Photos from the event
New England gave us the full variety of late summer weather this weekend during the 2009 Hinman Trophy. In a lot of ways it reminded us of the week we just spent in “old” England with more than enough wind, chilly temperatures, and rain all day on Sunday.
Conditions yesterday were at the high-end of just about any race we do seeing 3-4 foot waves in Buzzard’s Bay and easily 30 knot puffs at times. Lots of boats being pushed to their limits. We sailed our way back into the quarter finals on Saturday afternoon and turned up Sunday morning to race against the “One man Wolfpack” team of Caleb Silsby, Michael Menninger and Charlie Buckingham. We won two races against them and were set against the regatta’s top seed, Silver Panda in the semi-final round. We quickly won two races against Silver Panda. We lost the third race in a tough race and a couple of tough calls that went against us:
Off the starting line we were ahead of our opponent sailing on close-hauled course. Our opponent sailed into an overlap with his bow “one foot” according to the umpire after the race from our leeward transom. Seeing how close we were I was reluctant to cause contact by putting my tiller down and trying to keep clear that way. Instead I continued straight for a few seconds hailing protest, citing rule 15. As we were protesting, our boats hit, thanks to the 25+ knots of breeze and hefty chop. We were given a penalty for not trying to take any avoiding action, even though my conscious inaction was the only reason we didn’t immediately collide. We were happy to know that the interpretation was that 1 foot was enough distance, even in that much wind. Unfortunately in the same race and same conditions, Adam and Nick had an incident with another opponent where they took almost a boatlength of extra room while gybing around a leeward mark, and were given a green flag because the interpretation was the the conditions allowed for more leeway than normal. At another weather mark, Adam and Nick hit a mark while rafted up with a team that ultimately received a penalty. Another protest was filed by the other team later down the leg as they sailed away from the mark and Adam and Nick were penalized for hitting the mark during the incident, even though rule 18.5 states otherwise. This penalty was ultimately apologized for by the invovled parties, but nonetheless cost us significantly. Rolling with the punches is something that you learn to do in teamracing, and we were still leading the best of 5 series 2-1.
In the fourth race we were leading the race in a 1, 2 around the windward marks. Adam sailed around the leeward mark first, and we were sailing down the leeward leg ahead of our opponent. We hailed “no room” and sailed to where I thought the edge of the two boat length circle was to ensure we had enough space to finish our gybe and sail down the reach. As we gybed our opponent saw the only opening we gave them in race and sailed straight into our path. They made no attempt to round the mark legally behind us or illegally inside of us. We had a heavy collision and hailed protest, but the time that the raft-up was over, they had let one of their teammates sail past. We were still rafted up when the first red flag came from the umpires some 10 boat lengths away. I knew in my mind we were right, but our opponents were convinced they were right as a team on the ropes of elimination has to. If they were receiving the flag, then rafting up with us instead of sailing clear to take penalty turns was a violation of rule 21.2. We protested again and jostled clear.
Both boats screamed down the reach overlapped and heard another whistle and red-flag from the umpires, but couldn’t hear the numbers. Neither boat could sort out who the penalty was for, and all four sailors were generally confused by the calls. One in shock at what was happening and the other disrupting a race that was all but over. When we finally rounded the second leeward mark and headed up with the judge boat came very close to Nick and I hailed our number and pointed both the black and red flags. At that point, I was in complete disbelief and my mind was in a bit of chaos. Black flags in teamracing mean that there will be a hearing after the race, but I confused that with a black flag in match racing which means that you are disqualified.
Ironically another black flag had occurred during the incident we were in with a situation with our teammates Tyler and Briana. They had apparently been given a red-flag penalty in the 5, 6 pair for a rule 42 kinetics violation right as they failed to avoid a luff from their opponent. During that luff the opponent hit their boat hard enough and caught their boom to the point that Tyler turned over. Apparently not that hard to do in 25 knots. As you can see, the fourth race turned into a melee of epic proportions and resulted in us effectively sailing off the course and Tyler and Briana upside down with a red-flag penalty pending. We sailed past the finish boat to ask where the black flag hearing would be, and were given a finishing position, which would come back to haunt us.
