Gulfport November 9-10 – US Championships, Taipan 4.9 Sloop
A few of us set up our boats on Friday, with three boats already rigged from the GYC. Kirt and Geert came in about 2:30 in the afternoon and Chuck and his wife made it a little later that night. Rick came in late I suspect.
Saturday started with steady 10 knots from the east south east. We did a 4G and spent 1 hour 25 minutes on the course. All had good starts and then Mike and Carter powered away. We all sailed sloop. The course was long at approximately 2 miles across Boca Ciega Bay (just guessing). Lots of wind shifts to play and some boat chop to negotiate.
The temperature was a perfect 80 degrees with the water about the same. Sunny too. The second race was more out of the south and the “A” mark was set up close to a seawall behind a few condos. What a difficult time trying to get around that sucker. I chastised my buddy Big Ed for placing it there, but he said he was just following orders from race committee. It did make for some challenging racing though.
The last race was a slow one, but in the end I could see the onshore breezes kicking in (a benefit of being in the second half of the field!). We were ready for it and powered up from downwind run to reach in a few seconds. We went across the finish line about two seconds behind Michael Coffman and his wife Theodora for third place. We then had a long run back downwind to the GYC when all was over. I didn’t go, but heard that the night out in Gulfport was great with a 10% discount at a local eatery. Gulfport has some real funky places close to the GYC.
Sunday was south wind at 10 knots with three races run. Still trouble with the condos on the south side of the bay (changing wind speed and direction). Also, had more difficulty with powerboat chop. We had great starts all weekend, but blew it on race one with an over early. The pin was way downwind and I didn’t see it (my fault).
Race three was fun until we ran into the back of the GYC’s commodore’s new 4.9. He hit the “C” mark and proceeded to do a penalty turn right at the mark. I assumed instead that he would clear the mark and turn between “A” and “C” somewhere. I was readying the boat for upwind and was just hooking up for wire work when I looked up to see him sitting dead in the water 20 feet in front. Ron was skippering at the time and we had no time to react. We hit him square in the rear crossbar three times before we finally stopped. It was a hard crunch and I thought there would be major damage, but was surprised to find only small missing pieces of gel coat. Wow!
The boat is very fast for a 16 footer and has a lot of things that you can adjust to go slow or fast. I haven’t quite figured out the fast part yet, but have the slow part down pretty good.
Sorry about lack of race details, but my memory is fading.
Michael Crawford USA #213
