Sea Bear's 1st Long Race

Participating as Skipper and Helmsman for the Berger/Stein Squirrel Bank Race taught me a few lessons. The weather reports before the race were dismal, possible Thunder-Storms and strong winds. The actual conditions were mostly sunny, cool, with winds 10-18 knots. The Seas were 4-6 feet. For me this was the most difficult sailing conditions I experienced sailing Sea Bear. A big thanks to the crew today was Doug Warner and David Holcomb. I hope for future races we have more crew to handle the boat. There were 12 boats in our class, Sea Bear came in 8th, we were the last boat to finish, but we did finish.

Before the race I was talking with a few other sailors in the club house, they suggested that I reef the sails due to the conditions. The boat felt overpowered with the full Genoa while we were practicing before the start. We reefed the Genoa to the second mark which made a big difference in how the boat handled.

I have read that steering a sailboat for extended periods was tiring, since my experience to date was rather short day sails in very pleasant conditions I was not prepared for the effort I expended as Helmsman for this sail. During the race I had a hard time not slipping from the high side of the boat. I had a hard time finding a place to brace my feet to keep me in place. I wrapped my free hand around the stern pulpit to hold on.

My original plan was to sail on one tack until the mark was past where the mark would be 90 degrees from our current course. I wasn't sure at the stare which direction we would be sailing. I chose to follow most of the other boats and so we went south at first at heading of 195T for 4.3 miles. We saw other boats tacking and so I chose to tack too. Way earlier than my plan. I seem to have a habit of turning early and I am working on learning to wait and then wait some more before I turn to the mark. On the starboard tack we were sailing with another boat in our class and I enjoyed the match racing. Once again I turned too soon and we had to tack a few more times to get to the mark. We could not find the buoy and we met the same boat we were sailing with earlier, both of us could not find the mark, we guessed that we were far enough and both decided to turn for home. Looking at the track you can see we were wondering around a bit at the weather mark.

Sailing down wind was for me more difficult than sailing up wind. We could not set the whisker pole to hold out the Genoa. I tried sailing on a broad reach and jibbing, we lost a lot of "ground" to the other boat it was far ahead of us on the down wind leg. Eventually I decided to lock the main with the bang to keep it from accidentally swinging across the boat with the Genoa out to the other side wing on wing style. I had a hard time keeping the sails full, but we were sailing at 4-6 knots most of the time, even though it felt slower, as it always does sailing down wind.

One more thing, I spilled a lot of pretzels, they got crunched and footing was slippery, big mess to clean up.