Tac

Race Day 1 and 2

Well we are just about to have boat call for the third day of racing. Today is a 30 mile Coastal race, which is really nothing more then a large reach around this side of the Island. Not really looking forward to it but what can you do?

Anyway I did not write yesterday morning because I actually had nothing good say. We flat out had a shocker and nothing good came out of the day. What we had in the two great practice days was lost somehow and we once again struggled to have speed and crew work. We finished the day with a DNF and a 7th. (the DNF was because the committee used a tiny little blue flag as the pin end and none of the Swans saw it. A couple of them went back after having thought they finished and sailed through the proper line, we on the other hand were one the did not.)

So yesterday was a new day, Race day 2. Started in much the same fashion weather wise, sunny, warm and good breeze. After a long delay for the Swans we finally got a good race off. We had a great battle with the boats all within meters of each other. At one point we were in 2nd, then in 7th then finally across the line in 5th. We found out later that two boats ahead of us were OCS. So we moved up to 3rd.

The second race of the day saw us regain our starting ability and Tea and I had the boat flying up the first beat so we are really in the hunt at this point. We round the top mark in 3rd and start to slowly eat away at the lead of 1 and 2. At the bottom mark we chose to make a left turn while the top 2 did a right turn. But the kite under the bow stopped a great chance to take the lead. As it was we only crossed two boat lengths behind the two of them. We managed to hold of the rest of the fleet up that beat and down the last run. We finished with a hard fought and well earned 3rd place. With our two thirds we moved out of the basement on the score card and ended up 2nd for the day!

Today is another day and the weather from Commanders says the same as yesterday. 15-20 gusts to 25 from the N-NE. Sunny and warm. Not too bad!
Cheers

Tac
(Still no pictures)

Practice Day #1 Lanzarote

Well today we finally went for sail, after two more hours of tuning and retuning the rig. We got out and sailed in 5-12 knots of breeze against both Better Than and Ulika.

They had been sailing for a hour more then we had, but when we joined the races that they were having we went 4, 0 and 1. We are going very well and our crew is getting better. Things on the Blue Nights are starting to move in the right direction.

We had one great start against just Ulika that turned into a full on Match race start with Bill showing that he can still out dual his opponent. Tea did an awesome job putting the boat where Bill told her to and as a result we had the other team pinned over the line early and dead in the water. Big grins on all of our faces and some pretty heated Italian on the other boat :)

We are quickly getting our shit together and starting to make things happen. The boat is getting there as well, we do need to do a few little things yet to make our lives easier but for the most part we are starting to show what we can do.

Today we looked at yet another mainsail that we bought from Vixen and again we were not disappointed. I think we will be sticking with this sail for this event and things are looking up.

I know I promised some pictures, but the dumb ass that I am, I left in on the dock.

We also had a interesting thing happen to day. Bill just decided that going downwind at 9 knots that he would jump over board and do a man over board drill. We did have a vote and by only the smallest margins did we decide to go back and get him.

So all is well. I really do like the Spanish way of Yacht racing. Tomorrow is the practice race and it starts at 4 PM! The next two days of racing start at 2 PM! That is just bloody awesome.

Anyway, off to shower and head to a crew dinner.
Cheers


Tac

Hello from Lanzarote!

Sorry that I have not been keeping up with blogging, but if you could see where I have been staying here in Lanzarote you would cut me a bit of slack! This hotel is a FLASH and I have lounging at the pool until yesterday, when the boat finally arrived here.

The delivery was a dream and according to one of the ships crew if each delivery was that nice more people would sail on ships. It must have been pretty calm as I had left a shifter, (crescent wrench) on the coachroof and it was still there when the boat arrived.

The off loading was much quicker then the loading, something about less unioned stevedores. So we were back at the dock by about 11 AM and the work began there. Guinness started grinding and Art and I empty the boat.

We are starting to sail tomorrow where we have set up a bit of a tuning session against one of the Italian teams, Ulika. Things will be starting to take off.

I will get some pictures posted from here in the next day.
Cheers for now.

Tac

PS, a shout out to Sparkles and Ace! I hope your trip home was easy.

Hello from Palma!

I have been here a couple days now and the weather for the most part has been amazing! It is quite hot, the sun shines and the breeze is up!

