PIED PIPER RACING

Tampa Bay Stars

2011-11-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

So I spent the last 3 weeks in Tampa after a long month of October not doing much sailing. I sailed a Finn for the first 4 days, it was great conditions flat water and a nice 10 to 15 knot breeze. I was gearing up for my first Finn event coming up in New Orleans mid December.

Then it was time to get going in the Star we had 2 days of training prior to the start of the North Americans. Unfortuantly when the event started the wind stoped and the first two and half days of the event were plagued with light wind to no wind at all. The conditions where marginal for sailing at all and on day two we had a huge let down when we lost 20 boats in one leg. Brian and I were a little discouraged but we knew that we were sailing well and just needed to keep working to move up the standings. In the last 4 races of the event which were sailed in better breeze we had 3 top ten finishes a 10 a 6 and 3 this was good enough to move us into 9th place a recpectable result coming back from a very disappointing race 2.

Star sailing continues to be my favorite one design sailing. Much of this has to do with the people that populate the class and my crew Brian Sharp. Brian and I have spent a lot of days on the water together - the improvement from day one has been huge. Everytime I go star sailing all I think about when the event is over is the next Star event I can sail.

Talisman Verve Cup 2011

2011-08-27T01:14:00.001-07:00

About 10 days prior to the verve cup I got a email from Wally Cross asking if I was available to sail the verve cup as tactician for the Talisman B/C 58 designed to the IMS rule. It sounded like a good opportunity to help support a partial Quantum customer (jibs and spins) so I said let's do it.

I really didn't know what to expect from the boat but I did know we had a good crew and Dave Lamere preparing the boat so that was all positive. When we finally lined up for racing on Friday it was clear the boat sailed well upwind and we just had to find a way to hang on to the TP 52 Natalie J and Rogers 46 Bretwelda in order to do well. The common thought from the crew that had sailed the boat before was that unless the other boats had enough wind to plane we would be ok. The wind rarely went above 10 the whole weekend and the races we struggled most were the light wind races 6 knots or less. Talisman is heavy I believe close to 30,000 lbs compared to the 52s or 46 which I'm guessing come in around half that in displacement So when the breeze was light the lighter boats accelerate much better in each little puff they find. It seemed we missed those little pushes unless we get a sustained puff that allowed us to build our momentum. That was the case on Saturday's single light air where the 52 NJ could take every little whisper of wind and turn it into boat lengths we struggled to convert. It became clear after two days of sailing that the top 3 boats each had favorite condition that allowed them to sail at or above their ORR rating number. This was not shocking considering how radically different our design was compared to the newer 52 and 46.

The last day we had the best breeze of the 3 days. Lucky for our boat it still was moderate enough that the Rogers 46 and TP 52 couldn't get on a step downwind and we were able to square our spin pole a bit and sail deep. During race 5 we covered Bretwelda the 46 on the first beat tacking right in front of her near the port lay line. We ended up rounding the top mark overlapped with NJ who had come in on the starboard layline. It was a drag race downwind but a gear failure (a shackle on the new spin sheet opened during the only jibe of the leg) caused us to sail passed the layline with a wrap in the spin in a knot before we could start heading to the mark. It was a little disheartening.

This made race 6 a must win and it changed our focus from Bretwelda to Natalie J who had just raked up 2 race wins in a row and was sitting in first place. Off the line we started to leeward of the pack with NJ, Bretwelda and defiance in a group on our hip. We had a small left shift and a little better pressure. As NJ, Bretwelda and defiance peeled off we picked our spot and tacked to port. We had a nice lane on port and what must of been better pressure because at a 30 degree compass course it was clear to me that the shift was going right. So we pinned our ears back, dropped the traveler and worked hard to get over the top of the boats to leeward and beat them to the right hand side. We were able to do this and had the first cross by several boat lengths on NJ. We tacked on them and Bretwelda as they came across on starboard with the goal of herding them to the starboard layline and leading them to the weather mark from there. This worked out well and we rounded ahead by 500 yards or so. The downwind was all about hanging on to our lead and not doing to many gybes. We did one gybe and we were laying the left gate downwind. NJ was clearly faster downwind and had a better lane on port being to weather the smaller fleets after a gybe set maneuver at the top mark. They gybed on the starboard layline to the left gate and it became apparent that they had a piece of us and owned the inside position at the leeward mark. We reached up to force a decision and minimize the overlap. As NJ gybed we bore off and dropped our spin early. Many of the farr 40 fleet where also converging on the leeward mark so our entire goal was to sail wide and have a tight exit from the mark and not get stuck on the outside. We executed this about perfect and we were able to sail inside of NJ and roll the on port. Then we matched tack with them and continued to inflict as much bad air as we could. As we continued to extend Natalie J did a 270 degree turn from starboard to port I guess to "clear a penalty" from a foul at the leeward mark with a farr 40. In reality this isn't how you clear a penalty, usually a penalty that occurs within 3 boat Lengths of a mark requires a 720 degree turn to exonerate. And with the exception of match races (where a 270 degree turn will clear a penalty) in all instances and classes at least a 360 degree turn is required.

