Hot Rum #3

I am too tired to post a review of the race today, but suffice it to say we took 2nd (of 27) in class for the regatta. We finished 15th overall today out of 146 boats, and took a 3rd place in class. Not a bad showing as we are still figuring this boat out and the main sail is within a few hours of just blowing up in our faces. Thank you very much to everyone that crewed for any of the races. Today, we had Geoff, Adam, Warren, Mike, Devina, and Scott on board for the final race. This will probably have been the last race for Karma this year as we take a break for the holidays. Also, Theresa is getting home January 17th, so very soon she will see the new Karma for the first time. Results.

Have a happy holidays everyone.

Hot Rum #2

So the wind gods that smiled on us two weeks ago with extremely heavy air decided to show us what the opposite feels like on Sunday. There was little to no wind the entire race, I think the most we saw was maybe a puff to 6 knots as we were finishing. Karma does not like light air, but we ended up a respectable 6th in class which we were pretty happy with. We were only 10 seconds out of 5th, and in the end we learned a lot about what makes this boat go in the glassy stuff and I think our performance in light air will only improve. We started with too much shape to the jib and realized the boat like a flatter jib which let us point much better after the adjustment was made. I also accidentally wiped some bottom paint on my keel window, so I need to make sure to get that off before the next race so we can see the kelp on the keel.

Overall a great day with Adam, Geoff, Mike and Devina on board as crew. More importantly, we were able to get the boat put together in time for this race, which was only possible because of people helping me to get it done. Thank you to everyone that helped get Karma back on the course in 2 weeks.

More photos can be found here.

Some more photos of Hot Rum #1

DA-WOODY got some nice photos of us sailing back in after the boom broke.

Hot Rum #1 = Carnage

Today started off great. It was forecast to blow pretty hard and everyone was pretty excited to get some heavy air sailing in. We got a little more than we expected, but we'll get to that later.

We started off great at the line and were quickly passing boats on the first leg of the race, which was supposed to be a reach out to a buoy off of 3SD. The wind was cranking with probably a solid 18 with gusts to 25 with some bigger gusts to 30. We had a full main and the #3 jib up and were averaging about 6.8 or so heading out of the bay. We were still picking off some boats and were in pretty good shape for our class when we started hearing radio chatter about a missing mark. We looked around (the waves were pretty big) and realized we could not see the mark either. A couple of minutes later we also realized that we were at buoy 1SD, which is past where the mark should have been. Some mild cursing and we decide we should round 1SD and head downwind for the next mark. Thankfully most of the fleet is still looking for the buoy and we are still in excellent shape.

We take off on an epic downwind run. The waves were too big for us to set a kite and keep the boat under control so we are heading downwind doing 8's with a top speed of 11.54 on one of the larger waves. I can't easily convey how big the waves were out there today. It was insane, edge of control, fast sailing. We had one surf where the wave caught up to the transom and filled the cockpit with water, but aside from that things were going smoothly. We were in great shape looking to round the leeward mark in second or third place overall (or so we thought). We set up for the last gybe around the mark and the boom decides that it is done playing and snaps at the vang attachment point. While we are getting the boom down below and the main off the jib halyard decided to part. Awesome, so we are sitting right next to the leeward mark with the boom in two pieces and the jib in the water to leeward.

A true credit to the crew, no one is hurt, and we are all still pretty calm. We get the main down, the jib down, and then check for lines overboard and get the engine on. We are making all of 1.3 knots towards home with the engine on. We start to pull out the #3 jib but realize it has a tear in the luff, so we pull out the #2. I have to tell you, the boat was extremely well behaved with the #2 and no main, and in fact we are passing boats and hanging with a lot of boats that should have been faster than us but just had up too much sail area.

We tack to get around Zuniga jetty and the starboard runner parts also. Awesome, thankfully the other runner was still snug and we continue home under the jib.

So the damage for today was:

1) Boom in two pieces
2) Jib halyard
3) Running backstay

Good news. It was epic and a ton of fun up until everything went to shit. No one got hurt, and everyone was encouraged to put on life jackets as we got out into the big waves. The bad news, the RC abandoned the race before we even headed downwind but we were so far out we couldn't hear them. So in reality we could have just sailed home and it is entirely likely we wouldn't have broken anything.

