Fall Series #5 Results

10/14/2001

RC report submitted by Chris Bolton

Another great day!

For once, the weather forecast was almost exactly right. SE wind at 10-20, although the threatened rain showers held off all day. Several times it looked like it was going to rain, but each time it blew over and cleared up. Despite being late for the skipper's meeting, we set up early and actually had to wait for the fleet to show up. We set up a fairly long L-W course, and stuck with it all day. We would have liked to set a tight reach, given the sometimes hairy reaching conditions, but with the SE wind, there was no real good place to put a port-rounding reach mark, and we really didn't need any more capsizes, anyway. One of our RC crew had a wind meter, and we saw wind vary from 12. 5 to 19.8 in less than 2 minutes. We suspect some of the gusts went a little higher. The long fetch coming up from the south built up some good waves, too. We saw some slight variation in direction, but not enough to warrant changing anything. The wind died down a little at the end of the first race, but then came back strong. Nabeel Alsalam and his crew were one of the few Lightnings to put up a chute in the second race, and maybe the only ones to fly it on the second leg. They rode this added speed to a big win. However, when they tried this again in the third race, they went over shortly after the windward mark, prompting big smiles on the rest of the chute-less fleet as they passed them by. Nabeel and his guys self-rescued, as did the 2 cats that went over. The second race also saw 3 Lightnings come in at different angles and finish within 3 seconds of each other. The last race saw a close finish between two Lightnings marred by a big powerboat that came right up the middle and passed next to the RC boat. The resulting wake really hurt one boat, who finished seconds behind the other. We also towed a SCOW boat from Hains Point all the way back to the marina; I understand this happened last week, too. One Lightning went over in the channel coming home, probably due to the funnel effect there. We had just finished tying up all the boats and had to get the whaler out again to help in getting the mast unstuck from the mud. A very nice day, and we all wished we were sailing, especially after seeing boats shoot by us with spray flying. Pretty easy RC work, outside of trying to stand in the rolling boats. Several Lightnings came by close enough to wet down the RC; next time we might have to have a squirt gun ready in self defense…As a side note, I risked my laptop to take times (using Word and a shortcut macro), and this worked out very well.

Note: The Cats did RC.  Chris Bolton chaired, ....

The winds were steady and out of the south from 12 to 17 with sustained gusts in the low 20s.

Notes: Rick sailed 1 short.  Nabeel capsized in the third race.  Joe started very late. 

Note: Bill started with the two Mobjacks.  He beat the two in the first race and lost to 467 in the second.