From that point on the race was in hand and we covered till the finish. We finished 50 sec clear ahead of NJ. A nice way to end the event and take the regatta after a tough start to the day.

Thanks to Bruce Aikens and the crew of Talisman for having me onboard and to Wally Cross for setting it up. The Talisman had some real nice Quantum sails our 1.5 spin was very versatile and the code 1 and code 2 jibs covered the us well between the 5 to 12 knots we sailed in over the weekend.

Im currently standing by for breeze at the star district 4 champs in Gull Lake Michigan. So hopefully we get sailing here soon.

-Jack

Transpac daily updates from Patches

2011-08-05T08:50:00.001-07:00

Here are the emails that came from the Patches to friends and family as we made our way accross the Pacific:

July 10th 2011
Patches is off and running! The first 48 hours are always a bit of a shocker getting back into the offshore mode. This year was very pleasant with between 15-18 kts off the bow and clocking to due North.

Seas have been calm, in the 4ft range.

We started on Friday and held the #2 all the way out and around Catalina. Yesterday we put up the Jib top at 7:30 am with the genoa staysail. We held that setup for a while, finally pealing to the masthead A3 at 4:30am today and to the A2 at 11:30am.

Life on the boat has been… wet! We found ‘some’ leaks we didn’t know we had. And we made some leaks that weren’t supposed to be there! Regardless, we are all in good spirits and are heavily into crossing the ridge.

We have set ourselves up a little South to cross the ridge. There is a bit of a ‘hernia’ in the isobars along the ridge just north of us. The ‘hernia’ is most wide about 150 miles north of rhumb line. As we get lifted out of the ridge, it looks like we skirt it pretty close. We’ve been setting up to try and enter the ridge a little further south so our exit is a little further south than the routing software puts us. We are just a little worried that pocket of light air might grow and push south, especially with the big High so far North West. The only direction it has to go is back south and east! Hopefully our push south of the fleet keeps us in good breeze and gives us better angle on the gybe in a few days.

Of course the southerly route causes us to sail a little extra distance, but will be offset by the better breeze and gybe angle.

All of this has set us up in the standings well. We are currently sitting in 2nd in Class and 10th overall. With the lighter breeze down the course, we are hoping to chomp up the 70’s in the final ½ of the race. We are currently sitting further South than our fleet, so we are hoping as we spin around the lighter air to the North, we begin to extend forward and cut miles off of our distance to the mark.

Regardless, it is what it is and it be what it be! We are making the best of the situation and pushing hard. We are keeping all our maneuvers safe and slow.

July 13, 2011
Well, the last 36 hours have been interesting. After yesterday’s report, we know we are entering the last 3rd of the race in good position.

We have decided to play the west side of the fleet to leverage the easterly shift as we get closer to the Hawaii. The wind has lightened and we set a strategy to stay pointed towards the west side of the course. If the wind allows us we have been stepping down to the south to remove some of the leverage from the sleds that began gybing south yesterday night.

Over the last 24 hours the wind lightened even further and we have struggled against the front running sled, GI. We are now about 6 hours behind them on corrected.

Fortunately, we did well on the three other sleds that worked south, taking approx. two hours out of each of their leads.

We are now 20 minutes out of 2nd place overall. This has left us in a strong position entering the last 1/3rd of the race.

