threebeans on the Around Block Island Race May 22-23, 2009

As far as plans go, this one may have had a few glaring faults from the get-go. Take delivery of a brand-new Santa Cruz 37. Put it in the water for the first time the prior week. Equip it with the largest spinnaker built to date for an SC-37. Go sailing on it for maybe four hours. And then start the Storm Trysail Club's annual "Around Block Island" race: a 185 mile overnight.

Doublehanded.

Not surprisingly, the corrected time results were, shall we say, less than impressive. But, in terms of a "shakedown sail", nothing could have been better. The SC-37 is a fast and comfortable yacht-the boat did her part. Her crew did not.

Prior to this race, I had done a grand total of three shorthanded races. My first was the 2006 Around BI Race on my former boat, Cayo Loco, a modified Quest 30. After a windless, wet and foggy night, we dropped out mid-day on Saturday, having drifted 40 miles in 16 hours. In 2008, I tried again, sailing with Gerry Pearce-we managed a respectable fifth in class and both got the doublehanded bug. Later that year, we did a day-long "short distance" race, and kept up with the rest of the fleet, all sailing fully-crewed. Good stuff, and it was during that race that I told Gerry that I had signed a contract for an SC-37. Plans were immediately struck (and sealed with a couple of Dark and Stormies) to reprise our Around Block experience on the new boat in 2009.

But, as always, time compressed, and even as Gerry and I motored to the start, we were still checking items off the to-do list. For the most part, however, we felt the boat was ready to go and in good shape-the guys at Santa Cruz Yachts had built an exceptional boat and we were confident in it. The prep-time and that confidence, though, came at the expense of time sailing the boat.

Our lack of familiarity with the SC-37 became glaringly obvious only an hour after the start. With the massive 148 square meter 2A up at the start, things looked promising: we finally broke out of the wind shadow of a J/120 and started to reel in a Farr 395 and a Melges 32 that had better starts than us. That was shortlived, however, as we started to get breeze forward, and quickly made fatal mistake number one. Missing, of course, 1,200 pounds of crew weight on the aft quarter, we found that sailing hot angles with that monster kite was virtually impossible. As the rest of our fleet hung towards the favored south side of the Sound, we bled off north, losing both miles and leverage. We waited far too long to take the big kite down, and at last set the smaller 3A reacher.

With the small kite up, we started to see some sparkling numbers. With windspeeds in the mid-teens, we rarely saw boatspeed drop below 9 knots, popping into the 10's on a frequent basis. (Of note is that our instruments were un-calibrated and the numbers are close but not exact).

The relief of being able to sail east towards Block, rather than north towards Connecticut, was brief. My driving sucked. Old habits die hard, I guess, and I could not keep the boat on its feet. We'd accelerate, get going nicely and then BAM, round up. I would try to carve the boat down without oversteering, used to sailing a boat at displacement, not planing, speeds. Finally, I reverted to the Laser sailing driving technique that I learned eons ago as a kid. Remembering that the SC has a deep but narrow rudder, and was going fast, I would need to be aggressive. The boat responded happily-we learned through the course of the race that the more aggressively we were driving, the faster the boat would go.

About four hours into the race, the three IRC-Zero boats finally caught us, thundering past under jib-tops and with staysails set. After the race, one of the crewmembers on Rima told us that we were well east, and thus leading, the rest of the fleet, but were clearly the northern-most boat.

As the sun went down, we were in a groove, making back the lost time and angle on the boats south of us. We could still see them, and we were gaining bearing on them. Then the sun set, the breeze died, and we parked for over two hours, sometimes going backwards over the bottom thanks to adverse current. And we watched the running lights to the south move past us, still in breeze. Such is distance racing.

The boat treated us well, though, during the night. Our big sail blunder, which led to our split with the fleet, was a small mountain to climb, but as the breeze perked up, we were able to set the Code Zero, and were soon sailing faster than the windspeed. We felt that the boat's raw speed would bail us out as we snuck out of the Sound at Valiant Rock.

At dawn, having gone upwind for the last 15 miles to 1BI with the light #1, we were able to see the damage that our detour north had caused. We were with boats that started about an hour behind us. No problem, we thought, as the breeze picked up from the east as we rounded Block and we headed west-downhill. These were our conditions.

