Touch2Play at Key West Race Week

by Larry Huibers on 28 Jan 2015 Touch2Play had the great fortune of participating in what would be the largest yet gathering of J88’s to date. Quantum Key West Race Week would serve as a chance to see how boats lined up against one another in conditions that covered the full range.

For this event we had Rob and Sandy Butler, Steve Leibel, Keven Piper, Coleen Walsh and myself, Larry Huibers. The 5 other 88’s racing included Youngstown locals; Easy Eights and Night Owl, Deviation from New Rochelle, Instant Karma from Southampton and Saralysia from Port Sanilac.

I have been lucky enough to be with the Butlers on their last few boats and when Rob was looking for the next one the J 88 hit all the marks, easy to race and manage, comfortable yet performance focused. To really drive home the dual value of the boat we sailed it down and back to Key West.

We delivered the boat from Naples in what will be one of the nicest sailboat rides I have had. We had about 100 miles of down wind sailing in winds ranging from light to 20 knots. We ran the diesel all the way to keep the batteries charged and make sure we stayed on schedule. We left at 7pm, high tide with an eta to the Key West reporting buoy for 7am. With following seas and bursts into 13 + knots we needed to slow down a little near dawn so we could navigate in the channel in better light. We had a magical hour where dolphins were playing in our bow wave trying to get as close as possible to the boat. It was very cool. We got to the Galleon dock by 8am, grabbed a quick nap and began prepping the boat to race. Off came all the cruising stuff, jack lines etc and we were ready to go pace against other boats. Saturday we found a couple of boats and found our pace to be a little off. Lots of chatter and we narrowed our swings down ready to try again Sunday. Sunday was better and we felt OK going into race day.

Quantum Key West Race Week is a bit of a carnival with some of the coolest boats racing there. Seeing the foiling cats rip around was impressive. Ask Flip about it, he was on one of them and said the speed was unbelievable. The new CC 30 was there looking very good as well as a bunch of high end race teams.

We started slow with a 3,2 day one but felt we were getting things figured out. Day 2 had us finish 1, 1 so feeling better about the mid teen wind speed mode. Wednesday was really light with a shore side AP. We finally got in one race and we struggled in the really light stuff finishing fourth. Not how we wanted to end the day but a couple of rummers later we convinced ourselves we were where we needed to be. Thursday was moving day for us with 3 races scheduled. We finished second to Deviation on the first race and now spotted them some points. The next race called for us to put boats between Deviation and us. We provided a loose (ok maybe not loose) cover on them rounding the first 3 marks in 5, sixth. On the sprint to the finish we kept one boat between us and we were third to Deviation’s fifth. Steve and Keven figured we only needed to win all the remaining races to win the division, how hard could that be?. So that’s what we did, finishing with a 1, 1, 1 and winning the series tie breaker.

We won our division at Key West in 2012 on Carbonado and that was huge, this was even more rewarding because of the consistent improvements in crew work, boat handling and speed. It may go down as the second greatest comeback in sailing every, behind some cat race out west.

All the boats went better as the week went on and the differences were measured in a foot here, a little higher point there. Things we learned in no real order are. We use a downhaul line for the kite and found this was very helpful but as was pointed out at the video debrief all the boats held kites too long and bottom rounding never looked perfect for anyone. We followed the Quantum tuning guide and all boats were open to sharing their numbers; everyone wanted to get to get faster and collectively this was accomplished. Main sail trim is critical, lots of burping it to keep the boat on its feet. We could count feet gained when done right, just as easy to count feet lost when done wrong. We learned from Deviation to carry the traveller really high and narrow the slot with lots of in hauler on the jib. We hiked very aggressively, at least that’s what my guts tell me. Downwind we searched and finally found the right mode for best VMG. It was really easy for me, as the kite trimmer, to lull us into too much of a soak mode or feel like a hero heating up to a fast number. In breeze we kept the jib out, that helped a lot. We found that when the boat slowed down it took a really long time to get back to speed so when the boat decelerated you needed to do something positive right away. For an effective lee bow you had to be about a ½ boat length ahead just to be able to get back to speed to pull it off. Anything under 10 knots of wind speed and pressure is king; it made the difference in knots of boat speed. Steve said early on, make the boat go fast and he’ll look like a brilliant tactician. Well for this event we put 95% of our collective energy into going fast and by the slimmest of margins Steve remains a brilliant tactician.

Congratulations to all the class winners and the entire J 88 fleet for making this event enjoyable.
Thanks to Rob and Sandy who took excellent care of us all week. Oh and the return delivery was almost as fun, until the wind swung from the South to the North and the rain came and the lightening came and the waves came, it was great just in a different, wet, bouncy way.

See you all at Charleston!