This past weekend at Beaufort Yacht and Sailing Club was a blast! Although we were 1 of only 2 Lightnings at the regatta, we really felt like we had figured some things out and overcame a few of the challenges we faced at our previous regatta at James Island.
Let's "start" off this blog post!
To start with, we spent all of Saturday morning getting the rigging tuned. Armed with borrowed tools from our parents, the printed out North Sails tuning guide, and lots and lots of water (106 deg F heat index made the process slightly more grueling), we worked step by step to figure out the tuning. It was a lot of back and forth with the numbers, making sure our lowers were between 250-300 lbs and our uppers were around 180 lbs. Once we had the correct shroud tension, we measured the mast rake, as the tuning guide suggested. It was initially too far back with all of the blocks, so we removed the blocks to get the right number. Then we had to go back and make sure the shrouds were at the right tension again. We repeated this process and all of a sudden we just happened to get the right numbers with our shroud tension, mast rake, and prebend. Without the backstay on, we ended up with 300 lbs on the lower shrouds and 180 lbs on the uppers, 26’7” mast rake, and about 2-3 inches of prebend. However, we only had a ½ inch block and the vang block behind the mast. Based on talking to other people, it seems like we have too few blocks behind the mast. Based on the tuning guide, our final numbers were correct and we felt pretty fast on the water. Moving forward, we are wondering if and how the tuning should be changed given our relatively light weight (about 470 lbs) and more windy or wavy conditions (neither of which we experienced at Beaufort, which is probably why our pointing and speed felt so good).
Check out one of our upwind legs during which we felt we had so much better boat speed and pointing ability:
Saturday brought extremely puffy/shifty conditions (which, thankfully, we are used to - yay lake sailing!), and the course was short enough that we found it was useless to put up the spinnaker. Due to incoming afternoon storms, race committee sailed us just south of the bridge on the intracoastal. After a triangle course for the first race, the course then changed to a windward-leeward, and we did okay until we got caught in a pretty severe hole on the 3rd race near the upwind mark and took our only 2nd of the regatta. Storms brought us in early on Saturday, but Sunday brought much better conditions and a larger course. We got in some good spin practice, had some great takedowns and jibes, and were happy with how we performed overall. On the upwind legs, we did a much better job of communicating and coordinating when we were pulling on or taking off controls so that the wire and backstay could be adjusted concurrently.
Here is one of our better mark roundings from this weekend:
And the following downwind leg:
Here is what each of us has to say about this past weekend:
Darby (skipper): My biggest takeaway from this weekend is now I know what a correctly tuned Lightning is supposed to feel like. Granted, the conditions were in our favor with 8-12 winds and very flat water, but I felt like I could hold a lane, accelerate when we needed to, point when necessary, etc. A big tell was the tell-tale (ha) on the top batten of the main. I’ve been paying attention to it at every regatta so far, and this time was the first time that it was flying how it’s supposed to (half the time). I could easily draw the connection between feeling slow and how the tell-tale was flying. If I did feel slow, I would look up and see that our main was stalled, and then adjust accordingly (usually by playing the main).
Now that we have a properly tuned rig and we’re starting to understand how to communicate with one another with regards to the little adjustments we make on the water, I think we’ve made good progress. This regatta was a nice comeback from last weekend for team morale. We’re starting to figure it out, and I’m getting hopeful and excited. We’re planning on practicing these next couple of weeks with our spinnaker flying especially, and I’m excited to travel again to Hobcaw. See you all there!
Wheeler (middle): I really enjoyed sailing in Beaufort this past weekend. The conditions made it feel like we were sailing on Lake Lanier. Throwing current in the mix made for some very interesting races. The races on Saturday reminded me of sailing Thursday night Portsmouth races at LLSC because of how short the course was. It seemed like we were putting the spin up and taking it down almost immediately because we were already at the downwind mark. That being said, I felt like our mark roundings got much better this week. We were able to get our spin up and flying about 2-3 boat lengths after we rounded as opposed to a quarter of the way down the course. Part of that was definitely due to improved communication with Hannah. I started asking her to release the twangs or raise the spin halyard more often rather than doing those tasks myself which helped me keep the spin flying more consistently. With the shifty conditions, it was sometimes difficult to keep the spin flying. I hope that we can continue to improve our communication in the boat so we can keep the spin flying on the downwind.
