Fleet 28 Women Compete in the Annapolis NOODS
4 Chicks and A Chuck Hit the Road for the 2008 Annapolis NOODS
(by Diane Denman)
It was all Pip’s idea.
As you may recall, in July 2006, Fleet 28 women, Pip Earl, Julie Femino, Leanne Smith, Diane McAdoo, Rachel Allen and Diane Denman sailed in the J24 Women’s Open Championship Regatta in Marion, MA. Well they plan on participating once again in this event this coming June and headed down to the 2008 Annapolis NOODS for some practice and tune-up.
It was a great idea Pip and I am so glad we did it.
The story goes something like this……If you’ve ever traveled with your boat, you know the drill. You drive as fast as you dare while pulling 5000 lbs for 9 hours, set up the boat, launch the boat, race, drink sleep, race, drink sleep and race again. Haul out, break her down, and drive another 9 hours in an exhausted daze as fast as you can to the real finish line. Travel regattas are something like the Amazing Race but with no cash prize. But you get hats, you get really nice hats.
Pip Earl, along with Julie Femino as co-pilot, left Beverly Ma early, very early, Thursday morning with “4 Chicks and a Chuck” (the renamed Usual Suspect) and headed south to Annapolis. They arrived with the boat at 4:00 p.m. and the set up began. The boat was rigged and in by 7:30 just in time for an airport run to pick up the rest of the crew. The crew would consist of Pip Earl, Diane Denman, Julie Femino, Diane McAdoo and Chucky Twombly. Put another way, Chick#1, Chick#2, Chick#3, Chick#4 and a Chuck. (Chuck was substituting for trimmer Rachel Allen who will be joining the women in Marion this June.)
We chose the Annapolis NOODS as an opportunity to hopefully gain some confidence and practice our crew work in a large fleet of competitive J24 sailors. As a crew, we girls have not had a lot of experience in large fleets on a crowded line with crowded mark roundings, and tight finishes, so we went to Annapolis looking for just that and that is just what we got. I was nervous to helm the boat in a large competitive fleet, but I knew we had a great boat with good sails and a fine crew, so I went into it knowing we had all the right tools. We just needed to stay focused and give it our all.
As a side note, along with the “4 Chicks and A Chuck” there was also another Fleet 28 boat participating in this event…… “And in the left hand corner, weighing in at #@! lbs is Airodoodle”, helmed by John Denman (my husband) and crewed by Jeff Earl (Pip’s husband), Matt Herbster, Josh Toso, and Blair Denman.
This was gonna’ be fun.
Day 1:
Well, there’s the crowded starting line we were looking for. 26 J24’s. Gulp.
Wind = Light 6-8kts. NE
Weather = 65, sunny.
The good news is the starts went better than expected. Chucky as my wing-man called the shots down the line. Our approach was, start at the boat at about a minute and a half, sail the line and find a nice hole to put the boat. And it worked. In fact, in the first race, we found a real nice spot to put the boat, just underneath, coincidently enough, Airodoodle. Thanks honey. This WAS gonna’ be fun.
The 1st race went real well. It was a 3 leg race. After a decent start, we had a great first leg, getting to the mark in 6th , holding our position downwind, and finishing the race in 6th, what would turn out to be our best finish of the regatta. We were thrilled, there were hugs among us.
The next 2 races were what I would call good races with bad results. 3 legs, same starting approach.
2nd race, good start, got us to the first windward mark in 7th. Now normally being one of the first boats to round the mark is a good thing, but not when you are one of the first boats to discover that there is a LOAD of current running and all the boats behind you go to school on you. We got swept into the mark, passed by a handful of boats, pushed off, and started looking for a good place to do circles. Again, good practice right? You want to learn to take your punishment quickly. Finished this race up in 13th.
3rd race, good start, rounded the windward mark in 5th, held position downwind, smooth rounding. There was clearly more wind on the right side of the course so we started upwind in the pressure on the right. For a while, it looked like we were doing great things, but as we sailed into the deeper water, we were stopped dead in the water by the current. We were in darker water with more wind and lots of water rushing by the hull, but we were not moving well in relation to the rest of the fleet on the left. We learned the hard way to stay out of the current, crossed the line in 24th. Ouch. Don’t worry, we didn’t let that happen twice, we covered the next time and played the left side with shallow water and less current.
Day 2:
Wind = Light 6-8kts. NE
Weather = 68, sunny
Starts not so good this day. We weren’t giving ourselves enough time to find a decent hole to put the boat, ended up having to stick the boat in some less desirable spots. When we did find ourselves in a bad starting position, we did our best to keep the boat moving no matter how small the slot was that we had to sail in. The crew found us a lane to clear air real quick so the pain was brief.
