NYYC Invitational - Jamie's Story (1)

by Jamie McWilliam on 17 Sep 2009 Hi there from Newport, Rhode Island, where the RHKYC team is racing in the NYYC Invitational Regatta (http://www.nyyc.org/WorldInvitationalCup), an interclub event with 19 teams from around the world competing in identical Swan 42s.

We arrived over the weekend and today had our first spin in the boat, which is a nice piece of kit with a very big spinnaker and a very small rudder. Let's hope it doesn't get too windy... Today the Club ran practice starts and practice races. We had some good moments and a few bad ones, but all told felt pretty OK at the end of the day. And we made the weight!

The boats have been simplified to the extreme for the regatta: they're all tuned identically, and have a new main (North), a new headsail (North) and a new kite (Quantum) for the event. There are no other sails allowed on board, so shredding a kite is not an option. All the rigs have been set exactly the same, and you're not allowed touch anything like shrouds, forestay, or mast ram. There's a weight limit, you're not allowed put on any extra ropes or electronics, and each boat even has the same amount of water and fuel and you're not allowed to add or subtract any!

The end result is that upwind the boats are all going pretty much exactly the same speed, and probably the only chance of any gains are from tactics or perhaps from changing gears - especially because although there was good breeze all day today, ranging from 12 to 22 knots, it was quite shifty and quite patchy. The biggest gains from boatspeed seem to be offwind, largely based on the technique of flying a big a-sail, and of course with only an asymmetric kite, the separation downwind gets pretty big pretty fast so the tactics are critical.

From what we saw today, the NYYC team is a pretty polished unit, which is not surprising as they won a fiercely contested trial series, and have Ken Read on board calling shots - very much the local hero. Also featuring prominently today were the St Francis Yacht Club, which has loads of Etchells guys on board, and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, with the O'Leary clan on board in force. But there were lots of others in the mix at different times, and the fleet is fairly chocker with Olympians and World Champions.

For our part we had several very good starts, one OK one and one shocker; our upwind performance seems to currently have a very good 'high' mode but we have not got 'fast forward' to the level we'd like to just yet. Downwind we were very competitive. We were midfleet in the first practice race and leading the second one after a lap when we craftily dropped to second coz everybody knows it's bad news to win a practice race (right?).

More of the same tomorrow, and then into the real racing Wednesday-Saturday.

RHKYC team:
Warwick Downes (Tactics/Skipper)
Jamie McWilliam (Driver)
Gary Gilbert (Nav)
Nick Burns (Main)
Ben Williams (Trimmer)
Suzanne Downes (Trimmer)
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)