On Memorial Day, I went out and raced with the “big boats” at the Canandaigua Yacht Club in the 2008 Memorial Day Regatta. These little one-design 2.4 Meter sailboats weren’t really designed for racing 14.6 miles against J-24′s, Ensigns and Sharks!!
I got great start and then it slowed down for a while – through the first two legs actually.
I made it out to the course really late and as the 5 minute gun was going off I checked in for the race.
I forgot to lock down the shrouds and since I was reaching behind the line, I didn’t noticed until about 30 seconds after the start when I hardened up to windward. I reached down and popped in the leeward bracket on that starboard tack and was planning on tacking over to snap in the other side but I noticed that if I did, I would be tacking in front of several Catalina 25′s. I had committed at that point and was in irons and luffed up to fix things. From then on I playing catch-up for the rest of the day.
I did get some early wind and managed to cross ahead of several boats on the first upwind leg. By the time I sailed several miles and rounded the upwind mark, the wind died. I ate my lunch on that first reaching leg, drifting across the lake toward the next mark.
By this point, everyone was gone and the wind had clocked way to the right and everyone in front of me was close-reaching towards the downwind mark. I was way too late to get the new wind to catch up, even though I was sailing pretty good once it came down the lake to me.
The rest of the race was a reach because the wind kept clocking all afternoon.
I learned a lot about the boat today. I had plenty of time (3 hours, 40 minutes) to try everything.
I didn’t have any problems but I did hear a really loud pop once when I hauled in the backstay. I turned around and it looked like it was still there so I kept going.
The winds were between 3 and 9 mph during the race. There were occasional stronger puffs that lasted a couple of minutes. I stayed surprisingly dry.
I crossed the line last. I had heard the Race Committee call out to the “crash boat” to see if they were within sight of “the little 2.4″. At that point, I was rounding the second reaching mark with nice wind and was on my way down the final 5.5 km of the race. The race committee stayed on station and clocked my time.
“Thanks RC. I appreciate you waiting for me and my little boat“!
Here are the stats from my SC-1 computer:
2008 Memorial Day Regatta
Canandiagua Yacht Club
Canandaigua, NY
Total Race Distance Sailed : 26.890 Km / 16.71 Miles
2.4mR #161 – Bill Blevins
Total Avg. Speed : 3.86 Knots
Best 2 second run = 6.88 Knots (7.1 meters in 2 seconds)
Best 10 second run = 5.67 Knots (29.2 meters in 10 seconds)
Best 60 second run = 5.35 Knots (165.1 meters in 60 seconds)
Best 100 meter run = 5.53 Knots (102.3 meters in 36 seconds)
Best 500 meter run = 5.16 Knots (504.8 meters in 190 seconds)
Best 1000 meter run = 5.09 Knots (1,000.1 meters in 382 seconds)
Here is a link to a .pdf of the results file posted on the CYC site. (Since we haven’t picked names for the boats yet, the scorer assigned mine a temporary name of “Rocket” sounds fitting for the boat, but not reflective of my sixth place finish time.)
No photos today. Got a really late start and didn’t take my camera (or anything to drink).
