ACE WYC Frostbite Race 4

On my way to the club in the afternoon, I picked up some batten material from Port Whitby Marine Supplies.

Got the dacron delivery main attached at the tack and clew and fitted/cut the battens to it.

Tonight we had

• Mike (driver)
• Micheal (pit)
• Me (bow/jib)
• Ashley (bow)
• Walter (jib)
• Dave (main)
• Christine (runners)

We untied the lines at 5:20pm, but were stuck on the bottom, and could not back up.
We tried weight to starboard.
We tried weight to port.
We tried weight on the bow.
We hoisted the mainsail to heel us over.
We tied hoisting lines to fingers.
We had Nirvana tow our stern.
We had Nirvana tow our bow.

Finally, we got the boat back far enough that we could swing the bow around and we able to get out. The bulb keel on ACE is tapered back and makes backing up difficult:

Razorbill is a little more rounded at the back, but 4" deeper;

We got out of the channel at 17:53 (over half a hour!) and the race was already starting.

In our panic to get out, we had not even got a headsail on deck, or run sheets.  We brought the heavy #1 on deck, and found there was too much wind for it, so we swapped it out for the #2.

We sailed as fast as we could to the start, and followed the pack to windward mark 6 with winds 11-15 from the east.

First spin hoist was a little late because we were still rigging the spinnaker lines after the rounding. Once we got it up, we were flying toward the leeward mark, leaving the headsail up because we didn't need to gybe to the mark.

On the next upwind leg, we just brought another chute up on deck instead of packing the other one.  Ashley was on the port deck hooking up the spin lines, and I was on starboard deck rigging the pole, when a puff over powered us and the spinnaker came out of the bag half into the water with the sheets and guys attached.  Luckily we didn't have the halyard attached the head, or we would have had a boat stopping/spinnaker ripping shrimping situation.  It took Ashley, Walter, and I all our strength to get the sail back on the boat.  Surprisingly, the chute went up no problem!  All three of us were soaked!

On the upwind legs, we experimented with sail trim.  With the #2 sheeting in hard, we could do 6.8 knots into the waves.  We let the #2 sheet out about 2 ft, and sheeted in the main, and were able to do 7.5 knots upwind.

Only the Evelyn 32 saves us from scoring a DFL, but after handicap we DEFINATELY DFL!

I guess it could have been worst, we could have broken something, or hoisted the spinnaker upsidedown like Winston Churchill did:

Good thing they didn't have to gybe!

Coming in the channel, we left the main up to heel us over, as we saw Razorbill was grounded about 40ft from the end of dock 6.

We took their stern with speed and promptly grounded 25ft from the dock.  It took us about 20 minutes to get her to the dock.  Razorbill took another half an hour!

Needless to say, we beat Razorbill to the dock! LOL
The sailing season for us deep draft boats is done.
If the water drops further, we may have difficulty getting the boats to the mast/haulout crane.

Trip Odometer: 6.63 miles
Avg Speed: 6.6 knots!
Max Speed: 14.1 knots!
Moving Time: 01:18:49

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