J29s Look out for No. 3

Interested members of the J29 class assembled in the Commodore’s Room at the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron for the 2013 AGM on December 7 (Happy Pearl Harbour Day). Representatives from Silver Woman, Paradigm Shift, J-Zeus II9, Colmonell, Foxfire, and Satisfaction all contributed. I don’t have the minutes yet but it was only yesterday so the key stuff is more or less in my memory. It includes a new President, a new schedule, and a new sailcard.

The new President is India Morrison, who is a co-owner of Foxfire. She is our first female President and, I believe, our youngest President ever (certainly younger that I was when I was President). India replaces the outgoing Matt Christie. Scott Christie remains as Treasurer.

The past year was a bit of a tough one. We have fought off a down cycle for a few years but it bit in 2013. Our shortened four-regatta schedule did not excite and regatta attendance was down across the board. Competition was fortunately good and we did start to see some new blood with Foxfire and Painkiller getting out for regattas and showing they can compete.

After some discussion, we decided to go back to a five-regatta program with four to count. The designated regattas will be the RNSYS Opener, Charlottetown Race Week, Lunenburg One Design, Chester Race Week, and BBYC Labour Day. Those who have been around will recognize that the first four events are traditional fixtures on the schedule. BBYC Labour Day goes into a slot that used to be occupied by the Fall One Design at the Squadron.

The date of the Fall One Design got moved too many times and it waned until we dropped it this past year despite have a wildly windblown six-boat spectacular impromptuly held in late October after several early misfires. BBYC Labour Day takes advantage of an established regatta date and fun event. Weather is often good in Nova Scotia on the Labour Day Weekend. It’s well enough separated from Chester Race Week for folks to move boats but it does create a concentration of events through which sailors can get their boats tuned up and their crew work ironed out. If anyone want to come to Nova Scotia for a month can get in a lot of good J29 racing with the potential for, say, 25 competitive one design races over the period.

We have discussed designating BBYC as this year’s North Americans. The Bedford Basin is a good sailing area that has hosted Canadian Olympic Trials and world championships. It’s arguably more accessible to sailors from outside the Atlantic region than any other club we could designate and there’s a crane for launching and hauling. Matt Christie also indicated that improvements have been made to club docks that should make it ideal to accommodate a fleet of 29s. Some details will have to be worked out but it would make for an interesting season-ender if we can iron out the details.

The decision on our sail card is even bigger, though, and could have a significant influence on the style of sailing in Atlantic J29s. After several years of discussing the possibility, class members voted to do away with overlapping genoas in designated Atlantic J29 Regattas. The expectation is that all boats will sail exclusively with the turbo or jumbo jib introduced several years ago by Scotch Mist IV. The jibs have certainly been effective in higher winds and have been used out of necessity or experimentally in lower wind ranges. J-Zeus II9 won two races with Erik Koppernaes steering in shifty 10 knot conditions in the Squadron One Design two years ago after we tore or genoa and Paradigm Shift sailed jumbo in nearly all conditions during the past season. Doug Matthew’s reported at the AGM that they found there was surprisingly little impact on speed in very light air and it is probably everyone’s experience that the boat will tack considerably more quickly in all conditions.

The decision should also save class members money. Jumbo jibs cost less than genoas and will definitely last longer without the flogging that genoas receive through each tack. We also expect that it will reduce the requirement for crew, which has been a critical issue for many class members over the years. With a jib, the grinder and tailer can be a bit smaller people and a crew of about six should be sufficient to sail the boat in most conditions. Genoas will continue to be useable in PHRF events.

Other classes have made similar changes. Bluenoses, which switched from an overlapping genoa to a jib in the 1980s are an obvious local example. With the jib it became considerably easier to see out of the boat and sailing became much more tactical. It hasn’t hurt Bluenoses one bit as class events continue to routinely draw 20 or more boats and the value of the boats has risen substantially.

For us, it’s an experiment we can go back on if our boats become boring. We’ll still have genoas in 2015 if we change our minds. We also agreed that we can pull the big sails out of the bag if there is an interest from J29 sailors from outside our region in competing in this years North Americans.

The meeting closed with a report on our financial status from Treasurer Scott Christie. In short, we have $2,050 in the bank, which is a good war chest. We, however, generated a $200 deficit this year, largely thanks to a couple of regatta participants who did not pay their $100 class dues. The dues are not a lot and, although we our program is not particularly complex, we do need money for some of our initiatives. If any of our readers knows they are behind on their dues, please get in touch with Scott.

