Easy Wednesday Night Race

My latest sailing adventure was on an Etchells for the Wednesday night beer can races this week. It was an easy little race in relatively light air out to Southampton Shoal and back. My oldest daughter drove the last time we did this, but I was at the helm this time.

I really like driving the Etchells. I get the feel for the wind and with a few exceptions where I'm over-powered, I'm comfortable with this position. Ever since my near-collission, which I still haven't written about, I have been doubting my abilities, and had to ask which way to turn the tiller during a tack or jibe. I shouldn't have to do that but I am afraid of making a mistake. It's like I need to confirm my knowledge as I'm thinking it.

Bow of the Etchells as snapped by my daughter.

My husband and I had our two girls onboard with us. My oldest was sitting in the bowman's position and we kept having to tell her to hold onto something. She was too complacent with the light wind for my comfort. My youngest was sitting in the cuddy the whole time. It was convenient to have her hold the beverage my husband and I shared during tack maneuvers, but I really wanted her to come out to watch the waves and enjoy the sail. For her, though, it was just something to get through. (And so you don't need to ask, the entire family wears life jackets when we go out.)

The best part was that it was a nice easy sail with the whole family. It wasn't blowing too hard and I don't think I got a single bruise from the adventure. I needed that more than I care to admit, since my body is still riddled with bruises, including a new one from a fall on my mountain bike. (I merely tipped over the wrong way and didn't get my foot out of the cleat in time. No big deal.) Another best part of the trip was that we saw a cool spotted seal while we were sailing back into the harbor. I LOVE seeing seals! And I just read that they are actually dog mermaids. Now I love them even more.

The worst part of the race was putting the boat away. Since it is dry-docked, that means hauling it out of the water, cleaning it off, putting the trailer away and putting the cover on it. The cover part feels like it takes an hour. The other worst part was that my daughter was sitting underneath and not enjoying it. What I would do to have her enjoy sailing more than she does!

And even though we were late at the start, we still beat three boats in. The Etchells is great like that.

4th Man on the 4th of July

Yesterday's 4th of July holiday was like a weekend rolled into a single 24-hour period. My husband and I went sailing on the bay with another couple on their Etchells. Then we ate barbecue, went swimming and went on a big hike to see fireworks. Some of that hike home included me carrying a 50lb+ child on my back.

Today I'm exhausted!

The races yesterday were PHRF "perf" races, where different classes of boats race against each other. They have some sort of handicapping system that I don't even understand, but that allows some sort of fair race scoring. 

We sailed with another married couple and while I usually work the bow, I ended up being the fourth man on a three-man-boat. Talk about being in the way! All I had to do was move from side to side on the boat, but the way the Etchells heels over, it's very hard to climb from side to side without anything to hold onto and nothing to brace your feet on. I got slammed around the boat quite a bit and slid along the bottom more times than I could count. 

We figured the winds were blowing at about 30 knots for part of the day, but I heard today they were clocked at 33 knots. The Etchells is fast and low and the harder it blows, the wetter you get, especially up at the front of the boat. The other woman who was working the bow took the most water of all of us, but I was next in line. The driver was probably relatively dry. Some of the spray was so heavy that a person could have been standing with a bucket of water throwing it at us at times. I got it in my eyes, my ears and down my foul-weather gear soaking me inside as well as outside.

When the first race was over, I could just as well have been done for the day. I was already tired and sore and that's just from moving from side to side in the boat. I don't ever want to be the person who makes us quit a race so I just kept going and kept my mouth shut. In fact, I didn't complain at all the whole time, even when I slammed my hand so hard that I discovered it was swollen after we were done. I thought I might have broken it by the intensity of the pain when it happened. Right now, though, you can't really tell I did anything. 

That's not the case with the rest of my body. This morning the bruises from yesterday had settled in. I have several more on my right bicep to go with my Laser sailing bruises and the back sides of both legs are covered. I have a couple more large and noteworthy bruises on the side of my upper right thigh and my tailbone. It hurts to sit. Besides bruises, I'm just achy and sore. Who would have thought that sailing would be so physical. I mean, I know it its, but I forget that it is, too. 

The second race was a strange course, and had us going up and back and around and we set the spinnaker three times, including the downwind finish. We were flying the spinnaker at the end and the wind was blowing so hard that I don't recall ever going that fast in a sailboat before! We were a rocket ship with a huge wake out the back! It was very fun. 

