Gale Force Sailing

When I was a kid my dad and I participated in an astronomy course offered at the local Franciscan college - St. Francis College.  We lived about a mile from the planetarium and probably spent six weeks learning about the stars.  Everything I know about starts I remember from that class.

Yesterday my Dad, Mack, sent me the following cut and paste piece that made viewing the night sky last night a real treat.  Even from downtown Washington, DC you could see this.  It was pretty amazing!  Don’t worry.  Tonight will be nearly as good so plan on checking it out!

Every once in a while, something will appear in the night sky that will attract the attention of even those who normally don’t bother looking up. It’s likely to be that way on Monday evening, Dec. 1.

Dag nab the rules.  You know, I’ve been accused of spending too much time reading the Racing Rules, but today I proved that you can never have quite enough grip of the ole rules.

So here’s the story.  Last week while racing in the Annapolis Yacht Club Frostbite Series, several of our competitors rounded the wrong mark and finished the race without having sailed the proper course.  We filed the protest with the race committee to act as insurance against any boats not doing the right thing - which is to retire after finishing (RAF).

Our protest was heard.  One of the first things a protest committee does is to determine whether or not the protest is a valid protest or not.  There are rules that dictate whether or not you have properly lodged a protest.  “Did you fly a protest flag?  Did you hail the other boats at your first opportunity?  Did you file within the time limit?  Etc.”

The procedures are pretty explicit in the rules.  The procedures MUST be followed anytime you plan on lodging a protest of any kind with two exceptions.  And here is where I screwed up.  Our protest was not filed in response to one boat breaking a right of way rule, but rather a protest of a bunch of boats not following the course.  So I didn’t think I needed to fly a protest flag.  And so I didn’t.  It turns out it doesn’t matter what section of the rules you think someone broke.  The procedures need to be followed.  We needed to fly a protest flag.  So, our protest was disallowed by the race committee.

This is a great lesson.  If you plan to protest something FLY YOUR FLAG in addition to the other steps you need to take (want to know what they are?  Call me.)

Now of course this does NOT change the fact that the boats that didn’t sail the proper course SHOULD retire. Dick Rose, the rules expert as Sailng World magazine writes this about retiring after finishing:

Under the Basic Principle, Sportsmanship and the Rules, if you break a rule you should take a penalty. There is no time limit on taking a penalty. Often a boat involved in an incident doesn’t know whether she broke a rule or not, but after coming ashore and consulting the rulebook her crew realizes they did, indeed, break a rule. According to the Basic Principle they’re still expected to “take a penalty,” but at that time—long after the incident—the Two-Turns Penalty is no longer an option (see Rule 44.1). The only penalty open to her is to retire and, because she is “retiring after finishing,” she will be scored “RAF”, which is normally the points for the finishing place one more than the number of boats entered in the series (see Rules A11 and A4.2).

Two of our competitors, Angry Chameleon and Spank Me, both told us that they intend to retire after they realized that they had not sailed the proper course.  I can’t tell you how much we appreciate their honesty and willingness to follow the rules.  It is a credit to their team character and sportsmanship.  I can only assume the the other boats will do the same - as it is the right thing to do but also because it would be terrible for those boats that didn’t sail the proper course to be further rewarded by the retirement of these two boats.

The rules are changing again.  It happens every four years, and this is a pretty great article, again by Dick Rose, about the rules that apply to filing protests and the subsequent hearings that is worth reading.  Most (if not all) of these rules remain unchanged from the change period mentioned in the article.

If you want to read the rules that are in effect until the end of December or read the new rules or read a document (PDF) that shows the changes highlighted I recommend going to the ISAF RULES SITE.  You can download and View the 2009-2012 edition of The Racing Rules of Sailing here.  You can find the same materials and few other things by checking out the US Sailing Racing Rules site.

For what it is worth, I love reading about the rules and rules situations.  I find that there are a couple of sources for great rules explanations.  I would suggest every racer get a copy of Dave Perry’s (he’s the US Sailing rules committee chair) book Understanding the Racing Rules of Sailing. It is an indispensable and easy to understand explanation of all the rules.  I should have read it one more time apparently.

I’d also suggest an online version of Dave Dellenbaugh’s (no rules slouch) bi-monthly racing newsletter Speed and Smarts. You’ll get a lot more than just rules out of this resource, and the next issue is going to be dedicated to all the new rules!

This is the first of several posts about racing in any “beer can” or winter frostbite series.  Beer can races are often mixed fleet events hosted by local clubs.  They get their moniker “beer cans” because most often RC’s use existing government marks in order to set the courses.  Then again, if you check the bilges of many boats racing in these series you might get another impression all together.

These races often take place on Wednesday evenings in the summer.  They are held here in Annapolis on Sunday’s all winter long.  Sometimes they are on other nights (Annapolis has a Friday series hosted by the Eastport Yacht Club too) but they are all often fairly casual affairs.  At least they are supposed to be.

