This past weekend was the Boothbay Harbor Regatta in Boothbay, Maine. It was a beautiful weekend weather-wise with a decent amount of wind, about 10 to 12 knots and sun! It was one of the few weekends I have not needed to bundle up on the water.
The fleet Kaos races in is called Division One, which are primarily the bigger boats. We are rated on a handicap system kind of like golf. We rate 66 and the fastest boat in our fleet rates 12, the slowest rates 75. Basically if you take the rating of a boat you are sailing against and find the difference that is how many seconds a mile that you owe the boat. For example, the difference between the fastest boat and us is 66-12=54 so the fastest boat owes us 54 seconds a mile. So for every mile of the course that boat gives us 54 seconds on our time.
Anyway enough of the complicated stuff, we sailed three races on Saturday, two windward/leewards with short legs of about 1.3 miles each. We won both of those races. Then we sailed a reaching triangle and came in second on that race-putting us in first for the day. We stopped for a bit on our way in so we could all go for a quick dip to cool down and then headed in, put the boat away and were taken out for a great dinner at the Rocktide by our skipper.
On Sunday we headed out for two more races, the first race was similar to the firs two races of Saturday and we won that race. The second race of the day is what I like to call and alphabet soup race, where we sail all over the place around government marks. It was taking forever so the race committee had to shorten it to get everyone in for awards.
After another quick dip we headed over the the Boothbay Yacht club for the awards ceremony. Kaos ended the regatta in first place with the second place pretty far behind. This weekend was the first in a series of two regattas for the PHFR (Performance Handicap Racing Force) State of Maine Championship. This coming weekend will be the second in the series, the Southport Regatta. Hopefully we will be able to maintain our performance.
Wow! What a great weekend! This upcoming weekend the weather doesn't sound so nice for the New Hampshire area, not sure how that will impact Maine. If the weather is iffy will your team play it conservative? Or do you go all out in the first race with the thought that the others may be shortened or canceled?
ReplyDeleteI am used to sailing on the West Coast and spent a great deal of time sailing and teaching sailing in San Diego where we got 10-12 knots of wind on an average day. It made for very casual sailing most days. Is this wind speed typical of summer sailing in Maine? What are the peak seasons for sailing in the Northeast?
ReplyDeleteJeannie,
ReplyDeleteWe only cancel sailing for really bad thunderstorms, no wind, way too much wind like 40 knots, and in smaller boats without navigational instruments fog. But it is always pointed out that it is the skippers decision to race and keep in mind the safety of the crew. My skipper is very safety conscious and he would never put us in a dangerous situation.
Race Committee will shorten, abandon or cancel racing due to weather.
Mr. B,
ReplyDeleteSailing season starts here in Mid-May and usually boats start coming out of the water end of September to mid-October.
A lot of the J24s travel to fall regattas until November first up here and then start to head south.
Our wind speed can totally vary from 4 to 5 knots of breeze to gusts up to 30. One year we saw wind speeds almost hit 40 during a regatta but that was pretty rare-usually it tops out at 25.