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new Sequoia speed threshold... 10.5 kts

Chris Miller

Sustaining Member
Kate and I (Kate as the skipper) grabbed a great crew and entered Sequoia in the 33rd annual Maryland Governor's Cup race from Annapolis to St. Mary's City, MD on friday night-- course length of 70 nm. It blew out of the north pretty good (we saw it peak around 25) and we were flying. With our old main and our pole-less cruising kite, we saw 10.5 several times coming off swells. We had never seen much above 8 before- all the dudes participated in the 10 knot rule (Kate and our other lady crewmember politely declined).
Race went great- only issue was a parted spin tack line which our fordeck crew fixed in less than 10 minutes. Ended up 19th out of 28 in PHRF A-3. Lots of fun, some cold beer, hot dinner:D .
Not as cool as Jim's overall win, but we had a super time and were extremely pleased with the boat and crew. As always, thanks to all who help the boat and me be better sailors!
Chris
 

Seth

Sustaining Partner
Yeah!!

Even I don't know about the 10 knot rule...I could understand joining the "10 knot club"-where all those named were able to reach or break 10 knots, but we are confused about the "rule"....
Either way, sounds very cool-for the record, I have seen 14.5 on a 38 during a wild Santa Barbara-King Harbor Race in the mid 80's!!

Cheers!

S
 

CaptnNero

Accelerant
penalty

Chris,

A few years ago going from St. Vincent to Mustique we busted ten knots on a 50 foot Beneteau shooting down some 15 footers on a broad reach past Bequia. I'm pretty sure it was blowing 25-30 knots. It was an interesting few hours with scopalimine patches in high use. As skipper if I had known about the "10 knot rule" I wouldn't have broken it.

Is there a penalty ?;)
 

Chris Miller

Sustaining Member
10 knot rule...

Seth, as I have said before-- if Sequoia's knotmeter ever says 14.5, it damn well better be broken.

10 knot rule is "tops off". It's supposed to be a ladies thing, but since both of the ladies on board were relatively proper, the dudes had to cover for them. Nothing like a bunch of mildly overweight guys pulling up their shirts at sunset while flying down the bay.

Lots of fun... thinking of making it a regular event for the boat!

Chris
 

CaptnNero

Accelerant
tops off

Chris, thanks for the clarification. Ok, well no danger of Kokomo making it to 10 knots, even if at least I know the rule now. We got up to 8.5 knots coming down the swells a few months ago on a reach in 25 knots. That was the day a power boater rammed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a sailboat dismasted hitting the Key Bridge, and a catamaran capized on the South River.

I was afraid the rule was going to be something like Ted Turner's relief over the transom when in the lead circa late 70's. Another possibility was from my skydiving days when a skydiver got married he would get mooned at the reception.
 
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ted_reshetiloff

Contributing Partner
Chris glad you had a good race. Really bummed I misssed out. The report from my friend on the Mount Gay 30:

"Awesome ride down the bay... at most times we were doing 11-12 kts. topped out at 14.6! We were at the top of our fleet all the way up to the st mary's rounding mark and it then got light and the crew work tacking just fell apart loosing time in every tack, not focusing on the boats coming up on starboard and navigating. All in all with the crew I had we did very well... Weather was good so that made it easier too. We got to the solomons area in about 4 hours...."

Top speed on Escape Plan, my 38, so far has been 9.6. Downwind surfing with reefed main and 100% jib off Cove Point breeze 22-25kts. That was with the 3 blade fixed prop and old main...
 

windjunkee

Member III
Chris,

Sounds like a fun race. Did you peak at 10.5 or did you sustain it for a while? I know on Voice of Reason, we were involved in a race over Memorial Day and had 25-40 knots with 10 ft swells and hit 12.5 knots with the right combination of gust and roller. But the fastest sustained speed (for a period of 90 seconds or longer) was 8.5 knots, or about 2 knots faster than our theoretical hull speed.

Good sailing.

Jim McCone
Voice of Reason E-32-2 Hull #134
 

therapidone

Member III
How heavy is that cruising spinnaker?

Did you have it raised during the times the winds were in excess of 15kt? If so, what weight is the spinnaker made from? I had one made last year & the sailmaker advised me that he wouldn't use it in winds beyond 15 kts & it's 1.5 oz. instead of the lighter .75 oz.