At the southern tip of Block, we were a quarter-mile behind the new fully-crewed King 40 American Girl, and about a half-mile behind the fully-crewed X-41 Sarah. This will be a good test: let's assume we are sailing boat-for-boat against them; we owe them time and we should be faster. After settling in with our now-obligatory post-set windchecks (hey, look, there's the keel again!), we got into the groove, quickly overtaking the King 40, then the X-41, and then watching them fade into the horizon behind us.

Maybe we could use the boat's downwind speed to salvage the race; with tunes blaring and guzzling Red Bull, we had a morning where we rarely saw boatspeed drop under double-digits with windspeeds hovering at around 17 knots. Lots of boats can spurt forward at 10 knots; few that I've sailed on or against just keep going, mile after mile, with no wake, no fuss, and no slowing down. Fast really is fun!

We re-entered Long Island Sound at Plum Gut. It was an ugly experience: we got headed as we got into the Gut, couldn't bear off thanks to the fishing boat fleet and the Orient Point Ferry, and decided that a double-handed takedown was out of the question and frankly dangerous. We ultimately ended up skidding the boat through the Gut on its side, going basically upwind, kite and main luffing for about four minutes. If the guy in the yellow Mako ever reads this, we're sorry that we almost poked your eyes out with the NKE wand at the top of the rig.

Once clear of the fishing fleet, we were safe to bear off, and started scorching toward Stamford with boatspeed in the twelves, peaking into the mid-teens. Fast is getting more fun!

Then our comeback ended.

It started as the breeze dropped. Overconfident, we thought it was time for the big kite again, and we did another costly bare-headed change. The big kite gave us maybe a half-knot of speed, but at the cost of the fifteen minute slow sail change. It would get worse.

Less than an hour later, we felt a change in temperature, and then chaos. The breeze spiked into the low 20's then to the mid 20's. The boat was very difficult to control with too much sail and not enough trimmers-pick one, blow the vang or blow the kite sheet. Usually we needed both. Time for another slow sail change, this one resulting in a twisted mess of 2A wrapped around the headstay. Finally we got the smaller 3A up and got going again.

Our rookie mistakes started compounding themselves. Though we were going nicely with the 3A, fatigue was clearly setting in. On a roundup, the active sheet slipped off the winch and the kite streamed off to leeward. Not fast, nor pretty. Fortunately, we were able to get the lazy sheet and manage yet another takedown. Re-rig the gear, get ready to set, and find a rip at the clew. Carefully go through the entire sail, looking for more rips and patching the tear at the clew. Reset the kite again; tack line jammer not completely closed, another takedown, another re-rig and repack, another set. At this point we were exhausted-not from sailing the boat, but from recovering from our blunders. Worse, we spent too much time under main and jib, poking along at 7 to 8 knots and giving up our speed advantage.

In the end, our lack of time and experience with the boat cost us a possible podium finish. Our division was won by Skye, a very well-sailed Farr 395. But, an analysis of our Expedition log file showed that we could quantify an hour-a full hour!-of time spent either recovering from the 2A takedown or from resetting and repairing the 3A, all in the last 50 miles of the race. Or, as a function of time, we gave up an hour during the last six hours of a twenty-six hour race-and we corrected about 1 hour and 15 minutes out of second place. We can only imagine what we could have done had we sailed the boat to its potential in the other twenty hours.

Lessons learned? The first: perhaps rate and sail the boat without the 2A for shorthanded racing. Whatever speed the 2A gave us, we gave back in sail changes to and from the 3A. Furthermore, threebeans rates 1.147; the previous hull Tiburon rated 1.137 with a kite roughly the size of our 3A. That rating difference would have meant another 15 minutes.

Or, perhaps we should rig both spinnakers with socks. Quantifying the time lost with a bare-headed change versus a sock change would help decide whether the large kite is worth the rating disadvantage; if the sock could speed the sets and takedowns considerably, having the large kite onboard might prove to be worth corrected time delta.

The overarching lesson is, of course, that there's no substitute for time in the boat.

With no races on the immediate horizon, we can focus on finishing the boat. But in the meantime, we're actually quite pleased with our third-to-last finish. While there's no substitute for practice, there's also something to a "trial by fire"- throw a race at the boat and see what happens in race conditions. We now have the confidence that when we point threebeans in the right direction, and keep her pointed that way without rinsing off the spreaders thanks to our mismanagement of her sails, she will take good care of us. The SC-37 is truly a remarkable boat.

 

Christopher Rosow
Fairfield, CT
June 1, 2009