From:
http://www.pbase.com/meyesphot
http://www.pbase.com/meyesphot
Monday, March 26, 2007
More pics!
From:
http://www.pbase.com/meyesphot
http://www.pbase.com/meyesphot
Lightship I Results Up
http://www.yra.org/OYRA/docs/Results/OYRA_Lightship1_032607_results.htm
We were 15 out of 21, beating one of the other Express 27's (Archimedes).
Nice job everyone!
This time we were basically looking at the boat; next time we'll be concentrating on the race instead of installing hardware 1/2 hour before the start. I've heard it helps a lot when the boat is ready to go so that the crew is racing rather than taking turns changing into sailing gear on the upwind leg...
We were 15 out of 21, beating one of the other Express 27's (Archimedes).
Nice job everyone!
This time we were basically looking at the boat; next time we'll be concentrating on the race instead of installing hardware 1/2 hour before the start. I've heard it helps a lot when the boat is ready to go so that the crew is racing rather than taking turns changing into sailing gear on the upwind leg...
Marseille
This is where my mother was born (and raced dinghies). Mediterranean coast on a nice sunny and a little windy day. Enjoy!!
The Church at the top of the hill is called Notre Dame De La Garde.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Light Ship On Her Way To The Lightship
Roger's ex-girlfriend. Also useful to illustrate the PHRF post as she is an Olson 25. (And no, Roger was not dating a 25 YEAR-old girlfriend but a 25 FOOT-long girlfriend.)
Do you think she knew she was being photographed?Arthur is in admiration in front of the mast-totem.
101 Dalmatians Vs 1000 Arabian nights (we used the extra one as we needed time to prep the boat)
"I am really not sure this is where we are supposed to be going"
Heather's inner thoughts: "this ship is big and we are driving right into it"Driver's thoughts: " I can dodge this, no problem"
Nathan: "I wish I hadn't put my sunglasses on. I can't see a thing in this fog"
Roger just spotted his ex-girlfriend on the water.
Heather joining the pole in its sleeve as her hands were a little cold
Maestro
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Lightship I 2007
(Nathan writing)
Today (Mar 24) was the crewed Lightship I event, with a simple course: St. Francis on the cityfront to the Lightship and back, for a handicap total of 25 miles. The actual lightship is long since retired, but at the same location (approach to San Francisco/Golden Gate entrance channel) is now a large buoy.
Conditions are usually typical of gate-crashers: heavy upwind out to the light bucket and a heavy downwind back. The scenery is great (Golden Gate, Pt. Bonita, and the shorelines north or south of the channel depending on which way you play the currents.
Attending were, from bow to stern, Heather, Arthur, Roger, and Nathan. Nat is still out on sick leave, which isn't particularly fair because she still managed to put in a lot of effort prepping the boat for the weekend.
This was a big event for Elise: her first offshore trip in years, and a first in racing for several of her crew. Because of much more stringent safety requirements for offshore racing (versus round-the-buoys in the bay), many pieces of equipment had to be procured and/or installed. It was a busy couple of weeks preparing, including installing permanent deck fittings for jacklines (used to "tie" crew down to avoid falling overboard while still allowing them mobility) to assembling a large bundle of signaling devices (parachute flares, smoke generators, etc.).
The workload was sufficient to keep us busy up through just before start time (we didn't even have time to change into sailing gear and took turns going below after the start).
This year, the breeze was up and down, basically #3 weather upwind and nice kite conditions downwind. There were extended periods when a #1 would have been preferred, but on a shakedown cruise and training day we didn't want to get caught out with too much sail area for the conditions. Our four-man crew was another factor in this decision (5 would be desirable in heavy air for weight/performance reasons).
We took the race easy, to check Elise's reactions to wind and wave loading and to give the crew a chance to understand how she would react both to performance tweaks and mistakes.
Elise was very forgiving, and quite eager at times when the wind rose.
The first portion of the upwind (from the cityfront to the Golden Gate Bridge) was reasonably heavy air, with all hands on the rail and deliberate effort to depower the rig- backstay, outhaul, etc. We knew that the wind was going to be going right, but guessed wrong about how soon and lost distance when the answer turned out to be "immediately" rather than "when we pass the gate". Still, speed was competitive and Elise calmed down when appropriately trimmed.
