Tacking

A fun day on the water had us racing in 8 - 16 knots. The Rick Johnson trophy is an awesome trophy and one day it would be nice to get Kraken's name on it but this year it was not to be. The main factor, perhaps bizarrely, was our ability to tack in stronger breeze.

Tacking right? Easy! We do it all the time?

Apparently not, and as arms got weary and the wind climbed and the sail got heavier it took us longer and longer to get the sail trimmed and boat speed back up.

Now I've had a chance to sit back and think about it it seems there are a bunch of things that we could have done.

• We could have changed people around on the boat to get fresher arms in place
• I could have either luffed or turned slower once through the wind to help the trimmers. While this would slow the boat down with the strong breeze we'd have been back up to speed much quicker than we were waiting for the headsail to come in.
• We should have risked the jib for race #3. Could have left the genoa strapped down on the deck for a quick swap back. The boat was overpowered upwind during the race and tacking the smaller headsail is a breeze.

As it was we lost several boat lengths on every tack. We failed to make a mark on one layline with a horrible tack back with the pole out to clear it and we were out of contention for that trophy early on in each race.

Downwind conversely the boat felt good, we were getting up in the high 8s and holding pace with the other boats.

While thinking about it I found this article on releasing the Genoa (Sailing World).

Moths Worlds 2016 in Hayama, Japan

Not much sailing involved - but this promo video makes me want to go!

TP52 Downwind

Video courtesy of Scuttlebutt Sailing

CYC Fall Regatta Delivery pictures.

NX2 Wind Transducer Woes Part II, or III, or IV

Over the last couple of years my NX2 wind transducer has frozen on three different occasions. The first time I sprayed it out with water and it worked again for a year. The second time I sprayed it with water and it maintained a small bit of friction running forwards. In the end I resorted to some silicon grease and it worked again for a couple of regattas but froze once more within a month.

Oddly it ran perfectly backwards.

Talking to a couple of people I ascertained that these were tricky to take apart and you can't get spare parts. Given it's frozen nature and the fact that replacement is very expensive I decided to have a go taking it apart anyway.

The transducer is on top of a carbon pole and I pushed a knife in between the two sides of the casing. When levering it apart the flange making a seal between the two sides sheared off - I'm not sure if this is UV damage or because I'm missing some technique. Inside one of the bearings supporting the propeller spindle was very rusty. Makes me think that spraying water in there to free it a year ago was NOT a good idea. Sadly this was the only advice on maintenance I've actually found online. I do wonder though it was already rusting at that point.

Cleaning up the rust I got my transducer going again, the other interior piece look okay. I've sealed the unit with tape for now and am going to try and source a new spindle or bearing and a new case. Or just keep fixing this one until there is no recovery. There is a little more friction than there used to be but I would expect it to work down to ~2 knots.

Other than the issue taking the unit apart its pretty neat inside. The spindle has a black and white ball on the end and a couple of sensors give the instrument information on rotation and frequency. There is no contact between the spindle and the sensors so friction is minimal, weight is also minimal.

Seems a shame not to be able to repair it properly!

This time I remembered to take piccies while up there (and wow - now I've got this blogspot account linked to my phone's backup on google getting the pictures is SUPER easy).

Kraken and Friends

Some of the boats at this weekends regatta stacked up at the end of the day.

CYC Fall Regatta

A fun weekend sailing in the South Bay again left us in a bad position in the regatta - and pretty much every race. We worked our way into good places and lost them, sailed badly downwind on day 1 and started badly all weekend. Coming out of a serious cold running into the regatta my foggy mental state and lack of experienced tactician to force me to sail in the right direction when I'm going the wrong way. Luckily we still had a few minor victories and enjoyed racing in wind from zero to fifteen knots - going from one to the other within thirty minutes at one point.


Highlight of the weekend was watching Melokia almost fall over when hit by a fair gust while on an unexpectedly tight reach. Also fun to sneak away from a becalmed fleet overhearing a voice from behind wonder how we were moving away like that.
Good positions lost through:

• Not sailing well downwind on day 1

• Not covering the fleet upwind on day 2

Bad positions gained through:

• Not starting well all weekend, had to double tack to avoid a collision with a port tack boat on one start had a windward boat refusing to lift up and get out of the way and for the other three races I was late and buried in every start. Regarding those boats the former took a turn even though I didn't protest which was very civil of them the latter admitted wrong doing later on. The way I've been treating boats is they get a single shot - a good apology will go someway towards future leeway on transgressions otherwise the flag hand gets twitchy. A few of boats in the 36.7 fleet now get my flag hand twitchy....

• Sailing in bad air. I'm starting to get to grips with how critical this is but tacks are costly too and the balance is not yet clear (also vs shifts etc).

Lessons:

• More aggressive starts, being over early occasionally is worth it if you're getting decent positions. At the moment we're never over early, and setting ourselves up for bad races.

