Sunday, May 27, 2012

Thoughts after Elite Keel

Consistent crew is key and unfortunately, we have had one 'sub' each time for the past few races, except once. And sooooo grateful to the people who stepped in, it would have been much worse without them!!  Still working on this! Ideally, having two rotations of trimmers and Foredeck/Pit would be ideal as well as the ability to have two drivers, ie a crew and a full spare, so we can keep racing very competitively if and when we have to.

This time; strength may have been needed - for instance, we may have gotten the pole too far aft in the pre-feed which meant that the spinnaker filled before it was completely hoisted. And Nat had trouble hoisting fast enough that way. Slow hoists cause wrap and that is what we had on the last hoist on Sunday.

Also, even though we normally handle gybes with just one person, in these conditions, we really needed two people to handle the gybes well. The wind strength was a little too much for one person to be able to make small adjustments, particularly on the pole.

Once Nat gybed around the mark even though the spinnaker wasn't down yet, causing a lot more loss, and extra fatigue for the foredeck crew. Lesson there is that: if there is a problem or a slow maneuver, we need to just keep on and accept that we will be a few seconds late; It is still better than causing havoc and having a slow recovery. 

We experimented with the new main which we loved - still because it is so much newer and straighter than the old one, it took some adjusting in terms of main trim and driving. Boat speed was good overall. And we are trying to figure out the best balance between driving high and slow or low and faster; particularly in chop - it is hard to know what is fastest to the mark (we may have faster boat speed but if we fall too low, we add so much more distance that ultimately we are slower to the mark...)  Overall both Nat's and Nathan's driving upwind was good, we just need to figure out jib settings to make the boat go best in the chop. Driving downwind has never been a real issue on Elise. Tacks are getting better and better - downwind the maneuvers in heavier winds is the next thing to practice for us.

Good starts overall, once we were over early together with one third of the fleet...

Tatics were good mostly, good calls on the course and we managed to gain one spot mainly by tactical calls. We did short call tactics covering Libra too. As Scott put it: 'a couple of great layline calls and one spectacularly overstood mark.'

Happy Serge

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Boat Work Day May 2012

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Nathan eating
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Serge doing some glass work
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Nat looking up some information on the iPad
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Gregory cleaning up wires
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Cleaning up and labeling cables
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Drilling holes to change a turning block for the vang
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Brian and crew came for a surprise visit!
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Elite Keel - coming back to the Club after the race

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Scott
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Nat
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Gregory and Mark
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Electrical work on Elise

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Gregory has done this so many times he can do it with his eyes closed :)
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Let there be light

Elite Keel Photos 2012

Courtesy of Nat's camera

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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Boat Work Day/Weekend

Involving Serge, Gregory, Nathan and Nat

  • Safety at Sea Seminar for Pac Cup
  • Recaulked/sealed cabin top windows
  • Applied primer (next step will be to paint over) in areas of cockpit with 'spider web' style lesions
  • labeled all electrical wires linked to battery 
  • replaced all ring terminals for these wires, sometimes replaced wires, or cut wires when they were corroded
  • removed all unused wiring
  • screwed on bus bar outside of battery compartment, too prone to wetness, directly to the bulkhead
  • expoy repair to the keel

 

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Vallejo 2012 Photos Post Race Photos

Time to relax...

Photos courtesy of Serge

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Serge the waiter
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Finishing the job

Vallejo 2012 Photos Sunday

Photos courtesy of Serge

Before the start[[posterous-content:pid___0]][[posterous-content:pid___1]]
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After the Finish
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[[posterous-content:pid___5]][[posterous-content:pid___6]][[posterous-content:pid___7]]Super Serge holding the boat all by himself

Vallejo Race 2012 - Photos @ Vallejo

Photos courtesy of Serge and Mike

[[posterous-content:pid___0]] The raft at Vallejo[[posterous-content:pid___9]]Just so we don't lose track of what's important[[posterous-content:pid___10]]Serge the Snacktician was ready with treats[[posterous-content:pid___11]]Elise getting ready to sleep[[posterous-content:pid___8]][[posterous-content:pid___1]]Eric making sure we don't lose track of what's important[[posterous-content:pid___2]]The boys[[posterous-content:pid___3]][[posterous-content:pid___4]][[posterous-content:pid___5]]Smily faces everywhere :)
[[posterous-content:pid___6]] Elise was on board[[posterous-content:pid___7]]

Vallejo Pictures Saturday Race

Writeup coming up!