During the winter, frostbite racing takes place.  This is beer can racing without the sun, relaxation, and most of the fun.  But we do it anyway.  It calls on many of the same skills as summer time beer can racing - with the added difficulty of frozen digits and lava-like water.  Right now we’re frostbite racing.

So what makes this sort of racing so special?  Well first of all the need for data and the understanding of race procedure is rarely greater.  In your average fleet race their is a race committee and a fairly clear start line.  These days most courses are windward/leeward with a leeward finish, and the marks are generally big floating orange shapes.  Pretty hard to miss.

But frostbite racing (at least here in Annapolis) sends dozens of boats around government marks and the course must be deciphered from a strangle alphabet soup of letters and numbers.  With this in mind it is imperative that the team know the race procedures and courses.

So - to get ahead download the race documents.  In the case of the Annapolis Yacht Club’s Frostbite series you’ll be well served by the NOR, SI’s, amendment A, last week’s cumulative score sheet, and a chart of Annapolis Harbor.  I wouldn’t leave the dock without these sheets of information and suggest all of then (minus the scores) be laminated and bound together in a binder.

The NOR provides some important “global” information and probably won’t be a weekly read - but everyone should read to glean in useful tidbits.  The SI’s help clarify many of the procedural questions that may come up when racing (such as what marks MUST be left to which required side and other interesting points) and, in the case of the AYC Frostbite series, the amendment A is something that is referred to every race.  It contains all the courses, start times, change procedures and much more.  Don’t leave the dock without it.  In fact I recommend that if you have a bunch of crew you should make your LEAST experienced crew person in charge of the data.  They’ll have plenty of questions - so don’t worry about not being up to speed on the info.

All the documents should be read by all the members of the team.  Frostbite racing has a few quirks regarding protests and penalties and the courses are, well… with at least three possible start lines, more then a dozen courses and the chance that the whole thing could be REVERSED, um… difficult to decipher (especially if you’ve been taking the “beer can” philosophy to seriously).  If everyone has read each part of the packet it improves your chances that everyone will know what it means when the RC puts up a neon green flag at 4:00 minutes.  (don’t know? - download and check it out… or call me)

This isn’t to say that this style of racing is hard or wrong.  It is just different and really brings out the need to have everyone collecting, processing, and utilizing race data.  In fact I really like it, think it is great for the grassroots development of sailing and is a unique discipline that is hard to win.

For instance, last week we won a race because we went to the correct mark while SIX boats in front of us went to the wrong one.  There was a course change for the fleet AFTER ours - but not for ours.  Therefore, even though we had a less than stellar race we won.  If you look at pic I’ve included in this post you can see our track for this race.  Can you see where we corrected and went to the correct mark?

So race data and procedure are really important in frostbite/beer can racing.  Heck its really important in all racing - but this winter is a great time to start practicing your data collection.

In the next post we’ll discuss a bit more about the start proceedures, styles, and rules.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008; A14

SHOW OF HANDS. How many of you were shocked — shocked! — to learn that the Chesapeake Executive Council decided last week to ditch its 25-year-old goal of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay in favor of short-term achievements? Yeah, that’s what we thought: none of you. The drive to cleanse one of the world’s largest estuaries long has been swamped by overdevelopment and the lack of political will to make the hard decisions that would turn the dream of a pristine Chesapeake Bay into a reality.

Stating the obvious, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) told at a meeting of the council, “The history of setting the 10-year goals has been, bluntly, a failure.” And with that, the third deadline since 1983 to clean up the bay — this time by 2010 — was history. Now, the Chesapeake Executive Council wants to focus on attainable short-term goals. The only problem is that the council didn’t articulate what those goals would be and said six more months of study would be needed before they could be specified. This is beyond ridiculous.

Things are bad in the 64,000 square miles of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed, and it’s no mystery why. Overdevelopment has changed the ecology of the region. Warm, polluted water flows unfiltered from paved surfaces into tributaries such as the Potomac River, which earned a D-plus for cleanliness this month from the Potomac Conservancy, for the second year in a row. Another problem is agricultural runoff, laden with nutrients that feed algal blooms and create oxygen-deprived dead zones. The result is a dirty bay and the dying-off of species that gave the waterway its vitality.

Missing have been consistent policies throughout the watershed that reduce the flow of pollutants into the Chesapeake. Widespread adoption of smart growth and green building methods would help; so would controlling agricultural runoff by instituting an enforceable system based on total maximum daily load of pollution in the bay and its tributaries. But until the leaders around the watershed display the courage to act — rather than simply study — no one will be surprised by the lack of progress when they announce that even the short-term deadlines they have yet to announce won’t be met.

I am starting three new blog “series” this month.  The first is a series on how to improve your sailing team with an eye to improving in the off season.  The second is a series of articles on my experiences sailing in the 2008-2009 Annapolis Yacht Club Frostbite Series.  Finally the third is a series on the preparations I am making to prepare for Key West Race Week 2009.

The idea is to add a bit of structure to the blog posts I am writing between now and the end of the year.  So I hope you enjoy them, I encourage feedback and comments in order to hone what I am writing about.  Enjoy!