Rob's racing diary, May 22, 2008

Thursday night at the Rat

Anyone who has sailed in the Outer Harbour of Toronto in a hard northwesterly knows shifts and gusts. A high pressure system was pushing out the rain and cold from a low that had been dragging it heels over the city for the last few days, and it drove the gradient wind into the 20-knot range last night. But with the wind coming down from the city streets into the Outer Harbour, there were shifts and lulls and gusts to make your head spin. I find it annoying, but race night is race night, and if you want to control the weather, put your boat away and become a bureaucrat for the International Panel on Climate Change (apparently, they know how to do that.)

Not a big fleet, but some good news in seeing Ken Robertson back in the straps after his winter in Florida and California. Ken is one of the pillars of the fleet and, at 70plus in age, can still bite you in the ass in light weather.

I thought it was a night for being cautious. I left myself plenty of room hiking, sheeting and steering to react to the gusts and lulls and shifts. The first race was odd. I am not sure why, but only Heinz and I made it to the start line at the gun.  Everyone else seemed to be still thinking about going round the course. So round we went, carefully, getting a feel for where the wind was and what it was doing. In the end it was me first, Joe Van Rossem second, and Heinz Gebauer third.

Joe packed it in for the rest of the night, so his son Tim decided to step up into his father's shoes and start powering around the course like a rock star. He finished the night with the last three races scored 2, 3, 2, which I am sure he will be happy with. But the real show was his port tack start in the last race.

Throughout the night, you could see him hanging around the port end while everyone else seem to be content to start anywhere there was space. The last race was no different, but as the gun went, the wind shifted and gusted to the left and you could barely cross the line. After loading up and jumping into the straps from my midline spot, I looked up and there was Tim, all 200+lbs of him stretched out, powered up and about 15 boat lengths ahead of everyone on port tack. A beauty, and, as Heinz hollered across the water to me after the start, "just like his dad!"

At the windward mark, he had to have a 20 boat length lead, but he couldn't get the boat jumping on the reaches with all that beef, so I caught up to him and for the next three legs (windward, leeward and a last windward) we had a classic battle that made sailing in that fussy, aggravating wind worth while. I think I caught him because he was a little too quick to tack on the shifts. The pattern seemed to be that you would get a hard header, then a big lift, and then another header. You had to wait for the second header to ensure you were in the lift when you tacked. If you tacked on the first header, you got a knock again on the opposite tack, and ended up out of phase. I got caught tacking on the first header on the first beat of the third race, where I ended up rounding the top mark fifth or sixth after the rest of the fleet held onto their starboard tack into a huge port tack lift from the west while I wallowed in a lull on the right side of the course.

No question, it was not a ton of fun to be buffeted around the course by that unruly wind, but it ended up well for me and gave me a few bullets and more drops in the Spring Series battle with Ken Walton. He didn't make it last night, and though it's not necessarily the best way to win, it still true that 80 per cent of success is showing up.