IT’S NOT OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER

I used to tell my mother about the great starts I would have racing various sailboats. She would respond, “That’s nice, but were you at the finish?” Not hurtful as much as thought provoking. Great starts are good, but sailboat races can fall victim to fickle winds, better tactics and can figuratively restart multiple times over the course of a race.

One such “restart” happened on Day 3 of this year’s New York Yacht Club Cruise last month. The course was from Greenport on the North Fork of Long Island to Sag Harbor, across Shelter Island from Greenport to the south. To make the course “interesting,” the Race Committee set a turning mark 5.5 nm inside Peconic Bay giving us a long beat followed by a long run. To make things even more interesting, there were forecasts of storms rolling across Long Island that afternoon.

I was sailing as one of four onboard Andrew & Linda Weiss’ CHRISTOPHER DRAGON, an Italia 11.98 that we had entered in the non-spinnaker division. Our objective was to have fun and, if we could win a race or two, that would be even better. In the first two races, we split wins with Patty Young’s Swan 42 ENTROPY. While DRAGON had a great rating, ENTROPY was well sailed by a full crew and her waterline gave her the legs to get out in the lead. She would be tough to beat on any given day.

OK, Mom, we won the start but, as was the case, the long, light, and flukey windward leg into Peconic Bay saw ENTROPY extend well on us. In fact, Patty told us later that they had us by over 19 minutes on the western most turning mark. The run home to the finish off Sag Harbor was dead down wind and, with both boats sporting non-overlapping jibs sailing wing-on-wing, we found the spinnaker divisions that started after us catching up. Then the wheels started to come off!

ENTROPY, NYYC Commodore Jay Cross’ Frers 74, FOGGY, and Former NYYC Commodore Paul Zabetakis’ Swan 42, IMPETUOUS, were easily over a mile ahead of us as we were halfway back out of Peconic Bay. We looked back at the slower boats behind us as the sky darkened and the forecasted front swept diagonally across the course, getting everyone behind us very wet with a short burst of wind. Being beyond the footprint of the front, we continued to sail in the sun and light breezes.

Then it happened…

IMPETUOUS had turned the last mark on her way to the finish off Sag Harbor and was out of sight; but it appeared ENTROPY and FOGGY were stopped right after the next mark and just short of the Sag Harbor/Shelter Island Ferry. There was a Race Committee RHIB in the vicinity…had they shortened the race? When in doubt, take out the binoculars and look! To our astonishment, while we were still sailing in 6-8 knots of wind, the two boats ahead had hit a wall of absolutely no wind and were just sitting there. In fact, Patty Young later commented that they saw 5-6 ferries cross the channel as they sat there watching us bring down the wind with us.

There we were, rounding the mark and side-by-side with ENTROPY having erased her nearly 20-minute lead. And the 72’ FOGGY was sitting there, too. As we sailed in, we were joined by DORADE, the Classic S&S yawl and another boat under spinnaker. The race had restarted!

As we worked our way up to the leaders, our eyes were mostly behind us. Where would the wind fill, die, or hold? And there were sandbars we had to avoid at all costs. On top of that, the wind was oscillating so we found ourselves gybing back and forth.

Quick tactics and keeping heads out of the boat was essential as we transitioned from puff to lull, from one point of sail to another. As the wind started to fill in and we were now on-the-wind, we were almost to the right hand beach when we had to tack out onto starboard. And…we were short handed. Importantly, there are times when you just do the right thing: as we tacked onto starboard to avoid the beach DORADE was to our left on port changing from a reaching spinnaker to a jib. There was a full fire drill in progress on DORADE’s bow. Rather than play port/starboard in this ever-changing situation, Andrew bore off and passed astern of this grand dame of sailing. “There’s no way we’re going to starboard tack DORADE!”

The wind filled finally. FOGGY and ENTROPY were off like rockets, but they only had about two miles left and that wouldn’t be enough run room to save their time. We came across the finish line with big smiles on our faces. We had anticipated the weather shifts. We had talked through each maneuver at least once before executing them. We kept our heads out of the boat – except for the navigator Larry Fox whose job it was to keep us off the beaches. We transitioned well from situation to situation. And while ENTROPY had sailed an exceptional race, the wind gods didn’t smile on them that day.

Oh, yeah, Mom, we not only won the start…but the race and ORC Non-Spinnaker, too.

Note: CHRISTOPHER DRAGON XII is a long-time UK Sailmakers Northeast customer and we sailed with our Titanium mainsail and X-Drive J1 for the majority of the Cruise.