• Be proactive downwind - if we're slow fix it we shouldn't be slow, we're not slow unless we're not setting our sails correctly.

• Don't throw positions away. Cover, consolidate, cover. Worry about what you've gained more than the one or two positions you might get while letting everyone else potentially threaten you.

• Gybing

• I'm not sure how this came to be but we've had trimmers swapping lines on Kraken during gybes. This is now a banned practice. We can swap them later if needed. Swapping adds huge confusion and at exactly the wrong time. Trimmer needs to push the clew forwards and add wraps as it goes ready for the pressure of the pole, the pole gets brought back, wraps taken off when the sail is well rotated and pressure is lower. I'm open to having the more experienced trimmer take control of both lines through the gybe if that's needed.
• Don't turn too fast. I don't want to stop my turn, but getting ahead of the trimmers is not helping. So my current stance is "I don't want to stop the turn so please trim as fast as possible but I am going to stop".

• Takedowns

• Headsail up earlier in stronger winds

• Pole down earlier, especially in stronger winds. We've done worse in the past but still an issue. Doesn't help when you have to put in an unexpected gybe right at the end but I guess we need to be quicker at saying just jump the pole, headsail up, round the mark and profit.

• Use stretch and blow when reaching above 10 knots 

• In a drifting fest clear your air, even if if feels like you are going the wrong way if you are moving its an advantage and clear air is king. Don't wait 20 minutes before thinking about this.

• Strategy

• Read the forecast again before every race in a regatta, compare with experience, make a guess on what's coming, go in with a plan, every race. This probably would have had us covering the fleet tighter and not getting punished by a 20+ degree shift.

• Random

• Tuning - every race, do it and create a table of settings and conditions

High Latitude Cruiser - Garcia 45

Yesterday I dropped Kraken off at Shelter Island Boat Yard for some TLC. Boring motor sail down marked mostly by a companion sparrow on board for a while - though I did see 10-15 kts breeze rounding Point Loma. In the yard there was a very serious looking 45ish foot boat. Asking around it turned out to be a Garcia 46 dating back to 2003 and had already rounded the world, and spent seasons around Tierra Del Fuego and Alaska.

The name rang a bell and looking into it I was reminded that Garcia had worked with the well known cruising guide author Jimmy Cornell on his latest boat - Adventura.

Their boats have a lot of interesting features. Anchor locker near the mast, shallow draft (<4') center board boats, interior 360 visibility, great layouts on interior and exterior for short handed cruising, lots of hull insulation which must come in handy in both the high and low latitudes.

Fast Cruiser - JP54

I remember seeing concepts for this a few years ago but seems like the boat has made water now.

Consider a fast - offshore racer inspired cruiser. A semi stripped down interior with comfy berths. A Kitchen that rotates inside the boat for weight distribution. A RIB garage.

 

America's Cup - 2015

The fleet races are underway for the next America's cup. I feel like the profile of these events is lower than the boat's deserve so here you go!

The speed at which these races unfold is pretty awesome and the boats look pretty solid. There's been some controversy in how this latest event has been organized but the end game of getting more pro sailors comfortable in racing big boats in close quarters at 30kts seems solid enough and the footage is still very high quality and might help new people understand the sport.

I have a huge amount of respect for Nathan Outteridge and featured his Moth tutorials some while ago. There's a neat video of him going over some of the foiling features of the AC45s.

YachtingWorld foiling overview.

A nice overview of some of the issues and solutions surrounding foiling. I'm looking forward to the current evolution of the Open 60 and whatever the generation following it is. Many issues of control and material stability to be solved still but very exciting to see us steadily get better at flying over the water.

10K page views

Just noticed the blog passed 10k page views - woot!

Race: Beneteau Cup 2015

I went into this weekend with a secret thought we might just win but a hard weekend on the water left us in fourth place after five races - just four points off first place! The bay once again was our undoing we just don't know it that well and combined with one bad race on the ocean where we lost our headsail during a start sequence and were over early (so had to double back and start again, painfully slowly) - somehow we still clawed our way back to 5th. Of course we benefited from issues on other boats too so overall it balances out.

Most importantly there's a huge difference in how we raced this year against last. The fleet has got more competitive as it establishes itself as one of the few big boat one design classes in San Diego and as that's happened we've also improved and are no longer sailing to survive and just make it around the course. We're starting to knock the rough edges off our gybes and tacks, our trim is in the ballpark and we're pushing the other boats hard.

The ethos on Kraken has always been to learn together, to bring a group of people up to a high level of racing, myself included. This has proven hard in some ways and the temptation has always been to just get out there and find the best sailors I can to make up for my own deficiencies on the helm ad turn Kraken into a win stick but the journey is the destination....  Kraken is fast - when we get it right we get rewarded. She makes up for our errors in some ways and keeps it fun.

