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Summer Sailstice 2014 Aboard Sirocco, a 43’ J/130

September 5, 2014 by Abby
Summer Sailstice 2014  Aboard Sirocco, a 43’ J/130

Every year in June our club, Oceanside Yacht Club, schedules a cruise/race to Dana Point, California which is 21 miles north of our harbor.  As luck would have it, the 2014 edition of this event fell on the Summer Sailstice weekend.  When the club received the notice announcing this year’s Sailstice, one of our members entered the club’s cruise/race on the event website and we signed up, not only for the yacht racing but to celebrate the Sailstice with other members of our club.  This was our third Sailstice event on our J/130.

Cathy and I have been sailing for over thirty years.  We now live in the San Diego area but have sailed the Great Lakes including the Chicago to Mackinaw classic, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Desolation Sound, San Francisco Bay, Mexico and now Southern California.  

It is ironic that my very first introduction to sailing was in Mission Bay, which is near San Diego, on a rental boat some forty years ago.  I knew nothing about sailing but my friend, Carolyn, who I later learned exaggerated her prowess on a sailing vessel, coaxed me into a rental partnership for two hours.  I was visiting San Diego in March from Chicago where winter was raging on; I was ready for some sun rays. Now I found myself on a tubby rental boat made of aluminum, probably weighing more than my rental car.  But it was floating, had a mast and sails and even a rudder.  To this day I am unsure whether there was a keel or centerboard.  But the weather was so nice, Carolyn was a delightful personality and pretty, so why not give it try, I thought.

We left the dock with the sails up with some assistance from the staff.  The light wind filled the sails, and to my amazement we were moving along nicely downwind!  The excitement of the moment blocked any thought of how we would get back to the rental shop.  I was not concerned anyway because I was duped into thinking Carolyn had all the answers.  She authoritatively stated that the luff of the sails should not be wiggly.  As I said earlier, I knew absolutely nothing and anything she said sounded right to me. So with that profound statement about the physics of sailing we managed to get back from where we started. I was dumbfounded that you could move around an expanse of water and not need a motor.  I was instantly hooked.

When I returned to Chicago, I immediately began shopping for a sailboat. I knew I wanted to sail on Lake Michigan and had enough instinct to conclude a 27 foot boat would be a reasonable size to handle the sometimes rough conditions in a big lake.  Luckily I had a colleague who was a big time racer who crewed on one of the biggest, fastest boats on Lake Michigan.  Ron was a true sailing expert and was kind to coach me on my new boat.

But it wasn’t too long after learning the basics of sailing that I got interested in racing my boat.  

Racing is where I began to learn the finer points of sailing and why different boats perform differently.  Frankly, after forty years, I am still learning things about sailboats and how to race them.

As any racing skipper knows, the challenge is to attract and retain good sailors on your boat.  Fortunately, the seemingly chronic shortage of crew brought me invitations to crew on other boats.  Believe me I wasn’t that good but my desperate skippers needed a warm body, maybe for the galley. I really had fun and was soaking all the accumulated knowledge that my skippers were displaying through tactics, sail trim and team building.

One of the funniest experiences I had was when we were finishing a race in pea soup fog.  Jack, my skipper and a good sailor, was nevertheless freaked out by the fog. We could not see the committee boat, visibility was maybe 30 feet.  The RC boat was blasting its horn every 20-30 seconds to give the fleet an audible direction by which to find them.  This was way before GPS was available.   Rather than sail by an apparent wind angle, Jack was zigzagging all over the place.  The spinnaker trimmers were trying to get him to hold a course to no avail. Then all of a sudden, we saw the committee boat and Jack called for the spinnaker halyard to be released.  The sail proceeded to fall right on top of the RC committee with hands poking up to get out from under the 1,000 square feet of rip stop nylon.  I don’t think Jack saw the humor in it like I did.  At least the RC got our sail number up close and personal.

I think Sailstice is synonymous with camaraderie because of the encouragement and support the event offers to get people out on the water, preferably in a flotilla. I know in our club the “brand” Summer Sailstice is well known because one of our members won a very nice prize a few years ago.  We are grateful for the opportunity to be selected and are very much enjoying learning to stay dry on the Beneteau-edition YOLO stand-up paddleboard.

Lee Pryor

September, 2014

 

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