There are about 9 boats who are all reasonably close up here in the front pack on corrected time. We have a solid game plan and are going to stick to it as we get closer to the finish. The wind will be increasing to the 12-14kt range tomorrow and 15-16 on Friday. We are trying to set ourselves up to take advantage of the building breeze but not lose control of our class competitors. The sleds are a bonus if we can pick a few more of them off, but we don’t want to lose any leverage on our fleet.

That’s about all for now. We will keep updated tomorrow.

July 14, 2011
Well, we have played our cards and it’s time to put the pedal down. No matter how hard it was to stick to the strategy as we slogged along at 8 kts and watched the sleds peel off to the south, we stuck it out.

The goal was to cross a day long finger of light air to extend out into the west side of the course. Getting to the west side of the course would allow us to take advantage of the shifting wind and leverage against anyone who took the short term gain with more wind south.

At this point, we aren’t sure how it will completely turn out. The move cost us about 1.5 hours on the entire sled fleet, but we are now going 15kts in 16kts of wind with a wind angle of 70 degrees.

By comparison, we were sailing all yesterday in wind angles in the 40’s and 50’s and doing 8-9 kts of boatspeed in 10kts of wind. Painful and frustrating, especially when the fleet tracking showed the sleds doing 10.5-11kts of boatspeed after their dive south.

By extending out to the west, we have been able to gybe into more wind and point closer to the finish line than the boats that were south of us. (At least that’s how it appears from here, we will see if that’s actually true!)

Now we are pretty well set for the run to the finish. We have 720 miles to go. The winds are oscillating between 65-70 and we are forecast to have winds shifting further east to 75 degrees which will further head us at the finish line.

After a tough day yesterday, Jack finally had enough. Starting on our first evening watch, as the breeze (finally) began to increase, he grabbed the mainsheet and has been constantly pumped the main with the kite. If there are 4 on deck, one person drives, one trims the kite sheet, one grinds the kite winch and the 4th person pumps the main sheet by hand.

If there are 5 on deck, the same driver, trimmer, grinder setup, but the main sheet is pumped with a pedestal grinder. Much faster!

That’s it for now; wish us well as we row this thing to the finish line.

We need to take about 2 hours out of the sled fleet and 6 hours out of the overall leader. We currently sit 1st in class and 5th overall as Holua (SC70) gained a place on us. We have continued to gain on our fleet, with the exception of Vincetori, who leveraged South with the sleds.

Until tomorrow

July 15, 2011
The drag race has begun.

The plan was to get out to the West of the fleet and leverage the
easterly shift. We have succeeded in getting to the West of the fleet
and have gotten a good header this morning with more coming tomorrow
morning.

The next three places in our fleet have spread out on the course.
Katana, in 4th, is directly behind us at 177 miles. Vincetore , in 3rd,
is in front of our port beam, about 82 miles to the south east of us.
Criminal Mischief, in 2nd, is between the two extremes and dead upwind
of us and 140 miles away.

We are comfortable with our position on our fleet as we are protecting
the right side of the course from Vincetore's leverage to the south
east. Criminal is dead upwind, and will need to sail further distance
(and longer time) to cover the 140 miles. We will be keeping an eye on
them and possibly step down to the west one more time to take full
advantage of the heading breeze as we get a little closer to the mark.

The Sleds have done a great job in this race. The front running 4 sleds
all took a dip south for more breeze a few days ago, and have been able
to maintain (and slightly increase) their lead as they have compressed
back to our line. It was a gamble for both of us as to which strategy
would prevail, and while the outcome is still yet unknown, I am tending
to think the southerly route back on Wednesday may have been a tick
faster.

We will find out for sure when the full header solidifies for us
tomorrow and we can accurately gauge.

Patches TP 52 Transpac

2011-07-22T21:52:00.001-07:00

http://www.pressure-drop.us/forums/content.php?1614-Patches-TP-52-Transpac-2011-Wrap-Up

Daredevil wraps up Charleston race week in 11th

2011-04-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

It was a successful week for the team on Daredevil. This was my first time helming a Melges 24 in over 2 years and it took a couple races to shake off the cobwebs but by Race three I was feeling pretty good. The team came together well and stayed focused on improving every race. USA 659 had good speed despite using a 2nd hand Quantum main that was over a year old. I was happy to see the Quantum Sail last so long and still delivery good performance and shape. We did have a new Jib and running Asail. The mast and sails fit together well and we were well sorted after one day of tunning. This was key because on the short courses you needed to have your head out of the boat or you were going to miss something. We are not heading to the worlds which would of been fun and I think we could keep improving on our results there. Instead the boat will head back to the midwest and sail in 4 events in and around the great lakes. We will wrap up with the US National Championships in Lake Geneva. The goal of this event was to set a good starting piont for reaching the end goal of winning the US National Championship. We have a lot of work to do to sail in the top 5 but I think it is possible. Thanks to the crew of Arthur Anosov and Dave Jochum for the hard work and effort. Most of all thanks to owner Tim Anto for making the whole event possible.