So right now I'd say I'm equal parts frustrated by our last result, proud of where we've got to and excited about the future races. We've got a couple of tweaks left to Kraken that will get us faster for next year, and I can feel that we're very close to tacking and gybing efficiently. Tacking is all in the helm and initial acceleration, gybing we need to work on trim transition from side to side.

But we're SO close!

/PeAcE

Love this boat

Solid Saturday and Speedy Sunday

We pulled out the stops. Talked through everything that came up on the Wednesday night preceding the regatta and some old faces returned to the boat putting us in a good position to have some fun.

So I was a bit disappointed to find us listed in the B fleet - the lowest rating with a sizable advantage over the other boats. Luckily OYC is a small friendly club and we quickly moved over to being the slowest boat in the A fleet, I had fun telling the crew we'd need to live up to this. Five boats in the A fleet included Pole Dancer (j120), Occams Razor (ft10), Shamen and Gringo (Shock 35s) and Kraken.

Wind came up solidly and the sea breeze piped up shortly before the start of the first so I figured on a fairly steady oscillation and for once got the hoped for behavior.

First race everything was a bit rusty, bad acceleration off the start, missing shifts on our second windward leg. We finished in 4th, not out of touch with the leaders but not really scaring them. As the wind built to 11-12 knots for the second race we were going a lot better and thought we might have corrected into second, later proving to be true. For the third race things were starting to come together and get interesting. Coming down the first run we were second in the water and pushing pole dancer in first. A little tussle with Occams Razor who overlapped to leeward and started trying to push up kept us in second at the mark though potentially unfairly if his proper course had indeed been above the mark with a gybe just before rounding it (though I suspect he wouldn't have made it around in time for the zone and we'd have had an inside overlap and the ability to drive down). Our final beat keep Pole Dancer right there with them crossing a boat length ahead half way up but then karma kicked in, we tacked onto the lay line pole up ready to chase and the boat rounding in between us (different class) stalled out, missed the mark and flopping onto a port tack right in front of us. We had to dive below the boat to avoid contact and then gybe around and slowly slowly make our way back past the mark ourselves. Painful and left us in third rather than fighting for the lead. Perhaps Karma?

In hindsight three better options stand out, in decreasing order of how I think it would have worked out in this situation.

1. I knew current was strong and the boat ahead had been slow and pinching hard. One more boat length out (over standing) as we could probably have luffed our way around it. Maybe two boat lengths! 
2. Crash tack earlier, the gybe cost a lot. Though it's possible we'd have fouled incoming starboard rackets we could have claimed collision avoidance blah blah 
3. We could have hooked the buoy behind the blocking boat and against claimed being forced into for collision avoidance. I'm not sure though that we could have both avoided contact and made it around the buoy on the correct side.

End of day we were in third.

One more race was scheduled for Sunday - a longer random leg race. This ended up being 7nm and I was worried that the reaching ft10 and j120 were going to run away with it but we had a solid upwind leg putting us into second place and held that for a while. The middle of the race was a constricted with a mark that needed to be left to port but once past that we were free to work the shifts. Partly we were forced into breaking out from the shore current relief as we couldn't quite clear the pier leaving Shamen (who can out point us and could) hugging the coast while we started playing the shifts but the shifts seemed to equal the current assist and we kept our distance ahead to the end. It wasn't clear how far ahead the faster boats were but in the end we got second on corrected time.

Sailing on both days was awesome and we just got better and better. Third place overall with the one incident between us and second overall.
I'll take that.

Girlfriend

Kraken's PO Greg Lynn followed up with a 42ft trimaran that he had a hand in designing - Girlfriend. Launched in the last few months videos are starting to come out of her moving.

Hopefully we'll see her taking on the larger boats for line honors in the coastal races - keep your eyes out for her!

Weak Wednesday

I'll admit it, I haven't been trying that hard in our Wednesday night race instead treating them as a good way to build some crew skills. We've had fun but just made outrageous mistakes through lack of application (not knowing the course, being late to the start etc). With this race though we went in with a strong crew and I decided to try properly thinking we'd have a good chance of challenging for the lead. At the end of the day we were significantly behind Shamen and the following are some notes on where I think we were losing out.

