Elise : Some awesome photos from the Nationals

Photo: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.432800346832891.1073741829.430756010370658&type=1

was a weekend of very right racing - where boats arrived within seconds of each others. Some out of towners and new arrivals or new drivers like on Opa! also proved to be great sailors which is great. 15 boats on the start line is very respectable. Finishes in each race except for the top spots were fiercely fought over and made for very exciting races and often the last leg would decide the outcome of the race.

Elise had overall good upwind speed the entire weekend, passing boats upwind and on the first upwind right behind and pacing the leaders (see photo below) - really poor downwind speed (we fiddled a bit with weight management and that made a difference) and wondered about rig tuning (rake) issues. We had constantly slow hoists which also made us lost a couple of places on a few occasions. We also had bad spinnaker hour glass and a line stuck under the lifeline in heavy air and we chose to lower the spinnaker to fix that. It was the third race of the second day and we were tired so decision was made not to reset. Day has to remain fun for everyone :) Finally, I took the leeward mark rounding too wider on a few occasions which allowed boats to get on the inside and beat us after the rounding. It was so close, that it cost us boats there too.

If we fixed all the above, we probably could go up 3 places in the fleet.

Note that the other three boats had a lot of twist in their main but by then, wind speed had increased to the point that lowering the traveler worked better on boat speed - even if the main wasn't used as much. Strange - 20 knots seem to be that limit. would love to understand that. Was really just a 'feel' setting.

We had a slow downwind speed where we lost all the ground we made up upwind in a lot of races.

An aggressive fleet on the start line - we had one general recall

Tight fleet

Whoever says sailing in't a sport needs to talk to me and take a look at these photos ;-)

Great shot of Motorcycle Irene - top boat in the fleet.

01 - Racing
Sail #	Boat Name	Skipper	Place	Points	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
28137	MOTORCYCLE IRENE	Will Paxton Zack Anderson	1	8	2	1	1	1	1	1	1
1	GET HAPPY!!	Brendan Busch	2	18	3	2	2	2	4	3	2
11	WILE E COYOTE	Dan Pruzan	3	22	1	4	4	3	3	4	3
41	MAGIC BUS	Paul Deeds	4	31	6	5	3	4	2	5	6
18364	PEACHES	John Rivlin	5	36	5	7	5	5	8	2	4
28050	EL RATON	Ray Lotto	6	56	4	8	10	16	7	6	5
18070	OPA!	Peggy Lidster	7	56	15	6	8	7	6	7	7
18353	TEQUILA MOCKINGBIRD	Matt Krogstad	8	57	8	3	9	14	5	8	10
85	SUMMER PALACE	Wolfgang Stehr	9	65	12	9	6	10	11	9	8
40316	MONSTER EXPRESS	Ted Lohr	10	68	7	13	11	6	9	11	11
101	ELISE	Nathalie Criou	11	70	9	11	7	14	10	10	9
28059	MOONLIGHT	Jim Gibbs	12	82	10	12	12	9	14	12	13
113	LIBRA	Sergey Lubarsky	13	83	13	10	13	8	13	14	12
28031	TAKE FIVE	Donald Carroll	14	90	11	14	14	11	12	13	15
91	MAKE ME SMILE	Neal Holmlund	15	104	14	15	15	16	15	15	14

Overall results: without retiring, looks like we would have been tied for points w/ Summer Palace and would have ended in 10th place.

We had a little disagreement with Opa! on the last windward rounding (we are starboard boat and Opa! crosses in front of us. As starboard boat and without any collision threat, we keep our course. Opa! tacks just windward of us - a tactical move called lee bowing as you basically take the wind off the boats below you and it allows you to step forward. Usually you do this with enough room to give you space to come down a bit which is the boat equivalent of stepping on the gas - and you need space because you can't do this by forcing the boat below you down as they are the leeward boat and have rights over you. If you force that boat to change their course, it is a foul. Most of the time, this maneuvre is perfectly legal and you can take over the boat just because you steal their wind not because you make them move the tiller.

Unfortunately, Opa! tacked very close to Elise with a clean tack. Out of the tack though, Elise had progressed further forward and there was an overlap - some leebow maneuvres start with no overlap with the windward boat then accelerating over the leeward boat - Opa! driver seems to not recollect that, every crew member on Elise remembered that because they had to bring in their feet as they worried about them being crushed. Established on the other tack, Opa! came down forcing Elise to change course to avoid having his crew feet crushed (the crew did bring their feet back on board too!)

The driver on Opa! indicatd that it was a normal move because out of a tack in heavy air the boat loses so much speed that it has to come down to accelerate again - and they just couldn't come up when Elise asked them to. The driver said that 'they did everything in their power to give us room and the fact that they couldn't is therefore Elise's problem.

Coming down made us miss the mark which forced us to do a penalty circle and lose precious time as well as take us off course a we had to go on the side of the course to do that not to be a danger to other boats. Our view is that Opa! would have done everything in their power to avoid coming down on Elise if knowing that they would have to come down after the tack to accelerate, they had tacked further away from Elise to windward as to allow for this re-acceleration.

Opa! did not have the option to crash tack and their stern was so close to Elise that the boat would have collided with Elise had it done a sharp turn, it was really that close. This is another way that the windward boat would avoid fouling the leeward boat if indeed they cannot stay high enough to stay out of their way.

An interesting comment was 'I thought you were making it' coming from Opa! after rounding the mark which would seem to indicate that the driver did not plan to make Elise miss the mark, or come down but just wanted to accelerate ahead of Elise at the rounding (a successful leebow maneuvre) - but having one boat pass you because of great maneuvring Vs 3 because you now have a penalty you wouldn't have had had you been able to stay on layline is a different matter :)

We will stay with different opinions! It doesn't really matter, just that fairplay is an important part of the sport and that it is important for our team to debrief on a situation.