Chronology
1700- 11 June
Friday evening, the night before the start
We attended the Skippers meeting to collect the race documents and to listen to the weather briefing. The briefing was the most important. A group of Navy meterologists prepared it and one of the men presented it to the racers. It was far from what we see on the Weather Channel. The presentation was on overhead transparencies which projected half on the screen, and half on the wall below the screen. No prepared sheets were given out so the racers (including myself) tried to follow the presentation while frantically scribbling down notes. The main weather features were two low pressure systems, one to the northwest over the Great Lakes, and the other, a tropical depression, southeast 500 miles past Bermuda. The latter to become Tropical Storm Arlene (the name was just coincidentally the skipper Pete Rebovich's wife's name) was not to play a factor. The former low would push through the northeast providing significant winds over the race period. The challenge would be trying to predict what the wind would be doing. Most indications showed 15 to 25 knot speeds with directions compatible with flying spinnakers. I decided to buy a new pair of sailing gloves. It was going to be one hell of a ride!
1210- 12 June
Noon Saturday- The Start
We had a great start. First over the line, this time we weren't early. Heading downwind we hoisted the 1/2 oz. spinnaker. A few feet out of the bag the halyard released, dropping the sail and going to the top of the mast. Within a minute, we recovered and the chute went up on the spare halyard. There was 17 knots of wind from the north, we were going south. Our strategy was to stay to the eastern side of the bay. After we stabilized the boat, Mark went up to the masthead to recover the halyard.
1300- 12 June
Saturday afternoon- first jibe
Approaching the eastern shore a little faster than expected, we needed to jibe out for deeper water with a "less than ideal" fore warning. In execution of the jibe, the spinnaker pole was damaged and the jibe could not be completed. Mark Rebovich, the helmsman, flew the chute downwind for 45 minutes while the skipper repaired the pole. Luckily, downwind the only direction we could sail with a spinnaker without a pole was only a few degrees from our optimum course. We had just dodged a bullet (the first of many) because without a pole we could not have finished the race.
We continued south, out of the bay toward the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
0400- 13 June
Sunday morning- Chesapeake Bay Bridge
After sailing over the tunnel section we raised the #2 jib and dropped the chute to come up to the course to the the Chesapeake Light, 30 miles to the southeast. The wind was 17 knots and there were 4 foot waves in sloppy seas.
1100- 13 June
Sunday mid-day Chesapeake Light
We rounded the light. It was a 117 foot tower marking the entrance from the sea to the Chesapeake Bay. At the tower, we altered course to close hauled. We were almost making the rhumb line, diverging to the east. Within a few hours we tacked in to shore and the wind had backed enough to set the spinnaker in 20 knots of wind. By the time we had the 1.5 oz. starcut flying, the wind continued backing and the boat was traveling downwind. Since the Starcut is primarily a reaching sail we thought that the boat was under powered going down wind with it so we decided to peel (switch) to the 3/4 oz. spinnaker (known as the "Pirate"). The skipper was below at the time.
After we successfully completed the peel, the boat felt stabilized and was powering through the 6 to 8 foot seas. After a few minutes, in 22 knots of wind, the tack of the sail ripped free leaving a 1 foot sail triangle on the end of the pole and the rest of the sail flailing in the wind. We dropped the Pirate and sent the Starcut back up. Since down wind angles were slow with this sail, we reached into shore. This eventually took us within 10 miles of Cape May by early the next morning.
The skipper got out his sewing kit and started to repair the Pirate. It was 5 hours of work.
The boat was reaching speeds of 9 to 11 knots surfing down waves. Progress was excellent.
1400- 14 June
Monday mid-day 50 miles east of Long Beach Island.
We were overtaken by another boat which turned to be also from the Raritan Yacht Club. They approached within 200 yards and then both of us decided to jibe. Our jibe went fine, theirs didn't. We sailed away from them as they took down their spinnaker and couldn't get it back up. Later we saw them with a jib up.
A few hours later the wind speed decreased to 13 knots and we peeled back to the repaired Pirate 3/4 oz. spinnaker. The patch held, we had dodged another bullet.
0530- 15 June
Tuesday morning approaching Block Island, 30 miles to go
I was below sleeping when I heard the call that help was needed on deck. I jumped into my foul weather gear bottoms, pulled on my boots and went up. The spinnaker was wrapped around the head stay. It was a bad situation. After 20 minutes of tugging and sailing downwind, we managed to get it flying again. We passed Block Island to port. A half hour later on the next watch, we wrapped it again. This time it was really bad. There was a bubble in the middle of the spinnaker that was wrapped above and below it. Nothing that we tried worked. 20 minutes had passed. We had 20 miles of water left before the Rhode Island shore.The skipper was hanging back and observing this debacle. He was unusually quiet until he announced that he had an idea. We all were receptive because the implied (yet unspoken) last resort was to cut the Pirate off the headstay with a knife. The key to the problem was to gain control of the sail. Since it was tangled far above our heads we had to de-power the lower part of the sail so that it could be unwrapped from the head stay without filling. The skipper's idea was to twist the bottom of the sail like a licorice stick. It worked ! The Pirate was shut down from the bottom to the lower wraps on the headstay by turning it a hundred times. The air was squeezed out and the sail was successfully de-powered. It was then unwrapped from the headstay and lowered. We stuffed it through the hatch and set the star cut.
0630- 15 June
Tuesday morning- The finish
We reached across the finish with the star cut . It was a fast race.