12th after 4 races in Charleston

2011-04-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

It was a perfect day in Charleston for the Melges 24 Class. We had everthing Charleston is known for strong currents, a challenging race course and good breeze. The courses were short and each race was only about an hour long. This kept the fleet close together. Boat handling was key and by the 3rd race we were starting to get it right. We have a lot of room for improvement. At the moment the forcast for saturday is looking a little ugly with strong winds and thunderstorms. For now we are happy with a solid start in this 47 boat fleet.

Charleston Race Week

2011-04-14T19:26:00.001-07:00

I have been in Charleston since Monday evening getting ready for Charleston Race Week. I am sailing for Tim Anto on his Melges 24 "Daredevil". We have a new team with two days of practice under our belts. There will be 47 Melges 24's racing this weekend and many teams ramping up for the Melges 24 worlds. The competition will be very good. I am not sure how it will all pan out but so far we have used our time here well. We have Star sailor Arthur Anosov calling tactics, Dave Jochum on the Bow and Tim on downwind trim. Looking forward to the next three days and 10 great races in Charleston.

Better Sailing on the last day of Bacardi Cup

2011-03-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

We made some improvements as the Bacardi Cup progressed in Miami. On the last day the Right side of the course looked to be better for pressure. So we made a nice start about 10 boat lengths to leeward of the committee boat. After sailing for a couple minutes on starboard we floped onto port and got into drag race mode with a nice lane to leeward.

The whole week I had been playing with the mast butt position and rake understanding that we were not really prepared for a good result and taking the oppurtunity to experiment with the set up. I ended up moving the mast butt two holes aft. This seemed to decrease the weather helm. I stood the rake up a bit to 37 inches (94cm) to try and add some more power in the boat. I think this was a better set up and made the boat easier to drive.

We rounded the top mark in the top 15 and passed a few on the downwind leg rounding the leeward mark in 12th. From here our lack time sailing together started to hurt and we lost places on each of the next 3 legs. We finished a disapionting 30th after what looked like a promising last race.

Its hard to get really upset at a mid fleet result when you dont put the time in at a major event like the Bacardi Cup. For the first time in two years 8077 will not be going to europe and I am looking forward to having the boat local so I can sail her more often and particapate in the North American events.

Next on the schedule is Charleston Race Week.

Stuck in 40

2011-03-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

After 4 days of sailing and lay day(due to a storm front) we have been stuck around 40th place, just a little better than mid fleet. Today we had two races in a nice North West breeze with cooler temps and short bay chop. We had a nice first beat in race one, rounding 15th at the top mark only to find we were BFD. Race two was a 5 leg windward leeward race course we sailed well and we rounded the last leeward mark in 30th but things got a little tricky on the last beat and we slipped a few places. Its been tough to get back into the boat after not sailing for 3 months. I'm not shifting gears as well and today was the first day that I felt like I was actually hiking well. We have one more race on Saturday, last shot to break out of the mid fleet rut.

Digging Out of a Hole

2011-03-08T16:11:00.001-08:00

The start is probably the most high risk time in any race. Today we had 2 starts a general recall and a start under the black flag. For us the first start was great and we would of been very happy to carry on sailing with a nice space to leeward. During Start number 2 we were fouled as the weather boat did not keep clear on the line and laid all over us as the gun went off. The race got worse from there as we were fouled by a port tacker trying to cross our bow and forcing us into a tack to avoid a collision. The Star Class is usually known for playing by the rules but in the basement of the fleet there seem to be some people that don't think it matters. We sailed the rest of the race with a protest flag flying. It was a long day of picking our way through the bottom feeders. Marek my crew for the week did a nice job of picking a few shifts on the 2nd beat and we worked our way back to the top half of the fleet. Finishing 40th on the day. It would of been hard for things to go much worse so I expect to do better over the next four days. We are currently in 35th much will change in the standings when the drop race comes into play later in the week.