Past the gate but before Bonita, a few crosses left and right netted or lost distance inconsistently versus the other 27's. Shortly after Bonita, the wind dropped, and didn't recover until we were near the lightship. Staying out of the way of some commercial traffic inbound for Oakland was a minor inconvenience that kept us a bit to the south. A good spinnaker set at the mark got us going well, but the wind was light and we took a deep course south rather than taking a couple of gybes to work north. Still, we managed a couple of solid gybes for practice.
Arriving back at the main channel near Seal Rocks and Mile Rock, we worked back north through and into favorable current. One extended gybe (problems getting the pole back on the mast on the new side) led to a temporary wrap around the forestay which we resolved by flying the kite without a pole for a while. We just twinged it down, drove+trimmed the wrap out, and then reset the pole on the new gybe (starboard tack heading at the South Tower) at our leisure.
After passing under the bridge (pointed at the St. Francis, the finish line and our home port) a very welcome increase in wind came in and gave us a quick 13.8 knot over ground run (in favorable current, but our knotmeter is on the "fixit" list so we don't know our through-water speed). We had one or two "ease the sheet NOW" moments, but handled everything properly and got in a nice fast run across the finish line and correct spinnaker drop afterwards.
Today (Mar 24) was the crewed Lightship I event, with a simple course: St. Francis on the cityfront to the Lightship and back, for a handicap total of 25 miles. The actual lightship is long since retired, but at the same location (approach to San Francisco/Golden Gate entrance channel) is now a large buoy.
Conditions are usually typical of gate-crashers: heavy upwind out to the light bucket and a heavy downwind back. The scenery is great (Golden Gate, Pt. Bonita, and the shorelines north or south of the channel depending on which way you play the currents.
Attending were, from bow to stern, Heather, Arthur, Roger, and Nathan. Nat is still out on sick leave, which isn't particularly fair because she still managed to put in a lot of effort prepping the boat for the weekend.
This was a big event for Elise: her first offshore trip in years, and a first in racing for several of her crew. Because of much more stringent safety requirements for offshore racing (versus round-the-buoys in the bay), many pieces of equipment had to be procured and/or installed. It was a busy couple of weeks preparing, including installing permanent deck fittings for jacklines (used to "tie" crew down to avoid falling overboard while still allowing them mobility) to assembling a large bundle of signaling devices (parachute flares, smoke generators, etc.).
The workload was sufficient to keep us busy up through just before start time (we didn't even have time to change into sailing gear and took turns going below after the start).
This year, the breeze was up and down, basically #3 weather upwind and nice kite conditions downwind. There were extended periods when a #1 would have been preferred, but on a shakedown cruise and training day we didn't want to get caught out with too much sail area for the conditions. Our four-man crew was another factor in this decision (5 would be desirable in heavy air for weight/performance reasons).
We took the race easy, to check Elise's reactions to wind and wave loading and to give the crew a chance to understand how she would react both to performance tweaks and mistakes.
Elise was very forgiving, and quite eager at times when the wind rose.
The first portion of the upwind (from the cityfront to the Golden Gate Bridge) was reasonably heavy air, with all hands on the rail and deliberate effort to depower the rig- backstay, outhaul, etc. We knew that the wind was going to be going right, but guessed wrong about how soon and lost distance when the answer turned out to be "immediately" rather than "when we pass the gate". Still, speed was competitive and Elise calmed down when appropriately trimmed.
Past the gate but before Bonita, a few crosses left and right netted or lost distance inconsistently versus the other 27's. Shortly after Bonita, the wind dropped, and didn't recover until we were near the lightship. Staying out of the way of some commercial traffic inbound for Oakland was a minor inconvenience that kept us a bit to the south. A good spinnaker set at the mark got us going well, but the wind was light and we took a deep course south rather than taking a couple of gybes to work north. Still, we managed a couple of solid gybes for practice.
