NASS Annapolis to Oxford Race, Chesapeake Bay, MD

Can't believe I'm beating Mark Schneider to this information!!

Race context: 200 Plus monohauls; 4 N20s, 2 Reynolds 33s, a Supercat 22, and multiple multi-hauls.

This is pieced together from multiple sources and as usual, believe what you want:

Doug and Andy (N20) - Line honors; "They were Flying!!!"

Roger and Nate ? (Supercat 22) – Pitch-polled with the spin up; made it to Oxford' don’t know were they finished.

Todd and Mr. Bolton (N20) - capsized twice; sixth across the line

Keith and Alec (N20) - Passed Donnybrook and then Keith was washed or "fell(*)"off the tramp with Alec on the wire and the spin up; Keith was plucked out by a mono racing without any sails up; Keith was reported to be having a beer on the mono while Alec righted the boat on his own (*)

Eric Miller (N20), a N20 from somewhere, finished behind Doug and Andy, but ahead of Todd and Mr. Bolton

One of the two R33 was in the top six across the line.

(*) Source: Mr. Wagner, hahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahah

Where did I leave that rehab device (aka can of beer)?

Mark is busy tring to figure out how to put together his new A Cat. I guess compared to the Tornado the total lack of overcomplication is baffling. Anyway, back on subject. From ashore it looked like 8 - 12 kts of breeze but your report sounds like they had plenty. Can't wait to hear more or should I pick up the local paper (Capitol) for a totally eroneous version of events? Ed

Doug and Andy finished in 2 hrs 27 minutes on Saturday; 29!!minutes ahead of us! Flying is the right description. Of course, we did flip twice, and Todd pulled a rudder off on the second one when he grabbed the tiller to hang on to the boat. Took some time to reattach the rudder in 2-3' waves. Our first flip was right beside Donnybrook as we tried to gybe behind them; a little too high too soon. They must have had 15 people on the rail who saw that one :-) Definitely more wind south; some monohulls told us they saw 20+ down the bay on their instruments; the waves definitely got bigger south as there had been a steady north wind for 36 hours or so. The close reach up the Choptank was a workout with the puffs coming and going. AWESOME to be on the beach and watch 170 boats finish; they were coming across the line overlapped for almost 45 minutes. Donnybrook (SC 72) was the only mono to beat us; we were griding them back down but ran out of distance. Only bad news is that we beat the beer truck guys by about an hour :-( Roger and Keith both broke some battens, and Doug and Andy had a crack in the hull; possibly from one of the logs that were plentiful in the bay.

Sunday had nice semi-trap wind out of the river, and then it died. Eric Williams was the only beachcat to make the time limit (he went up the Eastern Shore very early and it paid off); Keith and Alec were less than 200 yards away when the 6 hr time limit ran out :-( Only multihull and beachcat classes had finishers; NONE of the other classes had anyone beat the time limit. Lots of unhappy sailors out there... Long day; our tow home behind Relentless (thanks guys!) was 1.5 hours :-(

Oh, by the way; Pirates-we screwed you over :-) As long as one boat finishes within the time limits, there is NO limit for any other finishing boats. I had to go look that up this morning. Lesson learned: don't listen to those losers already under tow and thirsty for the beer on shore.

Big time bummer. After technically not finishing the day before (getting plucked out of the Bay by a mono counts as assistance I'm sure) I really wanted to finish on Sunday.
Which only confirms my point of view that when you're that close there's no point to giving up.

I just went down to Gertie this afternoon to has some special time with her, and hmmmm. . . weres OZ?

Don't know off-hand. From Leeane it sounds like Roger pushed off from Oxford about 12:30 for the sail back. That's about the exact time the wind dropped out of the Bay. I got a call from Jodie last night looking for those guys, and as we talked she got a call from Roger. I assumed he had made it back to Galesville...

In other news, Doug's boat sustained damage to one of the hulls on Saturday, and took on a lot of water. After their sail back on Sunday there was so much water that the beach wheels broke underneath it! So Black Betty ain't on the lot either...

There was a lot of debris in the Bay this weekend. Tides have been high, and I guess a lot of the crap just floated off the shores. Whole tree trunks were sighted, and lots of stuff ranging from small branches up to that level. When you were on fire going downwind you were lucky to see it to try to avoid it - we took a bunch of knocks, one good enough to jam the starboard board in the trunk, which we then couldn't put down for the remaining upwind legs to the finish.

once again another story of survival from the Chesapeake bay boys.