The first race that wasn't

I had hoped that our first race on Karma would have gone fairly smoothly, getting around the course clean with a decent result. It didn't happen. My CRA membership was not updated in time, so we were trying to explain who I was to the Race Committee 20 minutes before the start. Then, on our first set we blew apart one of our spin sheets, and without a spare, we were unable to set the kite again. We decided to race the first race, but realizing that there was no way we were going to be competitive we decided to call the racing, broke out some beer and cruised around the bay. Crew for the impromptu booze cruise was Andrew Constantine, Mike and Heather Stoll, and Shannon Bertrand and her friend. I have to tell you, the booze cruise was a very enjoyable afternoon.

Lessons learned:
1. You can't race and try to use old gear. I spent last Monday evening making new spin sheets for the boat. Next month will probably be the halyards. Month after that will be the random control lines. It isn't worth it to put the effort to get a crew together and not be able to race due to gear failure.
2. The runners take a lot more planning for your pre-start game. The new Karma is very different from the last one, and it will take some getting used to.
3. Always bring plenty of beer. In the end, the goal of going sailing is to have fun. Despite not finishing the regatta everyone seemed to have a great time.

More pics here.

Next races are going to be the SDYC Hot Rums. The calendar has been updated on the right.

New Oracle Tri

Went sailing today on Karma and took photos of the new Oracle Tri. Check them out here.

New Karma - New bottom - New sails

The joke goes something like the two happiest days you have owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Well I went a grand total of 4 days without a boat. Mike Casinelli (our spin trimmer from worlds) was trying to get rid of his old boat after having just purchased a Cal 36. The Kirby 30 (called Scrambled) had been very actively raced before falling into neglect before Mike saved her. While Mike almost never raced the Kirby (renamed Good Fortune), he did a ton of work cleaning her up and fixing her up.

Mike wanted to get one last race in on his Kirby before getting rid of her, so we decided to do the double handed race around the Coronado Islands. While racing we talked about his new boat, and how I had just sold Karma. Well as fate would have it, we decided that I should purchase the Kirby, and we should make a run at some of the local regattas next season. A quick e-mail to Theresa (who is deployed in Qatar), and my lovely and very beautiful wife let me buy a new boat without her ever having seen it. Having a boat that can stay in the water and isn't as extreme as the melges helped sell the idea.

The Kirby was in great shape in every respect except for two things, she needed a new bottom and her main is hurting. A quick call to a local boat yard, and we now have a new bottom.
Before:


After:


Next was a quick trip to the Ullman loft to order a new main. While there Chuck Skewes just happened to let me know that they had a carbon jib for a Kirby 30 laying around the loft that had only been up twice. So there is a new carbon #1 sitting in my garage, and the boat will have a new main in the next couple of months. Again, since Theresa is gone, I asked her if we should go carbon on the new sails or save some money and go with a dacron type main. Theresa starts asking some questions, and one of them is "Will the main last more than 5-6 regattas?" I started laughing explaining that now that we weren't doing the melges thing anymore, the main would last more like 2-3 years. Once she found that out, she immediately said go carbon. Got to love it.

I am hoping our first regatta in the new Kirby 30 Karma will be the PHRF Area G champs October 11-12 in San Diego.

Karma is sold

Karma is moving to Texas. As sad as I am to see her go, she is going to a good home and is going to be raced one-design a lot more than I ever could have. The decision to sell such a great boat was difficult, but with plans for children in the near future and the cost of the campaign starting to escalate it was time for her to go.

Karma was not that bad when the major regattas were on the West Coast of the US, but with the circuit gearing up towards the '09 Worlds in Annapolis, all the major regattas have shifted to the East Coast, and it just became to expensive to keep her.

That said while the Melges 24 era of my career is over, I also purchased a Kirby 30. While not nearly as fast or glamorous as the Melges, it will be a great boat for San Diego and PHRF racing. It will be a big change for me, and nothing will replace the thrill of closing in on the leeward gate at 18 knots overlapped with a few other boats, but it was time to move on.

I am not sure if I will just continue this blog with the new boat, or I will start a new one, either way, I will let you know. Thank you for following along with Karma on such a great journey. All of us that have sailed her have benefited from the experience, she will be missed.

George Roland
Former owner of USA-131 Karma

All dressed up and ready to go

Karma is all ready to head up to Long Beach for Long Beach Race Week 2008. As mentioned before, we did have some repairs that needed to be done to the boat. As you can see, the old pig-tail, which holds the mast up and is used to adjust our mast rake (fore and aft adjustment) is rusted and is actually cracked at the fitting. We also replaced the cleat that holds up the spin halyard and shoved something into the middle of the halyard to make it thicker in the cleat area.




