Today I participated in my first official sailing regatta. Although my Laser remains nestled against the ceiling of my garage in its nest of nylon webbing, I have been getting in what sailing time I can. A friend from work and church skippers a Lightning. I was out with him once before, serving as the middle crew member. The Lightning generally races with a crew of three, the skipper, middle crew and forward crew. The skipper, of course, directs the overall actions of the crew and mans the tiller. The middle crew balances the boat (aka “sack of potatoes”) on the windward (upwind) leg and acts as spinnaker trimmer on the leeward leg. The forward crew trims the jib and manages the spinnaker pole.
Today, the winds were fairly strong (over 10 knots and gusts approaching 20 late in the day), and with 14 boats on the course from all over central New York, the competition fierce*. We had planned to two-man the boat, because his son was not available, but we picked up a third who had arrived to crew for someone else (who had some kind of conflict). SO our skipper has had his boat a little over a year, but had extensive racing experience from the past. I’ve been out in the class once before, and our third didn’t have much experience either (a few times out in prior years).
We certainly suffered from our lack of experience, and especially had trouble setting our spinnaker. In the third race, we managed to impale it on the forward cleat (the loop below the tip of the bow where the bow line is connected when docking). This required a sail-tape repair at lunch time. In the afternoon we managed to twist and tangle the spinnaker to such a degree (we stowed it rather poorly in the previous race I think) that by the time we got the lines cleared it was flying free of the boat (like a giant crazy kite). This attracted considerable comment** and several amazing pictures from the race observers, so I’m hoping to share this rather spectacular and embarrassing vision with you good readers.
Otherwise, we did fairly well, so that despite our poor transitions, we generally gained on the other boats once we were set. Our best races put us in 7th and 9th which we were pretty happy about to be sure. Our spinnaker fiascoes netted us two 14′s, and I think we finished next to last in the other two races. In the final tally we ended up next to last overall.
That’s ok, because the wind was great, and we had a blast. And there’s a pretty strong indication that we’ll do well with some experience.
We Didn’t Finish Last!
September 22nd, 2007 by Chris* It is worth noting that the Lightning class was developed locally in Skaneatles, NY, almost 70 years ago. Accordingly, some of the world’s most experienced Lightning sailors are in this area.
** Most of the comments were something along the lines of “We were waiting to see if you’d capsize!” or “That was quite an impressive kite you were flying.”