As it turns out, we won the spinnaker class of the race, beating out all of our competitors. That was very cool. It's different, though, than sailing side by side from your competitors and seeing the finish one after another. When we crossed the line, no one was around us and a boat with a different rating than us - larger, etc - finished ahead of us. All in all, if you're going to get beaten up and run through the ringer, winning is a bonus.

My kids are sailing today and I can't wait for them to be finished. When we put their boats away, I'm not going to think about sailing for a while. And I'm going to recover.

Adventures with Steve

I've been living and breathing sailing lately and I have the deep tan and Raggedy Ann nose to prove it. Mostly, I'm living and breathing Optimists with and for my daughters. Next in line comes the Etchells, for which I wrote last post - and never finished the story, but I'm not going to do that here. The last boat on the brain is the Laser. 

I have my own Laser named Steve. Recently my husband found a great deal to get a second Laser on Craig's List, at which we jumped. Yesterday we took Steve and the new Laser, named Scooby Doo, out on the Bay. 

Carol and Steve

Getting everyone on the water, including the girls into their Optis for race practice, was a monumental effort. Scooby Doo hadn't been sailed in a very long time and getting it rigged up took time. The two of us sailed out of the harbor in a very light breeze. We sailed past a few random giant jelly fish that looked like mushrooms the size of basketballs. The wind was shifty at first, but the farther you went out, the breeze picked up. 

Emboldened by my husband's presence, I went further than I had ever gone. I was doing pretty well finding the feel of the boat, the wind and getting my maneuvers down. 

And then I flipped.

I've never capsized before. They make the kids do it in sailing school, but for me it was always something I knew would happen to me eventually while out on the water. When it happened, I knew that matter-of-factly I had to push down on the centerboard and the boat would pop up. I would climb back on and away I'd go. Except that is not what happened. Not even close.

First of all, I pulled down on the centerboard and the boat didn't budge. I pulled down on the centerboard again and again and again and nothing would make the boat come back upright. A guy sailed up next to me in a keel boat and offered me help. He didn't know what he could do to help and I didn't know what to do to take help. It had also just happened so I was confident I'd be fine and sent him on his way. I looked out to see that my husband had sailed off pretty far past me, but was probably making his way in my direction. He was either really, really far away or he didn't know that I was down. 

I tried over and over to right the boat and nothing was working. I finally tried pushing the hull of the boat under the centerboard while pulling down and after a few tries, I got the boat flat again. With the feeling of relief mixed with "now what?" I tried to pull myself into the boat. That proved challenging and the boat was turned around and tipping a bit again. I thought that if I turned the sail into the wind, I could be sure that it was going to stay flat while I climbed in. 

Turning the boat, I managed to capsize it again. Fortunately, I now had the pushing-while-pulling trick up my sleeve and it only took me a few tries to right the boat again. My husband still wasn't there and I was getting tired. 

Trying to climb back into my boat, I kept getting my life jacket caught on the edge of the boat and I couldn't get myself out very far. When my husband finally arrived, he asked me if I wanted him to tow me to shore. He tied our boats together and set off in the wind. I started dragging behind the boat like I was Superman flying off to save the world. 

I called my husband to bring his boat near mine instead so I could use it to climb up. I thought that if I could throw my foot onto his boat, I could leverage myself up. It worked, but in the process, my husband's boat turned away from the wind wrong and he capsized. He was able to right his boat easily without even getting wet. (Show off!)

Once on board Steve, I tried to calm my nerves but realized that I was shaking. I had been in the water a long time and don't know if the shaking was due to cold or fear. It didn't matter at that point. During the acrobatic maneuvers, we managed to drift pretty far and we were nearing the land. We weren't at risk of crashing onto rocks, but we were close enough that our wind was affected by the land. I couldn't make the boat move the way I wanted it to. And close enough to have a hearty audience for the whole show.

My husband was yelling instructions to me to get the boat back in order, as all the lines had loosened up during the capsize. The loosened lines made my boat very touchy to the wind and I needed to flatten out the sail to under-power it for my ability and situation. The main sheet, the rope that controls the sail got wrapped around the corner of the transom, the back of the boat, and I needed to un-hook that to regain full control.

The next thing I know it, I've got the boat going again and there is a high-speed ferry crossing my path. I wasn't so close as to hit it, but close enough to be freaked out by it. And then freaked out by the wake it caused. I bobbed around a bit and kept heading into the wind to stop myself from going anywhere. Another lower speed ferry soon followed, nearly duplicating all the fear that I hadn't quite recovered from.