39th after Day 1 at Bacardi Cup

2011-03-07T20:09:00.000-08:00

We finished how I expected slightly better than mid-fleet. I have not sailed the boat since December and I am sailing with a new crew for the first time. We didn't even have a chance to sail last week so this was the first time sailing at all together. Many teams are making the hard push for the 2012 Olympics, putting in many days on the water and improving there equipment. We can do much better and I think we can work our way into the top 30 over the next couple days. The trimming and driving need to improve first and then everything will get easier. I'm looking forward to the rest of the week and 5 more races on Biscayne Bay.

CMRC Debrief June 2009

2009-06-15T14:10:00.000-07:00

Overall a great job by everybody, sailing as a new team and our first time together in a true match race event I felt really good about the team work and the attitude of everyone onboard. This made the sailing really fun and everyone remained great friends while working towards the goal of improving and performing up to our potential.

I am going to go through the different aspects of the races piece by piece to identify areas where I feel improvements can be made:

Starting

Time and distance – I need to do a better job with time back to the line, we will be able to dictate the tempo of the race and control our position better if our timing is better. I would like to work on controlling our speed and sailing full speed toward the line and timing it very carefully so I start getting in my head if we are early or late or right on time.

Pushing – We need to do a better job pushing our competitor while remaining under control and in a strong position. Too often on Sunday we were too aggressive trying to get the hook and draw a penalty the outcome was we received penalties or we put ourselves in weak positions. We can push to get into a nice safe controlling spot to weather and then let our trimming, timing and driving work for us. Must remember the goal is to start even and in a position too execute our upwind strategy.

Dial up – When we enter on Starboard and dial up I think we can do a better job holding our position to weather of the port enrty boat. I think Don’s team did a very good job of this. In our training I would like to get into more downspeed maneuvers and dial ups. When we entered on port I thought we did a very good job escaping and getting back into a control of the start, good job by Nate and Dave in those situations.

Build angle and acceleration to gain distance in the prestart – Sometime I felt that we were not driving trimming or hiking as well as we could have been to get the separation. When we were chasing I thought we did a better job closing distance and staying right in the lead boats quarter wake.

Overall starting was strength but as we sail against better teams we have to do a better job being under control and conservative in our choices in the pre-start.

Upwind

We had good upwind speed all weekend. There was not a team out there that was able to hold a lane on our hip off the line. We also did a very good job executing our strategy sailing the other boat to the longer layline and then pressing on them the whole way to the weather mark.

Positioning of tacks – We can improve our tacks by making sure that we find a nice flat spot to make the turn. We can also do a better job of identifying which direction the wind is shifting if it is left we can extend longer on port before setting up the loose cover and vs versus. I saw bill do a nice job of this in the last race.

Technique - In breeze where keeping the boat flat is most important to acceleration out of the tack centering the traveler and having the vang set to control the leech in the flatten I think is that way to go. Tacking and dropping the traveler doesn’t depower the boat enough to flatten in anything above 14 knots. The jib needs to come in no luffing, no back wind in above 14 knots. The only way to improve our tacks is to do more in a variety of conditions and understand the different adjustments for the condition. In breeze if I already have the main sheet in my hand I can go straight to hike instead of leaning back into the boat to get the mainsheet out of the tack. I am sure this was factor in our tacking issues on Sunday. If we find a flat spot to tack the turn up to head to wind can be paced slower with the rudder. The boat will hold its pace through a very slow turn if we can find flat water.

Lay lines I felt between Nate and I we did a real good job on identifying where the laylines were and using them to our advantage.

Mark Roundings

I think our crew work got pretty tidy as the weekend progressed we made good adjustments with the changes in velocity. At the leeward mark the boat that can get cleaned up first and have the whole team hiking has a strong advantage. If we are leading in the downwind this means an early drop whenever possible and getting as much sorted before the turn to head upwind. I think our team handled the chute better then anyone else in the regatta. Including Don’s team who had a complete cock up at the leeward mark in race one with a big knot in the halyard.

