Billy'sTranspacBlogII-2: Catalina Island Race Installment 2

TranspacBlogII-2: Around Catalina Island Part 2

So, we’ve beaten the CF 37 around the west end, hoisted our spinnaker before they did, and scooted down the back-side of Catalina Island. They mount a charge, but we fight it off. The wind lightens, the light fades, we change to the light-weight spinnaker. Things get quiet. We look at the imposing profile of the back side of Catalina on our left.

The back side of Catalina Island is kind of a foreboding place, perhaps because I have early childhood fears. These emanate from scary stories heard at night on the north side of the island, in a calm and friendly cove called Howlands. Picture a fire, and a father who doesn’t talk much suddenly caught up in a story about the “monster from Iron Bon bay”. The bay is really called Iron Bound Bay, but I’ve always remembered it as Iron Bon Bay. I guess I thought it was adjacent to bon-bon bay or something. Don’t ask me about the monster. I’ve completely repressed the story and don’t want to hear it ever again.

My wife and I actually found the bay on a detailed chart of Catalina Island a couple of summers ago. We were taking a pleasure cruise around the island on the oldest boat in southern California, the yacht Siwash (more on this boat in later blogs), we had decided to poke our nose in there and have a look. The south swell was huge, and the backwash and spray and slop were almost intolerable. The boat rocked and pitched all at the same time. The noise of the seas rolling under concavities right at the sea-land interface is fully unnerving. Extremely low pitched sounds, like the best theater sound system you’ve ever experienced. They definitely sound like monsters. They are monsters. Let’s get the hell out of here before they get us!

So, back to the race. A beautiful spinnaker run, that induced me to catch some sleep before the “parking lot” at the east end. The crew woke me for the jibe, in which we turn 40 degrees to port to bring the wind over our port stern instead of our starboard stern, where the wind had been all the way down the island. We executed the jibe perfectly. Those of you that followed my first Transpac Blog know that this is not a trivial feat. Each corner of the spinnaker has two lines attached. The spinnaker pole that has been holding out the sail to windward on the starboard side, has to swing down past the head-stay where the “bow man” attaches it to one of the lines on the port side of the spinnaker, at which point the pole is hauled back to the port side (you might recall I had been the guy hauling the pole up on the new side on the way to Hawaii two years ago, and hauled with so much vim and vigor that I pulled it right through the sail). The helmsman is supposed to time his swing past the wind to coincide with this hook-up. Well tonight, it actually went smoothly, in spite of the night being PITCH dark. No moon, lots of overcast.

We have a new bow man, Andrew (jeez, did I ever hear his last name?), and he is VERY good. He is focused and quiet, and deliberate, and loves to sail. He hasn’t yet made a mistake and has already bailed us out of mistakes made by other crew members. Yay for Andrew. On this, his first jibe with us, he performed flawlessly.

So now we are approaching the east end “parking lot.” The Psyche crew is full of people who have sailed right through the parking lot, without slowing down. I never have. I later found out that they were sailing in the rare years when there was a southeast gale. Not like the wind today, which was a straight ole westerly, the prevailing wind. They call it a “parking lot”, because the wind usually just shuts off. Nothing. Nada. Ninguno. It causes the greatest anxiety and depression for the boats in the lead, and is the greatest source of hope and renewal for the boats that are trailing. I think because I’ve usually been trailing, I love the parking lot.

One year on board a converted Lapworth 50 called Sumatra, we came into the parking lot dead last. As you approach it from a dead-last position, you KNOW it is calm because you begin to see running lights. Lots of them. We counted them up that one year, and realized that the entire fleet was drifting around in there, and had been for hours. In we came with a westerly, maybe west northwest. We decided we would “hug the beach” and sailed really close to the land, perhaps 25-50 yards off. After losing the westerly, like everyone else, we managed to pick up a sweet little offshore whisper coming off the cliffs and dying before it got to the other boats. We sailed by the entire fleet. I think we ended up finishing 4th out of some 20 or 30 boats. Totally amazingly cool.

The next year we did the same thing, and watched the outside boats pick up wind first and leave us in the mist.

