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Cracked Rudder Mounts, Capsizes and Burning Rain. Welcome to Weymouth

August 10th, 2010 in Regattas.

We’ve been here nearly a week and Weymouth hasn’t fully come up to its reputation until today. There’s been sunshine and moderate air with little current. Yesterday, as the regatta opened, the breeze freshened to the teens and we saw significantly more clouds and current. During practice for instance we had 2-3 boatlengths per minute of current. Today we had closer to 10-12 boatlengths per minute (almost a knot), creating havoc in terms of seastate and laylines. Anybody watching the racing live via GPS can certainly get a feel for the funny angles we’re sailing over ground. The racing looks quite different in person.

We’ve had some struggles of our own on board. During practice we broke the head mounting on the rudder post, a custom piece for Folli boats that we had to have shipped in from Italy. Unfortunately when we broke it on Thursday afternoon, the piece couldn’t arrive until the first day of racing. Friday was spent searching over hill and over dale to find a machine shop that could manufacture such an odd piece from scratch. Somehow we managed to get an identical piece created out of aluminum (or al-yoo-min-ee-um as the bloke put it) and tried it out for the first day of racing. Trouble is: the pin that attaches the mounting is conical so that it tightens as you pound it in, whereas the pin we got from the manufacturer was standard bolt allowing significant play the in system. It caused just enough play to be really difficult to race with for the first day, but luckily that’s behind us as the new piece arrived Monday afternoon.

Next on the list: we broke a batten in race 1, which happens from time to time, but in the process of taking the main down and putting a new batten in the halyard jammed so the main wouldn’t go all the way back up. With time ticking away before race 2 and sailing downwind away from the starting area I made the executive decision to try and latch it manually in the halyard lock at the top of the rig. Anyone who’s seen a star mast knows that its virtually impossible to climb. The wires are slick and the mast is skinnier than a Laser mast, but when you get up to the spreaders you can literally lay the boat on its side and get the rest of the way to the top. I somehow made it to the spreaders (a feat which will make my Melges 32 bow guys proud) and the boat promptly capsized allowing me to get the rest of the way out, pull the remaining five feet of sail up and manually latch the halyard lock. Luckily Coach Ivey was there to tow us back upwind to the starting area and help us drain the water out of the boat. We were well and good to sail the race luckily, but the trouble about manually locking the halyard is that you have to manually unlock it at some point too! So after racing, in 15+ knots and lumpy seas, I crawled up the rig again, flipped her over and swam to the top to unhook before a long, cold, upwind, 5-mile tow back to Weymouth Harbour.

Today we didn’t have nearly the excitement, although Brad did stab a hole through the clew of the main with the whisker pole, and we had gusts well into the upper 25+ range before the finish. A massive righty skewed the beat for the remaining three laps of the race as we fetched each new mark thanks to a knot of left to right current moving on the racecourse. At the finish, even though the Race Committee was surely planning on another race, the Star fleet turned left and headed for the harbor, voting with their feet against knock-down puffs and piercing rain that both moisturized and exfoliated on the way upwind to the dock! The simple reality is: there’s a lot going on here in Weymouth. Slowly but surely we’re getting it sorted out. Hopefully we can get our act together for three races tomorrow.

Standing by in Weymouth.

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