• Start - lost a couple of boat lengths right away. Should have been more aggresive about keeping position, less early. Starting on the second row would have been just as good as where we did start. 3 boat lengths, and lack of tacKtical initiative.
• Tacking - I was too aggressive going into tacks. Tighten main, loosen headsail slightly, let boat round into tack without forcing rudder. Try to steal distance to windward. Maybe half a boat length per tack, 4 boat lengths total.
• Post tack - Acceleration wasn't great despite a solid breeze. Trimmers need to use a power position and then trim more consistently.
• Gybing - need to smoothly move the spinnaker around the boat. Turn will follow the spinnaker. Keep it moving until we're on the other side - we can't complete the turn until the sail is around the boat and it gets the guy closer to the bow for pole attachment. Might have lost 2 boat lengths.
• Bottom mark - pole down a little earlier, spinnaker down faster (start it coming down even before the gybe). Fore deck was right they wanted this. In wider out closer so we have a bit of time to power up into the beat. 1 boat length.
• Shifts - Wind likely very similar this Saturday, it was oscillating in about a 10 degree range and we weren't tacking on it. Limit tacks to two per short leg, four per long leg but try and get the shifts. Boat lengths? Unknown... a few. Let's say 4 but it could be more.
• Bottom - no-one likes a dirty bottom. It'll be clean for the weekend - Boat lengths - 1.
• Pole - Need to be more aggressive moving pole and pole height. We saw significant increases on speed when we did actually adjust it. Boat lengths - 2.

17 boat lengths ~ 500 ft. Could have been the difference to first place.

So  - before the regatta this weekend we'll have a little team talk.

Main - Tacking - when tacking we're going to tighten up slightly and we're going to loosen the jib an inch right after.
Helm - going to drift into the tack, then chase the telltales to keep driving to windward as long as possible.
Trim - Tacking, Power position first, then trim in as speed builds.
Main -Tacking, Power position first, then trim in as speed builds.
Trim - Gybing - Sail needs to move smoothly from one side to another, we shouldn't be waiting to get into good positions to see the sail, and we have to have it trimmed to the new side faster so we can rotate the boat under it.
Pit / Mast - Pole height needs to be considered right after setting the spinnaker and right after each gybe - it may vary on each side. Look up at the sail and see where the break is, it should be center or slightly above center if it isn't push the pole height the opposite way you want the break to move (up if the break is too high, down if it is too low).
Tactician - Wind shifts and pressure! Also in the start make sure we a) know our course, b) know the favored end and c) give the other boats a hard time!
Tuning - check and adjust rig for conditions at start of every race.

Let's follow our Weak Wednesday with a Strong Saturday!

Matchracing Skills

If you haven't seen it and enjoy racing the Alpari Matchracing Tour has some great videos.

This is a nice example, the boat control is just supreme. Watch the spinnakers fly through the gybe!

Foilers - coming soon to water near you!

With the moth firmly established but on the extreme end of sailing and the Gunboat firmly out of most people reach its nice to see some foiling action starting to come closer to my reality.

Courtesy of the Yachting World you tube channel meet the Whisper:

What about the laser? There are so many of these lying around just awaiting a new set of blades..

 And this is pretty interesting...

2015's JP Morgan Round The Island Race

One day I'm going to take part in this!

More Coastal Racing

We took Kraken from Oceanside to Dana Point and back over the weekend. This was two races one in each direction and follows on from our DNF earlier this year, stranded by low winds. As no-one else finished that race everything was still to play for.

Nine boats entered and our troubles started early when I got to the boat and realized that mis-communciation with our diver left a carpet on the underside of the boat, with the rudder looking very bad. Having anticipated a fairly leisurely setup instead I found myself with a brush strapped to a boat pole and my head in the water seeing what I could scrub off!

John, Sarah, Jordan and Jonathan all appeared and we set off.

Wind initially was good and the normal adverse current was missing and after our 11:42am start it seemed for a while that we were making good ground, might be in in the top four boats out of nine and could be sipping cold beer before four in the afternoon.

Instead of building though the sea breeze steadily backed off and stayed abeam. Boats flying asymmetricals or code 0's took off and we sat in second to last for most of the race. Having settled for this everything changed right at the end - proving that even when there seems nothing to fight for its well worth pushing hard. Shamen tried to go above Obsession and got taken to the moon, at the same time the breeze started to really shut down and there was a nasty reflective chop. We snuck under Shamen, and Obsession and Hanky Panky in the last few hundred metres finishing half a boatlength ahead of Obsession in 5/9.

Dana Point harbor was pretty busy, Tuna Crabs by the thousands, people milling around the restaurants and boardwalk. Small sharks, cats on kayaks and Orange Counties limos finished the scene but we were all pretty sun drained and hit a fairly early night.

The next day we came back on a line much closer to shore and had to take some imaginative lines through kelp beds. Shamen rolled us about half way through the race and pulled away but we were able to come in third and for a while as the wind shifted behind us our inside route looked like it stood a chance of getting us back into a fight with Shamen, but not to be. Third it was.

Not sure exactly what order boats finished on the Saturday - our final position for the weekend was somewhere between 2nd and 4th.

Lessons learnt - verify diving schedule corresponds to races (I normally do!), sail faster.... We got a better reaching shape on our #1 on the Sunday with a different outhaul position but seeing slower boats who we'd been about to reel in pull away with their asyms was a bit annoying, confirmation of the known hole in our sail inventory.

Waiting

Planned to bring Kraken back up post Yachting Cup yesterday but glad I didn't. Planning on coming back tomorrow now when this has settled down.