I arrived on Thursday afternoon, checked into the hotel then went to check in on the boat. I was having trouble getting to the boat as there as a language issue with the guard at the gate :) So I stopped to check my email. While that happening a giant storm rolled in and I mean HUGE! I could not even get to the boat by foot as it was blowing about 65 and there was hail. I was sitting in the car watching a 90'+ heeled over about 30 degrees! That is how hard it was blowing.

When the storm ended, I drove around to the gate that was once closed to me and drove right through. I think that the club must have know that the various "skipper's" would be coming in quickly and did not need to have the hassle of the gate.

When I got out to the dock that the boat was on, all you could was carnage! The dock, (see picture), was gone and each of the boats on that dock had damage. So we start the week with boat work. Oh, well it could have been much worse.

Anyway, here are a couple pictures. I will try to keep updating but the next couple days are boring and filled with nothing but work on the boat, the cradle and then getting the two of them together on the Ship to Lanzarote.
Cheers

Tac

Audi Invitational Recap!

Well here I sit in the Airport in Olbia awaiting my flight to Rome. The regatta is over and I again must leave one of the most beautiful places I have ever sailed. This is my second time here and I cannot wait to come back again next season!

The regatta is amazing! The organizers did a bang up job of putting together great racing, great parties and also great logisitics for this event. Audi as a sponsor stepped up and provided an opportunity to mix superstars that they sponsor with each team for the Coastal race on Saturday and the guest had a great time seeing what sailing was all about.

Our Rockstar was cross country skiing gold medalist Pietro Piller Cotter. Pietro helped the home county Italians win the 4 X 10 KM relay in the 2006 Winter games in Torino! Pietro is a great guy who had never sailed before but had some much fun that he came back with us on Saturday to finish the regatta! I do see a sailboat in his future!

Anyway back to the racing. As mentioned on Saturday we did a Coastal race. The race was only 16 miles for the Swans as the wind was quite light and we needed to finish in time for the Gala dinner at the YCPR. We had a great start, punched out at the pin end. Sailed out just short of lay line, tacked over to port and crossed the whole fleet! There really is not much like that first tack onto port and seeing the picture window below the boom, with you crossing the entire fleet!

We rounded the top about 4 boat lengths ahead of our "friends" on Atlantica. Well as they say, little details can derail a big effort and that is exactly what happened. We had a screw up in the set and that allowed three boats to catch up and roll over us, to the point where we had to gybe early in order to not get trained by the whole fleet.

Well going right downwind never work all week and this time was no different. This made of a long race in the mental up and down game. We finished 12th. It was really a huge blow to the team who had worked very hard at giving us in the back of the boat good crew work. The situation also was not helped by the fact that we were now sailing on a course that allowed for no new tactical opportunities to claw our way back to a more respectable finish.

Saturday was again welcomed with a sunny sky and light wind, in fact no wind at all. So we had a dock postponement for a couple hours. When we started to head to the racing area it looked real promising to get a good race off. Well the wind died forcing the RC to postpone again. About 15 minutes before the cut off time we got the last race off. One general recall later we were off.

Again Bill, Tea and Guinness had a great start down by the pin. We sailed very well, (again we now have speed!!!), up the first beat and rounded the top in 5th place. Johnny and I made a bad sail call for the run, choosing our A2 instead of the A1 and that cost us two places at that point. The second beat dealt really fluky conditions with boats just feet apart being in totally different wind strengths. This allowed a couple couple boats to get by and we rounded the last top mark in 9th place.

Bill and I saw a nice pressure lane off to left and decided to not do the standard gybe set like the rest of the fleet had done. We sailed lower and faster all way down the left side picking off one boat to finish the regatta with a very hard fought 8th place.

It is truly my opinion that our score card should have been all single digits for this event. We sailed better then it shows and we are getting our program together and we will continue to move up the leader board.

The next event is in Puerto Calebra in Lanzarote. It looks like it will be a great event and we will continue to work hard at getting better.

I will have a more technical debrief posted at some point this week. I am just burnt out right now and will have to way till I have my head sorted a little better!
Cheers

Tac

OUCH!

Well the day on water was a very eventful one. We have many goods things that happened and a couple of not so good things as well.

We are starting the boat very well again, the second start was a glamor! We have speed and angle which was missing in Cowes and we are looking better on the crew work side. However we managed to give away far too many boats with bad luck, bad tactics and a couple bad gybes.

