Wee Beastie has a good weekend at NYC Open

It ended up being a great weekend for racing on Aug. 12/13, despite what the original weather forecasts predicted and Wee Beastie III was working hard to make the podium at two race events hosted out of National Yacht Club.

The first day of racing was the NYC Open Regatta and competition was stiff with one of our long-time rivals out there with us in full force: Umi Taka is a C&C 35 mk II that is stacked with some of the best racers on Lake Ontario and we owe it a reasonable ton of time. Also pitted against us was a very well-sailed Express 30 named Papillion, to which we owe a couple of reasonable tons of time. On board Wee Beastie III were: Jim MacIntyre, Rick Marmei, Mike Bauer, Sean Wagner (one of Mike’s regular crew), Jenny Ouyang, a very enthusiastic newcomer to sailing and brand new crew to Wee Beastie, and myself.

Race 1 was a dream. I’ve mentioned Wee Beastie’s “sweet spot” before, but it is somewhere around 7-8 kn of wind and flat water and that’s just what we had. We nailed the start and chewed up the race course earning a very solid first, beating Papillion by just under three minutes and Umi Taka by just over three.

But as the day progressed, the wind built. By Race 2, we were dealing with steady 12-14 kn of wind from the Southwest. No longer our wind, really, but we still managed a third, with the heavier, more solid Umi Taka taking first and a G&S 30 called Zoo2 squeezing us out of second by a mere 6 seconds! Papillon got fourth, nipping at our heels by about 35 seconds.

By Race 3 the wind was now in the high teens. The race was hard work and the waves were building as well. We nailed the start again (or did we?...). It was getting pretty tough to handle the sails and even the Race Committee was having trouble setting marks – the course that was set was no longer a true upwind-downwind such that the leeward leg was enough of a reach that (thankfully) no one put up their chutes. By the end, we were still the first boat to finish and we were pretty sure we were at least not worse than a 4th, but it was hard to tell what the results would be after the handicap math was applied.

We then hung around the start area waiting for a Race 4 to be set. The RC and its little flotilla of mark boats was seriously struggling to get anything going with a persistent shift that had now reached steady over 20kn with heavy chop coming from the southwest. Boats started radioing in one after the other to say they were retiring for the day. We were giving the same consideration serious thought but with the caveat, “If Umi Taka calls it off, then we do, too…” After about an hour of pounding around and not going anywhere, we heard the call on the radio that the races were done for the day.

So we headed back to shore and waited for the awards ceremony while enjoying a fine barbecue and free beer (like, lots of free beer). As it turned out, preliminary results on Yacht Scoring’s website for Race 3 showed we managed a respectable third behind Umi Taka and Papillion. Overall results placed us second! But then… remember that bit of foreshadowing above in the brackets with the “or did we?...” business? Well, here’s where our story takes a somewhat disappointing turn. Revised results were posted shortly before the awards presentation. Turns out, Wee Beastie III was noted as “OCS” in Race 3. “OCS” is Racer-Nerd-Talk for “Over Early”. Yes, my friends, we were over early or “On Course Side” at the start in Race 3 and as a result we were disqualified! There was elevated discussion amongst the Wee Beastie Crew about not hearing any kind of hail on the radio at the start. We had two radios dialed in and heard nothing after the start. For the record, it is not the RC’s responsibility to ensure that a racer has been hailed and informed of this sort of infraction. And, in the “old days” of racing, the RC pretty much never communicated directly with boats in the fleet. That has changed a lot over the years and today’s RC’s are typically much more communicative out on the water, providing fleets with ongoing updates as to course changes, approximate start times and, yes, multiple hails to a boat that may have gone over early. But not this RC. Not even a “Three, two, one, Division One Start!” They stuck to the old school model of management, for sure. So for us, “Nailed the start” became “Failed the start.” And we were scored 9th out of a fleet of 8 boats in Race 3. OUCH.

But wait…what’s this?...When the cumulative results were sorted out, there was a three-way tie including us for third place – all three boats having 13 points total. BUT, because we were the only boat of the three to have scored a first, the tie was broken in our favour! So, despite being tossed out in one of three races in the series, Wee Beastie still managed a spot on the podium with Third overall!

And so, in the end,we were quite happy with how things turned out, despite our fatal error on the start line of Race 3. We went in hoping for a first, but happy to be in the top 3.

The next day was the AHMEN race. This was one of a series of races hosted by a consortium of clubs in Toronto and covered about 15 nmi around a few random marks west of the Toronto Islands. The weather was gorgeous with the wind conditions just a bit high of Wee Beastie’s sweet spot at around 12 kn. We were pretty short-handed with just me and Jim and our new-found crew, Jenny Ouyang, out for this one and, so, it was going to be a bit tricky if we were going to do anything with the spinnaker. The course was an odd-shaped triangle, twice around. We had a good start and sailed as well as we could. The first time around, few boats put up chutes, the long leeward leg being just a bit too much on the beam for most boats to carry them. But the second time around we put up our spinnaker and Jenny drove for a while as Jim and I managed the sails. It was a great leg and we kept our competition at bay – all but one. Katbird is a Dufour 34 to whom we owe a bucket-load of time to. They were not anywhere near far enough behind us at the finish to take them on corrected.

Still, in the end we did at least as well as we would have hoped, finishing 2nd in division and 5th out of 21 boats overall.

It was a really great weekend and I highly recommend anyone interested in getting involved in more racing to consider this double-hitter event as well worth the effort!