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Hinman Trophy 2011, Houston YC
October 3rd, 2011 in Regattas.
The annual US Team Racing Championship for the Hinman Trophy is always a fun event to try and put on my schedule. The regatta is a great way to stay in touch with former college sailors and the teamrace-minded crowd is a different breed. The game seems very complicated to some outsiders, but for those who know, and for most who have ever tried, it is hard to say “no” to a weekend of racing against top talent. Three on three racing makes match racing look exceedingly simple. Teamracing is a game of trust amongst your teammates, calculated playbook application, sometimes unbelievable feats of boathandling, and all the while, good sailing. The best teams are those who have the right combinations of speed, team race experience, and cohesion amongst their teammates. The beauty of teamracing is that pattern recognition and brains can often trump boathandling. That said, the fastest teams with the fewest mistakes will almost always win.
My friend and fellow Georgetown alum, Brian Bissell, asked me whether Jackie and I would want to race with him, Becky Nygren, high school phenom and SDYC sailor Nevin Snow, and College of Charleston Alum and recent Women’s College Sailor of the Year Allie Blecher. It was fitting that our team was named the “SoCal Luchadores” because we were akin to a band of Mexican wrestlers with our record-setting list of characteristics. We boasted the second-oldest sailor at the regatta (Brian), the youngest sailor at the regatta (Nevin) at 17, and the biggest sailor at the regatta (Me), weighing in at a whopping 192! We had the masks to prove our “Luchadores” status as well.
Houston Yacht Club is a great place to go sailing. The members and the facility make sailors feel welcome and Galveston bay rarely fails to provide good conditions. We had hot temperatures in the 80s and 90s, but clear skies and 10+ knots of steady breeze for the majority of the event made for good racing during most of the event. Fifteen teams sailed more than 150 races over the course of the weekend. Although the number seems high, it really averaged out to be a lot of shoreside time for the majority of teams.
Unfortunately, the organizers seemed a bit handcuffed by the boats and the format of the event. Fifteen teams is not significantly more than a normal Hinman, but the fleet of eighteen Vanguard-15s provided by Laser Performance was six fewer than years past. The boats they did provide, although brand new, leaked badly. Teams hauled the boats up on the docks and drained, often for a few minutes each time they rotated, about every half hour. One boat had to be replaced part way through the event by rotating in one of the hulls from the local fleet. Beyond the sinking fleet, the fact of the matter is that six boats are needed for each race, thus a fleet of eighteen can run three races simultaneously. This enabled a pace of about 8 races per hour. At any given time this weekend there were six teams on the water. That meant more than half the regatta, nine teams, were waiting on shore (Keep in mind that college regattas usually host eight teams per weekend, in eighteen boats, so six teams are on the water, with two teams waiting to be rotated in). Luckily for us, we started racing at 10am on Friday in the first set of boats, but there were teams that waited until close to 3pm on the first afternoon before they started their first race. We joked with other teams about their 27-hour break in racing. While I love racing the Hinman and HYC did a fabulous job of hosting the fleet of sailors, I cannot imagine that all the teams flying in from England and across America came away with a great impression of the regatta. Going into your first race after seven hours of waiting, only to get into boats containing as many gallons of water, takes away from what would have been ideal US Sailing Championship conditions. (more…)
2011 E-Scow Blue Chip - A Mysterious Experience
September 26th, 2011 in General.
At the end of every E-Scow season since 1966 the Pewaukee Yacht Club has hosted the Blue Chip. To better understand the event, one has to know the E-Scow class. The National Class E-Scow Association (NCESA) has almost 90 years of history with fleets spanning the Midwest, the Finger Lakes of New York, the Jersey Shore, down to South Carolina, and west to Grand Lake, Colorado. To judge the quality of E-Scow sailors is to index the very best that American sailing has to offer: National, International, World and Olympic Champions and legends are scattered across the historic records.
The E Blue Chip is an invitational event for the top finishers from all the major events on the E-Scow calendar each year. Pewaukee’s strong scow tradition and ideal location (smack in the middle of Wisconsin and ILYA) makes it a perfect stage for an ultimate showdown between the top sailors in the class from across the country each season. Taking it one step further, the Blue Chip committee goes outside of the class to find a sailor of note to join in the fun and test their mettle against the seasoned class veterans. The guest list is a laundry list of great sailing talent including Dennis Conner, Lowell North, Hans Fogh, Jonathan McKee, Steve Benjamin, Gary Knapp, Tom Ehman, Gary Jobson, Paul Cayard, Mark Reynolds, Ken Read, Russell Coutts, Courtney Becker-Dey, Dave Perry, Betsy Allison, Carl Buchan, Vince Brun, Morgan Reeser, John Lovell, Peter Holmberg, Dave Ullman, Liz Baylis and last year, Bora Gulari. Ironically, those are the Non-E-Scow sailors, competing against legends in their own right who had earned invitations to the event such as Buddy Melges, Bill Allen, Gordy Bowers, Brian Porter, Harry Melges, Tom Burton, and Dick Wight among others. The “Mystery Guest” gets the advantage of a good boat, new sails, and a great local crew, but has little time to prepare in what are some odd boats to sail. The E is very fast, sensitive on the helm, but ultimately difficult to get a handle on because of the need to sail with constant heel.
