Nathan will do a race specific writeup but I wanted to share some thoughts. I will focus on Elise's race and what I learned that will help me during the Pacific Cup. Today was the crewed lightship race and we carried daisies (the flowers) out to the lightship and dropped them in the water as we rounded the mark.
First, big surprise but Elise has to be the most uncomfortable ride you can get upwind. It's bumpy and even something as simple as taking off your pants requires a lot of energy and creative thinking. Not sure how pouring hot coffee will work...
Second: with quite a bit of breeze and on any point of sail, Elise is quite a handful if you concentrate on getting her to go fast. And there's no stopping...it will be a very tiring experience, day and night. I was completely wiped out at the end of the race, and I was trying to imagine just coming up on deck for my shift in the middle of the night.
Also, yes, it can get warm if you are just driving but it gets really hot if you start doing things and this may trigger seasickness or just make you feel very uncomfortable.
I will take the motion sickness patch. This works GREAT for me. I was on the verge of being seasick (downwind and when the wind died!) so my movements were very slow. I was fiddling with lines, setting the chute and I had to take short breaks often before completing my task. The main reason for this was lack of food. When I am very hungry, I get seasick on land...
Having food supplies up with you in the cockpit is a great idea. Saves you going down below just for a bag of chips or an apple. Especially if you are double-handed. I didn't eat anything during the race, but after a day of wind, sun and at times irregular wave patterns/sea - while actively trimming and driving to get the boat to move as fast as we could possibly do, I was tired, irritable and frustrated. I messed up a spinnaker hoist right at the beginning of our last leg (a foul halyard), I messed up a maneuver that I have done millions of time., and millions of time right. Just because my brain wasn't paying enough attention to details, and because I wanted to go fast. It was a race after all. The faster the spinnaker goes up, the sooner we will get to a higher speed range.
I loved the waves - it was quite a roller-coaster at some point, until we exited the current in the main channel, the waves became similar to the familiar choppy waters you get in the summer on San Francisco Bay. Sometimes, Elise would get suspended in mid-air for a split second and then come banging down on the water on the other side of the wave. I had to keep a hand on the lifeline because I realized that I was falling slower than Elise was. This made for a pretty sore butt...fiber glass landings are not pleasant. Quite tricky to drive upwind on the waves, they throw you all over the place and create micro wind spirals that can take you by surprise. Studying the wave pattern is definitely helpful in steering more effectively.
Here's another recommendation that I got from Nathan: double-handed, just take your time, check your lines and only when you feel everything is clear, go ahead and complete the task at hand. Recoveries are slow and they also drain you of any remaining energy very fast. It is better to wait a few extra seconds and get it right.
I completely trust Elise. She's a solid light boat, she handles waves very well (at least compared to other small sailboats I sailed on), she is an absolute blast downwind. But this is going to be one wet ride...Even the cabin won't stay dry for very long. Some of the waves ended up landing in the bilge soaking a few pieces of gear on their way down.
I have read a lot of articles about the awry weather conditions on that day but frankly, it didn't seem to be super wild out there. The waves were nicely spaced out, the wind was far from the heavier winds we get over the summer, there was no fog, clear visibility all around. I am not a Pacific Ocean expert but I never felt that these were conditions we couldn't handle, and even race in. If anything it was a great ride, full of nice and safe excitement.
Nathan (the skipper for the Pacific Cup as he has a lot more experience with this - my experience of the Pacific Ocean is very centered around unusual fishing/whaling techniques) and I have different goals. It is my first Pacific Cup so there's a lot for me to learn. Just getting to the finish in a reasonable time would be a major achievement for me. Nathan on the other hand, wants to race the boat as hard as he can. I don't know if my "hard racing" matches his. Probably not. I don't believe that I have misled him in any way but reality really sank in during that race. I really think that I can learn to perform as well as he does in those conditions. We will practice as hard as we can...but I missed an entire season so even when it comes to getting to know Elise, Nathan is ahead of me. It is honest to make sure that the other person doesn't develop unrealistic expectations...it can also be a problem if the objectives of the people on the boat don't quite match. In our case, the intent is the same. I will race as hard as I can - and if we can get a great position at the finish, I will be the happiest person on Earth. Maybe the solution is to see this maiden voyage as the real practice for the next Pac Cup? I don't know. I felt really sorry and sad for Nathan after that race, even though he reiterated that he was having a lot of fun with this program and knew where I stood in terms of Pacific crossing experience double-handed.
Anyway, I had never raced Elise double-handed out in the ocean before. So Nathan and I had a celebratory glass of champagne back at the club.
No comments:
Post a Comment