Arriving back at the main channel near Seal Rocks and Mile Rock, we worked back north through and into favorable current. One extended gybe (problems getting the pole back on the mast on the new side) led to a temporary wrap around the forestay which we resolved by flying the kite without a pole for a while. We just twinged it down, drove+trimmed the wrap out, and then reset the pole on the new gybe (starboard tack heading at the South Tower) at our leisure.
After passing under the bridge (pointed at the St. Francis, the finish line and our home port) a very welcome increase in wind came in and gave us a quick 13.8 knot over ground run (in favorable current, but our knotmeter is on the "fixit" list so we don't know our through-water speed). We had one or two "ease the sheet NOW" moments, but handled everything properly and got in a nice fast run across the finish line and correct spinnaker drop afterwards.
PHRF Certificate (and PHRF Info)
Elise just received her 2007 NC PHRF Certificate. Her rating is 129 seconds/mile (like regular Express 27 ODR). Performance Handicap Racing Fleet certificates are one way of adjudicating race that is not One Design (eg, not all the boats are of the same type). One Design racing is regulated by class rules to ensure that the winners win thanks to their superior sailing skills, not because they have more money and bigger sails.
Some races may be open to different types of boats. Typically, these boats will be arranged by class (roughly the same size/speed boat will compete together). Those are more tricky to handle tactically because some boats will be naturally faster or slower than your boat. Hence the need for a handicap system.
Sailboats racing under a "handicap system" have a function applied to their elapsed time, producing a "corrected time," and the boats place in corrected time order. This function, which differs among systems, attempts to fairly represent speed differences among boats.
For example, an Olson 25 is slower (on average and based on past performance) than an Express 27. So if the Olson 25 and the Express 27 both cross the finish line at the same time, the Olson 25 did a better job since they started worse off to begin with and at the same time as you did on the Express (obviously this example is 100% theoretical ;-)). The quality of their job is also proportional to the distance of the race. If you are slower than other boats, the distance between you and faster types will increase with the length of the course. This is why the handicap is calculated per mile and acts as a time multiplier. In this particular case, even though the two boats finish at the same time in real time, the Olson would win on corrected time because the Express will owe her time. In most PHRF races, you will see both times in posted results: Actual and Corrected. The corrected time is calculated based on the actual finish time and the boat handicap (rating * distance of the course)
(if you want to illustrate this, you can do this experiment with a friend. You are allowed to run but your friend can only walk. Try to run as fast as you can and ask your friend to walk as fast as he/she can on the same itinerary. Vary the length of your race and measure the distance between you and your friend when YOU cross the finish line)
PHRF (pronounced "perf") is Performance Handicap Racing Fleet.
Some races may be open to different types of boats. Typically, these boats will be arranged by class (roughly the same size/speed boat will compete together). Those are more tricky to handle tactically because some boats will be naturally faster or slower than your boat. Hence the need for a handicap system.
Sailboats racing under a "handicap system" have a function applied to their elapsed time, producing a "corrected time," and the boats place in corrected time order. This function, which differs among systems, attempts to fairly represent speed differences among boats.
For example, an Olson 25 is slower (on average and based on past performance) than an Express 27. So if the Olson 25 and the Express 27 both cross the finish line at the same time, the Olson 25 did a better job since they started worse off to begin with and at the same time as you did on the Express (obviously this example is 100% theoretical ;-)). The quality of their job is also proportional to the distance of the race. If you are slower than other boats, the distance between you and faster types will increase with the length of the course. This is why the handicap is calculated per mile and acts as a time multiplier. In this particular case, even though the two boats finish at the same time in real time, the Olson would win on corrected time because the Express will owe her time. In most PHRF races, you will see both times in posted results: Actual and Corrected. The corrected time is calculated based on the actual finish time and the boat handicap (rating * distance of the course)
(if you want to illustrate this, you can do this experiment with a friend. You are allowed to run but your friend can only walk. Try to run as fast as you can and ask your friend to walk as fast as he/she can on the same itinerary. Vary the length of your race and measure the distance between you and your friend when YOU cross the finish line)
PHRF (pronounced "perf") is Performance Handicap Racing Fleet.
