The team:
Nat - skipper
Nathan - navigator
Heather - rock star foredeck and trimmer
The start:
There were only two divisions at this year's Coastal Cup (and no short-handed crew as far as I could tell) - the boats rating below '4' (that included a lot of negative ratings) and the boats that rate above '4'. Elise was in the latter group...and one of if not the slowest boat overall.
There was another Express 27 on the start line, 'Magic'
We may have had a high rating, we were still a very light boat, able to power up in no time on the line (as opposed to having to accelerate from a mile away). Nathan pointed this out and suggested that we aggressively shot for the line and take up boats at the start. I did not execute so well on that strategy...and we started a boat length away from the line when the gun went off.
I was not too worried about this given the length of the race. It was ebbing and all the boats tacked to get into the deep water channel as soon as they could and benefit from the current out of the gate. As soon as we crossed the line, we did the same thing. We stayed in the deep water channel as long as we could.
We had about 15 knots at the start, going up to 18 under the gate but then going way down as we made our way past Seal Rock. The wind dropped to below 10 knots very quickly so we changed down to the #1 (genoa). We stayed in the main channel at that time to keep being pushed away (i.e. out) by the tide currents.
First leg South - under genoa:
With winds around 6 or 7 knots, and a very loose beat, we cleared seal rock and pillar point. By the time we reached the level of Lake Merced, we were on a reach and ready to hoist the spinnaker. We put the 3/4 up and continued on that gybe offshore. I went off watch.
The watch schedule was a bit different from what I am used to double-handed and it threw me off. I couldn't really get any sleep. As I was falling asleep, it would be time for me to get back up.
When I got back up and during my and Heather's watch, we raced along a Catalina - the wind was back up and oscillating between 15 and 20 knots. It wasn't quite enough to push Elise way ahead of that boat. 'Magic' went way offshore and by then we had lost track of it. We had decided to stay within a steady corridor offshore and minimize distance to finish this year (we had gone way offshore the previous year)
Next year, we may stay even closer to shore as we did find ourselves about 35 miles out at some point, further than we had planned to be originally. It will be interesting to have these three data points along three different strategic courses.
We were making really good time leaving Pillar Point and heading off to the latitude of Monterey in the evening.
I went off watch again - trying to get some sleep but not managing that very well...I was wide awake from a week of long nights' sleep...
When I came back on deck, the wind was in the mid twenties, gusting 30 and we had the 3/4 spinnaker up still. I very quickly realized that I was too tired to fly this correctly - I decided that it wasn't safe to keep up a sail I couldn't devote all my attention to in that kind of wind and at night and we put up the genoa again (taking down the spinnaker). We also jibed at that time, heading back to land, with 26 miles to go before we were going to hit land, so plenty of room.
Clearly, this was going to be slower than with a spinnaker up...
I was very very impressed with Heather's work on that race. She was fiercely trimming when the wind was under 20 knots. When the wind went above 20 knots, it was actually easier and steadier (hence faster) to steer to the wind, as opposed to trim the spinnaker. Keeping the spinnaker on the edge would mean very little room for the driver before it collapses. Given the swell, it would basically need constant constant trimming and would end up being a rather slow process, as it would collapse all the time we hit a wave...
Whenever there was a sail change, she was up on the foredeck, setting things up, hoisting sails, fixing sheets, putting up poles, etc...constantly attacked by waves that were aggressively jumping over the bow, disappearing under water on a regular basis.
At that time, imaging a wet and cold foredeck - not very inviting, and it's a pain to get there as you have to stay clipped in.
Heather changed sails numerous times. jib up to the genoa earlier with Nathan's help. 3/4 spinnaker up and genoa down. 3/4 spinnaker down and genoa up. Geona poled out. Geona down and France up (that's the 1 and a half ounce spinnaker). France down and genoa up. Genoa down and jib up. Jib down and genoa up. Loads and loads of sail changes...
She also took her fair share of driving and she passed the sandwiches, made some hot tea (in high rollers with the boat pitching and rocking), soup, etc... Rock star crew.
When Nathan came back up on deck, genoa was poled out. When I switched back, the genoa sheet got caught up somehow in a turning block and jerked the pole back as the boat nearly rounded up on a wave, causing the pole to bend around the shrouds. Crap. 3rd bent pole in 3 weeks..And not even a glorious way to do this
We swapped over to the spare pole, got France up and got going again. (remember, France is our heavy weather spinnaker - basically built for this kind of wind, with wind speeds from about 25 to 40+ knots)
As we neared Conception, the wind got up to 35 knots, gusting 40 and would keep increasing to a steady 38 gusting 45. France was still up, we put the pole slightly forward to enable us to steer a slightly hotter angle that would put us more in the direction of Santa Barbara.