We sailed into a small cove to try and hear these protests, a rarity in fully-umpired teamracing. Meanwhile the other two teams on the water as well as our team sat sailing around in building breeze and 3-4 foot seas. Ultimately, Tyler lost what consisted of his series. And because I misunderstood the black flag situation, even though we didn’t interfere with the race after receiving it, Silver Panda was awarded a win for the race, and our team was penalized -0.5 wins from our total.
We had gone from being 2-1 before the race started to 1.5-2 after the race finished. Unfortunately we lost the fifth race in relatively quiet fashion after the hour long wait, but I’m still miffed by the decision. The team race rule book says under 3.1b that a team’s score in a given race for “any other rule (besides 28.1) broken while racing for which a penalty has not been taken” should be given 6 penalty points. The book then says that “after a hearing the protest committee [which in this case was made up by two umpires from the situation in addition to a third non-party, but in race umpire] may penalize as follows: … When a boat has broken rule 1 or 2, rule 14 when she has caused damage or injury, or a rule when not racing, it may penalize the boat’s team by half or more race wins or it may impose no penalty.”
As I am re-reading my rule book today, and as I was apologizing last night to the judges, I don’t think there was ever any discussion of us disregarding safety or not pursuing fair sailing. The entire incident is really an unfortunate one, and I feel terrible for having my team deducted a point for a win they got legitimately earlier in the series. Now that I understand the black flag complexity between teamracing and match racing, I’ve certainly learned my lesson, but am distraught by the reality that teams can only be deducted points because of breaches of safety or unsportsmanlike acts. Tim Wadlow and I both looked at each other in a bit of disbelief after getting off the protest boat. I don’t think that either of us thought that what had happened was so egregious, and the handshakes and hugs between the teams after racing show that all this is better left on the water.
We met the former Harvard sailors’ team of Tall Boyz in the Petit Final, and by that time it was gusting close to 30 knots. In the first race Kyle Kovacs lost his crew overboard and turned over, leaving us to win the 3 on 2 battle. In the next race we lost in a blow out 3 on 3, and in the final race Adam and Nick found the bottom of Buzzards Bay with a minute to go before the start and couldn’t make it back in time, so Tall Boyz won that 3 on 2 battle. We had some really fun racing against them though. Very wind. Very wavy.
We took fourth in the event, presenting a San Diego Yacht Club burgee on behalf of our supportive home club and its membership to the commodore of the Beverly Yacht Club at the evening trophy ceremony. In case you wonder whether we had any fun. Chris Love and the SailGroove.org video was great all weekend. Hopefully his camera dries out from Sunday so we can see some of the legendary racing. Congrats to the Yale team of Team Extreme for their win!
Interview with Chris Love at SailGroove.org:
Sailing Videos on Sailgroove
Some fun footage from Sailgroove:
Here you’ll see a couple of close encounters between Pete Levesque and us during our first round-robin race against Panda. We were ducking a teammate and trying duck Pete when he tacked very close in front of us, a penalty that ultimately gets a green flag. The trouble is that before we could resolve anything in the first incident, we had already gotten ourselves into a bad spot with Tim Wadlow forcing us both to tack. We did a quick circle to exonerate ourselves from an obvious foul on our part, and ended up with an L for that race. You can see from the footage how complicated the flag-system can be, and the reason for the heated debate about how to solve the problems inherent in the system. Did we pull the flag too soon? Maybe. Did they have time to exonerate themselves? Maybe. Did the flags get in the way of the next incident? Maybe. Was there a foul? Yes. Were there two fouls? Maybe. These are the subtleties of the game we play.
Sailing Videos on Sailgroove