So what would happen this year, wonder we. Well the boys are all thinking the wind will turn south and follow us home, but then we start to see lots of lights. Not the whole fleet, but much more than half of it. Parked at the east end. We blithely come in thinking maybe we can sail right past. We don’t. The wind totally stops. Nothing. Our knot meter finally hits the 0.00 mark, and stays there, and stays there. Actually, 0.00 usually means you are still going forward a little bit. You can look at the water and see it creep past you. But sometimes, the wind goes SO slack that you completely lose the ability to steer the boat. Then it starts these slow turns. “Turning 360’s” its called. Really depressing, but also hilarious, and if it is day-time, you can always go for a swim.

Well, we don’t turn any 360s, but we are slow enough for big schools of small fish to be attracted to our white stern light. We notice them, when we realize that schools of dolphin were racing all around the stern eating the bait.

Ok. So what do you do when you hit the parking lot? You look back at the competition you so skillfully led to this point. Here comes the CF 37, who trailed us all the way down the backside. He sees that we are stopped and takes a hard right out to sea, to try and keep the wind. Damned if he doesn’t keep the wind. He sails right by us, maybe 200 yards outside. He doesn’t have much wind, but he does have some.

So now what the hell do we do? We barely have steerage way. It will take hours to get to his track. This is where everyone else but Steve Calhoun and I hit the sack. Now, I must say that I know why Steve is there, besides sailing the boat as fast as he can. He is the “beam me up” guy. This is an amazing concept that I learned 2 years ago on Psyche in this race. You get into the parking lot, you drift and you drift. The time goes from 2000 hours to 2100 hours to 2200 hours, and you are still drifting. Racing, but going nowhere. Then Steve says, “let’s get out of here.” Oh, wait, no, I think we are catching those guys, I think the wind is coming up. Brroooom.

I can’t tell you what a RELIEF it is when Steve turned on that engine two years ago. We were looking at a noontime finish. Turn on the engine, and we get home before first light! Everyone but the helmsman sleeps all the way home. You roll into bed not all that exhausted. I had never done this till two years ago, but I could verily see the moment coming tonight.

But this night was different. I had the helm, and steered Psyche on a radical course, more or less heading for Newport Beach, about 90 degrees from our course home. I thought, let’s do to the CF what she just did to us. 45 min on that course, and the wind came up a bit, this time out of the east. We were under jib now, just ghosting along, but no more goose eggs. Our speed crept up, and up. Kept her headed out. We crossed way behind the stern of the CF and kept going out, and out. The wind increased a little bit more and a little bit more. Now we were going 4 knots. Turned toward the barn (the course home) and the lights of all the boats inshore were moving rapidly past our forward quarter, our beam and we were leaving many of them behind.

You can see this whole story on the map here.




So, I managed to keep Steve’s hand off the ignition switch. The wind gradually increased for everyone. Here was our east-southeasterly, and it came with misting rain. But we sailed hard into the breakwater. The CF finished in the end just a few boat lengths ahead of us, but because our rating was better we beat her on corrected time, for a 2nd in class, and 7th place in the fleet of 30 something boats. We finished around 4 AM, perhaps 16 hours after we started, all of us feeling pretty good about it all.

I have to tell you one more story about the Catalina Island race. Remember the Siwash I was writing about in Iron Bon Bay? Well, way back in I think 1913, she was 3 years old, and my Grandad was a freshman at Stanford. He brought a bunch of his new college buddies, all cocky and headstrong, as a crew on this same race. A big rain storm had just come through, and they started the race in confused seas and a strong North-northwesterly wind. Really strong. Probably 30 knots or more. The great thing about such a wind, as opposed to the usual west wind is that there is no tacking to get around the island, just point the boat to the west end and sail there. Grandad did, but his crew didn’t. They were all below, puking their guts out, and completely helpless with nausea. But Grandad loved that stuff. Here was Siwash on a close reach going like hell. She was a gaff-headed sloop in those days with WAY too much sail area, but she went fast if you could control her. Grandad could, and did. Single handedly. He rounded the west end and headed down the course, the wind well above 30 knots. No spinnaker that afternoon. He had to drag one of his mates up to help him jibe the massive boom (the wood that holds the bottom of the mainsail). It extended 16 feet past the stern and went BOOM when the wind caught it on the other side of the stern. Then down went the mate for his date with the bilge, and Granddad sped past the parking lot, which was a freeway that year. He told me once that there was NO decrease in wind velocity. He rolled in to the dock around midnight.
Siwash broke the record around Catalina that year, and the record held for 27 years. That is a pretty amazing feat. Grandad was something. Every time I sail at night, I sense his ghost. Especially when I’m on Siwash. His ghost is all over that boat. It is a complete honor to be part of that legacy. Thanks, Grandad.

