[Greyhawkupdates] 6 (now 7) hours into the race

[Tim Allen GREYHAWK]

6 Hours Into this race:

It was beautiful sailing recentyl, in about 8 knots of wind from the SSW, 1 to 2 foot seas, sunny skies, warm... but the breeze appears to be dieing once again.

Looking at my AIS, I see Flying Turtle about 7 miles ahead, Toothface about 5 miles off my starboard, with Sola Fide close behind them. Lots of other sails further behind them off to the west, but they are not showing up on AIS... looks like a white speck of a sail way off in the distance to the North East. 

Wait a sec -- Flying Turtle ( PHRF 51)? Toothface (PHRF -9)? Sola Fida (PHRF 55)? What the heck? How did I get up here, especially with all the clusterfucks I had today!

Let’s back up to the morning before the start. During breakfast at the club, we were all surprised to see big changes in the Gulf Stream -- the current flow models based 

sorry about that -- wind shift -- not a good one either, but not sure what I  can do about it -- light and variable right now.

The gulf stream current flow model based on altimetry of the sea surfaces showed this morning that the big meander bend up to the NE has been cut off. So we now have a large cold-core eddy (counter clockwise circulation) and a newly forming warm-core eddy (clockwise circulation) north of what is now the stream, forming paired system of votices with adverse current expected right along the rhumb line! So west is best... cut through the middle (more or less) of cold-core eddy, and pick up the main body of the stream south of it.

So I get back to the boat after breakfast and tape my computer down to the nav table, plug in the instruments and start up my charting program. No GPS signal. No instruments signal. No AIS signal. 

Ok the wind shifted back a bit, so we’re headed in a better direction now. 

Back to the story. It turns out that I swapped in a new computer since delivering the boat down 3 weeks ago, and this one doesn’t have the right drivers for the Serial to USB adapters. Not sure I can download the right drivers over the Iridium so maybe I’ll just go back to plotting my position manually.

It was blowing 20 knots in Newport this morning, cold and clear. I hoist the main on the mooring, put away the lazy jacks, and cast off. With the engine assisting, we sail out to the start area. It’s really blowing out there, so I put a reef in the main. Eventually I shut the engine off and continue to sail about under reefed main alone. Class 1 is off.... now Class 2 is off -- that’s the warning signal for my class, so I start the timer. The start line is set as a reaching start (line parallel  to the wind, with the boat end favored). I sail down to the line -- 5 minutes to go, tack around and sail back, turn around again with 2 minutes to go. All of a sudden the rest of the class shows up, and they’re ahead of me! I roll out the genoa just before crossing the line and work my way to windward of the rest of the class. We get around Castle Hill 

another wind shift, this time with increased velocity; I have tacked onto port and am back on course and moving again

....and head into RI sound. The rest of the class appears to break left to follow the rhumb line, but under Main and Jib, I continue straight ahead getting my spinnaker ready.

This year I invested in an ATN sock, into which I loaded my 1.5 ounce chute. But I guess there are some tricks to loading and then using these things, because I had a devil of a time getting the bell up. But it’s up, the chute is drawing well, and we’re flying ...bye bye y’all. I catch up to Adhara (Class 2) and pass him, with Ariana in my sights, the wind is shifting. I gybe onto port (what’s happening to the NW wind that we were supposed to have all day and into the night?). The 1.5 oz. sail just won’t stay full, so I get ready to swap it out for the 0.5 oz sail. I’m going to do this bare-headed, so I pull the bell down on the ATN sock (! guess there are some tricks to that, too.) Becuase I had gybed, I blew the sheet off the clew and pulled the sock down to the tack on the pole. Ease the pole forward, release the tack, go back to release the halyard and drop the sock, but it won’t budge. I tug and pull and it’s not coming down! 

Well I’ve got to get the other sail up and deal with this mess later, so I just tie the sock off to the base of the mast and set up to use my other spin halyard. Hook up the corners of the sail and hoist away, but how come it won’t go all the way up? Go forward to see what’s going on and realize I’ve hooked the sail up sideways! So I drop it on deck again, unclip the two corners that were mixed up, make sure I’ve got them sorted properly, hook ‘em up and hoist again. This time we’re good to go, but gawd this old sail looks awful, and I bet it’s just a sieve to the wind, too.  But the wind soon dies and heads us, so down with this sail and out with the genny. Unfortunately it just flogs around, so I roll  it up and get out the light staysail “windseeker.”  It takes some doing getting it set up, finding a sheet for it, etc... and meanwhile the windex is doing pirouettes at the top of the mast, we have no steerage whatsoever, and the autopilot is having hissy fits. At one point, we were headed back to Newport -- well whatever it takes to get some way on so I can steer and get this boat going again!

But the windseeker does it’s job and soon we’re moving and the breeze is building again. Time to roll out the genoa, but  -- oh s**t --  first I’ve got to relead the sheet, becuase it was on the wrong side when I set the staysail up.

Genoa out, staysail down, unhooked, rolled up and thrown down the companionway with the other sails. Oh yeah -- I almost forgot about the ...

Wind is up. time to take the genoa down and put up the jib. Back in a while.

OK, just as I got the sails on deck, it was time for “chat hour” so I put the change on hold. In the meantime, the wind has settled down and the genny is the right sail (for now). Changing down means going bare-headed for a while, or setting up the heavy staysail while changing the headsail. Not sure yet what is the best way.

So now that we’re all up to date, It’s time to file this report, and send in to the RC a list of all the boats I heard on the radio. 

How again did I get up here? BTW, now it’s 7 hours into the race (it took me an hour to write this....) We seem to be moving well now.

Time to make something for dinner.

More tomorrow sometime.

Tim Allen GREYHAWK

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