Congrats on a great race...heading down the bay at night under such conditions must have been fantastic...I've enjoyed all 3 of my trips down during the 3 times I've done the Solomons race even though each and every one of them ended w/ no wind at the mouth of the Patuxent, tantalizingly close to the finish line but just sitting there & bobbing up and down in the blazing sun.:boohoo:

I sent along your recap of the race to a broadcast email list consisting of our dockmates...just as here, folks wanted to know what the "10-knot rule" was. After I sent another email explaining it, one dockmate emailed back the intriguing question: What's the 20-knot rule?:devil:

Regards,

Ed:egrin:
 

therapidone

Member III
BOMBS AWAY! Another recap of the Gov Cup

Greetings Chris et al,

I just rec'd an email from the owner of another entry in the Gov Cup that included a recap from one of his crew members...I think you all might appreciate this--especially the part where they enter the restricted Naval bombing area!:eek:
==========================================================
Last Friday night I crewed on a 30 year old, 30' Coronado in the non-spinnaker class, in the annual Maryland Governor’s Cup race from Annapolis to St. Mary’s, Maryland, which is located just inside the mouth of the Potomac River, a distance of about 70 nautical miles.

148 boats were racing in about 7 divisions. We were racing in the phrf non-spinnaker fleet, which generally consisted of a variety of 25 slower rated boats. Our division was the last to start, at 6:30 p.m.

At the start, we had a north wind of about 15 knots, and we were headed south. Within the first hour or two, the wind speed increased to a maximum of about 18 knots, at which time we watched a number of the spinnakers ahead of us disintegrate into long strips of torn sailcloth.

From the start, most of the boats popped their chutes, broad-reached east across the Bay, and sailed south along the eastern shore. It was their plan that when they got close to the Potomac River, they would broad reach back across the Bay and into the mouth of the Potomac River. At the start, we discussed whether to follow the fleet east across the Bay. I believe the fastest route to leeward in breezy conditions is to run as nearly dead downwind as possible. Most racing sailors advocate broad reaching downwind, based on the reasoning that dead downwind is the slowest point of sail, and that the additional speed that is gained by broad reaching compensates for the extra distance that they must sail to get to the destination. My thinking is that there is a limit to how fast a displacement sailboat can go. If the wind is so strong that the boat can reach that limit running dead downwind, then broad reaching actually works to your disadvantage, because broad reaching adds to the distance that you must sail without increasing your speed by a sufficient amount to compensate for it. In this particular race, the rhumb line was virtually dead downwind. We started on that course, running wing-and-wing, and before long, our speed was nearly 8 knots. As we continued south, the size of the waves increased slightly, and the wind speed increased, and we were surfing 8.5, and sometimes nearly 9 knots. One of the crew asked if we could increase our speed by broad reaching to the east, and I asked, “When a 30' boat with a 30 year old hull design is already surfing and doing 8.5 to 9 knots, how much faster can it go? Will the change of course increase it’s speed enough to compensate for the extra distance we would have to sail? We all found that hard to imagine, and continued our course dead downwind.

When the wind began to subside slightly, and we slowed to about 7.5 knots, we raised a second jib, so that we had one jib poled out on the port side of the boat, another jib flying without a pole on the starboard side, and the mainsail to starboard. The boat was equipped with a roller furler, and the headfoil had two slots. As I understand it, twin headsails are only allowed if the sailing instructions specifically authorize it, and that is the case in the Governor’s Cup. We had to alter our course to the east by a degree or two, to keep the wind slightly closer to the port quarter, and to keep all three sails full and drawing, but the extra jib brought our speed back up to about 8 knots, and we believed that ½ knot made it well worth the small increase in distance.

As the night progressed, we watched the long parade of lights of the many boats sailing a few miles from us down the eastern side of the Bay, come into view, fall back abeam of us, and then fall astern of us. Many of those boats had started five minutes or more before us and many were flying spinnakers.

Around 2:00 AM, the moonlight faded and it became very dark. At that time, we were just south of the point where the Patuxent River empties into the Chesapeake Bay. That is the location of the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, and there is a restricted area in the Bay where Navy pilots practice bombing. They use targets that look rather like cubistic mushrooms. They are about 20 feet high, 20 feet across the “cap,” and they are built sturdily enough to withstand the impact of many practice bombs. We knew the area was there, but none of us had ever sailed through the area, and we didn’t know the target structures were there. It was marked as a “restricted area”on the paper charts, and the locations of the targets were even shown on the paper charts, but we were using a computer for navigation, and that degree of detail was only shown if you zoomed in on a small area. Our mistake was that we didn’t zoom in close enough. The helmsman asked the boat’s owner if he thought we could continue our course through the restricted area. The owner replied, “I don’t think they’re going to be scheduling bombing practice at this hour of the morning, especially when everyone knows that all these boats are going to be racing down the Bay.” Because the computerized chart didn’t show any structures in the area & we didn't consult the paper charts until afterwards, none of us thought there was any cause for concern. The first indication of a problem was when we suddenly saw two large, unlighted targets appear out of the darkness at a distance of about 20 yards from our starboard side. Within about 20 seconds, we passed another target about 20 yards from our port side. We realized that we were surrounded by unlighted, fixed objects that we couldn’t see until they were already alongside us, that the objects were only about 40 yards apart, and that we were traveling at about 6 knots on a very dark night. While the owner hunted desperately to find the flashlight he had been using, the helmsman altered course toward the east, and out of the target area, not really knowing whether that was a safe way out, but deciding correctly that continuing into the dark, unknown territory was an invitation to disaster. Despite the magnitude of our mistake, it was just not our destiny to have our tickets punched that night, but that moment moved right up into second place on my all-time list of scary sailing experiences.

