Century Club: Jeffrey Halpern

This was a weekend of pretty hardcore sailing. Saturday I went sailing with some friends on a Farr 56 (pilothouse). This is a new boat to them so they are still sorting her out, but it is a very cool boat. This was the first time (besides the sea trial) that they sailed the boat with the mainsail. It was in the 40 F range out on the Bay and blowing in the high teens to low 20 knot range when we left the dock. We ran out the river under mainsail alone and were moving really well. Once out of the river, we close reached north towards the bridge. Along the way, the wind was steadily building such that we saw gusts well up into the mid-30 knot range (true not apparent).

We were under full mainsail and the forestaysail (not the headstaysail), and the boat felt balanced and completely under control. We were limiting the heel angle to a 10-15 degree range using backstay and vang tension to depower the sails. The in-boom furler and main halyard were hydraulically driven, as were the mainsheet, and headsail sheet making sail trim and jibing a push button affair until we rolled out the staysail.

The staysail was on a normal winch. On one hand, the winches were sized perfectly for the sail so that the grinding forces on the winch handle were very manageable, but it took a lot of grinding to bring the sail in. I felt pretty beat when I got home.

After a while, given the rapidly increasing winds, we decided that prudently, it probably made sense to head back towards home. We got rid of the jib on the way back towards the river, and by then we were seeing gusts into the low 40 knot range.

I have not spent much time sailing boats this size in these kinds of conditions. I was amazed at how nonchalantly the boat handled those conditions. 40 knots on Synergy would have felt like a tough slog. The Farr 56 just shrugged it off in a no big deal, this is what I was made for kind of manner. It was all very impressive.

I was reminded of one of the truisms of distance cruisers. I had only met the boat owners perhaps a couple months ago. We had sailed on Synergy and on their boat, exchanged emails and talked on the phone. I really liked getting to know them, but realized that they are getting ready to head off on some distance passages and there was a good chance that I would not see them again. I have often enjoyed the fellowship that happens during those moments when ships pass and pause for a gam with a fellow sailor. But often wonder whether their passages went from there, and miss some of those lasting friendships made in those short acquaintances even decades later.

In any event, I ended up sleeping really well on Saturday night, that is until I had to get up the next morning. .

All last week I had been checking the weather every single day with mal-intent. And much to my delight, all week it looked like Saturday would come with 50-60 degree temps. and 10-12 knots of wind.  Those forecasts could not have sounded more like perfect spring sailing weather.  Sitting at my computer in my office, reading the predictions, I could mentally feel the wind in my hair and hum to the song in my heart. 

But by Friday afternoon the reports showed 15 knots of wind with gusts to 25. I thought to myself, "Gee, not ideal, but doable." By Saturday morning,  the predictions called for 30 knot gusts.

Living strongly in the heavy denial stage of the 7 stages of grieving, I rigged the boat and headed out. Sliding out the channel with the wind on my quarter, I thought "Heck this ain't so bad. I have sailed in a lot worse. " 

It was only once out in Whitehall Bay, I could see the furiousness of the waves out in the Bay. It was only as I spun Synergy up into the wind to raise the mainsail that the full force of the wind hit me. Even then, in what was a lull, I thought it was manageable. But as I set the autopilot and began to leave left the wheel starting to go forward to pull off the sail ties, one of those, "What the hell was that" kind of a "We-are-not-joking-here" type gusts hit with all it had in it;   laying Synergy over perhaps close to 10 degrees under bare poles. I looked at the wind instrument, which showed that gust as 28 knots. 

That left me adjudicating the arguments being laid out by the competing voices shouting into the opposite sides of my brain

 One side shouted, "Are you a wimp? Put up the main, you can always reef if you have to"  While in my other ear, the voice of reason shouted. "Are you out of your cotton picking mind? You are still in a lee, and it will be even crazier winds out there." 

The voice of reason won and so I begrudgingly motored back to the dock. 

It was still mostly nice to be tooling around out on the water, or as my old friend Chuck would say, It hardly sucked at all. 

Slowly but steadily Frank, the owner of Starbid and I have been improving the deck layout on Starbird to make her easier and more competitive to race. Last fall we began a small project to install a few new rope clutches and reroute some lines. Today, we took a long lunch break during our workday, and finished that project off. 

Jeff

After Saturday's energetic sail, Saturday night I slept very well with a big grin on my face. My sleep was only occasionally interrupted by the newest member of our family, "DIngus" who arrived on Saturday morning while I was prepping to go sailing.

We are calling our new kittie Dingus for the moment since we have not had an easy time agreeing on a name. Dingus's name may end up becoming Bogie based on Bogart referring to the Maltese Falcon as "the Dingus".

Dingus joins his new to him sisters Trouble and Chloe.

While I like cats, cats are one of my wife's favorite things in life. I admit that I was not in love with the idea of having two cats, let alone three but for Barbara, cats are what sailing is to me, and cats are way less expensive to maintain than Synergy, so i can't complain (and don't).

Sunday was the AYC Frostbite race to nowhere. This was the first race of the second frostbite series. During the down period between the halves, the owner of the boat, and I have worked on a number of tweaks, making some hardware changes and having the mainsail tweaked. Since we had not raced in a while and had some new gear and sail shape changes to get used to, we got out on the course really early so everyone could sort out and get used to the new stuff. There was almost no wind when we got out there, but quickly the wind began filling in nicely so that there was a steady raceable breeze by the posted start time.

Unfortunately, just as things were getting good, the race committee delayed the start several times, ultimately pushing back our start by 45 minutes or so. By then the breeze had begun to call it it quits, dropping down below 5 knots and with holes developing out in the course area. Perhaps 45 minutes into the race, the race committee abandoned the race since the only breeze that we were experiencing came from the tide pushing us out towards the next mark at around a half knot.

By then, we had been out on the water for almost 3 hours and frankly all of us were cold. When I parked my car before I walked to the boat, the temperature on the car dash showed 25 degrees. When we packed it in and started back to the dock, one of the crew showed less than 30 degrees on his ski jacket thermometer. Those are great temperatures for ice boating, but not especially comfortable for soft water racing.

On the other hand, Will Keyworth got some great action shots of Starbird while the wind held. 

Jeff