Don't you fellas ever have lesuirely jaunts? :P

I still think most of them are skeered of Tybee...and yeah.....that's a challenge to you! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

unfortunately doing long races on the bay are either tales of survival or perserverence with not much in between. In two years here I can only count a few days where conditions were really good. The majority of the time it is either 2-5 knot drifters with holes all around or 20 plus with 2-4' bay chop. come on up sometime and join in the errr "fun"!!!

BTW - does everyone know what day tomorrow is???

Talk Like A Pirate Day!!!
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/

Rogers boat was not there and his van was.

Black Betty was there.

Congrats on winning the race back! Did anyone pass donnybrook on the way back?

Those are reserved for Tuesday evening racing!:)

The breeze likes to die as the sun sets on our little river. I have found that about a half-hour after sun set the breeze comes back.

Hmmm, tell that to John McLaughlin, Doug Kirby, Andy Herbick, Chip Zenke...

Seems like over the last couple of years it's either 2.5 or 25.

You gonna bring your new ride to the CRAC Lighthouse? It'll either be 2.5 or 25. Last year it was 2.5....

For some reason we didn't see Black Betty.

We didn't win nuttin'.

We must have gotten by Donneybrook on Sunday, but it would have been when we were in the light stuff in the Bay (not as fun as smoking by them on Saturday). We didn't see them after we rounded the X mark - we were too busy running down Todd and Chris on a double-trapped spin reach. Once out of the river the wind died and we were crawling up the Eastern shore while a lot of the bigger boats went out in the Bay. I think Donneybrook went out there and then eventually gave up. It was cool to look back and see a bunch of the sport boats following us up into the shore area - I thought it would have been too shallow for them.

So here's your "survival tale":

This is a race weekend that's been a bit of a bad luck story for the four years that the beach cats have had an official start. First there was Isabel. The next year a strong NorthEaster kept us on shore and played havoc with the race. Last year the wind dropped out halfway there, and nobody except three PHRF A0 boats finished.

But this Saturday's ride was a blast. At the start we picked up our first chunk of wood that actually stuck to the starboard dagger - interesting gurgling and banging noises... Starting at the back of a 200+ boat fleet on a downwind blow was awesome. Of all the classes, the beach cats started last, behind the multis and PHRF A0. Our goal was to run down all of the keel boats before the finish. At first the Inters were grouped pretty tight, although Doug and Andy showed early on they were the ones we'd be chasing. We started picking off other boats pretty soon after the start. We got settled in with Alec on the wire and finally started to assert ourselves on Todd and Chris as we ran down Donneybrook (for those who don't know, Donneybrook is a PHRF A0 custom all carbon Santa Cruz 72 - big money, big boat, big speed, very impressive). It was dicey running with all the keelboats downwind as we were running hotter angles, and they didn't care if you were starboard and the lee boat. That meant that often we would approach them and have to feather the boat up to take their stern while flapping the spin to avoid taking a gust at the wrong time. Pass the stern flapping, sheet in, bear off, and smoke by them in blast of spray! Dodging keelboats and logs... As the Grey Goose (aka the Love Boat) got along Donneybrook with us, they jibed towards the big black boat, tried to head up, and took their first crash of the day. Good show for the Donneybrook crew!

We were feeling pretty good about things after that, keeping an eye on Doug and Andy in the distance and picking our way through the heavy part of the keelboat fleet. We were getting close to the course for R80 in the Choptank, so we took a starboard jibe to the outside of the traffic and started to reel in a F-31 that was doing real well. Jibed to port to head towards R80, and were smoking along nicely when I found myself getting grabbed by a wave and upended off the back of the boat. As the boat was still powered up, nothing I grabbed stayed in my hand - so I got to see the Pirates of the Chesapeake sail off with Alec in the trap under full power with no helm, until she headed down and capsized to windward after the wind spilled. I watched to make sure Alec was with the boat, and started to swim. That was useless. The Backstroke worked best, still not too efficient. So I bobbed and watched as Alec got the boat ready to right. He was keeping an eye on me as well, so everything was ok with the world, no worries. I was happy we were outside of the traffic as I figured my biggest danger was getting conked by a keel.

It was then I saw off to my left that a mono had dropped all sails and was motoring towards me. That actually bummed me out a bit - I didn't want to mess up anybody else's race. But even though I felt things were under control, the prudent thing to do was to take the ride, as you just never know in those situations. I estimate our separation at about 30-50 yards at most, and I have full confidence that Alec would have righted the boat and gotten back to me. However, a safe ride was there, and I took it even though it would mean accepting assistance and a DSQ.

