CYC

PSSR Big Boats – Parades Saturday and Perfection Sunday

Kurt Hoehne Racing , , 0 Comment
PSSR Big Boats – Parades Saturday and Perfection Sunday

Jan and Skip Anderson don’t aren’t always lucky enough to pick the right day to photograph on a 2-day regatta, but sometimes they hit the nail on the head, as they did for CYC’s PSSR last weekend in Seattle. Maybe they read Bruce’s forecast. The event, which features as many buoy races as is reasonable given the conditions, rewards refined crew work and tactical course management.

Here are some of Jan’s shots. Click to enlarge, and by all means go to her site to buy some!

Even CYC’s Race Fleet Captain Matt Wood struggled when reporting Saturday’s racing: “Saturday posed significant challenges for both the competitors and the Race Committees, as the highly vaunted Puget Sound Convergence zone made a strong appearance. Racing started in southerlies which began backing to SW then West before dying and allowing a Northerly to fill in later in the day. Unfortunately races changed into reaching parades as 90 degree shifts plagued both courses.” 

They may have been parades, but several races were sailed and, hey, we don’t sail because conditions are always postcard-perfect. 

Sunday was another story. It was breeze-on from the north, bright sunshine and there were even some waves to play with.

The big boat ORC fleet was a complete no-show, and the PHRF turnout was sparse. The decline of handicap fleets in this event continues, but there were four healthy one-design classes (J/105, Melges 24, J/80 and San Juan 24). The J/24s sailed the weekend before and the Moore 24s were a no-show for the CYC event.

As usual in a multi-race series, there were no real surprises in the winners circles. Shrek made a return to the racecourse but had to accept second place to the well-tuned Absolutely in the “big boat” class. The Sierra 26s Uno and Dos were walking away from PHRF Class 2 after the first day and handily finished the job on Sunday. Jerry Diercks, David Brede, Bryan Rhodes and Ken Johnson (on a tie-breaker)  won their respective one-design classes. Results here.

A clear bright spot on the Seattle racing scene is the J/80 fleet. The design is one of the early sport boats with minimal cabin space and an asymmetrical spinnaker standard. Seven J/80s completed all the races, and it came down to the last race to determine the winner. Clearly, there’s more to this fleet than just wins and losses. Bryan Rhodes of the J/80 Crazy Ivan reports after his great duel with John Sezer’s Reckless:

I don’t have my boat in the (Sail Northwest owner-club boat setup) club, nor does John, but we are the two exceptions. It’s a great program for owners and has been a big boost to growing the local fleet. For example, there’s Lek Dimarucot, who owns Underdog. He started racing on Monday nights on one of the club boats and then purchased Underdog and put it in the club.

As for the J/80 fleet, I’m the fleet president and joined the J/80 North American Class Association board last fall. It’s been helpful to meet with other board members and learn what they are doing to grow interest in the J/80. We are implementing many of the things that have worked for other fleets – getting together after racing on Monday and Wednesday nights, having an annual Fleet Series with a set schedule of events, and staging larger events in the J/80 West Coast Championship that was raced during PSSR. It’s added a social aspect to the racing and fits into the active Northwest lifestyle that so many live in the Seattle area to enjoy.

PSSR was a great event despite the fluky winds on Saturday. We had five boats take a first place in seven races. The starting line was a lot shorter than some of the recent events, which, combined with the strong ebbs, made for some interesting starts. The regatta came down to the last race and we barely edged out John on Reckless by a few seconds. I wasn’t sure we had won the race until I asked the race committee. In that race he rounded the first leeward mark in 4th or 5th place but made a huge gain on the next windward lap. He’s a tremendous competitor.

-Bryan Rhodes

 

Thanks, Bryan, for taking the time to send in the tale of the J/80s. Your efforts to make the J/80s a fleet and not just a bunch of boats is clearly paying off.

 

 

 

Gaucho’s PSSR Victory

Kurt Hoehne Racing , 1 Comment
Gaucho’s PSSR Victory

My friend John Cahill has been racing the Ross 930 Gaucho very successfully, consistently and quietly for many years. It was great to see him win Class 5 at CYC’s PSSR (Puget Sound Spring Regatta) this past weekend, fittingly by a single point over rival Here and Now. John even answered my request for a report on the event! It’s a great read, you can tell it was a fun weekend of good, hard competition. In short, PSSR at its best. Results for North Course and South Course.

Oh, and enjoy Jan Anderson’s photography, both here and on her SmugMug site. Yep, once again I’m going to remind everyone to go buy her photos. 

 

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John at the helm with Alex Simanis focused on the main on the nimble Ross 930 Gaucho.

By John Cahill

First off, fantastic conditions for April racing on Puget Sound: relatively warm, dry sunny days with somewhat light air on Saturday, but not bad (by our standards). At times we felt like the race committee would be crazy to try to pull off a race in existing conditions, but we were surprised how good the racing turned out to be and how fortunate we were that they got races off (and stopped running them) when they did. As usual, the south course got better breeze and more racing than the north course (not sure why that is but it seems fairly consistent from year to year).

On Gaucho we got off to an unfortunate start by being called over early on the first race. We were shocked when they called our numbers and sure that they called the wrong boat over but didn’t have any time to ponder it so we turned back to restart. We managed to stay in the best of the available breeze on the first beat and had good boat speed (for us) in the lighter breeze. This allowed us to claw back into the top four boats around the first mark. We found another shift on the run and finished 2nd for the race (we were very lucky not to be buried deep right at the outset). After several delays we got two more races in the afternoon, again in light air, and pulled off a respectable 1st and 3rd to keep us in the hunt for the first day. I felt we did a great job of picking up the shifts which helped tremendously. Much credit for this goes to Alex Simanis from Ballard Sails for his help. At the end of the day we were tied for first (ahead only by a tie breaker) and only one point ahead of the 3rd place boat.  Tight racing but really fun, this is what it’s all about!

Sunday was a new day, 10+ knots in the morning which was more than we saw all of Saturday. Our class was a dogfight for the lead position between the top three boats.  In the first race we got off the start line cleanly at the pin end on the first race and managed to lead all around the course with clear air for the win. The second and third races were more of the same and with consistent starts, going the right way and good boat speed, we were able to get two more bullets. Just when you start feeling good things started getting harder, after a less than ideal start we could only manage a third in the 4th race of the day.

I have to say we were really hoping the race committee would call the racing for the day at 3pm but the CYC race committee never considers stopping racing in good breeze, so on to race #5.  Shortly before the start we got into a position that forced us to tack close in front of a starboard tack boat. We threw the helm over hard but they called foul and even though we didn’t think we had broken a rule, we likely would have had to gone to the protest room which is an uncertain outcome. We decided to play it safe and do our turns, putting us in the back of the fleet sailing away from us after the start. Much to the crew’s credit, no one gave up.  Like in the first race, we fought our way back into 4th by the 1st mark of a twice around race. We picked up one more place on the next legs and rounding the last windward leg were in 3rd.  Once again we noticed something the three boats in front of us hadn’t considered, a different leeward mark was closer to the far end of the start finish line than what we had been sailing to most of the day.  We took the shorter route and managed to round the last leeward mark in 2nd and closer to the top boat.  From there it was a short beat to the finish and we managed hang on to be second over the line.  On corrected time, we placed second in that race only 2 seconds ahead of the 3rd place boat for the race.  If we had been 3rd we would have been tied for first for the regatta.  Quite a weekend for us indeed!

– John Cahill, Skipper Gaucho