Sailing Blog
Day 1 Charleston Race Week – Where to Begin… »
April 15, 2011
Saying that the first day of Charleston Race week was crazy, dangerous, head shaking or frustrating would have been an understatement. With 47 Melges 24s and 23 Melges 20s mixing it up on a short track with 15-18 kts of wind and 3 kts of current, there was no shortage of confusion, carnage and overall mayhem on the course. We survived the day on the M and M with minimal contact, but finishing a day with a host of unforced errors was frustrating to say the least.
While I cannot go into the details of what happened on Day 1 in under 5000 words, there were a few highlights that deserve recognition. The first race, we snuck in for an eighth place which was the most uneventful race of the day. The second race, we did a nice job tacking at the pin end, port tacking the fleet and establishing ourselves in the front group, but an error on my part at the first layline put us into second place and kept us there most of the race. We rounded the last bottom mark and noticed our tackline had gone under the bow and was dragging under the boat which resulted in our boatspeed suffering. The decision was made to send Peter up to the bow to put the tack line back above the deck, and we all were about to gain an understanding of the dangers of being a bowman on a 20ft boat.
Pete shimmied up to the front on his belly, cleard the tack line and on his way back, lost his grip and fell off the windward side of the boat while we sailed on port tack. He did manage to grab the tack of the jib, partially pull himself back on the deck then for the next 30 seconds, Mary Anne and I watched Peter do a crab dance on the bow balancing between having an awesome save, or falling in the water. I did think to myself, “I should probably go grab his ankle…”, but I was to enamoured with watching if he was going to be able to save it or not to do anything. One bad wave came, and over the side Peter went, fully losing his grip this time. I leaned over and extended my arm, and just like Sly Stallone in the opening scene of Cliffhanger, Peter and I latched arms and the process of getting him back on board began.
I say process because hauling in a 185 lb man who is now fully wet with sailing gear is not an easy thing to do. After another 10-15 second struggle, we finally got Peter back aboard, trimmed our sails and made our way towards the finish. The boat was pretty calm at this point as we were beyond getting upset of frustrated. We did only lose 1 boat and managed to take a 3rd place which was a decent finish, but with my bad call on the layline, and losing Peter overboard, it felt a lot worse.
It was clear all day that the RC had no concern with the timing of our start and it almost seemed like they intentially started us at a time where the two fleets would be as mixed up as possible so they could sit back on the comfortable power boat and watch the carnage from a distance. The start of race 3 saw the 20 fleet get off cleanly, and as we got about 1/3 the way upwind, the Melges 24s were rounding their leeward mark directly on top of us. Our nice 23 boat fleet had just turned into a 60 boat fleet and we were trying to go upwind with boats around us that were faster and continually either rolling, tacking in front, or hitting us. But nothing could prepare us for what we were about to experience at the top mark.
We approached the windward mark on the port tack layline and with 3 kts of adverse current, Melges 24s and 20s were having a very hard time making the mark on starboard tack which resulted in a lot of boats having to gybe below the mark to make another run at it. By the time we got the to the mark the first few boats in each fleet had gotten around, but what was left was a 40 boat mess of circling, tacking, ducking, gybing and trying to avoid each other while hoping to get around the mark. There were even a few swimmers in the water that had fallen off there boats which only added to the excitement and after we finally got around and set the spinnaker after 2 attempts, we could only shake our heads, laugh and mutter a few explitives about the situation. We didnt really know what position we were in most of the race, but once the 24s cleared out, we saw we were in 10 place and would have to just chalk that up to a crazy race that we couldn’t get too bunched over.
The final race seemed docile after the previous heat, and it was a sprint to the right side of the course towards Folly Beach to get current relief from the middle of the course. Even if it meant sitting in multiple bad lanes for minutes on end, it was worth it to get out of the adverse current. We took a 5th in the last race which was a good note to end with. Overall, we survived the day, with a 8, 3, 10, 5 and good enough for 6th overall, but it was not easy. Huge breeze is forecast for day 2, and with 4 races scheduled our only hope is that the RC will be a bit more kind in our starting times to keep the fleets separated a bit more tomorrow. Results here.
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