PSSR

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.

 

 

 

Bruce’s Brief’s: Wx for Apr 20, 21 & 22. CYC’s PSSR

Bruce Hedrick Bruce's Briefs, Racing , 0 Comment
Bruce’s Brief’s: Wx for Apr 20, 21 & 22. CYC’s PSSR

While we certainly had enough rain last weekend, get ready for some great weather this coming week. The last Wednesday night race was a bit chilly but that is springtime sailing in the Northwest, it’s only going to get better. Besides, as long as we have wind, who cares? In addition, we certainly didn’t get clobbered with rain the way the north side of Kauai did, getting 28” of rain in 24 hours. The house we used to stay at that was located on the beach at Hanalei Bay at the pier, was destroyed when the Hanalei River went way over its banks. I’m trying to get some pictures but it’s very sad.

So while we will have a weak cold front move over us tonight and bring a little more rain to the area, the post-frontal system will have high pressure build into the region over the weekend. As you can see from the 500MB charts, a thermal low pressure will set up along the Oregon coast Monday and Tuesday as an upper ridge shifts over the Pacific Northwest bringing us some nice and warm weather.

Click to enlarge any image.

As we say, the best day for breeze in the Northwest is the first day the ridge of high pressure starts to build over our area. That should be tomorrow, however, we will be in an area of strong onshore flow which will mean a strong westerly in the Straits as well as a strong flow in through the Chehalis Gap. Those winds have to meet somewhere and that will be in the Central Sound at least for tomorrow morning. By around midday, the northerly should move down the Sound and we should have 8-10 knots of northerly building slightly as the afternoon wears on.

Sunday should be even better with 10-15 knots of northerly in the morning and then building into the 18-20 knot range by late afternoon. We should be able to get plenty of races in this weekend with lots of tired sailors showing up for work on Monday.

There will be tides but not all that bad and depending on how much clearing we have Saturday morning, the start of the flood should bring the stronger, steadier northerly down with it.

 

Tidal Currents at West Point.

0900           Slack

1030           Ebb               .35 knots

1224           Slack

1900           Flood          1.12 knots

Sunday

1012           Slack

1130           Ebb               .21 knots

1318           Slack

1954           Flood          1.03 knots

 

It’s worthwhile to look at the graph of tidal current velocities to explain the gap (≈6 hours, instead of the usual 3) between the midday slack and max flood.

 

Have a great weekend!

 

PSSR Small Boats – RS Aeros Ascend

Kurt Hoehne 505 Dinghy, Racing , 0 Comment
PSSR Small Boats – RS Aeros Ascend
Hobie 18 punching through a wave in 2017

I was hoping some pictures my bubble up from last weekend’s CYC-Seattle Small boats regatta, but alas none have (So I’ve resorted to using last year’s). But there was some good racing across several classes this year. The Hobie 18s had a nice 5-boat fleet, with Ethan Salkind showing his winning touch extends to the 2-hulled vessels he sells, with straight bullets. There were two Hobie 16s as well. It’s great to see the multihulls in the CYC events, and hopefully those classes grow at major events.

505s, Stars and J/24s all featured small fleets but a dominant performance in each. Results. Jay Winberg was the lone Laser out there as others in the fleet were off traveling.

The biggest and most competitive fleet was the RS Aero fleet, which now boasts Jonathan McKee as one of their own. We have a report from one of the original fleet members, Jacques Garrigues:

PSSR was a challenging first regatta. The Seattle Aero fleet has some of the very best sailors and now Jonathan McKee has joined us to add to class acts like Dalton Bergan, Carl Buchan and Dan Falk.

Jacques Garrigues in an Aero in 2017.

Top Tasar sailor Michael Karas was sailing our loaner Aero and is a terrific talent.

Saturday was raining, the breeze was 5-7 kts early and built to 9-14 kts from the south running against a strong flood tide. On Sunday thank goodness the rain was gone and the breeze had switched to a northerly, 8-10 its early, building to 15-24 kts late. We had three very experienced new additions in Jonathan McKee, Jim Barrett, and Michael Karas all of whom were fast from the first horn.

The regatta though was dominated by Dalton Bergan who has phenomenal speed upwind, downwind, 9 rig, 7 rig, you name it he is showing the other Seattle Aero sailors how it is done. Congratulations to him. As usual, other consistent performers were Todd Willsie (second) and Eric Becker (third) despite some “kissing” by them at the leeward mark followed by a swim to cool off!! The swimmer will remain nameless.