As the morning wore on, the new whisker pole that the owner was using for the first time, developed a bow. Then it turned into a kink. Finally, under the stress of a strong gust, it snapped. We continued sailing with both jibs, and found that we could still keep them flying fairly well, even without the pole. The starboard side jib was pretty easy to keep flying as long as the helmsman kept the boat in the groove. The port side jib collapsed periodically, as any jib is inclined to do when being sailed wing-and-wing without a pole, but we found that we could keep it filled fairly well by playing the jibsheet. Using only the crudest of tools, the owner was able to put the broken pieces of the pole back together into what looked like a whisker pole, but it was just too short to be useful anymore, and he began wondering aloud whether it had any kind of a warranty.

We reached the mouth of the Potomac before dawn, took down the twin headsails and, after the longest and most exhilarating downwind run I’ve ever experienced, we began to beat to windward up the river. A line of boats came across from the east side of the Bay and converged with us, and, for the first time in a long time, we had close competition with other boats that we were trying to pass, or that were trying to pass us. We beat our way up the Potomac to the mouth of the St. Mary’s River, and then up the winding, narrowing St. Mary’s River to the finish line, at St. Mary’s College. Shortly after sunrise, at about 6:30 a.m., almost twelve hours after the start, we crossed the finish line.

We knew we had done well, but didn’t know until just before the start of the awards ceremony that we had finished first in our 25 boat division.

I had one more “first” that day. It was the first time a skipper with a two-day growth of whiskers ever wrapped his arms around my neck and gave me a big kiss on the head. He was a happy, gregarious man, and he deserved success.

Our crew consisted of our principal helmsman, Paul, who got a great start, and kept the boat squarely in the groove for most of the 12 hours. He kept her sails full and drawing, contributed to our discussions on course and strategy, made suggestions on sail handling and sail trim, and, above all, he steered us safely away from those bomb targets. Ken was our utility man. He did anything he was asked to do, from sail handling to steering the boat to trimming the sails, to setting the whisker pole, and he did it all well and without hesitation. The owner/skipper was John. He did everything from the most exhaustive boat preparation, to rigging and equipping it, setting up the computer program, plotting the waymarks, steering, sail handling and trimming, repairing, and keeping the crew well supplied with food and beverages. He left no task undone.

The official race results show that we not only beat all the boats in our division, but we actually crossed the finish line ahead of most of the boats in division C/D (started 5 minutes before us), and before many of the boats in division B (10 minutes before) and two boats in division A3 (15 minutes before us). Those two boats, racing with spinnakers, had ratings in the area of 125, as compared to our rating of 198, racing non-spinn..

Ah! Life is good!
 

Chris Miller

Sustaining Member
Willing to destroy your kite...

Ed, our kite is a 1.5 oz UK cruising kite. We were willing to sacrifice it to the race as long as it was safe to do so. We were never out of control (although we approached that edge a few times...). We put it up in 18kts, and held it all night until the turn up the potomac- winds at 25 kts for a while.
The only carnage we had was a 5/16ths XLS tackline that parted when it really started blowing. We did a temporary fix with an old 7/16ths dyneema blended halyard. Jib was up during the 10 minutes it took to re-rig the tack, then chute right back up.
Kudos on the 198 winning the non-spin. The targets are a "local knowledge" thing, I guess. We race through them 3-4 times per year, both dark and light.
Chris


PS. as far as the 20 kt rule... I guess one of us will have to think of one- hmmmmmmm.
 

ted_reshetiloff

Contributing Partner
FWIW those targets are not actually used with physical bombs. They have sensors on them that alert the bombers when they have hit. Much like Laser tag. There is a wreck I believe its called the San Marcos on the lower part of the bay that they used to drop live ordinance on but that was many many years ago. The targets are not such a big deal as the fish traps are. A few years ago we blasted through a section with no nets just the pilings at 12.5 knots on the Moutn Gay 30. I was steering it was about 2am and the guys on the rail barely had time to get their legs inboad as I threaded through 2 pilings. Very scary at that speed. We later heard of a J-30 who was not so lucky and spent 3 hours with a hacksaw cutting his way out. The traps are not on the charts and are not lit...
 

jkm

Member III
Last week we went over to Catalina and were doing 8.4 without much effort.

Got a little wet and wondered what my old bird could do?

John
 
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