Jack & Jill - a fun race for couples and families

John Buchanon and Dave Kitchen - Great RC work!

On Sunday our daughter, Elizabeth, and I raced S'agapo in the Jack & Jill regatta at Santa Cruz Yacht Club.  It is a terrific regatta that requires double handed sailing from the Jack and the Jill or as many crew as you can stuff aboard provided that only the Jack and the Jill are over 16.  Some of the Families had three generations aboard, we could only muster two (so far).  Two of our best Race Committee team members did a terrific job and oversaw perfect racing conditions.

The day was one of those "Perfect Santa Cruz Sailing Days" where the wind started at 13k and built to 20k before we finished.  The waves were only 3-4 feet high and there wasn't any fog anywhere near us.  It reminded Elizabeth and me of why we enjoy sailing here so much.

We went out early to practice a bit, this was Elizabeth's first time driving S'agapo in a race and she wanted some time to tune up.  It was one of my first times tuning both jib and main in a race and I needed the time to sort things out.  We decided that Elizabeth would "drive" and I'd do everything else - fair enough.  But by the time we'd practiced and backed down to clear kelp from the foils we were a little late for the start.

Alerion 38 - Surpirse

The strategy for the standard Santa Cruz beat from the starting area to the Wharf Mark is to head into the shore on port tack as soon as you can.  As we scrambled for the starting line due to our silly distractions we had the perfect opportunity to start at the Signal Boat end of the line with good speed and head for the favored side right away.  That's a nice way of saying we started almost last but going the right direction and moving fast.

On our first beat, your author failed to trim as well as he should have, we were slow and high.  In S'agapo going 5 degrees higher than anyone else but going a knot slower isn't the fastest way to the finish line, and we suffered a bit as the J-105, Vu Daje, hung on close to us.  We rounded the Windward mark in second place boat-for-boat but in terrible position on corrected time.  Both the J-105 right on our stern and the Alerion 38, Surprise, a half dozen boat lengths behind had us nailed.  We weren't holding the Sydney 38, Aboriginal, It was time to get moving!

Unfortunately, we were rated with our spinnaker and this was a jib-n-main race, so.... we weren't able to escape on the run like we usually do with our large chute.  The course from Wharf Mark took us to SC3 Mark off of Pleasure Point, on a broad reach.  Elizabeth began to get the feel of moving S'agapo through the waves and we started picking up speed.  The Alerion 38 is a tough boat to get away from without more sail area and she was still back there - too close.

S'agapo with Elizabeth Vrolyk at the helm

As we reached toward SC3 Sydnie Moore, who did a terrific job of organizing the regatta, snapped this picture with her cell phone.    It's always fun to see ourselves sailing and I remain struck by how little twist I was putting into the mainsail.  Hmmmm, I'll have to experiment a bit more with that.

When we rounded SC3 and headed back up to Wharf Elizabeth mentioned that she was pulling pretty hard on the tiller: "Too much weather helm, Daddy." and I set out re-trimming.  We had the J-105 two boat lengths behind us and going about the same point and speed.  It was time to do something different.  I eased the main traveler down more than normal to reduce the helm and eased the jib in-hauler to keep the slop open.  Then eased the jib sheet just a little for drive and S'agapo took off.  Elizabeth was getting about 1/3 of a knot better boat speed and with the greater flow of water past the keel fin S'agapo was still making about the same course through the water with her bow a few degrees lower.  It was exactly what we needed.  We finally started to really put some distance between us and the J-105.

Sydney 38 - Aboriginal

We rounded Wharf and headed down to Black Point Mark, then back up to Wharf and down wind to the finish.  We knew it would be close, but we'd no idea exactly how close as Aboriginal, a Sydney-38 was ahead of us boat-for-boat, and would correct out on us by a couple of minutes.  We were second but the J-105 was very very close to having us on corrected time, and she did by just under 20 seconds.  The Alerion 38 was far enough behind that we had no idea how we had done, we would later learn they had won the race.  The results were close and a pretty good indication that the ratings were close to perfect.  All that aside, we had enjoyed a tremendous day on the water.  It was terrific to be racing with my Daughter again after so many years.