Close Encounters

Racing Party Girl - Day 2

On tap for tonight... a crew of six aboard Party Girl.  With a full boat, we headed out to the race course.  Party Girl was starting in the third group and the skipper wanted to get us out early so I could get some last minute instruction on setting the spinnaker sail. If you've ever seen sailboats with those larger than life, colorful sails, then you have seen what a spinnaker looks like.  Now, you have to treat the spinnaker with respect. In heavy winds the spinnaker can get out of hand and pull the whole boat over into a broach... not a pretty site. YouTube has several examples of this. You can see the broach at about the 57 sec mark.

   

Before last Thursday, I had never seen a real live sailing race, moreless know about the different race courses that exist in the universe. We have been racing on a course called The Olympic Circle. It consists of a middle buoy called a center pin, and circled around it are eight buoys called cans. They are numbered one through eight, placed at equal distances from each other along the cardinal points on the compass and each is a half mile from the middle buoy.

The way it works goes something like this- we sail out to the race course to join all the boats that are going to race for the night. When we arrive on the course, this is what we find: a center pin, the eight cans, a finish line buoy, and two power boats that are home to the race officials. Sailing within the course on standby, all the boats anxiously await for the officials to choose a specific race pattern for the night. Each night it's different and each night it only becomes known to the racers just before the race.  

So, like, ten minutes before the race begins we see the sign pop up out of the official's boat. We can't quite read it, it's too far away and it's blocked by the sails of other boats.  We tack and move closer and see it's D4. The list of maybe 50 race course combinations is consulted. We see that we have to go around Can 7, then around Can 2, around Can 4, back to Can 7 and around it, and around Can 2, then back to the center for the finish.  So, I'm advised that means we will put up the spinnaker sail two times during the race.

The race is about to begin- there is a series of flags and horns issued by the officials that let the first race group know it's time to start.  Once the first group starts, five minutes later the second group starts, then it's our turn.  The goal is to get as close to the starting line, with as much speed as possible, without crossing it early- not an easy task.  We get closer and closer to the line, along with the 4 other boats in our starting group, all trying not to cross early.  In our boat, we're wondering if we should slow down or make a 360 turn to stall for time, but our helmsman (the guy steering) does a beautiful job at timing it just right, and we are off to a great start.  

We go around Can 7 and it's time to put up the spinnaker sail.  We raise it, and a quarter of the way up the halyard (rope) comes loose from the top of the spinnaker sail.  Now you might think- well, just reattach it.  Not so easy. The snap shackle at the end of the halyard retracted some thirty feet up to the very tippy top of the mast.  The spinnaker halyard was out of commission. We spent the rest of the race tediously switching the halyard off of the head sail (sail at the bow of the boat) and putting it on the spinnaker sail and then back on the head sail.  

While racing, the close proximity of the boats is exhilarating and something that will take getting used to. I felt like I could have reached out and handed my camera to the guy in the above picture. At one point in the race, we perpendicularly intersected the first starting group. In a nerve racking move, another boat in our starting group and our boat weaved between three or four of the boats from the first group.  There are four boats in the picture below, can you pick them all out?

So, what happened to the spinnaker halyard that was lost at the top of the mast?  Well, back at the dock we asked around to the other boats if there was a bosun's chair to borrow.  The guy next to us dug one out of the bowels of his boat, and I don't mean that figuratively.  As wet as it was, I think they had actually stored it in the very bottom of the boat.  Not just in the very bottom of the boat, but in the bilge area where all the stray water collects.

Climbing the mast is like drawing the short straw. Most people don't want to, and are downright fearful of, climbing up a thirty foot aluminum pole attached to a boat that can, even while docked, move randomly and unpredictably.  There was much debate as to who would go up the mast, taking in account: personal weight, height, girth and number of beers consumed.  

Reading about this sort of things in books, I had always been distrustful that such a skinny tall pole (mast) on a sailboat could safely hold a person. Even though I know the force the wind puts on the mast is in the thousands of pounds, there still exists an unreasonable fear somewhere in the back of my mind. So when presented with the opportunity, I thought I would nip that fear in the bud.  While they were debating about who should climb the mast, I piped up and said, "I'll do it".

Even though I was strapped into the Bosun's chair and attached to two other halyards, the whole setup lacks the ability to hoist me up the mast- only catch me if I fall.  I had to climb the mast under my own strength, while the boats small movements were amplified up the mast. With the reassurance that the chair and the crew below were there watching out for me in case anything went awry, 

Up I went!

~J~