We were on the water for about four hours each day with full on hiking and gathered at the end for well earned drinks and food.

All in all a really good start to the season in the Pacific Northwest for our very competitive and growing Seattle RS Aero fleet.

 

Thanks, Jacques!

Bruce’s Brief for April 22-23 and CYC’s PSSR

Bruce Hedrick Bruce's Briefs, Racing, Weather , , 0 Comment
Bruce’s Brief for April 22-23 and CYC’s PSSR
Wind Speed/Air Pressure at West Point

If only we were racing today…..but we are not, so we might as well deal with it. It’s just difficult to look out at the Sound and see 8-knots from the north with a temperature of 55⁰F and not dream about racing or cruising in those conditions. OK, the wind chill is still around 46⁰F so it’s not exactly summer-like yet. It does, however, give us some hope for July 5th…….

The surface chart for today, 21 April, shows us the inevitable for this upcoming weekend. We’ve got both rain and wind headed towards us for both days and well into next week. As we said last week, the long range weather has us as being wetter and cooler than normal and with the jet stream staying well south of us, it is going to stay that way. Don’t kill the messenger.

The surface chart for tomorrow, 22 April, shows a moderately healthy front aimed right at us. The timing of frontal passage is still very unclear. The coastal buffer zone (CBZ) will once again have an impact on timing however it won’t be as dramatic as last weekend where it totally blocked the front and sent it off to the northwest and away from here. The key will be for you to check barometric pressure trends along the coast and inland reporting stations. It’s already starting to drop today so it will happen. After that, check the wind directions and wind velocities around the Sound, including the Washington State ferries on the Bainbridge and Edmonds-Kingston runs. The pre-frontal breeze will be southeasterly, while if the pressure is rising and the wind is out of the southwest, that would be post-frontal. It could, however, be a mixed bag as the front interacts with the CBZ. As per usual, expect stronger breeze along the coast and in the eastern Straits and the San Juan Islands.

That doesn’t necessarily mean light air in the race area off of Shilshole. It could mean 15-20 knots from the SSW in the morning backing off around midday to 5-15-knots from the south and then filling back in from the SW at 15-20-knots around mid-afternoon before slowly backing off towards sunset.

Sunday looks lighter however as the front has passed expect a more consistent onshore flow to develop over the course of the day which could have the breeze build slowly into the 15-20-knot range from the SW over the central and south Sound. The convergence zone will start in the north Sound around Port Townsend as strong westerly fills from Race Rocks to the East. The CZ will slowly work its way south to Edmonds and north Seattle by the early evening on Sunday.

Tidal Current at West Point
Saturday
0754 Slack
1124 Max Flood .82
1418 Slack
1600 Max Ebb .3
1936 Slack

Sunday
0842 Slack
1212 Max Flood .96
1506 Slack
1648 Max Ebb .38
2106 Slack

I have also included the graph of current velocity over time as it shows a distinctly non-sinusoidal curve so be aware especially with the flood being stronger than the ebb in a predominately southerly breeze situation. A little unusual so watch the COG and SOG.

Have a great weekend but be prepared for just about anything!

Squall Punctuates PSSR Small Boats

Kurt Hoehne Racing, Youth Sailing , , 0 Comment
Squall Punctuates PSSR Small Boats

CYC’s Puget Sound Sailing Regatta (PSSR) last weekend was of the small boat and dinghy fleets, and there were plenty of options from which to choose, including both Hobie 16s and 18s! Saturday it blew in the teens (except for the last-race-of-the-day squall) and Sunday it was light. Life on the committee boat on lumpy Saturday wasn’t the most comfortable and rumor has it there was some mal de mer going around.

The largest fleet in both size boats and numbers was the J/24 class. In 2015 only six J/24’s sailed and last year it was eight. This year it was 14, which is a good sign the fleet has embraced the idea of coming out of Lake Washington for this event. Wayne Pignolet’s Joy Ride won the class with an extremely consistent performance, followed by perennial top boats Self Abuse and Tremendous Slouch.

All photos by Jan Anderson:

Mats Elf won the six-boat 505 fleet in a tight battle over Cody Kowalski while Paul Evenden, Eric Ledbetter and Jay/Lisa Renehan won the Hobie 18, Star and Tasar classes. Results here.

Only two Lasers showed up for the regatta, and were basically absorbed into the RS Aero fleet. Many new faces dotted the Aero fleet, which is great to see. It was Todd Willsie hanging on for a narrow win, especially after a satisfying last race on Saturday when a squall packing around 30 knots rolled through race course. After three firsts and a second on Saturday, Willsie watched his lead start to disappear as Eric Becker, Randy Shuman and David Rogers all showed light air speed.