The normal "safe" channel between waves is middle of the picture.

The Yachting Cup was an up and down affair. A couple of second places (listed as third on one race but successfully protested the second place boat for a fairly extreme port starboard incident), but also a couple of last places. Things got better on the Sunday and it was a relief to end with a happy boat at the end of the weekend.

More to come on this race later.

How things change

After our light winds practice at the weekend I was left reflecting on how things change.

The boat was split, half experienced, half inexperienced. We started with basic trim upwind. I had intended on working on acceleration practice but with light winds and cruising sails up quickly scaled back to tailing, grinding and basic helming, getting people into new positions.

Downwind we practiced free flying the spinnaker with people trimming who hadn't been through this before (nor had much experience trimming) and pulled off a dozen gybes.

A year ago we were happy to do two.

Then we doused (mexican) and went upwind a bit again.

Next came a tack set.

And another mexican douse.

Then a gybe set.

And a windward douse.

So three sets, three douses, three different set types, all crisp and fast, two different douses also crisp and fast beyond a small matter of the hatch hot being open ready for one of them.

The hatch was the only major mistake.

A year ago we'd have managed a single hoist, a couple of gybes and would have considered ourselves lucky to not wrap the spinnaker hard on the forestay.

Vidoe: G4 second video - WIPEOUT!!!

I'll stand by this being the future of cruising but when I order mine it's going to have an automatic mainsheet dump.....

Glad everyone is okay especially the guy you see smack his back on the mast!

Video: Gunboat G4 first video

This is a "weekender" with galley, enclosed head and comfy beds, not to mention a decent sized entertainment area and the chance of 40kts speeds.

This is the future of sailing.

Photos: The Border Run.

Testing out the Jib Top on the delivery to Dana Point, worked awesome then but in the race the wind was just too light and we swapped back to the spinnaker soon after trying it. Nice to finally see it working properly on the delivery though.

The power stations on this coast plague you in light air. You can see them for hours....

Morning of the race, Charlie Wind Whisperer on the helm, Nick settling in, Sarah hiding.

Jonathan making a brief appearance above deck.

Before cooking up a feast as the sun set....

...which was tasty and hot and spicy as it got cold

Last moments with the spinnaker before a late charge into the channel at 3am. After this the wind switched 180 and we sailed upwind after dark.

This was the last photo I took. After this the wind started picking up and we tacked our way to the south past Point Loma.

Returning back with Jonathan on board we took an aggresive shortcut inside the kelp beds and wiggled out to the north, the photo below shows our path. This saved us 40 minutes at least over the longer and safer route south and around the beds that I take solo.

And right after we popped out Jonathan called out "Whales Ahoy" and there they were!

Later their small cousins turned up

And for once I was sailing home in company, with other sailboats running to both Oceanside and further north.

Equipment: Nexus Race Steer Pilot

I have to say that the steer pilot, set to AWA tracking, came into it's own after dark last night. It really allowed the helmspeople to steer a tight course in the dark.

Push the needle to the zero!

Race: The Border Run 2015

Congrats to the Border Run crew on a well fought third in class. Pretty good considering half the race was reaching in light air which is the big hole in our sail wardrobe.

Slow but sunny day and looked likely a long long night but then the wind came back to 10 knots on the nose and we finished with a good few hours of upwind sailing, other boats around us and a nice spinnaker hoist and run down the channel at 2am.

Tired today, but 8th place on corrected time out of 30 odd boats in challenging conditions seems like a good result.

Hmmmm, would have been a good race to break out our 60 rating and the oversize asym...

Photos: NOODS, outsideimages.com

Paul Todd's photos are a cut above most of the race images I've seen. He got some great shots of Kraken at the NOODs this year.

http://www.outsideimages.com/photo-gallery-nood-san-diego-2015

This is one of my favorites.

Video: First One Design Win - SD NOODs race 7

Neat Video by Jonathan on the bow with footage from Jordan's camera too.

Our first one design win, stayed clear of the fleet, had the right sail, kept mistakes minimal.

Video: Moths: Banging the Corners cup

I really enjoyed this coverage of some of the best sailors in the world going head to head in their moths. It has some nice on board footage giving a sense of the speed of these craft and Loick Peyron proves himself pretty funny :)

Found the video on Sail-World.com which I found looking for info on Daisy Staysails for the upcoming BorderRun race. This website looks likely to be worth spending some time on. 

Video: Crusader sending it.

While this blog is mainly about my experiences sailing a Beneteau 36.7 in the gentle climes of Southern California there are times when other boats in less pleasant, well, less gentlemanly surroundings just catch the eye.

This video is of a boat called Crusader. It's an Elliot 35 so about the same basic size as Kraken but less comfort, bigger sails and some serious miles under their belts sailing at high speed.