The deck got very wet. On a couple of occasions, the boat was entirely vertical, zipping down a wave and planting the bow - which surfaced back up immediately, causing only a slight deceleration. The spinnaker would cause the boat to leap forward again. It was just so awesome...Our version of a roller coaster. Beautiful sunny day, just a lot of winds but never so much that we couldn't easily keep the boat under control and big swells, but none too steep or bad breaking - they were unfriendly in that they were coming from different directions, however, the 'rogue' waves that we got would cause the boat to round up (we did round up a couple of times, under both drivers but with the jib up!!! Wave-induced in a gust.
These were perfect conditions for a boat like Elise. She was built for that kind of downwind surfing. An up year in my books!!
On the Bay or close to shore, you can get that kind of wind (Express 27 Nationals in 2007 had 45 knots of wind, and the ones in 2009 in Santa Cruz also saw gusts well above 40 knots) but you get some nasty little chop that makes it pretty hard to surf. Offshore, the cool thing about this wind is that the boat can travel a long time with a wave, and we really got some long long long surfing going. The more wind we got, the longer we could surf on any given wave.
We had to take France down as we veered to make it to the Santa Barbara channel. We were on a reach at that time and we couldn't carry a spinnaker at that angle. We tried first with the #1 (we should have hoisted the blast reacher in hindsight but went lazy) - the wind kept increasing and the genoa was definitely a stretch. We swapped to the jib and Elise just TOOK OFF on those waves. The boat was faster on a reach under #3 than it was on a run under spinnaker. And we could still surf down waves as waves were coming from three different directions at that point, one of them pointing toward Santa Barbara, we were just surfing on a different set of waves.
Deck was still super wet. I buried myself under a camp mat to try to stay out of the way of the spray...Boat rounded up once under the #3 during that time (it had also rounded up on my watch under the jib), due to a wave that came from the wrong direction (typical of that area and sometimes hard to anticipate) - we were down only for a few seconds, back up in business immediately and super fast!!!
As night fell in, the wind didn't falter so long as we were close to Point Conception and not too far inland yet. I went off watch at that point. When I came back up on deck, the wind was much lighter. Elise was flying the 3/4 again. We had to gybe to get back on track but unfortunately the wind dropped to nearly zero, causing us to hoist the genoa and take down a very droopy spinnaker that was just threatening to wrap itself around the forestay and that was providing close to zero thrust.
We were having a ton of fun and Elise was absolutely loving these conditions - she typically goes really really fast when she surfs and she was planing and surfing all the time - yet it was rough and tiring conditions for the crew. Wind, salt and sun offer a pretty bad combination for the average human body. Warm ginger tea (yes Heather provisioned the boat) brought us a taste of heaven!! Every surf, every wave (from any side and they would attack us from all sides pretty much) would cause us to be totally drenched. I had to clean the salt off my eyes several times and my fleece was so wet that it stuck to my body offering it a moulding cold suit...
Down below, the boat was soaked. Every one of us would walk down with dripping wet gear that was hanging off the hammock over the port settee. My sleeping bag was wet. The mattress (used as a heat insulator) on the quarter berth was wet...The only thing that was NOT wet was my butt...my foul weather pants worked wonders, doubled up by some sailing shorts; also keeping water out. And my feet. Waterproof goretex socks and nice offshore boots.
Getting back up into wet gear before walking up onto a cold and wet deck isn't necessarily the most enjoyable experience in the world. These kinds of conditions remind me of these folks who like to walk up glaciers...they also get cold and wet...but they don't go as fast as we do on Elise :-) and we don't get to carry our gear on our back! All in all, it was basically really bad when you went off watch and before you fell asleep as well as when you were just about to come back on watch. Once you were asleep or playing around with the boat at a sustained 14+ knot boat-speed, all this would disappear into the world of trivial details that you hardly pay attention to.
The wind stayed almost dead for hours...We were merely 3 miles or less away from the finish line. Spinnaker Cup all over again (for those who do not remember, it took us 4 hours to do the last 2.5 miles of the race in Monterey as the wind had shut down completely after midnight)!!!
Elise's electrical connections can definitely do with a little cleanup as sometimes the instruments would just get disconnected and reset themselves without any human intervention...
The wind miraculously picked up a little bit just short of the line and we managed to finish at 3:24am on Saturday morning -
Our transponder never worked...so we won't know what our course was!
Quote of the race:
'I can't get current to flow to the magic box when I hook up the solar panel' - Nat
'You do realize that the solar panel is NOT connected to the magic box? Took someone without an EE degree to find that out...' - Nathan
'Oh yes, it works much better when it is plugged in.' - Nat
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