RHKYC at the NYYC Invitational – Jamie’s Story (3)

by Jamie McWilliam on 17 Sep 2009 Well, the weather was lovely and the company was great, but apart from that it was a shocker.

We set off out today for the first three or fout races in what looked like being a cracking day for racing - 18-20 from the ENE, forecast to be pretty steady with the heat being more on the start, boat handling, and boatspeed, rather than the shifts and pressure differences of the two practice days. So we had a couple of trips upwind to make sure we felt fast (we did), and headed down to get into the first sequence. We had been trucking at about 045 on starboard, but in our last look at the line it was more like 035-038, and the beat was not very long (2 miles) for boats who were all going about the same pace, so we decided to start up by the committee boat.

We shepherded a group of boats out there on port as we came down to the last minute before the start, preventing them tacking, and turned back at about 40 seconds to explode off the boat end at pace, only to discover the port jib sheet had come off the jib clew. Merde! While we held her almost head-to-wind to get it re-attached, the guys we had pinned out came back below us and held us out, and we wound up starting second row one down from the boat. No disaster, as we were quite quickly able to flip and clear, and we found a nice groove and trucked out to the right waiting for a knock to go back.

Instead, it held steady and then went about 10 left, so we carried on a bit more and when we got a little righty we flipped back onto starboard, only to see the breeze go another 15 left almost immediately, and we were toast. The entire pack came over on the (newly relocated and a lot closer) port layline and left the RORC, the Royal Danish and ourselves absolutely buried, trucking in from 'Cornersville, Population 3'. Yecch.

Anyway, heads were still up, and we knuckled down to the task of picking off some victims in the remainder of the race. Unfortunately this part of the plan didn't go so well either, as we got a brutally unreasonable final knock just before the top mark, while unable to tack because the Danes were on our hip, and couldn't lay the mark. So we went to shoot it, got tacked on by the RORC, got into irons and hit the damn buoy. In reverse. Crikey almighty. At this stage any number of choice vernacular comments sprang to mind, but the presence of the ESPN camera on our pushpit calmed us all down, and we got on with the job of doing our penalty turn and getting round the mark. All accomplished in an eerie silence.

Although it would have been understandable, if not forgivable, to have struggled to focus on the now Lazarus-like task of picking off even one or two boats, we proceeded to do so with a good kite set. And then the tack line shackle bust and the kite drifted in behind the main and got into a wrap. Honestly! What did we do wrong? Was there some churchgoing requirement that we weren't told about?

Ah well, no probs. We got the wrap and the tack line sorted with nary a harsh word spoken, and speared off down the run. We then threw our gybe into the bottom mark and managed to lay her down for a brief second - I hesitate to call it a broach, especially in light of how the rest of the race was going - before executing a neat weather drop and heading off up the beat. This proved to be one of the highlights of the race, as we actually overtook a boat, albeit the Italians who were proceeding with no headsail. But when it's a famine, crumbs seem like a feast. So we silently erupted in cheers as we moved out of last, and did a nice set and run down to the finish where we discovered that one other boat had retired, and there were loads of protests which might also help our cause. 'Good job we stayed out of trouble' quipped Benny.

At this stage it was obvious that the sails were having some problems, so the Committee moved racing into the bay north of the bridge, and after an hour’s motor-sail to get there, we had a couple of cracking practice beats in glorious sunshine, flat water and 20 knots, before the head and tack fitting webbing on so many headsails broke that the Race Committee called it off for the day.

OK, so nobody died, but it was a bloody disaster. The good thing was that there was zero blamestorming, and the entire crew got on with it in a very professional fashion, and we've got a lot of races to go. Ben Ainslie was DSQ in his first race when winning gold in Athens, and there's no question that we will have a steely focus from here on in, as we have already used up our 'life' - even without a discard, because in this fleet I think it's going to be pretty easy for everybody to have at least one shocker.

Cheers from Newport
Jamie


RHKYC team:
Warwick Downes (Tactics/Skipper)
Jamie McWilliam (Driver)
Gary Gilbert (Nav)
Nick Burns (Main)
Ben Williams (Trimmer)
Suzanne Downes (Trmmer)
Rob McMillan (Trimmer, owner's rep, and owner of Quantum Sails Newport)
Joachim Isler (Pit)
Glenn Kim (Mast)
Gaston Chan (Mid-Bow)
Drew Taylor (Bow)