Few Puget Sound boats have been sailed so consistently well over the past few seasons as Different Drummer. The nearly 17K pound Wauquiez C40S is pretty much the prototypical modern cruiser-racer. Comfortable, solidly built and well behaved, she sails to her 81 PHRF rating and is one of the few boats in that rating band to regularly give fits to the 1000 lb. Sierra 26s Uno and Dos. Race post-mortems are a great idea, and skipper Charles Hill has allowed us to reprint his review of the first two races of Center Sound, in which they’re now tied with Uno going into the last race.
By Charles Hill (borrowed with permission from the Different Drummer Facebook page)
I have been meaning to write up a race report for Blakely Rocks but never found the time, and now I have two race reports to write up and still not much time, so I’ll make this quick. After two of the three races in the Center Sound Series we are tied for first in our class (out of 12) with Dos (a not unfamiliar position). We are also standing 8th overall (out of 70 something boats). How did we get there?
Blakely Rock: We started really well in a decent north breeze. We were first around the upwind mark, closely followed by Dos, Elusive and Red Sky (a Wauquiez C45s, which is basically a scaled-up version of Drummer). After setting the spinnaker, we sailed toward the center of the Sound. Most of our class, and indeed most of the fleet, gybed and headed towards the eastern side of the Sound. I’m not sure why they did that, because we could see building breeze coming up behind us and it certainly seemed softer off to the left. It soon became clear that we were in better pressure and it sure looked as if we were opening up a lead over our class. For reference, we had Firefly in front of us, and Sachem behind us. For the first 2/3rds of the run to the Rocks it seemed that we would round well ahead of our class, then we made the mistake of drifting too far to the right and found ourselves in softer pressure. We should have gybed early, but we were pinned by one of the smaller boats we were passing, and we made the mistake of trying to tough it out and get ahead of them to leeward, which took way too long. In the event, this allowed Dos, Elusive and Red Sky to haul us in as they crossed over the Sound into better breeze. Dos must have been on the plane in what was now a solid 15 knots of breeze, because they rounded the rocks some distance ahead of us. Elusive and Red Sky rounded with us.
On the beat back to West Point Elusive pulled slowly ahead of us, Red Sky fell back a little, and we were hauling Dos in, but not fast enough. Once we past West Point we tacked in towards the breakwater. Elusive did not, and they fell back. I was really surprised at how quickly we opened a significant lead over them on the water. Interesting how the right tactical call can make such a big difference. In the end we passed Dos, but not by enough to save our time and they won, we were second, Red Sky third, and Elusive dropped to fourth.
Scatchet Head: With soft breeze in the forecast, the race committee elected to run two laps on a 12 mile windward/leeward course. We had to pass through the finish line at the end of the first lap so that they could shorten the race if the wind dropped as per the forecast. The wind didn’t drop. Instead we had two laps in a solid 8-12 knots of breeze with beautiful sunshine and stunning views of snowclad peaks. This was a way more interesting and fun race than the annual slog up to Scatchet Head and back. Note to the race committee: please throw one of these into the mix every year.
The only mistake we made on this race was the start, where I was a little too slow and let Helios and Red Sky get to windward and blanket Drummer with dirty air. They actually had an excellent start, we did not. We tacked onto port as soon as we could to get clear air, and after that it was off to the races. I think we had clear air for the rest of the race. After the first lap my guess is that we were in third place, close behind Dos and Elusive. The rest of our class had already dropped back. However, we had an excellent remainder of the race, driving the boat as fast as we ever have in those conditions. We slowly hauled Elusive in, while putting distance between ourselves and Dos. I suspect that Dos was very close to us on corrected time at the last turn mark, but we stretch-out our lead on the final beat to the finish and crossed 55 seconds ahead on corrected time. Elusive was third some 1 min and 25 seconds behind Dos on corrected time. We were also 6th overall, which was the 2nd highest fleet position we have achieved in a Center Sound Series race. Good times.
Kurt grew up racing and cruising in the Midwest, and has raced Lasers since the late 1970s. Currently he is a broker at Swiftsure Yachts. He has been Assistant Editor at Sailing Magazine and a short stint as Editor of Northwest Yachting. Through Meadow Point Publishing he handles various marketing duties for smaller local companies. He currently is partners on a C&C 36 which he cruises throughout the Northwest. He’s married to the amazing Abby and is father to Ian and Gabe.
How did you do at Toliva?
Hi, I wasn’t at Toliva personally (would have liked to have been), but if you’re asking about Different Drummer, I don’t see them in the results one way or another.
This story got a comment from Boomer Depp on Facebook – and I thought I’d share it here so the non FB crowd – growing all the time – could see it as well. If this becomes a larger discussion, maybe we should take it to the discussion forum on handicapping. (to get into the forums pull down from the menu item “Forums-Have Your Say” and create a login)
Boomer Depp’s comment on Facebook
Kinda whitewashing it with an article like that, especially when you’ve seen what’s going on in that class since the Sierra 26 was put in this class. Then another head scratcher, when the Waiquiez 40′ joined in a class of boats 34′ average. We know this class has also been controversial since the Sierra 26 was grouped in with this class, which was spoken of in the local NW sailing rags, when they first joined.
As for the Wauquiez 45, they rarely get out to play with it last racing in last years CCS. So obviously they’re not quite in the same league as the Wauquiez 40 which comes out to play in most all the bigger regattas and races..
Some of the regattas like the CCS add a few 37.75′ C&C 115s & J35s into the mix in this class. Not hard for Wauquiez 40 to consistently do well in a class, when your boat can waterline the rest of the class and rate slower then a J-35, when they’re rating should be closer to the J35.
DOS is usually the Wauquiez 40’s main competition in most of the regattas, with good boat and sail handling skills, excellent course management by Brad Butler & crew and an extremely fast designs in DOS and UNO’s Sierra 26 carbon hulls – which require very competent boat and sail handling skills when it gets breezy or suffer taking a swim; followed by the well sailed Quest 30 Charlotte usually taking third in class – though Charlotte isn’t having a successful Center Sound Series this year with six 72 raters thrown in the class.
The 72 raters should have their own class including the 75 rater Shock 35, like the fast 30 class back in the late 90s – and the Wauquiez 40 should be sailing with them.
My response
Hi Boomer. FYI I’m copying this to the sailish blog and posting to the handicapping discussion forum there so that even non-FBers can see. First off, the piece was merely a peek into the skipper-crew communications on DD, not an article on the sailors, the boat etc., so it wasn’t meant to whitewash anything. And it certainly wasn’t about PHRF, to be honest I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I am highlighting the cruiser-racer vs Sierra rivalry because one of the big things to come out of last fall’s survey was the almost universal feeling that racing those disparate types of boats against each other was hurting participation. Both DD and Dos are extremely well sailed as far as I can tell. Regarding the ratings, that rating band, like so many others, has some serious issues and anomalies. If everyone agrees to sail level, great. (I think the J/35 guys would really like a 1D class) If not, and if ratings are going to be an issue, I again suggest looking at ORC as the arbiter to take 90 percent of discussion, and the human factor, out of the equation.