Catalina Island Race Part 1

Billy's Transpac Blog II-1.

Awake with a start (did I scream?). Whoa, where am I? Somebody pulling on my foot. Tense the stomach muscles, try to see. Pitch black. "We're jibing!" Oh. ok. yes. I am on board Psyche. Again. In my cave, where I was sleeping the sleep of the dead as the rest of the crew spinnakered down the backside of Catalina Island toward a head on collision with the "parking lot" at the East end. There is something so wonderful about getting a headfull of sleep while your smart friends sail the boat at breakneck speed, giving quarter to no one. I lie back down, relaxing for 5 sec till I remember where I put my glasses and my headlamp. Ok. Let's go. Still fully dressed, I inch myself backward out of my womb-tube, up to the 10PM rendezvous with China Point.

This is the middle of perhaps my favorite installment of my favorite race, the around Catalina Island Whitney race. We've already rounded the west end, second in class, barely ahead of a CF 37 who we had battled all the way and finally in an anticlimactic joke, squeaked ahead of.

Psyche again. Tuning up for the Transpac. We are the only Cal 40 in the fleet today, which is sad, because you never really know how you are doing (handicap times "adjust" your elapsed time each mile into a "corrected time" and which you can use to estimate how you are doing. You know how many minutes per mile you get from each boat, but that that knowledge makes it very difficult to translate answer the question "how are we doing?").

But we are just out for practice, right? Well, uh, not really. We don't want those bastards to beat us. So Don Burdge took the helm for the start. A well-set line and an upwind start, and despite a not very well thought out strategy, we hit the line on starboard tack (wind over our starboard bow) with good speed. There is a wonderful feeling right after a good start; you entertain the notion you can beat the entire fleet, and now and then you do. But today, we soon realized that the two other competitive boats in our class, a Catalina 42, and the CF 37 could point much closer to the wind than we. The Catalina to leeward was slowly converging with us, closer and closer. "Don, you've got to head up, they're going to hit us (and because they had the right of way, we'd have to do a double turn, which would put us in the tank). Don: "let's tack." We do. The other boat, the CF37 is right there sailing on starboard tack. We're sailing on a course that would run us up her rail, and through her cabin. "Slack the main, we'll duck them". We head down, and come as close to her stern as we can. So, wham-bam, both boats are now ahead of us. Sail fast, Don. We sail in to the break wall, tack out on starboard toward Angel's gate, the entrance to the big blue sea, and both boats cross well ahead of us on port tack. They tack on our wind, and now we are stuck here, with lousy wind and already behind. Pull in the main tighter, we've got to do something to point with these guys. But no matter what we do, they keep making more water to windward, and leaving us in the mist.

By the time we get to Angel's gate, our two competitors are a bit ahead of us, and well to windward, far enough away that our wind is clean. Small consolation. Don steering. The rest of us quiet, contemplating a long sail around Catalina with no boat near us. Beautiful, flat sea, though, with a 9 knot westerly. Ideal sailing conditions.
Now, we were outside Angel's gate heading on a course half way up the west end of Catalina. We had more space, more time. We started to relax. Ok, let's watch this bucket, and see what makes her go fast. Lighten up on the pinching to windward. Loosen up the reins a bit, and see if we can make Psyche just go faster. Watch the knot meter, and the "true wind speed." 10 knots of wind means we should be going 5.5, 11 kts of wind should take us over 6. 12 knots should put us in the high 6's. My turn to steer.

I LOVE to steer Psyche to windward. I may not be as good as my brothers, and I'm definitely not as good as my dad was in his day, but I LOVE it. It is such a wonderful dance. Such a full-blown meditation. It is like Yoga, but fun. It is a little operant conditioning puzzle. A "Skinner box" is a puzzle that an experimental cat has to solve by finding the latch with it's randomly exploring paw, and then having the presence of mind to realize what its paw did to get out of the box, so that next time it can get out faster. We are similarly trying to get Psyche out of the slow box, and if we do, try to realize how we did it. We all guess and talk and compromise and try stuff. The main trim, the jib trim, the halyard tension, the main mast bend. All kinds of things.