Keeping the boat flat around the leeward mark in breeze was fast. We have to make sure that jib is luffing 30% to 50 % as the bow swings up into the breeze this goes for circles in the prestart as well. Speaking of circles I think we can back wind the jib harder during this maneuver to help push the bow down.

Downwind

95% of the time our downwind communication was good and we protected our position well. There were a few tough spots where the trailing boat was able to bring pressure from behind but over all we did a good job staying between our competitor and the finish.

One area we can improve on is understanding where the lay lines are downwind in relation to where we are on the course. This way we can protect our lead safely without engaging the trailing boat, which can be risky.

In tight spots we have to continue our communication loop so that decisions can be made using the best possible information.

Any errors that we made during this event can be traced back to making aggressive decisions without having complete information. Patients, patients, patients!!!

Conclusion

We accomplished our goals for this regatta. We earned good points for a 2nd place finish and dominated for 95% of the event. At the same time we have a lot of room to get better and continue to keep our rate of progress at a higher level then our competitors.

Miami OCR

2009-01-24T18:42:00.000-08:00

1/24/09

The past three days I have been in Miami getting ready for the Miami Olympic Class Regatta. I have sailed three events in Miami this winter. Each event is a good learning experience. Miami OCR with be my 7th star event and I hope to place in the top 10 there are 31 boats sailing. I earmarked this and Bacardi Cup as two events where I wanted to have my best performance. We had the practice race today and I made several silly mistakes. Our boat speed was good and we started the boat well. I am racing with Federico Engelhard for the first time so today was a good experience for our new team. Racing starts on monday and I feel we have a good oppurtunity to do well.

Getting Started

2008-11-12T16:08:00.000-08:00

Starting used to be my least favorite part of sailboat racing. Becoming a good starter requires practice and I spent the better part of last winter working on starting. Usually I was by myself using a mark or two marks and a two minute sequence. Staying inside the boat and pin laylines we would work are way slowly to the line and then accelerate to full speed and try to hit the line at zero. Sounds simple enough but if you do this drill enough you start picking up the skills needed to be a good starter. The first time I worked on this drill I was amazed at how bad at it I was, slowly I started to get a better feel for the time and distance. When I got this part down, we started mixing in defensive moves to protect our lane in the prestart, going bow down at an imaginary port tacker or executing a double tack to set up higher on the line.

In order to make use of this practice in a race you have to know where the line is, remain focused on your boat and the time and distance to the line, set up on starboard early with about 1 min to 1:30 left to the start. Then defend your position while remaining focused on your position in relation to the start line.

The video above shows good execution, that is a result of about 30 days of starting practice and plenty of trial and error. We are the star USA 8077 in the middle of the screen. When the video starts we are on starboard checking our angle to the line on starboard. This will give you an idea where the layline is and it serves as a final indication as to what phase the wind is in left shift or right shift. At the time we felt the right shift was on so shortly after the video starts we tack to port to head to the boat end of the line. I have a few things on my mind at this point. 1) don't sail past the boat layline 2) tack to leeward of large group of approaching starboard tackers and 3) get as close to the boat layline as possible while still accomplishing the first two objectives. We tack to starboard on the boat layline. I know we are in a good spot but there are a lot of boats in the area at the time. At this point I'm focused on controlling my speed and distance to the line. There are a lot of boats around but most are still reaching around at high speed and not on there final approach to the line so I am not too worried about them just my boat and the line.

At about 30 seconds to the start I get more leery of boats getting close to my lee bow or coming in from behind looking to establish a late overlap. So I keep an eye over my shoulder if someones coming a big bow down usually keeps them from getting the hook and the poacher will go further down the line. In this video you can see Eric Doyle make a late approach to the line and fill a gap one boat to leeward of us. There is one boat closer then I would of liked to our lee bow he hooked underneath us earlier in the sequence. I probably could of done a better job with him earlier in the sequence. He makes the mistake of getting to close to the line to early and leaves himself little room to build speed and momentum. We stay slow and use the last five seconds to build speed and roll the boat to leeward with our momentum. It takes practice to coordinate trimming the sails and turning the bow down enough to build speed quickly. Remember a boat on a close reach builds speed much faster then a boat closehauled or pinching. Also really hike hard to keep the boat flat and prevent any leeway.