That second photo shows the thicker part on the left side there, not sure if it will turn out okay in the photo, but hopefully it will work okay this weekend.

Also, due to the keel having been damaged AGAIN during a tow (this is getting ridiculous) we have changed the way we shove foam around the keel. Hopefully this will work better.






That is about it for us, some small clean up and then the normal boat prep tomorrow night, and then off to the races Friday. Wish us luck and you should be able to follow along from the Long Beach Race Week website.

Karma gets some work done

There are some updates to report. First, we are no longer going to race Whidbey Island, there were a number of issues, crew, time, money, and lack of any top boats entered all made us realize that we would be better off allocating resources somewhere else. The good news is... NO MORE WEIGH INs till Annapolis!! Ahh, the sweet taste of french fries.

In two weeks we have Long Beach Race week where we will race for the Melges 24 Gold Cup. In prep for this regatta we are getting a number of things fixed for this regatta. This is the typical process before any major one design regatta. Make a list of things that caused issues last regatta or that were broken, modify anything the crew thought could be improved, and then give the boat a good cleaning. Our list after San Francisco was fairly small, we needed to solve the spin halyard slipping in anything over 20 knots, replace the backstay, fix the broken spin bag bracket, and we felt that we should probably replace our "pig tail," which literally holds the mast up.

Last Saturday Geoff Davis and I met over at Coronado Mobile Storage to work the spin halyard issue. As is typically the case, as we started to work on replacing the cleat for the spin halyard I noticed that the keel was resting against the front of the keel trunk, which is really bad, but more on that later. We replaced the spin halyard cleat and also pulled the spin halyard, which I dropped off today to get it modified to make it a little thicker in the specific area. I also have the required line for the backstay on order which should arrive tomorrow and I will then fabricate a new backstay to replace the old one. We then pulled off the pig tail and also have another one being fabricated.

Now back to the keel. If you scroll down a bit you will see what Karma looks like on her trailer. Her keel literally lifts into the boat to allow the boat to trailer much more easily as it is not 10 feet high on the trailer (if the keel did not raise). The downside is that the keel can get damaged while towing if the boat is not aligned properly on the trailer. We place foam around the keel to prevent the keel from moving around in the box, but unfortunately during the tow home from SF the foam in the front of the keel slipped out and now there is a nice rub mark on the leading edge of our keel showing the carbon fiber. This is slow, so today the boat was getting fixed and will have a nice shiny leading edge on the keel for Long Beach (provided we don't ding it up on the tow there).

We still need to clean the boat out, it is bone dry down below, but we took on so much salt water in SF that there are salt crystals everywhere. Back to work, and I will try and post some photos later on this week if there is time.

George Roland, out.

The less glamorous side of one-design

There are a lot of benefits to racing one-design, great competition, no (or less) complaining about unfair boats, eventually depends only on boat prep and crew work. Part of the crew work also involves the crew needing to make crew weight. The Melges 24 has a max crew weight of 794 lbs. The goal is to weigh-in just prior to the regatta as close to max weight as possible. At the same time, you want to have as much crew weight as possible on the rail, so this leads to the crew needing to diet before the regatta, but also wanting to quickly gain the weight back after weigh-ins.

Some crews take this to an unhealthy extreme with people sweating out everything they can in saunas and crash diets. The trick is to figure out a healthy way to cut weight, and then gain a bit of that weight back prior to racing.

So for Karma, this means that all of the crew will need to cut some weight prior to Long Beach Race Week. For some it is only like 2-3lbs., others (like me) it is 12 lbs. Loosing 12 lbs from 176 in a month isn't easy, but it has been done before, but being that all I can think about right now is weight, boat prep, work, and school, I figured this would be the most entertaining entry.

So all of my spare time is going to be dedicated to drinking lots of water, riding my bike a lot, and playing with the new Wii Fit. If this is done right, no one will need to spend time in a sauna before racing. Let's hope it is done right.

Elite Keel '08

So this last weekend we were up in San Francisco and raced the Elite Keel Regatta out of SFYC. Looking at the forecasts we were a little nervous seeing calls for 20-25 knots, the last time we has seen these conditions was over a year ago in Santa Cruz. However, despite only Adam and I haven seen these conditions before, Geoff, Christine, and Ricardo all stepped up and we went on to win this regatta. We were blazing fast upwind with our new Ullman's. Scary fast, we started off with a poor start on my part that had us over early at the boat end of the line, but a quick restart and great speed still had us first around the windward mark.