The folks on the keelboat were great. They got me on board, and said they were impressed with the speed of the cats. They were figuring out how they would assist us righting the boat when I told them just to drop me back in the water close by. That surprised them a bit. But perhaps they noticed that the whole time I was on board I had my eye on Alec and the boat, and wanted nothing more than to get back into the game. So to them I apologize - I probably wasn't very talkative. I even failed to get the name of the boat.

But drop me off they did, and they waited to make sure I got to the boat and watched was we righted it and got back under way. A quick wave and a call to find us at TAYC for drinks on me and we were back on our way, and they were back to their race having marked time for redress.

We ran for a little bit under main alone to clear lines and get a drink, and then it was back out with all the cloth and back up to speed again. Of course, after all this Donneybrook and the Grey Goose had gotten by us again. Into the Choptank and rounding G7 the chutes were put away as the ride became a tight reach. We stayed wide there - keelboats stacking up at a mark while dropping kites in a blow didn't seem like the place for a 20 foot cat!

As we headed up we found our starboard dagger was jammed in the trunk and wouldn't go down. Not what you want when settling into a long upwind port tack. But even so we continued to dispatch the remaining monos while trying to chase down Todd/Chris and Donneybrook. Up ahead somewhere was Doug and Andy, as well as Eric (I20 from Va Beach), and the F-31 we had been chasing before. The Goose held us off, and we obviously never caught Donneybrook again, but what a ride!

As Chris mentioned before, it was awesome getting to the beach before the majority of the boats came in because we got watch them all come up the river and race for the line. Lots of tight finishes to the end.

On the lawn in the middle of the mono crowd the cats drew attention, with lots of people stopping by to ask about them. The were at least of couple of folks that seemed genuinely interested - maybe we'll get some fresh converts!

Looking over our steed we found we had broken the top batten below the gaff. Of course with no spares, we set out to rig a repair. We had tape, but we needed something to splint the batten with. Well, I can honestly say that this is the first time both of us have eaten Key Lime Pie on a stick! There are sacrifices we must all make. After making sure they were clean of the remaining chocolate they were taped to the batten along some emory boards. The repair lasted - we'll probably sail with it this Tuesday, and until we find a replacement batten. Pie on a stick...

Party at Tred Avon Yacht Club was great. All in all a very fun event. We never did find the crew of the boat that helped us, but I'm tracking them down - they'll have drinks at the Riverview. We even got to be tourists in one of Easton's finest neighborhoods whilst acting as a taxi service. But that's a "tale of survival" you'll need to get from Chris.

Keith,



Thanks for the "Fix" I needed that. BTW, I like my, or Mr. Wagners version of you being returned to your boat better than yours.

As far as Tads little challenge goes . . . hmmmm . . . Statue Race 06. . . hmmm. . . Chesapeake Boys . . . 2,5,10,12,18,19,and 24th. Good video though!

I would add Worrell Bros team of Rob Lancaster to you list of past Worrell / Tybee / Atlantic race participants.

Ooops! How could I have forgotten Rob. Also Bobby Noll, and Gale Browning(?).

Here's the Wagner/Capitol Headline:

Donneybrook Takes Line Honors in Oxford Race, Catamarans Capsize all over the Place, Fall Off Boats

One of my favorite moments was when we were in the Choptank going upwind and wanted to get to the windward side of a mono to avoid the wind shadow and bad placement on our course. We came up dead astern and then climbed above them to windward (fun with the lee board only half in), momentarily stalled a bit right along side. Looked over at all the rail meat looking at us, took a puff, raised a hull and accelerated away. Later on some of the crew talked to us and told us how cool that was...

The other was when we popped the chute on the reach away from X on Sunday. Todd and Chris had the momentary "Oh $h!t" look as they figured they had to do the same. Then we got to mow down more monos before getting to G7!

Nice! Mr. Wagner will be pestered to come for a ride next spring. Of course that hasn't worked with the Spin Sheet editor and I know him. Maybe thats it, he knows me. Neither will want to "fall" of a Nacra 20.

Is there a story behind the aka "Love Boat" reference?

Donnybrook was DNF; guess they had enough, too. I think the F-31 got the gun Sunday, with the R-33 close behind. Only multihulls and beachcats made the time limit, which caused some moaning among the other 100+ boats.

Re the spin hoist from X to G7, I was trying to talk Todd out of it, because we were moving pretty well on a close reach, and you weren't making up any distance for a while. Looked like you started working up higher and got faster; don't know what you did but we had to put it up at that point as you closed. I think we screwed up and went under a boat we should have gone over that really let you get by. Speaking of that, I really like the start where we went over that big boat and you tried to sneak under, only to find a slight lack of wind. I was giving you the big ole shi#-eating grin as we went by :-)