It is impossible to describe how terrible the conditions are for the race committee people on the committee boat. The RC boat is a flat, open pontoon boat, with absolutely no protection from the wind. I just recently saw a formula for determining chill factor. It said to mutiply the wind speed by 1.5 and subtract that result from the temperature on your thermometer. Using that formula, it made the wind chill factor somewhere between 22 and 28 degrees F. yesterday. It was all they could do to make their fingers work well enough to write down sail numbers for the finishes. You all know how hard it is to get people to work race committee even on a nice day -- sure hope somebody comes back to do it again today.
The sailors fared much better than the race committee, because Rick White (PRO) did his best to minimize waiting time between races. All the people I talked to -- even the ones who came to the beach early or had breakages -- said the wind was very nice (speed, not temperature). Because of the wind direction out of the north, the main difficulties were with launching and returning to shore, especially with the concrete ramp situation at Rowell's Marina. From the perspective of leaving shore, the wind was onshore at a very-close-reach angle, starboard side.
I know you are all wondering what the breakages and problems were with the various types of boats. I did not get very specific information, but I know one A-cat had to come back in at one point and replace sidestays. An Inter 20 was somehow stabbed by an A-Class cat -- the hole was on the inside of the Inter 20's port hull, just in front of the main beam. Even the I-20 skipper didn't seem to be able to describe exactly how that happened, but it is interesting to try to picture it -- apparently, the A-Cat was on starboard and the I-20 was on port, and it did not happen while racing. The A-Cat was able to stay on the water -- I don't know whether it had any damage.
Randy Smyth was out all day yesterday because the transom broke on his F-18HT during the first race. I had originally heard that he broke his rudder, but when I asked him, he said, "Oh, no, they have the rudders really strong now -- it broke the transom instead." He says he was just sailing along, and the rudder pulled out of the transom, taking a piece of the transom with it. He worked the rest of the day Saturday repairing the hole in the transom (used a hair dryer to get the epoxy to kick in spite of the cold air conditions) and should be out there again today.
At one point Saturday, I watched an A-Cat sailing back to our beach under mast alone, somewhere between a beam reach and close reach, and sometimes even appeared to be going upwind. I thought that was amazing. Usually, if you are going to drop your sail before going into the beach, you drop it upwind of your destination, and this guy was sort of downwind of the destination.
In the middle of the night, the clouds suddenly cleared out, and I could see the stars and the beautiful, still-almost-full moon, lighting the water with a silvery glow. Roosters started crowing somewhere down the road. We are going to have sun today (Sunday), and temperature is supposed to get up to the mid 60's. But it sounds like wind is supposed to be 15-20 knots today, out of the same direction as yesterday.
Stay tuned to see if we can get race committee and sailors to venture out again.