Starting is mostly about having a routine that works for you and then repeating it every time. Setting up early on starboard helps you claim your spot on the line, measure the correct speed to the line, observe the last wind shift, then defend your position and finally accelerate to be at full speed or better for the start.

2008-11-12T15:48:00.000-08:00

2008-11-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

Pied Piper GL 70 finishes 2007 season in good form

2007-09-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

Pied Piper has won the last seven races of the 2007 Great Lakes 70 season, in the process winning the both 2007 Verve Cup and 2007 Bay Harbor GL 70 regatta. The Verve cup featured a combination of windward leeward courses 8 miles in length per race and a mid-distance race of roughly 28 miles with multiply legs of upwind reaching and running. Friday’s racing was picture perfect with a NW breeze in the 10 to 18 knot wind range. Part of our normal routine is to have at least one practice day prior to the three day regatta. Usually this day consistence of checking and adjusting our rig tune and making sure we work out all the kinks in our boat handling. We have become very efficient in working through this practice day and it helps get our team up to speed so we can start the regatta in good form. I think a good next step would be to involve another GL 70 as a tuning partner so we could do more testing and add a little more competition to the practice day. Another good habit we have developed is being the first boat out to the starting area. On Friday this was invaluable, we were able to sail upwind and downwind the length of the course and get a good idea of what wind shifts we could anticipate up the course.

Many of the small changes that we have made to the boat through the winter and this summer have begun to add up to great boat speed compared to our competitors. We led at every mark rounding during Fridays racing and our smallest wining delta was 38 seconds.

Our team is exceptional at coming up with new ideas to help improve performance, this is a credit to the various backgrounds of sailing experience and education on the team. The talk onboard and Friday evening didn’t have much to do with our performance that day but how we could improve and other small variables we could adjust to go faster.

Throughout the summer one of my pet projects has been revising our cross over chart. In many cases our work on the cross over chart allowed us to select a better head sail then our competitors in race 2 on Friday our entire class choose to sail with #3 jibs, we utilized our #2 genoa. We were able to match speed and sail constantly higher then the fleet. This chart was also very effective in the mid-distance race were there were many reaching legs. Throughout the summer we have continued to experiment with our code 1.5 asymmetric spin and found that the effective range for this sail is higher then we originally thought. Early in the summer we only utilized the sail into the 12 knot wind range. We have found that this sail is the best reaching sail in our inventory up to about 18 to 20 knots of true wind speed at a 125 to 115 true wind angle. In the wave chop on Saturday this sail was very effective as it was more stable then its symmetrical counter parts.

Next year I would like to work on developing a true light air VMG asymmetric spinnaker. The code A1.5 has found a very useful niche on our cross over chart as a powerful mid range reaching sail. This proved very effective in the mid-distance race where the last leg was reach into the finish I am certain that this sail allowed us to put more time on the rest of the fleet in this race.

The crew came together very well. Throughout the summer we have been able to sub in very talented sailors with our core group and continue to have great results. This is really a credit to the team atmosphere onboard. This weekend we added Gijs “Guinness” Gunneman and Tim Johnson to the mix and both contributed well. Tim and Ben Biddick worked on the navigation of the mid-distance race and Guinness was invaluable working with Dave Shriner on the rig tuning and calling out puffs and wind shifts on the downwind legs. Unfortunately the verve cup was the last event in the GL 70 2007 season championship it seemed that we were just getting the boat on track and the season was over. After some of the adversity we had during the Chicago Mac Race I am very pleased that the team has been able to pull together and win 7 consecutive races and the last two regattas of the GL 70 Season.

The GL 70 is already in the Pied Piper Racing Shed in Muskegon. This winter we have outlined several additional modifications to the boat to help our performance and hopefully keep us ahead of the class going into the 2008 summer season. Our goal will be to win the GL 70 Season Championship in 2008.
Thank you to the entire Team for a great 2007 – Ron Sherry, Mike Hoey, Dave Jochum, Ben Biddick, J.B. Shumaker, Brian Brophy, Bob Weisen, Andy McCormack, Mike Rehe, Dave Lamere, Stu Thompson, Dave Shriner, Kevin Savitt, Brian Smith, Adam Hollerbach, Perry Lewis, Tom Ervin, Eric Jochum, Eric Vigrass, Tim Johnson, Gijs Gunneman