1st race, 3 legs, we dug off the line from a bad start real nice, worked some great tactics upwind getting us to the mark in top 10. Held position downwind and ended up finishing that race with a 9th. That finish was fun. Sailing on starboard tack with one tack to go for the finish, we had one J to windward of us on starboard also. Julie waited for the guy to tack over, called for our tack, a beautiful roll tack followed getting us neck and neck with this other guy. It was gonna be real close. We sailed a horse race but Julie had us positioned well to windward of the committee boat so we didn’t have to pinch to make the finish. I had just enough breathing room below me to sail the boat at a fast angle and man, when the trim is right and you focus on letting the boat sail and you don’t try to push it forward, she sails fast! We got him. Hugs were among us.
2nd race, 5 legs this time, dug off the line again from a not so good start. About half way up the course we headed out to the left and called our layline to allow for the current we had seen the previous day around this time. Unfortunately, the current was not as strong as we anticipated and we found ourselves overstood as we approached the windward mark in the low 20’s, ugh. Picked up a few downwind. Sailed the next leg on port tack in my tell-tail hypnotic state learning that no matter how bad your position may be you need to stay focused and keep trying to sail the boat fast. You will pick up boats that aren’t doing this, especially in a 5 leg race. It was mixed results. We did pick up a few but I also got my first taste of being spit out. As we began to creep over one of our competitors to leeward, I held my lane and started gaining a bit. I tried focusing a little more, trying to get every bit of speed I could out of the boat in hopes of passing this guy, when I heard a noise over my left shoulder. It was the bow wake of another J. It was kinda’ loud, he wasn’t going slow. I tried focusing even harder now hoping to not only pass the one J to leeward, but totally blow away the one trying to sneak up on us too. I held my lane, wanting to sail high and fast and dust off both these guys. Well, that’s not what happened at all. I may have been holding MY lane but the guy over my left shoulder certainly wasn’t holding his, he was bearing off in full roll mode and before I knew it, my genie stalled, the guy above rolled over us and the guy below us took off, passing us to leeward like a greased pig, and Iwe were (say it together….) SPIT OUT! God this sail boat racing thing is fun. I vowed to not let that happen again. We finished in 18th.
3rd race, 5 legs again. Second best race of the regatta, got off the line with a decent start, got to the line in 12th, had wheels downwind, rounded close with the front of the pack, covered the fleet and worked great tactics upwind, rounding in 9th. Wheels again downwind, (don’t ask me how much we weighed, I’ll never tell), good rounding, picked off a few more upwind, finished in 7th. Hugs were among us again. It was great to close the day with a solid race start to finish. Nice job all around.
Day 3:
Wind = Wish I had fat friends kts. NE
Weather = 55, rain/drizzle
The wind had kicked up for the last day of racing, 15kts, puffs to 18kts. We carried the genie with a bubble most of the day. Flukey, flukey, flukey. I learned a lot about driving the boat upwind that day. I found that I could not just get into a groove and chew upwind. I really needed to “steer” the boat to the shifts in order to keep her sailing fast. It was great practice. The race course was real crowded that day. We had 19 Etchells on our line, 38 J22’s and the 26 of us. The committee ran 5 leg races that day so we all piled up at the roundings and on the course. We got a lot of practice tacking, ducking, and using all the cockpit controls. It was great. We struggled to keep the boat flat and point with the heavies, but we held our own. Starts weren’t great, again we weren’t giving ourselves enough time to find a good spot for the boat. 1st race finished us in 17th.
2nd race was a better race, approached the first windward mark in 6th but got fouled on layline in a port/starboard and forced to duck the port tacker. With the 2 extra tacks now required to make the mark, we rounded in 14th. Held our position downwind, slipped a little upwind, rounded deep in 20th, held our position downwind. We needed to dig-out! Our last leg we worked our way out to the left and found some shifts off the point of land. We sailed in phase with the shifts and picked up a good number of boats, crossing the line in 14th.
Overall result for the regatta….we lost the tie breaker for 13th . Yes, that does sound better than 14th. We were happy with that. I was thrilled to have done more than just survive. We got great practice, learned so much, and came away better sailors. And to all you women racers out there….I’ll admit, as a fairly inexperienced driver, I was afraid to play with the big boys. Thought I might mess them up, get in their way, embarrass myself. What I learned? Their not gonna’ cut you any slack and they won’t do you any favors out there, but they will welcome you to the race course with respect and enthusiasm, so GO FOR IT! It’s fun to be a girl.
For full results go to…http://www.sailingworld.com/nood_regatta.jsp
See you all on the water,
Chick#2