In the first race we were solidly in the top six for the first 3/4 of the beat. We had great speed and Bill put us in really nice spots. Tea's driving is getting better by the leg and we were quite at ease with where we were. As we were approaching the far left side, Bill called for a tack as the other boat just to windward of us had motioned that they were going to tack. As we tacked they changed their mind and we did not have enough room to duck so we had to "panic" tack back. That caused us to lose a few precious boat lengths and set up for further disaster later.

We now are fully on port tack layline and as we came to the mark we did our tack inside two boat lengths and fouled another team. So we needed to do a 360 penalty turn. We ended up rounding the mark last! That is how close the racing is here. We did manage to pass a boat on the final run, we are really fast downwind the Quantum A2 is awesome!

For the second race we were all set up down near the pin end, allowed one boat to cross over us on port so that we kept our hole on the line. Just as we were starting to turn up after his stern we got hit from below by Atlantica and the hole you see above was created. Tea did a great job of regaining focus and just driving the boat. We again had speed and angle as good as anyone. We rounded the top in 6th place. We had another good run with lots of pace. We passed one boat and rounded the bottom mark in 5th place. This is where the race goes pear shaped.

The wind was starting to fight the gradient breeze versus the sea breeze and Bill thought that the sea breeze would win the battle so we headed off to the right. Well as it turns out it did not and we rounded the top mark the second time in 12th. We again sailed lower and faster then people on the runs. We made considerable time up on 4 boats, not quite enough against one, we finished overlapped, and did catch and pass another boat. So we ended up with a 11th.

Our standings do not show how well we are going through the water. What was once our problem is gone! We have speed and can hold a lane. Now we just need to the crew work down to no mistakes and get around the race a little better and we will start to see some solid results.

Once we hit the dock Bill and Guiness started to attack the hole in the side. We are lucky to have two boat builders on the team this week. I was supervisor/gopher for the product. We did miss the party but the boat is ready to sail today.

We have the coastal race today and some VIP on board for that. I heard it was a Olympic gold medalist in Cross Country skiing. More on that tomorrow.
Cheers

Tac

Practice Day

Good day again.

Well today we had a great practice late in the day as the Mistral slowly died away and we had a nice 18-22 knot day. We had two important goals today. 1) Choose which mainsail we would use and 2) do some spinnaker/crew practice. We were able to accomplish both tasks and are quite happy with the sail selection and we are a work in progress on the crew practice. But that is what you get for having a couple new players in key positions. Time as they say will conquer that.

We needed to decide whether we were to use the newly reshaped WB mainsail or the Quantum mainsail that we bought from Vixen. I can say that the WB mainsail is a much different sail then we last saw it. I am happy to report that the changes to the luff curve of the sail that I recommended were applied and the mainsail looks much better. This is for sure still set up more as a heavy air sail but the boat was able to finally sail to targets up wind.

Due to the weather forecast however we have chosen the Quantum Mainsail as it will give us more range for the conditions that we are expected to see for the remainder of the regatta. It is quite nice to finally have an option and finally have some pace with angle. Thing are looking better.

I am sitting at the yacht club getting ready for race day #1. The breeze is supposed to be about 9-14 going right all day. Beautiful sunny skies and warm temps!!!!!!!!! This is for sure not Cowes!

Here is a picture to prove it!
Cheers


Tac

Live from Porto Rotondo!

Well you all should like this blog much better then the Cowes blog! What can I say, the weather here is awesome! A little Mistral is in for the morning but that is supposed to diminish by afternoon. So we have a little time to check email and for me to write a short a note to you all.

The area here is gorgeous and the little sailing that we did was quite nice. The good news is that the new sails fit and looked like they should in conditions under range!

The boat was a bit of mess after the shipping and the delivery here, so we have been pushing through quite a work a list but that is almost finished as well. We will be going out today to finalize the sail wardrobe for the event and shaking down the crew work. We are all quite ready to hit the race track and get some serious racing in.

Here are a couple shots of the harbor.
Cheers

Tac

Racing for a Cause!

2007 Windy City Match Race

I was fortunate enough to be asked to sail on board Heartbreaker for the WCMR. I was to replace Wally Cross, not an easy feat for me at all. Wally has been one of the best in the Farr 40 class since its inception, proof by the reason why I replaced him.......he is in Copenhagen trimming mainsail on Warpath for the Farr 40 Wold Championships.

