Swiftsure International Yacht Race
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Category: General
Forum Name: Racing
Forum Description: Hanse Chat about various races, gear setup, sail choices, rig tuning, etc....
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Topic: Swiftsure International Yacht Race
Posted By: Rubato
Subject: Swiftsure International Yacht Race
Date Posted: 23 May 2007 at 08:15
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This coming weekend will see the running of the Swiftsure International Yacht Race out of Victoria, BC, Canada. The premiere long distance sailing race in the B.C. and US Pacific Northwest area, Swiftsure has drawn boats and sailors from California, Hawaii, New Zealand and even Russia. The race is actually six different races over four separate courses.
A brief history, info on courses, boats entered, etc can be found on the official web site.
http://www.swiftsure.org - www.swiftsure.org
Two Hanse 400es are entered in the race this year; Rubato and Kerkyra. Although the original intent was for the sister ships to compete side by side on the same course; Rubato will be sailing the 100nm Cape Flattery race while Kerkyra will tackle the 140nm Swiftsure Lightship Classic race which ventures out into the open Pacific and requires life rafts to be carried.
Boats will be carrying GPS transponders to report position to the race committee and can presumably viewed real time on the web site over the weekend. (this didn't work very well last year but apparently it's new and improved).
Race start is 10am Pacific Daylight Time Saturday May 26th.
Steve
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Replies:
Posted By: landlocked
Date Posted: 23 May 2007 at 08:58
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Domo Arigato Mr. Rubato!
I wasn't going to tell them about the race yet in case it didn't go well for me
 Now the secret's out and we have to live up the the good results that others have had with their Hanse's all around the world.
Well, if I drop off the forum for a few months you'll know what happened...
Seriously, though, this will be great fun, with 200 boats participating in the various races, some parties beforehand, and a forecast that seems to be shaping up. Kerkyra's course will include many of the fastest boats in the Pacific Northwest as well as a 1967 America's cup challenger and a 105 foot navy training vessel. Rubato will be up against a larger fleet with many boats having similar handicaps to the 400e, so Steve will not have as many excuses as I.
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Posted By: Johan Hackman
Date Posted: 23 May 2007 at 09:59
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Winning is not the important thing - it's the only thing....
I wish you good luck. Johan -------------  http://www.johanhackman.se" rel="nofollow - http://www.johanhackman.se |
Posted By: Abstinenz
Date Posted: 23 May 2007 at 10:33
Hi, It happened to us. We will visit a "medium" one of theese days to get our fighting moral back  as we performed really bad yesterday in the local regatta. Windforce between 1 and 6 knots on a too small (one of our 500 bad explainations) up/down race track with 57 boats, we came in last in our group  .Please give our Hanse a windforce around 10-20 knots and we will show them...... Have to do some research on Hanse light wind trim  /Steen & Anne ------------- Hanse 342#436 |
landlocked wrote:Posted By: Rubato
Date Posted: 23 May 2007 at 17:21
I contemplated whether or not to say anything but I have high hopes for the race. In competition thus far with the boat, results have been disappointing to say the least. Too embarrassed to post anything here. There are 2 reasons for this; tuning/practice and ratings. As mentioned in previous posts, we can't point yet with our new foresail. Too much sag means we are dropping down on other boats, but the boat does have good speed. As far as ratings go, we've been racing using IOR ratings and the boat has a tough one - essentially fastest boat in the division. So although our line finishes have been improving we correct well down the fleet, to even last  . However, Swiftsure uses the PHRF handicap rule and our rating is more consistent with the results seen so far. Now we just have to worry about picking the right side of a multi mile wide course, currents, etc.... not to mention staying out of the way of freighters in the middle of the night...
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Posted By: Rubato
Date Posted: 01 June 2007 at 22:07
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I'm very pleased to report an excellent showing for Rubato in the Swiftsure International Yacht Race.
As mentioned, of the 4 courses Rubato participated in the 100nm Cape Flattery course. So we went from Victoria to the Northwest tip of Washington state and back again.
Rubato came 2nd in Division, 10th in class, and 16th for the course, WOOHOO!!
The race started at 10 am in the morning with winds in the 10 - 12 knot range. The Cape Flattery race was the 3rd start and the first attempt resulted in a general recall - suited us fine, we were slow to the line. On the second attempt we had a fantastic start, about 3rd across the line near the starboard end of the line on a starboard tack. For the next couple of hours we tacked up the Canadian side of the strait with wind building to the 15 - 18 range. At this point we put in our first reef making the boat much easier to handle. By the time we reached Race Rocks (a lovely little passage with tricky current) we overtook some of the slower boats that were in the start ahead of us (25 minutes). Our speed was pretty consistent in the 7 knot range.
We continued tacking up the Canadian side until about a third way to the mark (around Sooke I think it was) at which point the leaders started to head out to the middle of the Strait of Juan De Fuca looking for better wind as the wind was dying a little on the Cdn side. We followed and then took it to an extreme seeing stronger breeze closer to the American side. This paid off as we made gains for the next hour at which point wind across the course started to subside - quite a change in pace going from the 5-7 knots we had been doing to less than 1 knot at some points. This lasted about an hour until the wind filled in a little heavier once again and slowly built to the 20 knot range.
Although there were about 5 boats with us on the American side, the majority of the fleet stayed in the middle of the Strait. We started to consolidate as we approached the mark and it became evident that those boats in the middle had not suffered as light conditions as we had which put them about a half hour earlier into the rounding. Rubato rounded the mark in daylight at approximately 8pm. Those of us that have done this race before are used to rounding the mark in the dark perhaps as late as midnight, so this race was going very fast, but the best was yet to come....