PHRF ratings are assigned based on past performance of similar boats. So Elise's rating is the number of seconds per mile she is supposedly slower than a theoretical boat which rates 0. Most boats you are likely to sail on rate somewhere in the range of about 50 to 250. All ratings are multiples of 3 seconds/mile (i.e. the next faster rating than 171 is 168). I think this is done as a recognition that the rating process just isn't accurate enough to justify rating boats to 1
second/mile resolution.
Typically, a certain type of boat is given a stock rating based on past experience. Just to make it a bit more interesting, ratings vary somewhat depending on location; each YRA (Yacht Racing Association) can assign its own rating to a class of boat depending on their local experiences and conditions. For example, a good heavy air boat would rate faster in San Francisco Bay, than in Long Island Sound.
On top of your regional stock rating, there are a variety of standard rating adjustments depending on how your boat is rigged. The standard PHRF rules allow you to have a 153% genoa. You can carry a larger sail, but take a rating penalty for it. Likewise, you can chose to not
carry that big a sail and get a rating advantage. Having a non-standard keel, extra tall or short mast, a fixed prop (the stock ratings assume a folding or feathering prop), extra long or short
spinnaker pole, etc, all result in rating changes. Some boats have several stock ratings for different common variations. For example, there are 4 configurations of J/29's; masthead or fractional rig and inboard or outboard.
There are two flavors of PHRF, Time-on-Distance (TOD) and Time- on-Time (TOT). TOD is the more traditional and easier to understand, so let's start there. In TOD, you get a handicap equal to the length of the race course in nautical miles multiplied by your rating in seconds/mile. Thus, for a 6 mile race, a boat that rates 120 would get a 720 second handicap, i.e. her corrected finish time would be 720 seconds less than her actual time to complete the race. What people tend to do is think not so much about the actual rating, but rating differences, i.e. if you rate 120 and the other guy rates 111, he owes you 9 seconds per mile, so for a 6 mile race, as long as he
finishes less than 54 seconds in front of you, you will correct over him and win. Most PHRF races that Elise will do will be of that type. (I don't believe that I have sailed with the other type at all). So the formula for PHRF is to use the rating, in s/M, multiply it by the length of the course and subtract this number from the boat's elapsed time to get the corrected elapsed time (in seconds).
The other flavor of PHRF is Time-on-Time (TOT). In TOT, it's not the length of the race course that matters, it's the amount of time the race takes. To do TOT, first you have to convert your normal rating, R, in seconds per mile to a factor, F. The formula to convert R to F varies from place to place, but it's typically something like F = 600 / (480 + R). Actually, it's really something like F = 600 / ((600 - Rav) + R), where Rav is the average rating of all the boats in the fleet in that area. For reasonable values of R, you get an F which is a number close to 1. For example, a J/24 rating 171 has an F of 0.9217, while a Newport-41 rating 108 has an F of 1.020. To score the race, you take each boat's finish time, subtract their start time (giving their raw elapsed time) and multiply by their F, giving their Corrected Elapsed Time (CET). The theory behind TOT is that in a slow race (i.e. light wind), the boats tend to spread out but since the
amount of time each boat owes the others is fixed by the length of the race course (in TOD), slow (i.e. light wind) races tend to favor the faster boats.
On of the problems with TOT is that there is no universally accepted formula for converting R to F. With the sort of formula used above, you can argue about what should be used for Rav. Some people think we should calculate an Rav for each division, for example. Some people think TOT
is a total crock and want to go back to TOD.
Ratings are assigned by a committee of the local racing authority, formed from representatives of the member clubs. In our case, it is the Yacht Racing Association of San Francisco Bay. These ratings are somewhat subjective and I am sure that many people keep arguing over the accuracy of PHRF rating. A member may appeal a rating, presenting evidence, such as race results, which supports the appeal. The local committee's decision may be appealed to a committee of PHRF handicappers from all over the country.
Still, they are useful in that they allow us to have a lot of fun in other types of events. I don't believe that we will be contesting them!