But I'm steering, and I make a little discovery. The new jib, like most jibs today, has a little window in the front of it, where two ribbons are attached, one on the windward side, and one on the leeward side of the sail. Both ribbons are supposed to stream straight backward. If you sail too close to the wind, you create a stall on the windward side, and that ribbon stops flowing straight back and flutters straight up. You are pinching the boat too close to the wind, and need to ease her back to port, away from the wind. By contrast, if the leeward ribbon is fluttering up instead of straight, you are heading too far away from the wind, stalling the sail, and wasting precious distance to leeward. Head up man, you're reaching! So everyone knows that the ideal is supposed to be both ribbons straight. But today, I began to realize that this wasn't the case with Psyche and this jib. I found that she would go much faster, if I headed just a tad to leeward of the straight-streaming optimum. In this little groove, I found that the leeward ribbon streams for the forward three fourths of its length, but right at the end it flutters up, like the tail of a cat that is about to attack. I began to chase this little groove (it's not easy, cause the boat tends to go a bit wherever it wants to like a horse that is mainly under your control, but not completely), and when I caught that little groove, the boat started going distinctly faster. 10 knots of breeze was getting us over 6.0 knots, most of the time, now.

Ok, good in theory, but how are we doing with our competition? Well, we are out in the ocean. We see them way to windward, but we can't really tell whether we are gaining or losing. Time to pull out the bearing compass.

Psyche has a REALLY cool bearing compass. I don't know how, but it is much steadier, and way more accurate than any I've seen. You look at a boat across this little compass, and you get a magnetic readout of the direction of that boat TO THE NEAREST DEGREE! This is really something. I've no idea how it works so well, but we "took a fix" on the Catalina 42 and the CF 37. Within 10 minutes we could clearly see that the CF37 was falling behind! The Catalina 42 was too, but much slower, maybe wishful thinking.

So we all cheered up, knowing that out here with room to breath we were "outfooting" our two competitors. This doesn't really tell you whether you are going to get to the west end before them, though, because we all knew they were pointing closer to the wind.

For some reason, I think of that sail across the Catalina channel as a little like life. Sometimes, we sail our lives, entirely too aware of how we compare to others. Sometimes, maybe even often, we get so caught up in comparing ourselves that we forget that each of us is a unique boat, that can only be sailed well by turning attention inward. Comparison with others is essential, but it is best done loosely, and at intervals.

Now there is another aspect of racing a boat fast to windward, and life too, that we call "local knowledge". If you know the territory, even though you might not be as bright or promising as your competitor, you just might come out ok. Look at this map of Catalina Island.


You are looking at the western part of the island. This is where I grew up. I learned to sail under Arrow Point. My favorite upwind race-course, bar none, starts at Howlands Cove and runs up to the west end. From a very early age, I learned that as you come in toward Arrow Point, the wind freshens and changes direction. The wind in the channel comes from the west (upper red arrow), but in under the point, it bends WAY around, almost all the way from the North. This means we can go faster and point MUCH closer to the west end than our competitors out in the channel.

So, our new-found groove, combined with our local knowledge had us quite cheerful as we sailed in under Arrow point. True to form, Arrow point gave us the wind shift we expected, and freshened. We tacked back into the westerly wind of the channel, and after 15 minutes we crossed six boat lengths in front of the CF 37. And tacked on him!

So, our local knowledge and enhanced focus on our own boat won the battle. It was a huge take-home message, that we already knew, of course, but the reminder was clear.

But now we were in close quarters with the CF again. We started a tacking duel. We were trying to spoil his wind, and he was trying to tack out from under our cover. Oh, what fun this is. Sooooo much more fun than lagging the fleet and just sailing the course. We all had our adrenaline pumping.

But we were losing ground on every tack. I was steering still, but I just couldn't find the secret to keeping the boat moving through the tack. You start your tack by heading the boat into the wind, the crew lets go of the jib just after it loses all its wind, then as you pass through the eye of the wind, and the sail flops over to the other side, the crew grinds the sheet (the line that holds the sail to the deck) in as fast as they can. Lots of ways to make it go better, but I'll tell you about them another time.

Finally the CF crossed in front of us, and then tacked on us to spoil our wind! There we were, just before the west end, trailing these guys after all. We followed them out on port tack, the penultimate before the west end. Irritated. Why are we so slow in close quarters? Hmmm…. Could it be that we didn't learn our lessons from the channel? Are we going to have to follow this guy all the way to the east end?

But then we began to realize something. The CF37 was going too far out on port tack! Let's tack now! We did, and then he did, and we laid the west end and beat him after all!

The final life lesson then, is watch out for good luck!

Next installment in a few days!

Hi Grandad