Kids would rather go fast!

by Kimball Livingston on 17 May 2017 What do you do with 29 kids who want to sail faster?

Why not put them in Nacra 15s?

Which is how 29 moms missed having Mothers' Day brunch 2017 with their kids, but the chief culprit in the scheduling was bronze medalist Pamela Healy, a mom herself, so maybe it's okay.

By the end of each day on San Francisco Bay, there were some very young bodies emanating old-man noises. It was breeze-on. And even though the fleet of six Nacras (with sailors rotating through) found smooth water and wind mild-by-community-standards on the north side of the bay, everyone had to leave through and return through a San Francisco cityfront in full churn, moguls and whitecaps and all.

St. Francis Yacht Club with the St. Francis Sailing Foundation brought in Bryan Paine (ever hear of Ullman Sails?) as head coach, with 'backup' in the form of Pete Melvin (ever hear of Morrelli & Melvin?), and Mike Martin (ever hear of 505s or Aussie 18s?) just for example.

A couple of the Nacra 15s were sailor-owned. The rest were supplied as a step in building the four-month-old fleet with its C-shaped lifting foils (and where might that be headed, do you think?). There were capsizes. A few pitchpoles. For many of the high school sailors it was a first experience outside of FJs, aka the Flying Junior dinghies designed in 1955, and the difference is night and day. They had a blast.

Bryan Paine dropped a few quotables in the debrief, and they are loosely 'quoted' here:
'When you're sailing an FJ, you're always looking behind you for the puffs and the new wind. On a catamaran, the apparent wind is forward. That's where you look.

'When you're tacking, remember, the leeward hull has farther to travel, so we need a catamaran version of a roll tack.
'Going downwind, there are two ways to trim the main that will encourage a pitchpole. You can over-trim, or you can under-trim. If you want to pitchpole, either of those will work.

'But if you want to go fast downwind, remember to add Cunningham tension as the speed builds, to pull the draft forward and shape the main to the apparent wind.'

And so -
Pete Melvin gave it a bottom line: 'Bryan and I are giving you details about how to sail the boats, but we don't expect you to get everything in two days. The fact is, you went out there in a lot of breeze, you stepped up, and you sailed some fast boats that were new to most of you.

'We're impressed. You did well.'