For professional non One-Design races, often a more elaborate and theoretical handicap system (based on measurement) will be used. The stakes are a bit higher :)
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Elise in Latitude 38!!
http://www.latitude38.com/LectronicLat/2007/0307/Mar05/Mar5.html#anchor1085433
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Spring Keel (Sunday, Mar 4) - Pics
Take a good look at this boat.
5 minutes later, we will have overtaken her...
Desperately seeking Susan.Arthur is looking around the pit
Heather checks the windex up the mast
The "competition"
It's twins! Well, sixteenplets!
Hot shot.
Nice little gybe action.
Even Kate gets her picture taken as she sailed on Opal!
Spring Keel (Sunday, Mar 4) - Racing Writeup
The Spring Keel was Elise's first weekend round-the-buoys regatta. With 18 E27's signed up, it was also a great chance to practice working busy start lines and mark roundings.
The first day (Saturday) was discouraging because the weather lived up to its forecast of "dead". The hoped-for westerly never materialized, and the forecast easterly died. Sunday was much better, and the committee amended the sailing instructions to include three races (vs 2). The breeze was up and down (mostly down) but enough to run credible races and at times to give a good, exciting feel to the upwinds.
Unfortunately, the wind was blowing perpendicular to the main channel, and the RC had to send us out into the middle for some quick windward-leeward courses rather than up and down the cityfront (mostly out of the channel, ducking inshore in one direction and towards the channel for current aid/avoidance) as would normally be expected.
The courses were all W-L, once around with an offset, leeward gate, finish to windward. The only difference was that the committee switched from port to startboard roundings after the first race.
Out of the three starts, the second two were quite good for us. We were able to keep pace on the upwind for a change (a pleasant payoff to the losses in the Berkeley midwinters). Our tacking and gybing is still a little off the pace versus the experienced boats, so we generally avoided close fights.
Cyling in the wind velocity made it relatively hard to call laylines and favored courses (if you were planning on 3 minutes in a current to lay a mark, and suddenly get an extra couple of knots of wind, all of a sudden you've either overstood or have to do an extra tack and give the bow no setup time).
In general, it paid to play a bit more on position and current than on wind and short distances. Ups and downs in the wind made "safe" moves valuable. A few times, we split from the fleet to mixed results: as an example, in the last race hopping a few hundred yards to the side to get into Alcatraz's sheltering cone, gaining much distance against the two boats closest to us but losing distance to those a bit in front.
Our finishes were quite encouraging (out of 16 starters, 12 overall with individual finishes 13, 10, 12m two points behind the overall 11th boat). We were much more competitive in the light than the drifting conditions. When the breeze came up another notch (requiring everyone on the windward side with the #1 up), we started to lose a bit again. There's lots of tuning to do, but now we're solidly in the game.
Spring Keel (first day, Sat Mar 3)
Emre (limited engagement as regular crew)
Aideen
Arthur
Nate and Nat
The first day of the Spring Keel (hosted by St. Francis, with 18 Express 27 entries) was somewhat discouraging, with the race committee postponing an hour before the scheduled start (to avoid forcing people to leave the dock). Roger had called in sick, and Nat managed to lure Aideen (visiting from Seattle) with the promise of an exciting day on the bay (proposal made before the postponement, obviously).
Four hours later, the race committee having abandoned the day's attempt at racing, we decided to salvage what we could and get in a quick bay tour.
Some de rigour photos of our special guest later,
we stopped for gas and a snack in Tiburon, returning while enjoying the beautiful SF nighttime skyline (not pictured, because for some reason it's really hard to photograph).
we stopped for gas and a snack in Tiburon, returning while enjoying the beautiful SF nighttime skyline (not pictured, because for some reason it's really hard to photograph). 
Not a bad first day of a weekend, but somewhat disappointing as the first day of a regatta.
A few "fun" pics from the bay tour:
marshmallow, but not toasted- the grill is with the rest of the cruising equipment (non-existent)
No, your other "right"
No, your OTHER other "right"
Normally a trimmer would be unemployed when there's no wind, but snacktician is a valuable role on a cruise.
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