I was also very happy we figured out how to tune our boat. The process took much longer than expected (we spent from 9am until around 12:30pm on Saturday tuning the boat). It was all very technical and being a (former) Georgia Tech student, I really enjoyed how precise we had to be with it. I forget who exactly told me this but they said “when tuning a boat, every millimeter is a mile”. We definitely found this to be true because every time we turned a turnbuckle or added a mast block, we saw hundreds of pounds of pressure put on the shrouds and a noticeable increase in mast rake. When we finally reached the right numbers, I definitely noticed a difference in the speed of our boat out on the water. I’ll be interested to see how we do in Charleston in July when we compete against a larger fleet.
Hannah (forward): This past weekend seemed to offer the perfect conditions for our level of expertise. The breeze was low enough that I could sit on the low side and look up at the leech on the jib for most of the time. Playing with the sheet and wire while watching the leech when we hit a puff and then got out of it was so helpful. I understand a lot more now about how much wire to put on when we hit a puff and how important that is for helping us maintain speed and pointing. In addition, Wheeler and I were communicating more about adjusting controls so we could try to keep them as in sync as possible. Darby and I were better about communicating on pulling in our sails to get a nice little pump right after a tack. Overall, the 3 of us were more in tune with our boat and with each other and it definitely showed.
Something I still seemed to have trouble with for some reason is the spinnaker halyard getting tangled during the downwind and causing slow take downs at the leeward mark. By the end of Sunday, I was spending a good portion of the downwind (they were short legs) “tidying up” in an effort to have everything ready for the next leg and nothing to get tangled. This seemed to work, but I was constantly aware that every second I spent making sure everything is okay in the boat was a second I wasn’t spending with my head out of the boat, looking behind us to find puffs and help make tactical decisions. So I’m still trying to find the balance of those tasks on the downwind. I did figure out how to pull up on the wire where it attaches to the little car that you put the ball on the jib halyard into. This helps me make sure that I will always be able to get the jib up quickly. I also need to work on being faster at gybing the pole as you can see in the video below.
Check out one of our jibes here:
We were really happy with how we performed and the progress we made this past weekend. Thank you to Beaufort Yacht and Sailing Club for hosting a great regatta, Simon Jenkins for providing housing, Henry McCray for a borrowed ratchet strap and others for coming up to us and offering help and advice. Big thank you to Jim and Pam Burke, our mentors, who competed with us this past weekend and were there for our frequent questions while rigging and tuning.
As always, if you have any advice for us or just want to say hello, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email or leave a comment below. If you will be at a regatta we are going to, come and introduce yourself! We are young sailors eager to make connections in the sailing community. Next up, we will be at Hobcaw Regatta on July 13-14 ready to take on Charleston Harbor sailing again. Hope to see you there!
Here is a nice finish from this weekend to “finish” out this blog post (haha):
All videos from this past weekend:
Video Links
Start - https://youtu.be/DO9Oix7oNCg
First Upwind - https://youtu.be/CtXHv4fm0j0
First Upwind Mark Rounding - https://youtu.be/TnCJcCuQeco
First Downwind - https://youtu.be/ZSjujOSrO4M
First Downwind Mark Rounding - https://youtu.be/uxZATcFDX8Y
Second Upwind - https://youtu.be/UUvUD29T8wQ
Second Upwind Mark Rounding - https://youtu.be/nS0hVWYI2DU
Second Downwind - https://youtu.be/42ehUFKvblE
Jibe - https://youtu.be/y09wbZeksjM
Finish - https://youtu.be/SL9oxMdPZxE