I finally got going and limped into the cove. I sent my husband off to sail on his own, knowing I could get it into the dock at that point and wanting him to have some fun before coming in. I slowly made my way in and tied up. After getting on dry clothes, I went to the bar for a beer. 

Today my knee is tweaked, I'm bruised under my arms and I have a massive shoulder pain, though, that could be from hefting Scooby Doo onto and off of the car top twice. But all of my muscles are screaming today and my ego has its own bruise, as well. 

I'm not saying that is the last time I will sail the Laser, but I don't have immediate plans to do it again soon, either. And in the meantime, I'm going to see if there is a technique to pull myself out of the water should I need next time. If there is a next time. 

Etchells and Optis

My whole family raced sailboats last weekend. My husband and I are sailing an Etchells that was very generously loaned to us for the season from a friend and all around great guy. We named the boat 39 Steps for the season for a couple of reasons. The boat was previously named Rebecca, for whom I'm not sure, but it's the name of an Alfred Hitchcock film and I'm a super big fan. 39 Steps is another Hitchcock film, and the name of a play my husband and I saw when we were in London this past fall. It's also the number of steps it takes for us to get out on the water. In other words, it's complicated.

My daughters raced Optimists, or Optis, out of the yacht club next door to where our boat is dry-docked. So first thing Saturday morning, we drove out to Point Richmond, dropped me off at 39 Steps so that I could get the cover off and set it up to put it in the water. I had help from our "third" crew,  a great guy who's been a friend of mine ever since I've known my husband and to him even longer. The two of us moved the boat to the hoist and lifted it into the bay. We set it up, including raising the sails and checking all the lines, etc.

My husband went with the girls and got them set up. They needed their boats off the trailer that had delivered them from our club. Then, they needed their boats rigged, sails tied on, splashed in the water, usually with a lot of encouragement for the girls to do what they need to do, like get dressed, make their lunches, go to the skipper meeting and not a lot of help to get the boats ready. And we're usually late for everything, too.

Once we were all out on the water and doing our thing, the sailing was fantastic. We sailed separately from the girls and didn't see them during the day, but we knew they were okay and looked forward to watching them race the next day.

I'm in the pink life jacket.

For the first time ever, I drove 39 Steps. I usually work the bow, which includes adjusting and trimming the jib and setting the pole for the spinnaker. I also jibe the spinnaker pole when necessary and help throw the sail up and take it down when it's ready. It's a lot of work and is exhausting. So exhausting, in fact, that when we raced last time, I couldn't manage the last race and we dropped out. Sailing isn't thought of as strenuous, but it really takes it out of me.

Driving the boat is a little less strenuous physically, but it's mentally draining. There is a lot of concentration involved. I was pretty wiped out at the end of the day on Saturday. I took a lot of direction and tactical advice from my crew and focussed on keeping the boat going as fast as possible.

If I thought that racing was complicated, so is writing about it. I'm being pulled in a million directions or at least 39 of them. Consider this - To Be Continued.

All Day Pain

So, I went to the dentist today. That was fun.

My appointment was at 9:10am and I didn't stop being numb until 3:30pm. Here it is almost 7pm and I'm still in pain. Funny thing, my dentist just called to ask me how I was doing, too, as I was writing this!

My new dentist did a pretty good job getting me numb, but when he started drilling, I felt a hot pain in that area. He gave me more pain relief and I decided that I was going to bear it even if it hurt. Fortunately, the subsequent dosage did the trick. 

The worst part was that I was a little congested and phlem-y. I felt like I was going to choke on my own spit and I couldn't breathe through my nose. And my jaw got sore from being propped open with a rubber stopper like my mouth was a door on a windy day and needed some reinforcement. 

After the drilling and before the filling, the dentist let me rest for a bit. I cried a little. I didn't want them to see it, but I couldn't help myself. It was painful and stressful and I was absolutely miserable. 

During the procedure, I was listening to my ipod to distract me. It worked pretty well, but in hind-sight, I should have made a playlist. Being tense with Lady Gaga tapping an up-beat tune in your ears (or in my case, ear - singular) doesn't do much to calm the nerves. I was able to drown out a lot of the scary noise, though and I will definitely do this again.

I'm supposed to go in next week for the other side and I think I'm going to cancel my appointment. I think I just need more time to forget how awful this was before subjecting myself to additional torture. And if this worked the way it was supposed to, I'll be able to chew on that side and avoid it for a long time anyway.