We left the meeting with a fair number of loose ends concerning the regattas on our schedule, the designation of the North Americans, and a proper description of our revised sail card. India will have a bit of work to do on regattas and Andrew Childs indicated that he will revise our rules for sails. We all agreed that a meeting will be beneficial in spring to finalize things and get ready for a successful 2014 season.

Racing Round-up

I’ve been lazy about this blog for a while now. My last post was in August when the J29 season effectively ended with Chester Race Week. We had a lot of fun being slapped around by Andrew Childs in the Squadron’s final Wednesday Night Series and had a bit of frustration in the Turkey Bowl when the Race Committee lengthened the course in mid-race and we misheard it on our VHF, taking ourselves and radio-less second placer Hummin (Bll Haliburton’s E22) out of the picture. The winner was Alex Simpson in the J24 Barely Legal.

More significantly on the J24 side, Johnny Whynacht and the crew of Sticky Fingers went south to Portland, Maine, and beat 32 other boats to take the Down East Regatta. There was also a J24 Worlds Qualifier in October when I was in Florida. I don’t have many details about it other than the results, which show that Greg Blunden edged Ted Murphy. There’s a nice picture as well as results on the Atlantic J24 Facebook page but that’s all I’ve got. The 2014 Worlds begin on September 20-26, 2014 at Sail Newport / Ida Lewis Yacht Club in Newport, RI . Lots of time for Greg to prepare.

Silver Bullets

Chester Race Week enjoyed particularly good weather this year, with moderate fog, pleasant sun, one day of strong winds and two days of medium breeze, and one light air day that required us all to sit around for a while. As usual Chester Yacht Club put on a great social program with dances and the lot.  As well, this year’s event attracted J designer Rod Johnstone, who gave at least a couple of interviews to the media that I read in the paper or listened to on the radio. He also gave a bit of a talk in the club one morning, which I sadly missed because I have a day job and a crew to herd.

As usually, there were plenty of J boats out there sailing one design and winning PHRF races.  Notable accomplishments included Johnstone’s second in the Alpha fleet in the J35 J’ai Tu, and Scott Covey’s win in hiis J29 Rumble Fish in the Delta 1 Fleet (whatever than is). Scott won with three seconds but it was sad to see three 29s sailing time trials when they could have added to the J29 one design competition.

The one design fleets were, of course, J boat stalwarts, the J24s with eight competitors and the J29s with six. They award our prizes at the end of the very long prize giving that Race Week requires. We sailed nearly four times as many races. Enough said.

J24

I don’t  have a great deal to say about J24s these days. They have a lot of good sailors but I haven’t sailed in the class lately. Clearly the best in Chester was Peter Wickwire. He has a Canadian Championship to his name so I know he’s good. He also won five of eleven races in Chester, which reinforces it. He got a good fight, though, from young stalwarts Ted Murphy in Juvenile Delinquent and Greg Blunden in Adrenaline Rush, who, respectively, came in three and six points behind Peter. Detailed results are here.

J29

Chester Race followed closely on the Lunenburg One Design, which of course it does every year. The short breather in between didn’t slow Andrew Childs one bit. He racked up firsts even more routinely than in the North Americans eventually compiling eight of eleven races to win in a walk (See results here). 

As in the North Americans, the excitement went down between the boats behind as Colmonell, J-Zeus II9, and Paradigm Shift were clustered closely going into the last day. On J-Zeus II9 we brought in Erik Koppernaes for a final day upgrade but as we entered the last race needed to win and, we thought, have Colmonell finish fifth for us to make it into second. I was confident Erik could win but I was much more uncertain about Colmonell finishing fifth since they would have to be beaten by Painkiller, who steadily improved throughout the regatta but after ten races had not once finished ahead of Colmonell.

As things transpired, J-Zeus and Silver Woman had a nice two-way battle for the lead that J-Zeus won for keeps on the second upwind leg. In the mean time, lo and behold, Painkiller put together an excellent race to hold third. The tougher match was between Paradigm Shift and Colmonell who clawed at each other for the better part of four legs until they coasted to the finish not more than feet apart. The whistles for the two boats as they crossed the line were separated by no more time than I imagine it took the Race Officer to inhale but from our angle by the finish line we were confident Shift had done the job and handed us a miracle. As it happened, they actually hadn’t but an earlier close finish in Race 9 that we thought had gone to Colmonell turned out to be in favour of Shift meaning that we actually only needed Colmonell to come in fourth, which they had.

As a result, Silver Woman won, although Andrew has to lose a few so that I can actually write something about him; J-Zeus II9 came second, and Colmonell helmed by Matt Christie came in third. Our compliments to Brian Todd who ran excellent races for us throughout the event in variable winds that were frequently very challenging. Two races late on Monday and good windward legs on a very swingy heavy air day on Tuesday were especially notable.