Worlds Day 2

The 2nd day of the 2005 worlds regatta began with a postponement because of lack of wind. We had noticed during the car ride over to the regatta that the wind farms which we pass on the road were not making any power this morning. Normally the turbines are turning, even on the days when breeze has been light, but today, not a single wind turbine was moving. The postponement was okay with us though because we had work to do on the boat. Andreas had moved the spiro fitting down when he rerigged the mast for the big kite, but this was unnecessary and the lower fitting was affecting the angle of our pole and the geometry of the foreguy and topping lift so we decided today was the day to fix that. We were really glad that we did this because it really improved our ability to project and trim the spinnaker. In addition, Doug Hagan had pointed out to me that we should make sure that our mast base was all the way back in the step, or at the minimum distance (10 feet) from the transom. When we checked this, we found that the mast was 10 feet 2 inches forward of the transom so the next project was moving the mast back in the step and recalibrating. We couldn’t go all the way back because our partners are too close to the back of the mast. This might be a modification that the owner should undertake. Once we changed the mast base position, we recalibrated for rake and bend and made sure everything was copasetic. We did notice a big change in the position of the jib lead angle (more vertical) as a result of the movement of the mast base, and we also noticed a big increase in the amount of weather helm that we experience. The boat felt a lot better.

Another observation that Ethan made while he was helping us with the boat is that our centerboard is not a gybing board. Forget high aspect ratio. Our board won´t even gybe. So we went looking around to see if there was another board around that we could borrow. Doug Hagan said he has an extra HA 480 waterat blade that we could borrow, but it would require drilling a new hole in the boat, so we are not sure that we can get away with this. Andreas may ask the owner.




















The postponement flag and hoisted spinnakers drooping as we wait for the wind.

By the time we had finished all that and writing the tuning guide on the boat so I can see it while sailing, the breeze had filled in and people were starting to launch. Once again we wanted to get out early and make sure everything was working, and this is exactly what we did. Out on the course, we checked the boat, looked to see what the wind was doing, and got everything set up. The race committee set a course for 000 again, and the breeze was pretty up and down. The first start was abandoned because somebody hit the rabbit (again!) and when they got going on the second start, the wind just died off. So the start of the race happened in pretty much no breeze. We gated early and were in the neighborhood of Ethan, Mike Martin, and several others, but we were in the second row. We actually got pretty screwed at the start, were unable to lay the pin, and had to tack out and then back, and the already light air was really chewed up. We were not the only ones who couldn't lay the pin though. Lots of people got screwed at the early end of that gate start. As soon as we could we escaped to the left. The only consolation was that there were a lot of really good sailors who got nearly equally screwed on that start. It was not pretty.

The first beat went from bad to worse. Most of the fleet had a huge advantage on us because the breeze filled in from the right and we were going left. I think we went around the windward mark in about 170th position. Then to make matters worse, as we were trying to catch the rest of the fleet, this French guy behind us decided he wanted to start a fight for breeze and we had to head up to keep him off our air. I was kind of annoyed that we were so deep and still this guy thought it would be a good idea to sit on our air. But we did gain some boats on the first run. The second beat was a farse. The wind completely shut off and we were nearly dead in the water. Fortunately for us everybody was dead and we actually mustered a lot of speed relative to the boats around us. Towards the top mark, the beat turned into a reach and we actually flew the kite into the ´windward´ mark. Once we were around the top, the northerly breeze started to fill back in and we were able to sail down to the reach mark. We had a good gybe and passed a few boats, then headed for the bottom, basically maintaining the status. The 3rd beat was better in the freshening seabreeze. Andreas was on the wire pretty much the whole way up and we had good speed. I think we passed another 5 or 10 boats on that beat. The 2nd run was great. The breeze had built to wire running conditions and we were both fast and deep. We hourglassed the kite during the gybe though, so that slowed us down a bit. In any event, we had a good final beat and the best sailing of the day was the sail in to the club in decent breeze.

In the end, the race was an even bigger shake-up than race 1. Some really great sailors finished with much higher numbers than I had expected. It was a really tough race. Team Ötzi basically maintained position by finishing with a 2nd 141. We still are not where we would like to be.