In a throwback to my mad racing days, we got to use Evenstar as the Committee Boat for our club’s Wednesday Night Races.
Although the timing was a little tough with school not being out and my wife being on call, when called upon by the Race Committee Chair to pinch hit for the regular committee boat I was happy to oblige. After all, why not help out and give a little back after many years of racing myself. Certainly I never once wondered what was happening over there on the boat with the flags.
As it turns out Evenstar is a pretty plush ride for the Race Committee and pretty easy to use, though I had to resist the temptation to throw fenders over the sides during the start. There is no way I never came that close to the boat during a start, not even the time we caught their anchor rode. Nope, my manners always exceeded my agressiveness. Yeah right.
It was a light air night, and it turned out that my son and I were completely capable of setting and retrieving the anchor ourselves, which is encouraging since we’ve already learned we can do a bang up job sailing upwind and tacking. I’m thinking the two of us might even be able to take the boat out for a night this weekend while mom is off at Womanship for the weekend and my daughter is with a friend. He’s getting a good handle on keeping the boat still and following my hand signals.
Overall we had fun, and it was a good night out. The most important thing we learned is that we need to have the club give us burgers and dogs for snacks instead of cheese and crackers since we clearly have time to fire up the grill and cook between the start and finish on light air nights. However we must consult the Racing Rules of Sailing to ensure that we can add a leg if we need more time to cook.
I told them I’d do it next week if the regular boat was still not available, I don’t mind this one bit!
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LOL. So that’s why the RC sometimes run extra long races! I never thought of the “how long do we need to grill the burgers” issue before.
I am combing the RRS for a provision…
They would have caught us mid burger this week. When we started the race it was light, almost light enough to merit accusations of sadism on the part of the R/C…3-4 knots so we sent them on a short one lap 1.2 mile windward leeward course.
Halfway back from the mark the wind picked up to around 10 and clocked almost about 60-70 degrees to the right…quickly turning the downwind leg into a fast reach.
We had minutes between the time we noticed this and realized the scratch boat (and X-41 that owed the next fastest boat almost a minute per mile) was going to cover than last mile in no time at all on that point of sail.
Our mad scramble for guns, horns and scratch sheets would have been much delayed if we had to finish dinner first.
Unfortunately the RRS only allow the RC to shorten a course, not lengthen it. The solution is to set a course long enough to allow for grilling and eating of burgers even in a 20 knot breeze, say 6 laps. You can always shorten the course once the last member of the RC has finished their dessert and after-dinner drinks.