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20060806 - Even before getting
onto the boat, the race started way to early for the crew of Shellshock.
After receiving a call from the skipper of the Doctor Chicago, telling them
that the start time is an hour earlier than they had planned, the regatta
mobile was speeding its way through the interstate and arrived at the start
line with 10 minutes to spare.
Shellshock won the start and immediately put
up their small spinnaker. The wind direction was a beam reach, perfect for
the small reaching spinnaker. While everybody else had their jib out and
running closer to the wind, the crew of Shellshock was running the rhumb
line. They thought they were doing really well, until the trimarans flew
by them. One crew member commented that it was like they had on afterburners,
they were going so fast.
After an hour of sailing in high 8's and catching the
JAM fleet, the winds clocked and died down to where they had to use their
jib. Unfortunately they had on their 100% working jib, because they were
expecting stronger wind conditions, as was forecasted by the weather bureaus.
This was not good, as the all the other boats had much larger head sails.
Needless to say, the fleet just walked right over them. Of course the only
thing to do is take down the 100% jib and put up the 150% genoa.
In addition
to performing the task, on the slow side, the boat steered into a few (read:
about six) wind holes. The rest of the fleet, sailing much higher than Shellshock,
where there was just a little more wind, pulled away slowly. Over two hours
of this painful situation, with boat speed reading 0.00 (again) gave the
crew ideas of turning on the motor.
Winds started to pick up again and clock
back. A decision by the skipper, now Jeremy, to put up the small spinnaker,
got the boat to break 3 knots. With wind speed picking up even more and after
easing out the tightly trimmed spinnaker, the boat speed broke 5. As soon
as it broke 6, the crew moved to the high side to balance the boat.
Now Shellshock
was in a grove and not only was getting to speeds around 7 and 8, she was
seeing boats in the distance getting closer. Gaucho III, a Peterson 34 was
using her jib, when Shellshock overtook them on the high side. The whole
crew of Gaucho III just looked over wondering how we were able to fly by
them and hold our course with a spinnaker. She tried to do the same by putting
their spinnaker - note that the J/92 uses an asymmetrical spinnaker, better
for reaching winds. She did so, but could hold it as long Shellshock.
About
6 miles from the finish, the winds got up to around 17-20. The boat speed
easily reached nine and hit ten a couple of times. Things were getting exciting
for the crew as the boat broached on a couple of occasions and they had to
totally blow the spinnaker about a half a dozen times. Speed, sails and course
were getting difficult to control, and the boat needed a small jib to sail
her course to the finish line. This meant another head sail change for the
crew. So up went Anthony to unfurl and take down the 150%, put up and furl
the 100%, douse the spinnaker and pull out the 100%. You will note the boat's
course during this procedure on the GPS plotting below. Once the head sail
was up and the boat controllable, Jeremy steered Shellshock across the finish
line to a third place in their section.
Although not the best tactical decisions
were made on this race, the crew and skippers did well during the exciting
moments. No tacks or gybes, but three head sail changes and two spinnaker
sets were made by the crew of Steffi, Vlad, Jeremy and Anthony.
The whole return leg.
Starting portion.
Finishing portion.
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