As we pulled away from the mark and hoisted the chute, things began to calm down a little on the boat. We shook out the reef in the main, had some lasagne that had been warming in the oven, a couple of crew went below for some rest. We headed towards the Canadian side of the strait for one main reason - to get out of the shipping lane so we didn't have to worry about freighters and cruise ships in the middle of the night. We were on a port gybe for about 2 hours with speeds in the 10 knot range as the sun set and a following sea began to rise.
We executed a gybe in dim light conditions near 10pm. With the seas rocking the boat a little and with gusty conditions, the chute was a little unstable as we tried to keep it in front of the boat as the pole was moved over. Once the chute started to wrap around the forestay but with some sheet and guy handling we quickly got it flying again. We maintained a starboard gybe for almost 3 hours as the wind built to 25 knots with gusts over 30. I think it was around this time that we actually double reefed the main to get rid of some of the power. We saw the knot meter head over 14 knots a few times as we surfed down the backend of waves with stars overhead and a partial moon rising. It was a real rush. I remember being at the helm and having to ask people to yell when talking to me so I could hear them over the roar of the water coming off the transom.
From time to time you'd see the nav lights of a few boats around you. If you listened carefully, you'd catch the sound of flapping sails as the competition had a hard time keeping things under control and would broach every once in awhile. It was interesting trying to estimate where we were relative to one another as depth perception in the dark is very difficult.
Quickly we found ourselves in the middle of the strait again, needing to gybe and head back through Race Rocks to the finish. With wind still in the high 20s we made a very smart decision. We would take the chute down instead of gybing it, we'd do a chicken gybe to go easier on the boom and goose neck, then raise the maxi jib for the port gybe home. It worked like a charm... We only lost about 0.2 knot difference between the jib and the chute but the boat was much easier to control as we went through the passage.
We crossed the finish line shortly after 3am (about 12 hours ahead of what's normal for this race). As we headed into the Victoria inner harbour for our safety inspection we came upon a couple of boats that had spinnakers and sails ripped and wrapped in their rigging. This was a continued theme as boats continued to check in during the morning with one boat losing it's mast altogether about 8 feet above the deck - apparently the backstay broke.
All in all, I was incredibly pleased. The boat continued to have a light helm even in those heavy conditions. When she starts to broach, it's gentle and the recovery is equally as refined. As for my crew, 9 in total with 2 of them hadn't even raced with us or the boat before, they did incredibly well - sound decisions and very well executed.
Not bad for the first overnighter, I'm very pleased!!!!!!!!
Steve
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Posted By: Abstinenz
Date Posted: 02 June 2007 at 09:07
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Hi Rubato.
Congrats with the very fine race result and thanks for the good summary. /Steen & Anne ------------- Hanse 342#436 |
Posted By: Johan Hackman
Date Posted: 02 June 2007 at 18:09
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Congratulations Steve, and thanks for sharing! It was nice reading.
Johan ------------- http://www.johanhackman.se" rel="nofollow - http://www.johanhackman.se |
Posted By: les40
Date Posted: 05 June 2007 at 07:50
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enjoyed your commentary on the race....congrats, sounded like you had a blast! cheers leslie ------------- TODAK 2 |
Posted By: Alex Faber
Date Posted: 09 June 2007 at 09:40
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Congratulations Steve!!!
The reading was almost as much fun as you must have had. ------------- s/y eMotion (H430e #24) |
Posted By: landlocked
Date Posted: 09 June 2007 at 18:53
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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 5th 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. Lots more photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8567855@N06/ - http://www.flickr.com/photos/8567855@N06/
 ------------- "Kerkyra" 400e #042 |
Posted By: Johan Hackman
Date Posted: 09 June 2007 at 21:21
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Thanks for a great story and nice photos!
Johan ------------- http://www.johanhackman.se" rel="nofollow - http://www.johanhackman.se |
Posted By: Rubato
Date Posted: 10 June 2007 at 17:06
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Kerkyra...
Thanks for the account of the "long course" race. The crew thanked me for sticking to the shorter 100nm Cape Flattery course.
Meant to ask you, how do you find your pointing ability using the 140 relative to other boats and relative to the standard self tacker?
On rounding up.... When close hauled and strong breeze, get the main as flat as you can - lots of outhaul, lots of backstay to bend the mast and flatten the mid section of the main. Even doing that, the main trimmer likely has to have traveller down a little putting a bubble (back wind) in the main near the mast. Then if you feel yourself losing it with a round up, the main trimmer has to dump the main fast! This gives you less heal and the pressure now moves forward (wind in the jib only) which helps push the bow down counteracting the initial round up.
Downwind - much more difficult to avoid. Easing sheets sometimes helps, guy forward sometimes helps. Praying sometimes helps....
Cheers, Steve
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Posted By: Alex Faber
Date Posted: 10 June 2007 at 17:13
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Landlocked,
Very nice reading!!! ------------- s/y eMotion (H430e #24) |
Posted By: landlocked
Date Posted: 11 June 2007 at 05:54
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Rubato asked:
Meant to ask you, how do you find your pointing ability using the 140 relative to other boats and relative to the standard self tacker?
We didn't have the 140 up for long in the race, but we used it last year and found we were pointing very well compared to other boats. I'm afaid I didn't really get a feel for the difference between the 140 and the working jib due to the rather hectic sailing situation. One thing that was very nice about the jib was the ability to tack on very short notice while dealing with the "rush hour traffic" through Race Passage (nice for the crew on deck that is, the guy below trying to prepare soup and sandwiches had a hell of a time).
Thanks for the pointers about the overpowered main. I think we had the sail about as flat as we could get it with the outhaul and backstay, but probably could have moved the traveller down a bit as you said, and should have brought somebody in from the rail to dump the mainsheet.
Nice to have some things to think about for next time! ------------- "Kerkyra" 400e #042 |