2019 Sailing Results & Recap

Article by Kenneth Johnson

We had a good close one-day regatta for PSSC— after a very slow start to Saturday, the wind filled in during the early afternoon, and CYC ran off 5 races in about 3.5 hours! By the end of the day boats had moved from their number 1s to their 3s - and a change to a 2 somewhere in that process was probably warranted but I know we, and perhaps others, were too busy and tired to make all the changes. There was not a lot of time between races to make a change — on Grauer we got the 3 up and ready to go with 90 seconds to go before the start. Close enough.

No racing on Sunday - the wind never came in. Boats started to pack it up around noon and the racing was officially abandoned just before 1 pm.

It was great to see Cake or Death come out, and she kept improving after the first couple of races. . Also Sara, Joe and crew taking out T-Bone - too bad they had a block break on them; kudos for the effort and they were ready on Sunday (just the wind wasn’t). We tried but could not entice any of the Oak Harbor boats to join us.

We were surprised by how bumpy the water was - lots of good sized waves despite that the wind was flowing in the same direction as the tide. The flood made rounding the windward mark a challenge — it was so easy to tack for the mark way too soon and then watch the tide push your boat near if not not into the windward mark. Boats way overstanding, it seemed, got it right and those of us who confidently tacked underneath them were surprised (and humbled) as we approached the mark (in a very literal sense)!

The sailing was close and competitive. Grauer and Return tied on points (no discards at PSSC) with Grauer winning the tie-breaker as she had one more first place than Return (earned on the last race of the day which most of us thought was not going to be run - thank you Race Committee!). On Grauer we were too late in getting a spinnaker down in race 3….and the skipper (bless his heart) turned up too quickly with the chute filling on the leeward side making it almost impossible to bring in. We were blown down the course past the X mark before we were able to get the sail down. What we did not realize in all the commotion is that we just missed the Race Committee boat and inadvertently crossed over the Finish Line! Which was restricted, even if a boat is going backwards! As we did not know that, we did not do a circle to absolve ourself, and got a DNF for all the work that the crew did in getting us back in the race! And if T-Bone had not retired that race due to a broken block, Grauer would have scored a 7 rather than a 6, and Return would have won the regatta and the Salt Water Trophy. How close it was.

We were aware of all the little (and big) mistakes we were making, and we assumed everyone else is sailing perfectly. It is only when talking to other crews after the race is it clear that sailing is a series of mistakes, one after another, and minimizing their effect is a sure way to move up the finish ladder.

I think we had close crosses with everyone in the fleet, and 5 of the boats got at least one third or higher place. So it was very competitive sailing.

With PSSC completed, we were able to finish the scoring for the Salt Water and Fleet Championship trophies.

In the Salt Water, Grauer edged out Return by one place for first, and Manhattan edged out Fancy for third also by one point.

For the Fleet Championship, Grauer was first followed by Return, Fancy, Manhattan and Sweet Jesus. Return skipped two regattas, which greatly helped Grauer. The full results of the scoring are below — please let me know asap if you see any mistakes.

A couple of questions for consideration for next year. Currently we required 3 Fleet boats to participate in a regatta for it to count. Both PSSR and Lake Fall had just 3 boats so those results were counted. Is that an appropriate number? the regattas are open to all and part of the season pass for CYC - how many boats does (should) it take to make the results meaningful.

A related question is how many regattas/events we should count. We had 8 possible events this year - the 4 Lake Series (which get the most involvement), the 3 Salt water events (PSSR, PSSC and NACA) and Lake Fall — a boat had to participate in 6 of those events to be eligible for the Fleet championship, including one on the Salt Water. So there is some reward for showing up in a number of regattas. However, should the number be 5 rather than 6, with at least one regatta on the Salt Water? As it turns out, at least for 2019, taking the top 5 results would not have resulted in any change in the order of the boats than using 6 - although it would have made 2 more boats (Snappy and T-Bone) eligible for an award. Worth discussing.