It got my attention from the front page of SailingAnarchy and the boat has featured there a few times. I love how calm the crew always seems as their 35 ft boat almost hits 30 knots under jib and reefed main.

Video: Featured 36.7: Lula Belle

Lula Belle showing us how to sail in real weather!

While we're talking about Lula Belle I should mention that she was actually one of the deciding factors in our purchase of Kraken. There's a short but sweet video of her moving at some cracking speeds. I've added it below.

Nice Shot from 2014 NOODs

Trawling the interwebs for pictures from this year, still seeming few and far between, I found this AWESOME shot from last year.

Scuttlebutt

Got a mention on ScuttleButt for our third :)

Race: San Diego NOODs 2015

A year ago our first One Design tournament was the 2014 NOODs. Out of nine boats we were ninth, eighth, ninth and, wait for it, ninth. While we might have been able to improve on the second day we'll never know as I had to withdraw for family reasons.

I'd entered with some illusions on where our limited practice and lack of collective race hours were going to place us, but in the reality dawning there was a glimmer of hope. A couple of legs where we were mixing with the fleet. And it was fun.

2015 was going to be a different matter, on the racing front not the fun factor, and with a great group of people who had all raced on Kraken in the prior year signed up I went in feeling we had an outside chance at a top three finish.

The picture above was dawn on my trip down. The Santa Anna's kicking in already it was going to be a hot hot weekend but looking likely to hold wind in the afternoon. This was true on my delivery trip and held true for the weekend peaking at 15-20 knots breeze for the final race.

Saturday
Saturday started hot and light. We were buried in the start and never got to play the wind on our first upwind beat, downwind we'd closed back up again but as we approached the finish heard them shortening the course and finishing the boats.

6th.

Second race, 8 -12 knots, we were solid on the first beat but had the spinnaker halyard hold the genoa up (hadn't re-led it post the previous drop on the starboard side). This cost some time but once the bow team had diagnosed the hold up they wrapped the genoa in a poor mans roller furler and we finished fourth. The start had been better but still not great.

4th.

Third race we decided to approach the start differently and come in on port looking for a gap. For once the fleet was all pretty cohesive hitting the line and we ducked stern after stern before tacking behind Adventure at the committee boat. This ended up working out really well as we were able to hold the fleet below us as we lifted on the great circle. Adventure was the only boat who remained free and were able to hold in front of us on the final beat. As we've seen them do before.

2nd.

One thing worth noting was that for the first couple of races we were tuned lighter than ever before, about 29 on the loos gauge, and pointing sucked. In the final race we upped to about 31 and seemed to be able to point with the other boats.

Sunday
Coming back to the boat I felt we'd probably worked through a few kinks. The expectation was for potentially lighter winds but that wasn't what transpired.

Our first race we stuck with the 31 tuning and saw 7-13 knots, 13 towards the end. Boat speed was great the furschnaffle was Kodachrome calling a penalty for us as our kite touched their shroud right at the windward mark rounding. Getting the kite down and pulling two 360s was a lot of work and something we need to practice if we're going to get serious about winning these regattas. We got really lucky and the fleet got bunched at the leeward mark allowing for a significant recovery. Second beat and runs were clean and we almost snuck 2nd, ironically from Kodachrome but according to the results got third. Must have been by inches or perhaps they projected their kite better!

We made the choice ahead of time to stay near the committee boat on the start and had a pretty good start with a timedish run.

3rd

The second and final race of the day saw building breeze. We were seeing over 17 knots as the other fleets started and we scrambled to get battens in our #3 and tighen the rig. The fleet ended up split between #1s and #3s but I think the #3 with a moderate rig was a good place to be. Lot of power, fast tacks and good speed. I'll check but think the outers were at about 37 with loose inners.

With the rerig and sail change we were setting up in the five minutes and scrambling for position. We hit the line with speed at the boat end but on the second row, catching a break as Adventure was forced to spin around. Not in a position to tunnel through Sorcerer who'd pushed Adventure out the way we tacked out and sailed a clean beat leading at the windward mark. With winds to 20 knots we headed for the leeward mark deep, sometimes by the lee, with enough separation for the fleet behind to be unable to do anything.

Snagging a piece of kelp shortly after the leeward mark our lead started dwindling but Joe was able to hook some out and we got enough speed back to hold on comfortably for the win.

Our first One Design win.

1st.

And taking us to third in the regatta!

I have to spend some time digesting the weekend. It was an amazing amount of fun and hard fought by our crew racing nearer the top of a strong fleet than we've been used to. There are many things I've read about in the last couple of years that make more sense now, not worrying about a front row start so much as starting with speed, air and the ability to go where you want, sailing clean, tuning right - hell we're still learning how to make this boat sing.

I love seeing the other boats storming and realizing we're doing the same.

I love having a crew come together, get past a disappointing start and steadily improve through a weekend.

I really need to make sure my spinnaker doesn't hit other boats.