It was interesting for me to watch the fleets assemble on Sunday from Golden Gardens Park. About 300 yards away from the CYC committee boat the SYC team, with a healthy number of kids Optis and Laser Radials, where happily doing drills with a coach leading the way in a RIB. While Willsie and the others were waiting between starts, the kids were drilling, practicing, MOVING. I understand the Tasar fleet decided to peel away on Sunday and have their own rabbit starts to get more sailing in.

Personally, have a hard time waiting between races, even when a RC is on top of it. I get impatient and cold. And today’s kids are used to pretty much constant engagement of one sort or another. I can’t imagine my 10-year old sitting for 20 minutes between races unless he had an iPad, and then he’d miss the next start for sure.

As we contemplate moving  kids moving into adult dinghy sailing, one of the things we should perhaps look at is how we can reduce the wait time between races or find another way to keep everyone engaged, even when there are multiple classes and challenging logistics. Nowadays I’m usually happy for a bit of a rest, but I didn’t need or want that 40 years ago and I’ll bet neither do kids today.

Bruce’s Brief: Storm Arcing away from the Coast, Small Boat PSSR and early South Straits Preview

Bruce Hedrick Bruce's Briefs, Racing, Weather , , 0 Comment
Bruce’s Brief: Storm Arcing away from the Coast, Small Boat PSSR and early South Straits Preview

Certainly another interesting day out there and real fun for the weather geeks. As we said yesterday, this looked like just another winter weather storm, slightly elevated wind speeds but not as strong as the TV and radio folks would like to have us believe. As I write, the barometer here as well as in the Straits, and along the coast has started to go up which should indicate that this low-pressure system has started to arc away from the coast. In some cases rising rapidly which can be as bad as falling rapidly so we’ll watch those stations. The coastal buffer zone once again is helping to diminish wind speeds over the interior of Western Washington. Note the chart for Cape Elizabeth, which I will try to update before sending this out. I’ve also included the Langley Hill Doppler radar image because you can really see where the low-pressure is centered off our coast, especially if you run the “Reflectivity Loop.” It is clearly moving away from the coast.

As you can see from the surface charts everything is pointing towards a post frontal kind of weekend. I think given the option I probably wouldn’t head out this afternoon and instead just get the boat ready to go tomorrow, late morning. For the north, central, and south Sound expect 15-25 knots for south-southwesterly until mid to late afternoon. Before going anywhere, check the station reports on your VHF. Remember that the definition of heavy weather is the point at which you don’t feel comfortable with you, your crew or your vessel being able to handle the conditions. No harm in just spending a comfortable weekend at the dock getting caught up on boat chores or reading those owner’s manuals.

By Sunday things will ease off in the Sound however along the coast we’ll start to feel the effects of yet another low-pressure system headed our way. Check the 48 hour surface chart. More lows are out there however they are starting to weaken and as we saw this week, the closer they get to our coastal buffer zone, the weaker they become. There is some hope for better weather after all. The downside is in the 500MB charts which have the jet stream well to the south of us which is actually going to allow more moisture into California and keep us cooler and wetter than normal.

For PSSR at Shilshole, the boats and crews that like breezy conditions are going to love Saturday. The challenge will be where CYC sets the start-finish line. That’s because even though the conditions are post-frontal, in other words, a southwesterly flow over the Sound, you will still have a very localized southeasterly coming out of the Ship Canal. This challenge will be compounded by stronger shifts to the southwest as the day goes on and the breeze starts to ease. Very tactical and challenging racing for sure.

I had a request from my friend Peter Salusbury up in Vancouver to gaze deeply into the crystal ball to see what conditions we may have for the best long distance race in the Pacific Northwest, South Straits of Georgia which will be starting on Friday, the 14th of April. Needless to say, if it had started today it would have been quite a thrash but then again we’ve come to expect this of that race. While the 11 April chart continues to show what appears to be an unrelenting string of low-pressure systems out there, they are really starting to weaken, except for that monster 972MB low on the International Dateline. It, however, is not moving our way so at this point conditions are looking relatively benign. Doesn’t mean you can slack off in your safety preparation, however. I’ve included the Navy charts for Friday and Saturday next weekend. I’ll have a special South Straits forecast on Thursday with a weekend post on Friday.

Have a safe and fun weekend!

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. 

 

3719-X2
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