The regatta was put together by a great group of people from Chicago including a customer of mine Rick West and he awesome wife Liz Ware. They along a group of sailors came up with the idea to hold a match racing regatta in Farr 40's and also couple the event with a great cause to raise both money and awareness for the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation.

On Friday night there was a reception held that featured two pretty cool events. First there was a silent auction with some really incredible items that were donated and raffled off. As I told Liz, I kept looking for the "poor sailmakers" Auction table with items starting at $1.50! The one I really wanted was the Porsche driving school experience. But it went for more then I can handle.

The second thing that was pretty cool for the people at the event was that Tucker Thompson came and gave a little video show of the high lights from the 32nd America's Cup. He did a nice job with it and the public quite liked it.

One touching moment happened in the opening minutes of the night when a young lady, IIRC, of 13 got up and gave a moving speech about what it is like to be a child living with HIV/AIDS. It really showed why it was important to to be involved with this regatta.

The weekend was great for sailing, not enough wind maybe, but the skies were clear and the competition was tough. The team that won was a full professional match racing team which feature a pile of BMW/Oracle sailors and Cameron Dunn from Mascalzone Latino.

It was great to sail against such talent and also to have a little of that on our boat as well. Our Tactician was none other then Dave Dellenbaugh! Dave was the tactician for the German AC team in AC 32 this year.

We finished 3rd out of the 4 teams and we are also the only team to beat EWM and that was a satisfying race as we led the whole way around and extended to a real big margin on the final run.

I really wish that we could more of this format of racing. Match Racing is so much fun and so intense that more people should try it.

I look forward to seeing what Rick and Liz do for next year, they say they are going to keep going and build it for the next several years. I look forward to racing in it again next season.

Check out the website and please feel free to donate to the worthy cause!
Cheers

Tac

Wheel of Fortune!

This is a little article that I wrote about a year ago for D1D. I just thought I would throw it out one more time as the season is well on its way and maybe some of you drivers and tacticians are having the same issue at this time. Sorry for the regurge but I think it is a good way to look driving.
Cheers

Tac

The Wheel of Fortune

I have found myself doing ton of sailing lately, with the two Mac races, Harbor Springs, the Brian Jackman Farr 40 regatta in Chicago and now I am at a MUMM 30 event in Cleveland OH.

Over the past month I have sailed on many different boats and various levels of crew. It is a great learning experience each time I sail. Here is something that I have learnt over the past few months of summer.

I am pretty blessed with my job in the fact that I get to sail on many boats with great people. One boat that I have been sailing on this season is Team LaSalle’s Farr 40 in Chicago. LaSalle bank the US arm of ABN AMRO has sponsored a Farr 40 for two seasons in Chicago, this season I am calling tactics on the boat. In the two seasons we have had two full time drivers and a part timer this past weekend.

All three sailors have been dinghy sailors and making the transition is not as easy as some think. All three of them have been good drivers for the most part and with some time on the boat I think that have become quite good and I enjoy sailing with them.

But over the past two years, (I was the mainsail trimmer last year); I have been in the back of the bus and noticed an interesting phenomenon. Having been a dinghy sailor a long time ago I kind of forgot how you drive one. Usually with a Laser or a Vanguard you are moving the tiller a bunch to “work” the boat over waves, create lanes and get out of sticky spots. Well when the dinghy driver comes to a boat that has a wheel you generally get what I have termed “Wheel of Fortune”. The dudes are spinning the wheel like they are on a game show!

Great big turns on the start line, rudder moving all the time upwind and downwind because their experience is working the rudder over, under and around waves with the dinghy so in their mind then need to do the exact same way. Well boys that is slow!

When you watch the best drivers in the fleet they are barley ever moving the wheel at all. They find the sweet spot and just sort drive with a movement that rotating your wrist allows. It is quite a difference in performance between the game show contestant and the smoothest drivers in the fleet.

On the keel boats like the Farr 40 moving the rudder a whole bunch just adds turbulence and drag hence slowing the boat down. So if you get the chance to move up from a dinghy to a keel boat please remember to hold that wheel as still as possible. Your tactician and mainsail trimmer will thank you!

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