I don't like it when big boats collide. This wasn't us, but was in our fleet and there's no call for it if it can be avoided. We have flags and a protest room if needed. We can take our turns and race on or have a panel of experts help us through the rules.

Video: Coastal DNF

From Jonathan!

Video(s): Nathan Outteridge sailing the Moth

Nathan presents a set of videos on sailing the Moth. They demonstrate just how tricky this boat is and present a fantastic level of video presentation and informative narration from one of the top sailors.

I'd love Nathan to do more of these for keelboats and other dinghys!

Halyard maintenance - End for Ending - a trick

After blowing our jib halyard in the opening race I built a new one but then started having nightmares (quite literally!) about the other halyards on the boat, all of the same age, and all with a strange lock(?) knot right in the splice that looks like it was just weakening the line.

So I started "end for ending" the lines. Moving the cover over the stripped and UV damaged core and putting the eye splice on the other end. The first line I did just pushing a foot or two along the rope at a time and it took forever. The second I tied one end to a door handle and stretched the line out, this allowed me to work a couple of yards at a time and the process went much much faster!

First test with my new halyard / rebuilt halyards was okay, sails stayed up. Each halyard has three splices - a locked brummel around a shackle for the eye, a cover bury at the point the core comes out and reaving splice at the loose end to allow a line to be easily attached and pull through. I also added a cover over the main wear point on the jib halyard - again buried back into the core.

Here's the new and bright yellow (most lines on Kraken are blue) jib halyard going up the mast, the others I can just use the existing halyard as a feeder but as the jib had blown I needed to feed again.

At some point I'm going to post a video of the climbing process. I use two ascenders, one to some foot loops and the other to a bosun's chair. I also rig a line to a climbing harness and wrap it around the mast, that way any fall would be checked by the shrouds or spreaders, hopefully before hitting the deck.

To climb you stand up in the loops and pull the chair up, then sit an lift the feet loops. Takes about 10 minutes to get up and down, perhaps less now - with practice!

Whale Breath, and a race with a DNF.

Long slow race in light air into the biggest wind shadow of the area - Cardiff about 12 miles south of Oceanside - we pulled the plug at 8:20pm still 4 miles short and going nowhere fast. Most of the other boats pulled the plug too but maybe Shaman finished still waiting to find out.

Saw these guys -  insane life cycle!!

Lots of dolphins, some seals, a couple of whales during the light and a most surreal experience - while we were sailing at night we were flanked by some whales. We could hear them breathing but not see them.

Race wise I forgot to retune the rig so we were a bit tight but rounded the bottom mark in second (out of eight). Pole Dancer drew a big lead back upwind but as it got lighter we closed and closed and they quit at the point we were passing them. Foot when its light!!!

Shaman took the inside, got the expected shift and were slightly ahead when it got dark, but we were pulling that back too last I saw.

Stunning sunset and amazing moon rise over the mountains.

Dolphins!

Didn't take many (any?) pictures during the Midwinters but on the way back to Oceanside these guys took a nice flyby!

Technique: Hoisting your sail, solo

Kraken is setup for crewed sailing with halyards led aft to the cockpit. With a crew on board you typically have someone "jump" the halyard at the mast - a J motion using body weight to pull the line out and down then returning it to the mast base. During the return to the mast the pit man tails the line taking up slack. Done right the sail goes up super fast.

Harder to do solo but recently I've found a trick that helps at least when conditions are calm enough for it to be safe. Typically I've just hauled on the line from the cockpit, this is slower and on Kraken leaves a decent amount to grind up on the winch, the problem being not being able to use your weight and an extra 90 degree line turn absorbing some of your power. It also leaves you a long way from any snags.

Instead I stand in front of the mast facing aft. I do the same J motion with (for the main halyard) the line at the mast in my left hand and the tail led around a winch and back to my right hand. I then tail to myself.

Much faster!

For a while I tried doing this in the normal jumping position to the side of the mast but the tailing angle in the other hand was not comfortable.

To make this super slick I'm considering adding a turning block on the mast to have the halyard pull against.

As always tether yourself securely and don't fall in!!!

Race: Midwinters

This was a fun regatta, 7 boats entered and we cemented our more recent experiences of being in the fleet rather than following it around.

With a last minute withdrawal who magically appeared on another boat but not on their crew manifest we ran a little light for the conditions, in the past I'd have pushed hard to get numbers up but with the people on the boat had a lot of confidence that we'd pull it off.

Going into it we decided to have Sarah work both the mast and trim or tail. During maneuvers John took on Sarah's trimming duties and otherwise kept his head out of the boat. If things didn't work out it was nice knowing we had the experience to adjust and try different approaches but it worked pretty well and we sailed this way for both days.

Day one was light air from the SW.

Race 1 we picked up significant kelp can despite multiple attempts couldn't budge it, something we have to work on more. Despite dragging this from the first upwind beat we managed to hold onto 4th place.