The 2011 E Blue Chip was an experience unlike any other for me. Some of the legendary sailors on the list above that I spoke to about it demanded that I make every effort to attend. I especially wanted to be there to follow in the footsteps of not only my parents, Bill and Sherri, who attended the event in the 80s and 90s (finishing 2nd in 1990), but also of my grandparents on both Dad’s and Mom’s sides, since they have significant histories in the class. The Toms River Campbells are strong advocates for the class in New Jersey after having retired from actively sailing. Likewise are the Wilders on Keuka Lake in New York. Needless to say the entire family was happy to hear that part of the new generation of Campbells would get the opportunity to sail in an E boat at the Blue Chip. Bringing my wife Jacqueline to the event was a big priority for me ahead of time. What I didn’t realize was what a statement it would become for her to race the entire regatta with us, more on that later.
We arrived midday Thursday to sunny skies and nice breeze, in time for a little practice with a few of the local teams from Pewaukee and the surrounding lakes. What we didn’t know was that Thursday’s westerly would be the steadiest and most pleasant breeze of the entire weekend! It was really great to be able to get out and sail with our local hot-shot crew of Jim Campbell (no relation, besides a common interest in the Blue Chip!) and our boat’s owner Matt Schmidt, who had just come off a victory at the C-Scow Blue Chip a week prior. (more…)
2011 Star European Championship Report
September 12th, 2011 in Regattas.
Ian and I tune upwind back to RSGYC after racing
Photo: Leandro Spina
We arrived home from two weeks in Ireland yesterday to a warm and sunny United States. Two hurricanes have wreaked havoc on the east coast while we were gone. Yet, to some extent we felt some of both as we couldn’t race one day of the regatta because of the remnants of Irene and were jostled for a few hours on the plane yesterday thanks to Katia. The regatta was an all around success for the club and the class. Ian and I managed to make a small comeback on the final day of racing to take 9th in the event.
Though the regatta had a bumpy start thanks to three out of four days with gale force winds, the Royal St. George Yacht Club put on a wonderful event and completed their series on time against the elements and the odds. Spending time ashore during postponements actually allowed us to enjoy and explore the great facilities of the club. Its testimony to a good sailing club that one can welcome 60 or more large sailors from all over the world just to hang around and clog up the internet while nervously leering out the rain soaked windows at the gale outside. More than once club members expecting a leisurely Tuesday afternoon lunch and Guinness were quite surprised by the crowd of conspicuously oversized men speaking Ukrainian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Scandanavian or American-english making good use of the house bar and dining rooms. In exploring the place we did get a chance to see an amazing history of the club dating back to an era when America was just a young country much less one with established yacht clubs. The neighborhood in Dun Laoghaire was a bustling suburb of Dublin lined with tall Georgian row-houses and the odd Irish palm frond. The place is well worth a visit if you ever get the chance. The club is renowned for their teamracing, Dragon and SB3 fleets. There are but a handful of Star sailors from the area, and their efforts to attract the fleet were hard fought. The membership could not have been more hospitable and accommodating to the sailors at the regatta. We used the facilities as if they were our own and are indebted to the locals’ efforts to host such an event. Although, the usual local response to bad weather tag-line “Geez, it’s never a gale for four days in a row!” was under serious suspicion from the sailors.
Because of the lack of a local fleet, the regatta was somewhat of a smaller fleet of 28 boats, especially when compared to last year’s class record of 132. But the smaller fleet did allow for close racing and an outstanding opportunity for Ian and I to tune our P-Star one more time before shipping it Australia. George Szabo and Mark Strube were the only other boat from the US at the event so we were able to get some good testing and training in with those guys under lens of coach Leandro Spina.
