I have been sailing on a lot of different boats over the summer in California. I was more excited than most people might be when I got an invite to sail on a Catalina 37 for a Wednesday night race at Long Beach Yacht Club. I follow the Congressional Cup every year and as soon as I got to Long Beach I made it my goal to get racing on one of the boats, so when the opportunity arose I grabbed it.
The boats are pretty old and not very fast but there are 11 of them racing every Wednesday of the summer in Long Beach and it's pretty good racing. We raced in about 12-15 knots of breeze, decreasing throughout the evening (as seems to be normal for Long Beach). We had a good start, along with most of the rest of the fleet, so it was tough to know where we come out at the top mark. We rounded in the leading bunch, within touching distance of the leaders. As you would expect in close one design racing the positions changed frequently during the race. We managed to hold on to 5th across the line in front of Long Beach Yacht Club.
I really wanted to learn as much as I could about the boats, so I payed a lot attention to every little detail of how things worked on board. I was trimming the Jib Upwind and Kite Downwind. I liked the set up of the boats and I quickly learned how to get things done efficiently. I took some good boat notes after racing about what was working well and how to sail the boats. Hopefully I will get to put them into practice at a Ficker or Congressional Cup in the future.
The format for the Irish Match Racing National Championships was changed in 2012. The title would now be decided through a challenge event. This meant that any team could challenge the current national champion for the title. Which is exactly what we did. The event was sailed in J80's in our home club of Howth. We took on the 2011 champions, Team Top Gun, in what was effectively a first to 3 points championship.
The weight limit just about allowed us to sail with a crew of 5. We had the same team as from Nantes a few weeks earlier, with the addition of Graham, who helped out on the bow and in the cockpit. We had been sailing the boats quite a lot in the run up to the event, doing Wednesday night races and training at the weekends, so were were really happy with our boat handling and speed.
The racing took place in relatively flat water outside Howth Harbor, with about 15-18 knots of breeze. We started the series well, getting a penalty on Team Top Gun in the pre-start of race 1. They lead off the line, but they couldn't find enough room to shed their penalty before the finish. In race two we came from behind and gained the lead after a big luffing battle on the first downwind leg. We extend our lead around the course and took a comfortable win.
We just needed one more win to completes the series. But the third race started badly for us. We got a penalty in the pre-start for a port-starboard infringement. The two boats split off the start line. We headed out to the left hand side of the course and managed to gain enough of a lead to fit in a penalty turn on the port lay line. We crossed ahead and lead around the top mark. From there we managed to hang on to the lead and took the win in race 3, making us the new Irish Match Racing National Champions!
We all had high expectations coming in the event so there was a great sense of relief when we crossed the finish line in race 3. We were also delighted to have won the title.
We look forward to defending the title in the future.
The University of Nantes hold their annual match racing regatta every April. Having finished 5th at the event in 2012 myself and Ryan Scott were determined to go back and try to better our result the second time. Ryan was driving and I was trimming main and kite. We welcomed two new members to the team, Luke on Bow and Sam trimming the jib and pulling strings in the middle. I have done a lot of sailing with these guys on various boats in the past so it was exciting for us to join together as a team.
The event was to be sailed in J22's which myself and Ryan were pretty familiar with. We got the use of a J24 for some training in the run up to the event. The training sessions were really productive, our boat handling was pretty slick from the start, with the team really gelling together from the beginning. Most of our focus was getting the guys used to match racing maneuvers. So getting Luke focused in on Starboard roundings, helicopter sets, windmill sets and different drops was important. We also spent a lot of time practicing prestart maneuvers like dial ups, circles, holding the boat head to wind and backing up. We didn't have any other boats to train against but by the time the event came around we were pretty really happy with our boat handling. We just had to hope we would have the boat speed to match. We had one day training in big breeze. We did speeds I didn't think were possible in a J24. Check out the Video at the end of the post.
The event began with a practice day on Thursday the 4th of April with the qualifying races starting on Friday. We started the day with two wins over local teams from the University of Nantes, followed by a loss to the Polish Team from Gdansk having lead for most of the race. Later in the day the team secured a win over the Swiss as well as a very close defeat to the Hungarian Team, with only a few inches separating the boats at the finish. We ended the day just outside the top 4. With the top 4 boats going on to the semi finals it meant the guys couldn’t afford to loose many of their 6 remaining qualifying races.
Day two saw steadier and stronger breeze coming down the river from the north. We had had six races back to back in the afternoon. We sailing really well, claiming strong wins over teams from Brest, La Rochelle, Milan and Vannes in the first four races. We then suffered a close defeat to one of the local teams from Nantes, before finishing the day with a great win over another team from La Rochelle (EIGSI La Rochelle) in a very tight race.
We ended the round robin with 8 wins and 3 losses and were hopeful this would be enough to secure a place in the semi finals. The Hungarian team won the qualifying series with 11 wins followed by a local team from Nantes. There was a three way tie for 3rd place between Gdansk, EIGSI La Rochelle and ourselves, with all there teams on 8 wins. There was no time for a sail off so the result had to be decided in another way. Each of the teams had a win and a loss against the other two, which meant the tie break was decided on results against the higher ranked teams. The loss to Nantes 1 earlier in the day proved to be very costly and meant the we finished the qualifying series in 5th place, as the teams from La Rochelle and Gdansk went through to the semi’s.
We were left to contest the 5th/6th playoff. There was a bit of a feeling of Deja Vu for Ryan and I as we ended up in the same position as last year. We won the playoff 2-0 against the same team we had raced last year for the same position. Naturally we was disappointed not to better our result from last year but we could take many positives from the event. We sailed really well as a team, winning 10 out of 13 races sailed which for our first event together was very promising. We were undone by some small errors which cost us dearly in the end but it was great way to start off a busy season.
