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.

CRA Year End Regatta

On December 8th we raced the Cortez Racing Association Year End Regatta. We were greeted by cool weather and brisk breeze. With puffs into the 15 knot range we were able to get Karma on a plane a few times on the downwind. The first course was a 10 mile bay tour with the majority of the course a close reach. With it being too tight for the spin we were hurting for this race, but we did manage to pass a few boats once we got the kite up.

The second race was almost a direct windward/leeward type course, twice around, which was great for us. With a few tweaks to the rig, great downwind speed and some awesome crew work we were able to get a second in class. Unfortunately, there was a collision at the start of this race, so the results are still pending, which isn't that big of a deal, but the trophy was a bottle of champagne, which is something Theresa and I can always use. More photos here.

Hot Rum #1

On Sunday we raced San Diego Yacht Club's Hot Rum Race. This was the first of a three race series that consists of an 11.3 mile course out San Diego Bay, down the coast, and then back. This is a pursuit start with boats starting according to their ratings, so the finish order is your position.
We ended up 13th out of 33 in our class, and 58th out of 131 overall. We had a great downwind run but not quite enough wind to get on a plane which would have helped us greatly. Christine, Theresa, Adam, and Ricardo all did a great job getting the boat around the course. The next race is in two weeks and Karma is in the yard getting some blisters repaired on the keel bulb.
Good take-aways from this race -
1) We beat did very well in relation to all the other sport boats racing with us.
2) The new speedo helped our a lot during the race.
3) Crew work was excellent, now if only the helmsman could keep up...

Other pics here.