Photos courtesy of Nat's Camera

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Happy Gregory
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 The view from the boat
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 Eric hard at work
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Mike and Nat
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Nat and Mike

Vallejo Final Results

Result
PosBoatTotalRace 1Race 2
1 Wile E Coyote 4 3 1
2 Take Five 6 1 5
3 Peaches 8 6 2
4 Desperado 8 4 4
5 Elise 9 2 7
6 Magic Bus 13 10 3
7 Great White 13 5 8
8 Dianne 13 7 6
9 Strega 18 9 9
10 Risk 19 8 11
11 Archimedes 21 11 10
12 Libra 25 12 DNC

Monday, May 7, 2012

Vallejo Results Sunday

SAIL # SKIPPER BOAT NAME BOAT MODEL RATING FINISH ELAPSED CORRECTED PTS. COMMENTS YC
11 Dan Pruzan Wile E Coyote Express 27 ODR 129 16:40:18 3:30:18 3:21:19 1   EYC
18364 John Rivlin Peaches Express 27 ODR 129 16:42:15 3:32:15 3:23:11 2   STFYC
41 Marc Belloli Magic Bus Express 27 ODR 129 16:48:02 3:38:02 3:28:43 3    
77539 Michael Bruzzone Desperado Express 27 ODR 129 16:49:28 3:39:28 3:30:06 4   SSS
28031 Donald Carroll Take Five Express 27 ODR 129 16:50:06 3:40:06 3:30:42 5   CSC
0 Steve Katzman Dianne Express 27 ODR 129 16:50:24 3:40:24 3:30:59 6   LTWJ
101 Nathalie/Nathan Criou/Bossett Elise Express 27 ODR 129 16:55:19 3:45:19 3:35:42 7   STFYC
48 Rachel Fogel Great White Express 27 ODR 129 16:55:58 3:45:58 3:36:19 8   BYC
77 Larry Levit Strega Express 27 ODR 129 17:04:16 3:54:16 3:44:16 9   RYC
18355 Joe Balderrama Archimedes Express 27 ODR 129 17:12:40 4:02:40 3:52:18 10   SSS
91 Neal Holmlund Risk Express 27 ODR 129 17:16:13 4:06:13 3:55:42 11  
113 Marcia Schnapp & Sergey Lubarsky Libra Express 27 ODR 129 DNC : : 13   SFYC/S

 

Vallejo Results Saturday

SAIL # SKIPPER BOAT NAME BOAT MODEL RATING FINISH ELAPSED CORRECTED PTS. COMMENTS YC
28031 Donald Carroll Take Five Express 27 ODR 129 17:17:00 5:17:00 5:03:28 1   CSC
101 Nathalie/Nathan Criou/Bossett Elise Express 27 ODR 129 17:21:31 5:21:31 5:07:47 2   STFYC
11 Dan Pruzan Wile E Coyote Express 27 ODR 129 17:21:55 5:21:55 5:08:10 3   EYC
77539 Michael Bruzzone Desperado Express 27 ODR 129 17:23:05 5:23:05 5:09:17 4   SSS
48 Rachel Fogel Great White Express 27 ODR 129 17:24:50 5:24:50 5:10:58 5   BYC
18364 John Rivlin Peaches Express 27 ODR 129 17:29:38 5:29:38 5:15:33 6   STFYC
0 Steve Katzman Dianne Express 27 ODR 129 17:31:28 5:31:28 5:17:19 7   LTWJ
91 Neal Holmlund Risk Express 27 ODR 129 17:32:58 5:32:58 5:18:45 8    
77 Larry Levit Strega Express 27 ODR 129 17:36:24 5:36:24 5:22:02 9   RYC
41 Marc Belloli Magic Bus Express 27 ODR 129 17:38:52 5:38:52 5:24:24 10  
18355 Joe Balderrama Archimedes Express 27 ODR 129 17:55:35 5:55:35 5:40:24 11   SSS
113 Marcia Schnapp & Sergey Lubarsky Libra Express 27 ODR 129 18:12:59 6:12:59 5:57:03 12   SFYC/S

 

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