Ian and I just couldn’t buy a break at the outset of the regatta. We had great speed, probably some of the best of the season in 15-25 knots of breeze, but keep getting hung out on the wrong side of the course in shifty offshore conditions. We kept rounding out the back end of the top group in the middle of the pack. Fortunately the breaks started coming our way in the second half of the event. We had three top fives in the last four races and were about the fourth best team over the last two days. That was a big improvement on the scoreboard after being about 15th what seemed like all week. Sometimes the breaks come late in the series, and we came away from the event with a strong feeling that we got some great experiments over with and finished the event well, with a decent result to show for it.
These next couple months will be very important for the success of our campaign as we ramp up towards the World Championships in Perth in December. This event has been a good stepping stone with our equipment to prepare us for how to train between now and then. But we are glad to be back from a cold season in Europe. We traveled back and forth for 4 regattas including a 6th at Palma, 6th in Hyeres, 15th in Weymouth and now 9th in Ireland. It sure will be nice to race in some warm water for the fall here in the States!
As you may have noticed, I experimented with a more live-update style via twitter during the regatta to augment my regular website updates with short notes and photos from the regatta scene. I know that regatta and club live updates are becoming a better and better way to watch and get the inside scoop about regattas as they happen. I’ll try and continue to do that in the future as well. Check out @CampbellSailing if you’re so inclined.
More to come from www.CampbellSailing.com.
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Racing on Day 2 of Star Europeans Report
September 5th, 2011 in General.
Photo: Coach Leandro Spina
Racing got under way today in Dun Loaghaire for the 2011 Europeans. After uncooperative weather yesterday today’s conditions were very breezy for the opening race and moderating midday. Westerlies prevailed coming across the course directly from downtown Dublin, making for very puffy and shifty conditions. We had the 10-20 knots around the first lap of the first race and the breeze got slowly lighter and had a larger range from as little as 8 knots to puffs well into the upper teens throughout the rest of the afternoon. All said and done, the conditions were very difficult to anticipate and Ian and I struggled to piece together good races because of it.
However, our objectives demanding us to come all the way to Europe again was mostly equipment-based. We need to pin down exactly what our numbers should be for tuning the boat we will use at the Worlds in December in the upper breeze range in anticipation of Perth’s likely conditions. We are getting very valuable time in the boat because of it and the best take-away of the day was a general satisfaction that our upwind speed is better than it was for most of this past season in the upper range of the breeze. I just wasn’t pointing that speed in the correct direction. We didn’t have any magic downwind, but with the super flat water it was difficult to make gains without a breeze advantage. With a little luck and continuing to remain patient in hair-tearing shifty conditions, the results will improve.
Unfortunately our forecast for the next three days is on the windy side of things. Hopefully it will moderate enough for us to get the rest of our racing in the next couple of days.
In Ireland standing by for Training ahead of Europeans
August 29th, 2011 in Travel, Training.
I’ve made it to Dun Loaghaire (pronounced dun leery) and the Royal St. Georges Yacht Club and will spend the next five days tuning and training in preparation for the Europeans. Please keep up to date here at www.CampbellSailing.com and I’ve been uploading photos from the trip so far on my twitter feed: @campbellsailing
Princes and Senators, Ireland Upcoming
August 24th, 2011 in Training, Regattas.
Photo by Karen Ryan
After racing along side the Prince of Spain last week, we raced against Senator Kerry from Massachusetts this past weekend at the Nantucket Race Week Celebrity Pro-Am. The regatta was a charity event supporting Nantucket Community Sailing which promotes the sport to local kids who wouldn’t otherwise have sailing on the island. The foundation apparently provides over a thousand scholarships for kids to take lessons each year. The event was quite a scene with 14 top US professionals donating their time to be auctioned off as guest tacticians for 14 local and invited amateur groups racing in the local fleet of International One Designs. The boats are classics, not unlike our fleet of PCs in San Diego. They are gorgeous to watch race, but are tough little boats to figure out. I had some experience from racing the same class at the Bermuda Gold Cup a couple years ago. I’m not sure the experience did us any good, but racing was really fun against some of the top brains in the sport from the US. I was lucky enough to race with Jim Richardson and some of his regular Barking Mad crew while they were between Farr events. Even though our starts were some of the best of the fleet, we couldn’t manage to get the boat rumbling like we would have liked. It was a hard fought battle for points in the middle of the pack. Wherever you look you see tacticians eyeballing you waiting for you to make a mistake so they can get their team an advantage. All in all it was a unique experience and certainly an enjoyable one. The hospitality of the Nantucket YC and Great Harbor YC was outstanding and the racing was intense while still being quite fun, and all for a worthy cause. If the access to sailing provided by this fundraiser can make a fraction of a difference in the kids’ lives that it has in the lives of me and my competitors, then the event was a great success.
