Draft ’08 Race Schedule

September 20th, 2007

Some of the exact dates may be wrong. I may miss some midwinter races because of Sundance or ice sailing with Garth. I may miss all of May if I go to Alaska to climb Denali.

— winter & spring —

1/12 EYC / Jack Frost midwinters
1/19 CYC midwinters (two day series)
1/27 SSS Three Bridge Fiasco (DH)
2/09 EYC / Jack Frost midwinters
3/24 OYRA Lightship
4/19 Singlehanded Farallones (SH)

— summer —

5/03 HDA Vallejo Race
5/04 HDA Vallejo Race
5/25 OYRA Spinnaker Cup
6/02 SSS In The Bay Race (DH)
6/09 OYRA Drake’s Bay (two day series)
6/15 Coastal Cup
6/27 LongPac (DH)
7/28 HDA 2nd Half opener (two day series)
8/04 OYRA Full Crew Farallones
8/18 SSS Half Moon Bay (DH)

— fall —

9/01 Windjammers
9/08 SSS East Bay (DH)
10/6 SSS Vallejo Race (DH – two days)

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Upgrades?

September 17th, 2007

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was interested in continuing to upgrade the boat. I think the excuse is going to be all the singlehanded sailing I want to do this year. Basically, I’m a gearhead.

Solo-sailing upgrades

  • Monitor windvane steering
  • Tillerpilot
  • Windward sheeting mainsheet car
  • Spinnaker sock?
  • AIS system

Performance upgrades

  • Carbon masthead wand
  • Line adjustable jib fairleads
  • Double spinnaker sheet turning blocks
  • VMG display

Nice-to-haves or cruising upgrades

  • Utility bilge pump – Gulper 320
  • LED cabin lights
  • Second (Zulu) clock
  • Cockpit sheet bags
  • 2nd compass
  • Heart link 1000 batt monitor

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Post-TP repairs

September 15th, 2007

So we didn’t lose the mast or keel or anything horrible, but there is a handful of stuff to be repaired/replaced/maintained before sailing starts again. Here’s the the list (ongoing):

  • Spinnaker pole car, replace
  • Mainsail headboard slug, repair
  • Galley sink pump, repair, add new hose
  • Diesel shut off valve, replace (finally)
  • Tactical compass light, instrument power connections
  • Re-rewire mast electrics
  • Epoxy repair main stringer

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Polishing 101

September 15th, 2007

Today, with the boat out of the water, I washed the entire hull, deck to waterline. Then I used 1500 grit wet sand paper on a block (and a hose) to remove the old lettering from the stern and rear hull quarters. This takes a lot of sand paper, even when the lettering is old and thin. Learning: Do not ever use the sandpaper off the block, even though it’s tempting to do so in order to get the last little bit of paint. It leaves little finger shaped traces that then have to be buffed out.

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Midwinters and next season

September 14th, 2007

Any remaining Transpac trauma must be over, since I’m trying to plan this winter’s racing, and decide what to do next season.

The Olson 911 is a member of the SFBay 30 class, so we’ll race where the majority of the fleet does this winter. It seems to be down to the Golden Gate YC (first Saturday of the Month, November-February) or the Berkeley YC (second Saturday of the Month, Nov-Feb) midwinters.

It seems like several people also do the Corinthian mids, which seems to be a full weekend in January and a full weekend in February. I remember that being a fun series, but it might conflict with Sundance.

As far as the summer goes, I’m torn between doing the OYRA series (maybe doublehanded again) or getting a full crew together and racing the HDA series. That’s how I got my start in bay racing, so it would be nice to race and be competitive in that fleet.

Several people (including a couple O911s) race in the Singlehanded Sailing Society series. That’s another option. They have one of the coolest races around, the LongPac: A 400 mile race from San Francisco to any point on Longitude 126°40′ West and return, open to singlehandled and doublehanded yachts. Since they also have the 3 Bridge Fiasco and the Singlehanded Farrallones race, it looks like I will be racing that series almost by default.

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Remember the sunsets

September 12th, 2007

Because my last two posts were complaining about hassles and expenses, I thought I’d post a couple images that show why it was all worth it anyways.

Sunset Day 14

A sunset six hundred miles from land

Rainbow Day 16

A double rainbow ahead of a deep squall

Evening Day 16

The evening before landfall

Squall

A squall with our name on it

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shipping – what I’d do differently

September 7th, 2007

Per my previous post, getting the boat home is probably the main reason I’d think twice about another HI race in my own boat. If I did do another one, here are some thoughts about what I’d do differently (besides race on someone else’s boat):

1. Consider a trailer-sailer. This is sort of a joke, but I sure was jealous of the Hobie 33 and Fast 40 guys who had their boats hauled and ready in a morning. And they were able to pick up at the Pasha yard with a F-350 and go home.

2. Consider sailing home or hiring a delivery skipper.

3. Use a different boatyard.

4. Stay later or buy a ticket to HI to oversee the (complete) de-rigging/loading myself.

5. Arrange the Pasha shipping myself. Dealing with them can’t be any more difficult than anyone else in this process. Handle the “documentation” myself.

6. Arrange the CA shipping myself, using uShip or references to get a couple quotes.

7. Motor or sail up from Long Beach over a couple weekends, rather than ship this last distance. (This is kind of a no-brainer in retrospect, but we considered it and decided not to based on the original half-price estimate).

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Home safe – shipping nightmare over

September 7th, 2007

I spent about half a day at KKMI yesterday getting the boat off the semi trailer and on the hard. From the finish line off Diamond Head to my local yard, shipping home took 41 days and cost me almost half of the boat’s actual value.

Nightmare is too strong a word, but it was by far the most stressful/least enjoyable/most expensive part of this whole project. I’m definitely happy to discuss with anyone considering shipping a boat point-to-point, especially from Hawaii. I’m also considering an article for one of the sailing mags (maybe latitude), but here are the points that jump to mind:

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SBYC article

September 6th, 2007

Race writeup in the yacht club newsletter, for anyone who’s still interested:

http://www.southbeachyc.org/Documents/Wave/Wave_09-07.pdf

wavelength cover

Got back from India today. 26 hours airport-to-airport. HKE still AWOL with video camera in the Himalayas…

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MOB

July 30th, 2007

Now that we’re in, I can mention how terrifying the idea of a man overboard on a short-handed ocean race is.

During our initial MOB training in May, Colin the then-neophyte sailor suggested a dedicated GPS near the MOM8 for MOB use. At the time, I poo-pooed the idea a little, but since the TP, I really have been considering it strongly. It’s a great idea.

It also turns out that the big guys (i.e. the V70s and the like) have a single “big red button” dedicated MOB system that logs a GPS position. I’m going to look into getting a low-draw handheld with a dedicated MOB button, hardwiring it to the 12v system and hanging it on the port stern pulpit. The power cable can come up through the obsolete DGPS beacon antenna fitting.

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