Race 2 was going better we rounded the second leeward mark in third and right on the leaders when our genoa halyward blew. Crewwork getting the sail back on board and attached to spin1 was pretty quick but we lost a several places as the rest of the fleet had been compressed behind us. Luckily we were pushed far right while recovering and I think this worked to our benefit, putting us in 5th place in the end.

Race 3 (two beats and one run) we led until the last gybe when we had Adventure breathing down our neck and a split decision on board on what to do - sail a hot angle and fast or slow and inside. In the end we did neither, they were inside at the mark and we finished in second.

Day two heavier air (10-13kts, predicted at 15+).

Jon Gardner at North Sails pulled out some stops and we had a new spinnaker to play with, just missing day 1 because of the terrible weather the rest of the US has been suffering. With the new sail boat speed downwind was awesome and it seemed that only Sorcerer was on the same pace but it also felt like they weren't holding it as deep as we could. We decided to experiment with the #3 jib while the fleet went with their Genoas and in the end I think the power lost in the lulls was enough to push us back a bit because of the bumpy water, but this is a learning curve and running a few hundred pounds under the crew weight limit we played it conservatively. Next time in similar conditions we'll go the other way and see what the difference is.

Race 4 A little under-powered, ended 3rd, nothing much in my memory banks.

Race 5 A little under-powered and lost some boat lengths when a boat forced us to luff hard to avoid likely contact and then left us sitting slow and right on her - we had to tack away and subsequently sailed the wrong way with the same boat passing just in front of us at the windward mark (then turning down in front of us and later claiming that my call for room was invalid - apparently missing the point of 18.3, though in this case my belief is both boats sailed the rules perfectly). We were on starboard but my protest was thrown out due to incorrect flag use - a baseball cap doesn't quantify as a stand in and apparently there's a 17 second time limit. We'll be better prepared next time. In a close finish we ended up 5th by a single boat length and only a few more to 3rd.

Conclusions:

3rd place in the last race would have given 3rd in the regatta, we ended up in 4th place overall from Adeline by two points and were only 8 points off the two lead boats Adventure and Melokia. I think the final position was fair and there's work to be done yet to really challenge the leaders but we'll get there :)

Running with John's eyes outside the boat was awesome and I concentrated on the telltales more.

Crew work was amazing. The bow was solid. Power was good, we worked hard on acceleration out of tacks and playing a clean and simple race. We didn't have a single major spinnaker problem, might have been a bit slower here and there than we'll be at the end of the year but many of the other boats were having to deal with major wraps and spinnaker resets while we didn't.

We also consolidated some more rules knowledge that will help and we hit a few different boat on boat situations that will get played differently next time.

Lastly this was a great chance to play with the jib, I think it was just slightly the wrong decision in the conditions but this was a good chance to get a feel for it against other 36.7's all running Genoas.

Great practice for the NOODs next month where we'll play a couple of extra tricks hidden up our sleeves, not to mention have more hands on deck!

Gear: Bad News: Flaky paint

Pulled Kraken out of the water a couple of weeks ago and as she started drying up a couple of paint flakes came off, then some more, then... lots.

Looks like an earlier layer - not sure when but it was dark bottom paint coming off and at times red paint left underneath, had been applied wrong - with a primer that hadn't bonded to the underlying paint.

Solution? 5k of sodablasting, in SD. Likely some fairing, and new primer and paint. The end result, looking on the positive side, is we'll lose ten years of bottom paint and its weight. Also we'll know that it's done right.

Still - annoying!

Don't look here

Or here...

but still looks pretty if you don't look too close!

Race: Good way to end the year

We wrapped up 2014 with the Holiday Regatta in Oceanside. This was a three race series with the A fleet consisting of a J/130, a couple of Shock 35s and Kraken. Winds were light and shifty, 30 degree plus swings, no respect for a forecast, the upwind leg of race becoming the downwind leg of race two.

We placed well up the first beat and were in a solid position at the gybe mark - then got super lucky with a shift and crossed the line first, despite being the slowest boat of the fleet. In fact only Rasa from the previous fleet finished in front of us and only by a boat length. Nice start!

Second race we were doing really well but snagged some kelp near the end. having been right on Rasa's tail (Rasa swept the B fleet) we started dropping back but crossed the line some distance behind Shamen and Sirocco in our fleet. Turns out we won by 17 seconds over Shamen on corrected time and 19 over Sirocco. Woot!

The third race we split from the fleet and hit the wrong side of a shift. Never recovered from there. I never checked the corrected times but we won't have been too far off the others. Anyway, damage done at that point, regatta won.

Fun day, Kraken's first win under me and a great way to wrap up 2014!

I particularily like the second picture below as we're about to cross the finish significantly ahead of Sirocco with the yellow sail! Okay okay not significantly but if you add the 60 odd seconds a mile in...