The other pros at the event were: Chuck Allen, Sally Barkow, Dave Dellenbaugh, Robbie Doyle, Kevin Farrar, Peter Holmberg, Gary Jobson, Mark Reynolds, Dawn Riley, Dee Smith, Chris Snow, Mike Toppa, and Dave Ullman. Here’s the handout.
Next on the docket is one day of racing on the Log Canoes out on the Eastern Shore (Hurricane-dependent), and then getting back into the Star at our Europeans in Ireland on Sunday.
Back from Spain, Stars on the Horizon
August 8th, 2011 in Travel, Training, Regattas.
I just finished up racing this past week in Palma de Mallorca, Spain in the Copa del Rey as a fill-in tactician for the Yasha Samauri Melges 32 team. While good results were tough to come by, we improved significantly through the week as the team is on the upswing of their progression towards the M32 Worlds in Palma in September. I joked with some of my teammates that I had only been to Palma in March and April for the Princesa Sofia regatta, and what a difference a few months makes. Palma is a fantastic place to race spring or summer, but let me tell you its warmer in the summer. We were a few boats down from the Prince racing on the TP52 Hispano at the dock, so the scene at the Real Club Nautico de Palma was a little bit different from my years racing off the gritty beach down at C’an Pastilla as well! It truly was a race for the King’s Cup when he and the Queen hand out the awards.
The next month will be spent preparing for our next Star event in Dublin Ireland during the first week of September. The Pre-Olympic Test Event is going on in Weymouth right now, so I’m motivated to get my program back up and running after a well enjoyed month off. What an amazing amount of sailing and now Ian and I can get back to Star sailing refreshed and ready.
Jackie’s put an update on her website with some great photos she took at Weymouth in June to give you an idea of what the sailors are looking at this week at the test event:
JacquelineCampbellPhotography.com
North U. Youth Match Race Clinic & Regatta - Cocoa, FL
July 25th, 2011 in General.
I just got back home from coaching a clinic and regatta hosted by the Indian River YC in Cocoa, Florida and sponsored by North U. What a great four days of classroom work, practice and racing on the inland waterway! The heat was on, but it was a really fun experience for me to teach young first-time match racers how to play the game. Sailors as young as 12 and as old as 19, coming from as far away as Atlanta but mostly from the central Florida region joined up to race in 5 teams sailing locally owned Catalina 22s.
The 22s without spinnakers allowed sailors with very little sailing experience to pick up the sport in general as well as the fast-paced game of match racing all while having fun on the water. Most teams had never sailed together until this weekend, so it was a bit of an experiment to see how different sailors developed into their different roles on the boat. Skippers learned the classic plays and counterplays involved in match racing, while the trimmers developed strong boat and sheet handling skills to help their team better anticipate and react to the upcoming maneuvers.
I was totally amazed by how quickly some of the sailors, many of whom had very little racing experience, developed in their roles into focused and capable crew. We all got to learn together the complexities of match racing juxtaposed against its pure one-on-one form. The concepts began to gel without too much trouble, and by the end of the weekend parents, judges and the 22 owners were watching in awe of their local kids putting the boats safely through an intense series of races.
Many thanks to the Indian River Yacht Club and its many volunteers, Brevard County for allowing us to take over the public launching ramp and Coast Guard Auxiliary Building and North U for sponsoring the event. Each sailor took home a copy of Henry Menin and John Cutler’s North U. Match Racing DVD, a copy of Dave Perry’s North U Match Racing Playbook as well as a copy of his Intro to Match Racing DVD. Here is the pdf version of my Match Race Maneuver Checklist that the sailors discussed at length at the California as well as Florida clinics and will help any match racer brush up on their moves: match-race-maneuvers-checklist-1.pdf
Here’s the highlight reel from the weekend:
US Tour Continues in Sheboygan and Barnegat Bay, Cocoa Florida Upcoming
July 18th, 2011 in General.
It’s been a month of a domestic sailing tour since arriving back from England less than a month ago. We had a great opportunity to sail in Sheboygan, Wisconsin in their great fleet of Sonars and Elliotts in massive Lake Michigan two weekends ago. We had a match racing training group set up: Jackie and I were sailing with local Wisconsinites Sally Barkow and Annie Haeger giving us a great team to help train with Shawn Bennett, Craig Healy and Dave Perry to help get them ready for the Nation’s Cup to be held in Sheboygan in September. We were lucky to have steady breeze and little fog during our racing and had some really good sailing match racing to go along with it.
