Swiftsure International Yacht Race

Here is a synopsis of Kerkyra’s Swiftsure Classic race experience.  The race was a couple of weeks ago now but it has taken me a little time to get my sleep pattern back to normal, collect my excuses, and formulate the right spin on the race outcome:

As Rubato mentioned in an earlier post, Kerkyra was entered in the Lightship Classic course at Swiftsure, which is a 139 n.mi. course that took us out to the Swiftsure Bank in the ocean off Vancouver Island and back.  The race conditions were amazing and we finished this long course much sooner than any of us expected.

The Start:   Good start, wrong line.

It was executed with all the precision and timing of a space shuttle launch – only we had the wrong line.  Turns out the skipper (that’s me) hadn’t gone to the briefing the night before and missed the fact that the start configuration had changed.  Doubt started to set in when we observed the rest of the fleet well behind us as the gun went off.  No recall flag went up, nobody hailed us on the radio, but we thought it would be prudent to sail back to that triangular buoy that wasn’t shown in the sailing instructions before marching on.   At times like this it’s nice to know there are 70 miles to go to the turning mark.

Outbound:  Sibling rivalry. 

Soon after the start we were overpowered with our 140% genoa and full main and we changed to the working jib and put in a first and then a second reef on the main.  Even with the shortened sail Kerkyra would occasionally round up to windward in a gust.     In time, we saw our sistership Rubato, who’s race had started after ours, in the distance and apparently getting closer!  She caught us about 10 miles down our respective courses, and was standing up much better in the strong winds – without even a reef in her main yet!  This is the wonderful thing about racing – even if you think you’re doing everything right somebody comes along and proves otherwise.  Maybe it was her flat high-tech sails, maybe it was the people trimming them,  maybe a little of each but it was humbling and my only consolation is the knowledge that we were by far the better looking crew.

To the mark:  What are we doing here and where is everybody else?

As the different race courses diverged and the fleets dispersed we found ourselves on a lonely voyage to the mark in a dropping sun and rising ocean swells.   After the lesson in humility from Rubato, we imagined the rest of our fleet were already on their way back home.  It didn’t help that half the crew was seasick, the wind was keeping us on the rail, and the waves were assaulting us with all the compassion that a hammer shows for a nail.  We rounded the mark, a Canadian Navy frigate, on Swiftsure Bank at 0109hrs on Sunday morning.  Days later we learned that the rest of our division rounded at least an hour and a quarter behind us and we’d finished first at the mark on both elapsed and corrected time.

The ride back:  Almost in one piece.

We raised the cruising spinnaker and took off on the downwind leg with 20 knot winds and 10-12 foot swells.   This is the other wonderful thing about racing – testing the limits with a crew that doesn’t mind a few more bruises and broken dishes (well OK, they do mind, but this is what they signed up for).   Our Hanse 400 felt more like a windsurfer at times as we tried, in the dark, to walk the line between collapsing the kite and broaching.  Without a spinnaker pole we had to sail relatively high and with about a hundred miles to put under our keel it isn’t surprising that we often caught a puff at the same time as a particularly large following wave and broached – I don’t know how many times but it must have been well over a dozen.

Some 8 hours or so into the return leg the spinnaker halyard parted and we had to retrieve the sail from the water and unfurl the jib.  That’s when the self-tacking jibsheet got stuck.  Somehow it found its way between the sheave and the cheek of the block that attaches to the clew. This was an interesting predicament because with the sheet hopelessly snagged in the block the clew was essentially tied fast to the traveler and couldn’t be trimmed or eased.  We used our (now useless) spinnaker sheet to take the pressure off the jib sheet, removed the block from the clew and replaced it with one of our (now useless) spinnaker sheet blocks, cut the jib sheet from the old block and rigged it through the new one to finish the race.   I don’t know if we lost enough time from all that to account for our 5^th place finish but that’s the story I’m sticking with.

Epilogue:

-          Would definitely do this again if Mother Nature would furnish the conditions.  It was a great learning experience which was the prime objective.

-          Though I don’t have much to compare with under these conditions I remain very happy with the boat. 

-          Definitely got a feel for the rudder after sailing in these conditions.   Both upwind and downwind I could tell when the rudder was about to stall, at which point I would hold the wheel steady and sometimes the boat would come back while other times she would round up.   Should I have called for an easing of sheets at that point instead?  Rubato: is that what you were doing?

-          Wish I knew how the jib block failed.   Maybe it had something to do with the twist that tends to develop in the sheet.

-          Our mast has a fairlead just above the forestay for the spinnaker halyard which then runs up the outside of the mast to a sheave at the masthead.   According to the rigger who replaced the halyard last week, there are some fasteners in the area that are covered in “halyard dust”.   I think this part of the rig was done by our dealer, not the factory.

       -    Does anybody have polars for a 400 with an asymmetric spinnaker?

 

Lots more photos at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/8567855@N06/