LGYC Challenge Race

Saturday was the big race—the Los Gatos Yacht Club Challenge. I was the skipper representing Los Gatos Yacht Club (the host and challenging club), Jeff Smith represented NASA Ames Sailing Club (who won last year), and John Draeger represented Sequoia Yacht Club.

We had our first practice on Sunday and a second practice with our final crew on Wednesday. I was traumatized on Sunday, and Phill was traumatized on Wednesday, but we made it to the big day. (Click those links for details!)

After the beer can race on Wednesday, I had done some analysis of which boats had won, placed, and showed in the seven races I'd tracked this season. It turned out that M5 seemed like the fastest boat, M2 the next fastest, and M7 the slowest of the three but faster than the others in the fleet. So I had called Spinnaker and asked for those three boats for the race on Saturday... and told Rich I wanted to start out in M5.

I showed up around 9am with rigging tape and pliers, and checked out the boat. A short time later, the guys all showed up, and Phill started tuning the rig. I found out from Mike that they'd had a diver clean the bottoms of all of the boats on Thursday, so we were golden on that angle and didn't have to clean them ourselves. Kerry, Florin, and I went off to the skippers meeting at 10am and left Phill and Norbert to tune the rig.

The first thing I did at the skippers meeting was to check with John and Jeff, the other skippers in the race, to see if it was ok for Phill to tune the rigs on all three boats to be the same. They agreed that that would make the boats more equal and said to go for it. I called Phill and told him to go ahead and tune all three boats while I was at the meeting.

In the meeting, we found out the start/finish line, the course, the flag signals, horn signals, how to protest, what happens in the case of a delay, and what we were to do between the races. The committee boat would anchor just south of channel marker 3, and that would be the start/finish line. The course was out to day marker 12, rounding it to port, then to race marker Y, rounding it to port, and then back around the committee boat, leaving it to starboard and over the finish line. We headed back to the docks after the meeting, got all the paperwork squared away, taped up the turnbuckles after the adjustments were done, and got on our way.

On the way out the channel, we continued to strategize about the start, the finish, covering, best positioning, and so on. When we got out there, we had about 20 minutes to practice some tacks and gybes before the start. Then we positioned our boat near the committee boat and got ready for the start. Arrrggg... we were over early! So was John in M2. Jeff took off like a shot! We tacked back over the starting line and then back over again for a second start. Arrrgggg... we didn't realize that we had to round the committee boat to restart, so around we went and started that race for the third time!

Amazingly, we passed John in M2 on the way to marker 12 and nearly caught up to Jeff in M7 near Y. We had two GPSs on board, and we knew we should be able to see Y about 1/4 mile away, but we couldn't see it. When we were almost on top of it, we saw Jeff round where it should have been, so we did the same... and caught up to M7 very soon after. Sailing side-by-side back to the finish line, we talked and concluded that the mark had either sunk or drifted away. We crossed the finish line at the same time. John finished about a minute later. Although we were willing to concede the race to Jeff, because we believed he would have won if the marker had been there, the race committee decided to throw out that race, so we were starting over.

The race committee decided to change the course (smart move!) and start the next race about 15 minutes after John finished. The new course would be out to 12 (rounding to port) and back with the same finish as in the previous race. They decided we should continue to race in the same boats.

We did some maneuvering to determine the point of sail and best sail trim for the first leg of the race and some estimates for the second and final leg. The time clicked by quickly, and the race began. Again, we started early! This time, we knew we had to go around the committee boat and start again, which we did. We were in great form, got great speed, and caught up to Jeff around marker 12, leaving John in our dust. We rounded about the same time, and then we took off and took the lead. Stan calls this picture the decisive moment when we passed M7.

I've never seen anyone do what Phill did next. We had a flood tide, so we were surfing the waves on the downwind leg. Each time we surfed down a wave, Phill tugged hard at the main sheet (2-to-1 instead of 4-to-1), which resulted in a huge push from the waves. I swear there were a few times when we got pushed 20+ feet, and the boat speed exceeded 8 kts! That's on a boat with a hull speed of about 6.5 kts!!!

We won that race with Jeff sliding in behind us by 20 seconds. John followed 4 minutes later.

After that race, the race committee decided that we should switch boats. It was too choppy out in the bay, so we went back in the channel and waited for the committee boat (which was actually Jeff's own boat, Ionsa) to anchor around marker 10. Then the other two boats came up behind it, each grabbed a line from the committee boat, rafted up together, and switched crews. One boat left, we took its place, and then switched crews with it. Now each crew was in a different boat. We were in M7, Jeff was in M2, and John was in M5. Then that boat left, and we rafted up to the committee boat, so I could use its head. So I stepped over to Ionsa, used the head, stepped back onto M7, and off we went.

Back out near marker 3, the committee boat anchored again and announced the start time for the next race (officially race 2 but actually the third race of the day). We unfurled the jib, and I took the helm so Phill could check out the rigging. Back in our positions, we went downwind of the mark and prepared for the start.

The start of the second race was perfect. We were in first place right from the start and seriously smoked our competition all the way through the race. We rounded the mark at least a minute before Jeff and about 5 minutes before John. Ahh... another quiet downwind leg with the knowledge that we'd win this one, too. We calculated the points on that last leg and determined that we would win the entire competition with those two wins, even if we lost the last race badly. We crossed the finish line, furled the jib, and waited for the other two boats to come in.

Eventually, they both crossed, and then the committee boat called us on the radio and told us that we'd won and that we didn't need to do the third race. Then Jeff called us and asked if we'd like to do a fun race to 12 and back with a beer can finish (channel marker 20 and the dolphin, an ugly brown piling on the leeward side of the channel). Of course, we all said yes, and off we went.

That was actually the longest race of all, but we won it, too... by about 1/4 mile! And John was about 1/2 mile away when Jeff finished. Here are the results of the two official races:

Race #1
Place	Boat	Club	Time
1	M5	LGYC	23:24
2	M7	ASC	23:44
3	M2	SYC	27:49
Race #2
Place	Boat	Club	Time
1	M7	LGYC	24:39
2	M2	ASC	25:51
3	M5	SYC	29:21

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to win this race. I'm honored to have been captain of a boat with such a talented group of sailors and am particularly grateful to Phill for sharing his extensive racing knowledge with all of us. I'm also honored (and floored!) to have beat such worthy opponents as Jeff Smith and John Draeger. Both of them have much more experience than I do and many more wins under their belts. I owe it ALL to my crew, and I don't think I could ever thank them enough for this thrilling experience!

The party after the race took place on C dock next to John Draeger's boat, Yellow Brick Road. Many thanks to him for hosting and bringing the food, to Jeff for providing the committee boat, and most of all to my favorite skipper, Stan Phillips, for making it all possible. Stan has mentored me and helped me improve my racing skills over the last year with the utmost patience and instructive guidance. He kept inviting me to crew for him on Smokin' J, even after I screwed up the spinnaker set twice in one race! Thank you very much, Stan! It's only because of you that I had the courage to volunteer for this race.

Now I've got my first trophy and am very proud of it. It will hang on the wall in my office for the next year, when we get to do it all over again.

Thanks very much to my friend, Alice, who came out to cheer us on. She took all of the pictures here of the apres race party. Thanks, Alice! I'll update this post and add more pictures when I get the official images from people who were on the committee boat and, hopefully, have some good action shots of the race.