This past weekend we headed up to Toms River, NJ to join in the festivities of my grandfather Cliff turning 80. We spent Saturday on Barnegat Bay and were treated to a classic bay day with bright sunshine and highs in the 80s. The westerly held while we watched the morning races for the E-scows and then the seabreeze filled in nicely building to 15-18 knots for the afternoon race. I was lucky enough to jump on and drive one of the classic A-Cats Lotus that race on that part of the bay (pictured above). The fleet of about 15 boats has been racing on the bay for the better part of a hundred years. A fair amount slower than their Chesapeake counterparts the Log Canoes, the A-Cats are a blast from the past and actually a lot of fun to sail. The more people the better and for their lack of speed the boats make up for in power, camaraderie and competitiveness. We managed to win the pin end in our start but won nothing after that except for the battle of attrition. We rounded the winward mark ahead of only two boats but passed one boat spinning penalty circles, another picking up crew they had lost overboard and yet another that got tangled up with an E-scow. All in a day’s fun! We weren’t over the line and didn’t finish last so we’ll call it a moral victory. What a better way to celebrate 80 years on the water though? Happy Birthday to Grandpop and here’s to many more!
I’m headed to Cocoa Florida this week for the fourth in a series of North U Match Race Clinegattas. I’m looking forward to a varied level of experience and a great learning opportunity to talk about match racing in Catalina 22s at the Indian River YC. Here’s the video from the West Coast Clinegatta we had at Balboa Yacht Club a couple months ago:
Block Island, Upstate NY and the Chesapeake. Happy 4th of July
July 5th, 2011 in Travel, General.
It’s been a busy couple weeks of traveling since we got home from England mid-June. The day after we got home from England, Ian and I enjoyed a great reception at the Tred Avon Yacht Club where nearly 100 members joined us for dinner and a presentation about what an Olympic Star Campaign is all about. Photos and video showed the crowd where we’ve been since January and gave a glimpse into the work and fun we’ve been into on and off the water.
Farr40s at Block Island (Photo: Rolex/Daniel Forster)
Block Island
A couple days at home to do laundry and prep for the next trip of the month and my first time on Block Island. We drove up and took the ferry across for a great week of fun but terribly light-air Race Week. Honestly the Island came across as very similar to Portland (where we had just spent three weeks in England). The countryside in Block Island with its sweeping ocean views, small farms, rock walls, rabbits and sailors was similar in many ways to Old England. Ironically the breeze at BI didn’t live up to its English counterpart. The round-the-island race was far and away the most interesting part of the week for me. The breeze filled nicely for the race, and I was a bit out of my element trying to navigate with a paper chart with my notes for what I thought the current would be doing. Our bowman did have the GPS running and was navigating with me, but making decisions about tactical placement against our competitors as well as current decisions on the fly was an exciting change of pace from windward-leeward racing. We led our fleet the entire way around the course even after short-tacking the sandbar to the north end of the island and then blowing out our spinnaker on the eastside run. We finished second of the Farr40s but I think that everybody had a great time and learned a few things over the course of the week. I have to thank the McNeils for their hospitality all week and for always having a fun team.
A1 about to take-off (photo: AC)
Upstate NY
After BI, we headed west to spend a couple days on Keuka Lake with my grandparents there. The big excitement certainly is the celebration of 100 years of Naval Aviation thanks to Hammondsport local Glenn Curtiss. Grandpa Art has had significant involvement in the Curtiss Museum there for many years and they have been a major focal point for the US Navy as they celebrate their centennial in the air thanks to Curtiss’ flying boats. The things are incredible to watch take flight on the lake. I love to see this centennial parallel the Star class centennial. Naval aviation has gone from one dude and his crazy flying boats on Keuka Lake to supersonic ship-launched hell-raisers. The Star class has been there for the duration, maybe not supersonic but no less persistent.
Myself and Nick Deane on board Koala adjusting trim (Photo Jacqueline Campbell)
Chesapeake, 4th of July
We made it back to DC in time for the 4th of July weekend. What better way to celebrate than head to the Eastern Shore and go for a boat-ride. We took Jackie’s family’s 35-foot Hallberg-Rassy Koala from its berth in Oxford, through Tilghman Island and around to St. Michael’s for fireworks there Saturday night and back to Oxford for Sunday’s show. I think I might be navigated out for the next month between avoiding rocks while going around Block Island and then avoiding sand bars and Chesapeake boaters on the shore this weekend. What better time spent on the water? We’re heading out to Sheboygan this weekend for a bit of match-race practice. July is going to be a light month of Star sailing, before we look to get back into gear August and September.
More to come from www.CampbellSailing.com.
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