Today, Friday (10/25), we had Scout hauled to clean and inspect her bottom. Even though we have a diver about once a month “we” haven’t been able to see her under carriage since we left Kemah, Texas in January. So, onto the lift and out of the water she went, then the staff at Wormley Creek Marina (and Michael) scraped off barnacles and power washed the brown crud. When the job was complete I could hear Scout singing….my heinie’s clean…..my heinie’s clean! Yep, now she has a bottom as smooth as a baby’s butt. Nice. The rest of the day was spent putting things back together then a lovely night at the dock.

After checking our weather guru’s, we decided it would be better to travel on Saturday rather than Sunday. So, Saturday (10/26) we released our lines and departed Wormley Creek at about 8:00. It was an overcast morning, but we had a lovely and uneventful three and one-half cruise to Hampton, VA.

Arriving at Hampton Yacht Club about 11:30, we tied up and walked up to the Club to take care of the business part of docking. Kelly, who checked us in, mentioned there was a sailboat race tomorrow. I inquired and suggested that Michael might like to hitch a ride. Lo and behold next thing we know Michael is chatting with Dixon and asked to crew on his boat “Kingfisher”, a C&C 99. How exciting!

Sunday (10/27) morning Michael met Dixon and the crew on Kingfisher to sail in the first of HYC’s “Frostbite” race series. Since Michael hasn’t sailed competitively in about two years, to say he was excited was an understatement.

After the race Dixon sent out an email to the crew recapping the event. It’s a long email but I thought it gave great insight to sailing on the Chesapeake. I redacted the first part of the message concerning a previous engine problem and subsequent repair that was the reason for the “short notice” about finding crew.

Here’s Dixon’s email: To become a better sailor, you need to sail in big air…. Well, we got that chance yesterday in HYC Frostbite #1, the first event in a 5-race distance series conducted using government marks in Norfolk Harbor.

With such short notice though, finding enough trained people posed a challenge. Luckily Drip and Mary were both signed on and from there I added Jake Snyder, Audrey Fulk (Commodore emeritus of the W&M sailing team) and Brad Robinson. I was still one short and with a strong weather front due to cross Hampton on Sunday, the winds were forecast to be really up, with rain as well. Saturday, when I went to HYC to scrub the bottom, I happened to meet Mike and Sharon Bythewood. Mike and Sharon were overnighting at HYC on their new trawler, having just started south towards home. I overheard Sharon mention to Mike that “…there’s a race tomorrow!”. Not meaning to eavesdrop, I did insert in their discussion and we began to chat. Turns out Mike was indeed interested in getting in a race and was looking for a ride. They hail originally from Bend, OR and Mike had sailed regattas on the west coast (J120) in San Fran, San Diego, etc.. So, after a pleasant conversation, I invited Mike to join us on Kingfisher the next morning.

We convened at the boat around 9:45 Sunday. I made crew assignments (Drip-bow, Jake-mast, Mary-pit, Audrey and Brad-jib/kite and Mike-main/kite. The forecast was for southerly winds ~19kn gusting to 30+ and building throughout the day with heavy rain storms intermittently. Temperatures in the low 80s.

We departed the dock at 10:15, raised the #3 and main in the creek (rolling up the former) and motor sailed out to CCVR Mark “H” to the west of Hampton Bar. Boats were very slow to get to the start owing to the high winds and ebbing tide. We signed in at the RC and did some upwind work, forgoing a spinnaker set/gybe owing to the high winds, which by now were in the 22-26kn range. This is right on the border of raceability according to the sailing instructions.
On our way to the start, Mary had suggested trying a reef in the main, which helped considerably with boat handling. I decided that given the conditions, we would start with the reef in and hope that our improved handling would offset a lack of sail area and boat speed. Even so we were on our ear (25+ degree heel upwind) quite a bit.

The RC started the race sequence promptly at 12 noon with a random leg course of 10.1 nm. Here’s the course:

A great number of our usual competitors did not even leave the dock, but we had 7 starting in A fleet including: Sitella (J111, PHRF 33), Feather and Bumps (both J36, PHRF 84 and 81 respectively), Stardancer (Beneteau First 36.7, PHRF 78), Diablo (Andrews 28, PHRF 87) and Danger Paws (Melges 24, PHRF 93). At PHRF 108, we are always the “slow boat” in A fleet. We got a reasonably good start about half a boat length back from Sitella and Feather near the middle of the line.

It took a few minutes to get the boat settled in but in spite of the reef, we were keeping up with faster boats. Sustained wind was now about 24 kn and we saw gusts upwards of 34 kn as we rounded mark “Q” heading for the Middle Ground Light (Mark “W”). Much to Drip’s chagrin, I opted not to set the kite on our starboard rounding of the lighthouse. Winds were pretty high and, as it turned out, we were not the only boat not to set the kite. However, Sitella (rounded first), Feather and Danger Paws did throw up chutes and so pulled ahead. We followed Stardancer (no kite) downwind back to a starboard rounding at mark “H”. We kept pace pretty well and had been consistently pulling away from Diablo and Bumps all the way to the second mark (“W”). From this point on it was basically a 5 boat race.

As we neared mark “H”, Mike suggested shaking out the reef, as he had been able to watch the winds behind us and determined that they were lessening, especially so in the rain squalls that missed us but affected the winds nonetheless. We were unable to undo the reef downwind due to pressure on the sail, so when we rounded “H”, I headed up and Drip, Jake and Mary were able to get the reef undone. Once accomplished, we sailed again for the lighthouse. Winds at this point were still southerly but had lessened to about 20 kn so we were in good shape and started to claw back upwind towards Stardancer a bit. Ebbing tidal current was about 1 kn by this time, so when we made last starboard rounding of “W” to head downwind towards “I” and the finish at “A” (off Hampton Creek), I decided to hoist the kite. Jake and Drip did so perfectly and with Audrey, Mike and Brad handling the kite trim be blasted downwind at 8-9 kn.

On this last long leg, we again started slowly drawing back to Stardancer. As we reached “I”, we thought we would have to gybe to reach the finish at “A”, but the arrival of a heavy rain squall shifted the winds to the west and allowed us to carry a port gybe eastwards. The rain was pretty heavy (it was the first rain we had felt all day) and everyone was soaked but Audrey kept our boat speed up pretty well.

As we neared the last 200 m of the race, however, we suddenly got hit with rapidly oscillating wind shifts and the boat tried to broach…not once, but 3 times. We were seriously close to a flying gybe which might have broken the gooseneck and sent much of the crew overboard. Audrey finally let go of the spin sheet and with Drip, Mary and Jake, managed to get he kite down, allowing us to gybe the main and finish the race. Needless to say that last 200 m was quite gnarly. Not sure I want to do that again.

When all was said and done, we had finished 5th out of 7 and only missed correcting over Stardancer by 51 seconds…or about the amount of time it took us to get the broach under control.

It was a tough day, but a fun and exhilarating day. As Mike said back at the dock, “it’s going to be a 4 ibuprofen evening”. Likely it was for most of us.

So a big shout out of thanks to everyone who came out to brave the winds and rain with Mary and me. By this time, Mike and Sharon are likely on their way south. It was a fortuitous meting for me Saturday on the HYC docks and I really appreciate Mike bringing his “big wind” experience out to play. Dix.

Thanks Dixon! Michael had a blast and did indeed have to take four ibuprofen before bed.