Wee Beastie III racing abroad

Wee Beastie III has been out and about this spring, participating in a few race events outside of the Basin, starting with the ABYC Open Regatta on May 28, where they took third place in division. Competition was stiff, the weather was gorgeous and the party…well, let’s just say that ABYC still knows how to throw a good bash. There were various “open bar” tasting tables offering a great variety of licenced beverages and live music well into the night. There are few clubs left that can come close to bringing back the “good old days” of the sort of regatta parties LORC used to have. But AB’s was pretty fun, I must say.

Wee Beastie III makes the podium at the ABYC Regatta

Then there was the “double-whammy” the following weekend, where Wee Beastie III took part in the Susan Hood Trophy Race and the LOSHRS Double Handed Race #1. The former started at 8PM on the Friday night, just off Port Credit YC. The course took us across the lake and around the Niagara buoy, then over to the Burlington Weather Station and back to Port Credit, a total af about 75 nautical miles. Winds were about 10-12kn most of the way across the first leg. Then, with about a mile to go to the mark, somewhere around midnight, the wind picked up big time, gusting over 20kn. At the time we had the spinnaker up and the #1 rigged on deck. Verging on broaching, the main ragging and me on the helm, struggling to get us off the wind, we had to make a quick decision to get the chute down and go main only till we could get the #1 off the foredeck and rig up the #3.

By now, we were flying along on a port tack broad reach, approaching the mark in the dark, doing 7+ knots with just the main up. We were also right on the rhumb line. So, any boat that had rounded was now storming back right in our path on starboard. We had to have all eyes out front to keep an eye on approaching lights. At the mark, some boat just ahead of us did a flying gybe – WHAM!! – and proceeded to turn right up into irons, sails flagging till they got control. Our gybe was better and we found our course to Burlington, for now close reaching. Once the #3 went up, the next 5 hours saw the waves building into a pounding chop. The wind never dropped below 20kn and gusted to 25 on
and off the entire night. (BTW, have you noticed how windy it’s been this year so far? What ever happened to, “When the sun goes down, the wind goes down”?). They call it “The Coolest Race on Lake Ontario” for a reason and by about 4AM it was pretty cold out there, especially for the crew who steadfastly sat on the rail, taking the occasional wave down the neck.

Daybreak was pretty but also still pretty cold. By this point, we really had no idea where we sat in the fleet. It wasn’t until boats started reporting in to the finish that we could start counting off the boats ahead. In the end, we got 5th out of 10 boats in our division. We were actually pretty happy with that finish.

Wee Beastie is not a heavy weather boat by any means. Her sweet spot is somewhere around 8 knots of wind. Compared to our competition in the division, we were satisfied with who we beat and OK with who beat us. More favourable were the overall fleet results where we sat at 16th out of a total of 49 boats.

It is rare to actually get any kind of restful sleep during the ‘Hood. So, after landing at the dock around 11AM Saturday, Jim and I said farewell to our crew and got some well-needed rest to prepare for the Double Handed race the next day. Sunday was still breezy. In fact, I don’t think the wind dropped below 10 knots since we headed off to PCYC on the Friday afternoon. The course was from Port Credit, to a turning mark about 3 kn to the South, then up to the Gibralter buoy and back to the Mimico mark, a total af about 16 miles.

Sailing a double handed race is a different kettle of fish than fully crewed, especially if you want to use a spinnaker. “Less is more” is a very important approach to consider. So, while it might be tempting to hoist the chute and gain a knot or two of speed, you also want to make sure that you aren’t going to lose everything you gain and more in a messy takedown. So, for the first long reach to Gibraltar, with the wind almost on the beam, we held high for a while to get a sense of things. Give’r, a J88 sailed by Tim Sweet out of NYC, got their chute up first. And, while they had some control issues at first, they started to pull ahead. Rum Kist, a Beneteau 10R just to windward of us were next to go with the chute. When we saw they could hold it, we, too, put up the spinnaker. Wheeee! What great sailing that leg was! We took off from Rum Kist and enjoyed watching one of our top competition, Setanta, dropping back, struggling to maintain control.

The Gibraltar buoy is a strange rounding to take – to starboard – essentially meaning, in certain conditions, you have to tack to get around and head to Mimico Mark 5, despite both legs being downwind. And you don’t tack with a chute. As it happened, the next leg was more of a close reach. About 6 painful miles of watching Setanta gaining and gaining on us! Had the leg been just half a mile longer, we wouldn’t have held them off. But, as it was, we crossed just 15 seconds ahead of the big Hanse 40, with whom we rate even. So, for this race, Wee Beastie III managed a very respectable 2nd out of 8 boats in our division and 5th overall in the fleet of 26 boats.

Again, I highly recommend this particular weekend to my fellow HYC sailors looking to try a bigger race event. Both races are held out of PCYC, making the trip there worth the effort!