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http://www.adventureonline.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=986Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2007 9:20 pm Post subject:
Timbo - good seeing you there, bud. Glad we entertained.
Upwind regatta, all the way. Everyone seemed to be taking it easy on the downwind legs, with only a couple of teams trying to trap out. It was really lumpy with the fresh SE breeze, and too light once the breeze laid down and the chop flattened.
The trip up to A was awe-inspiring - boat was planing. I told JC once, after he asked how we were doing, that we only had the prop in the water. The wing mast and new daggers make the Blade a pointing machine, but with a sail plan of that size, it seemed that pinching was death. We saw Tomko short-tack the A-pin more than once only to fall back through our jib window - JC overstood everything and the acceleration was exhilarating (wheeeeeeeee!).
I’ve seen speculation elsewhere and heard on the beach that JC was vulnerable in lighter airs. I wish we’d had the chance to address that question on the race course. We took a fourth in a lighter race that saw 30-degree shifts (RC-recorded – I’m not guessing). It was nuts how fast positions were changing constantly in each leg. About 2/3rds of the way through the race, we decided to stop trying to do our own thing – we got lucky that Johnny and Katie tried to cover after we sailed a mere 20-yards into a bad shift and dropped three boats on left-side flyers (where the heck did they come from?!). We glued ourselves to the Lovell’s line and shopped their transoms for the remainder of a loooong race (Modified Course 9; Start-A-C-A-C-A-C-finish upwind). Ask some of the hotshots how easy it was to get flushed in that race. JC did the smartest thing he could have in abandoning his pride and not going for a bullet in iffy wind. By sticking close to the second-place guy, he saved his week. Lovell tried to put a boat or two between us, but he couldn't do that and still effectively cover - our positions remained unchanged and both teams took it as a throw.
There were some spectacular stuffs out there – I’m told that Roy caught one of ours and I sincerely hope he did. We buried it and JC went flying forward – ‘chute was off and I even uncleated the jib – we were on our nose for what seemed like an hour. I finally realized that Casey was in front of me and mostly submerged. I managed to climb the hill and uncleat the main – the boat sat down and leapt forward again. JC just reached up, snagged a shroud and swung back onto the boat as it shot past him, a la Spiderman. Tomko said he saw the stuff developing and just wrote us off as swimmers - he was only slightly more surprised than we were that we saved it and kept on rocking. That was our very first downwind leg – we started laughing then and just didn’t stop for the rest of the week.
_________________
John Williams
Capricorn USA 70
Eyewitness responses to JC and John's stuffing :
Robi:
John, funny that you posted that. We witnessed it from roughly 500 yards away. You guys pretty much broached huh? It was crazy, you were flying a yellow spinny, and this happened on the first day.
Yeah, that was very cool!
Terry Back :
Yep,
Everyone on the spectator boat said "pitchpole"! The spi' was flogging and next thing you know the Blade flattened out and rocked-on.
Awesome job JW/JC.
Timbo :
JW, that was an amazing recovery, we all thought you were toast! (wet toast) I was thinking there would be much more of that type thing with no foot straps. But after talking to Matt, he said when it's blowing like that, it's much faster to stay on the tramp and go deeeep.
Question, did you guys pull the boards up prior to that stuff? From where we were watching it looked like only about half the teams were pulling the boards up.
For those who were not there to see them, the new Blade daggers are much longer and skinny. They look a lot like Inter 20 boards, but are much lighter, being foam and carbon.
As you can see in that picture on the Catsailor forum, the boat has PLENTY of volume in the hulls, especially in the aft sections.
John Williams reply to question of Timbo :
Tim,
Never touched the boards - it just didn't feel like we were tripping on them at all, upwind or down. And it seems like they're built very well to take the speed and pressure we put on them. The up-hual needs to be looked at a little - I saw that some people had ripped the small fairleads off the deck. Maybe longer screws or a backing plate?
j