Unfortunately our closest competitor on Full Throttle broke his head stay at the start of racing the second day, and with us taking a bullet in race 4, we had already won the regatta before the last race started. Not a team to give up, we still raced the last race and ended the regatta with another bullet.

While we had a great time, there were a couple of negatives, first our spin halyard is slipping again when it starts really blowing, so we need to fix that. Also, we snagged the windward mark with our keel (our hull didn't hit it, the mark anchor line was stretched out to windward) during the 3rd race, but we were able to recover to finish 2nd place in that race after Bones tried to pinch us out at the finish line and was disqualified from the race.

Big thanks to Geoff Davis, Ricardo Papa, Christine Pai, and Adam Storey for working their asses off and getting us our first win in a one design event! It was great knowing that we were actually out there racing and looking for more speed when a lot of boats where just trying to survive the conditions and get around the course. It was great that the San Diego boat was the one to go up to SF and kick ass in their conditions. Next on the one-design schedule is Long Beach Race Week end of June. I am off to Hawaii for a couple of weeks to spend some time with the wife and for a friend's wedding.

More Pics
Write up from SF Melges Fleet
Results

Peter Lyons of Lyon's Imaging was out shooting photos. Link here.

All Packed up and ready to go

This is what Karma looks like when she is in travel mode. The hull covers are there to prevent the hull from getting damaged during the trip. They are a new addition to the program and will hopefully end up saving us time when traveling because we won't need to spend 2 hours cleaning the hull before every regatta. Geoff Davis is towing her north Thursday morning, so if you see him on I-5 headed north honk and wave, but please be careful when passing!

Adam Storey is going to bring his helmet camera to Elite Keel, and if the forecasts are right is should be blowing so hopefully we will get some cool video to post next week.

CRA Opening Day Regatta

On May 10, we sailed the CRA Opening Day Regatta. This was to serve as our last tune-up with our new main and jib. While our results don't show it, we had the best crew work out there. We passed boats with quicker gybe sets, better douses, and overall better boat handling. All of this still was not enough for us to make up our rating of 60 on a windward/leeward course. Crew for this race was:

Geoff Davis - jib trim
Bruce Harris - main trim
Christine Pai - bow
George Roland - helm
Adam Storey - spin trim

Our roll tacks and roll gybes were great, things are getting very smooth, now we just need to head up to SF next weekend and compete against some other Melges. Race 1 was pretty clean, and and the new sails did allow us to perform very well upwind, but we still had no chance in the 8-10 knots of breeze in holding off our competition. Race 2 we suffered on the second beat because we got bounced between two shifts and did about 4 extra tacks. Pics of the rest of the racing can be found here.

CRA Winter Regatta 08

CRA Winter Regatta 08

On February 9th, we participated in the CRA Winter Regatta. We had an okay showing for us, with a third in the first race, and a fourth in the second race. This placed us fourth overall. The picture above will link to a gallery of photos that Da-Woody took of our boat. Crew for the race was Adam Storey, Geoff Davis, and Ricardo Papa. We were about 100lbs light on crew weight which actually helped us the first race because it was extremely light air for the first half. While we had a horrible start and quickly got rolled by the fleet (my fault), we quickly made huge gains by setting the reaching spin allowing us to catch up downwind. Unfortunately the wind started to fill in and we have zero chance of holding our rating in the 5-10 knot range. The important thing was that we got around the course very cleanly and had a good time practicing our roll tacks and roll gybes.

The second race allowed us to make up for our first start, and we got away clean from the boat end, but could not hold off the bigger boats to the first windward mark. We gybed early to stay in the pressure while most boats went for the lighter pressure near the shore with less current. Unfortunately we could not hold off the two FT10s and they were able to pass us downwind and hold their rating. French Bread won convincingly by over a leg on the rest of the fleet.

Sunday was a practice day so Adam, Theresa, Ricardo and I took Karma out to do some drills. The day did not start off promising with the bay looking like a mirror, but the wind actually filled in and we were able to get the boat on a plane while working offshore a bit. We saw French Bread out practicing also, as well as Stealth Chicken doing some testing. Another great day was had by all aside from a slight sunburn to my back.