Hyannis

Summer of School and Sailing

I finally returned home to Florida last week to take a much needed break from the rush of classes and sailing. I had just completed my final regatta for the summer and finished my third summer class, freeing my schedule up significantly. It was nice to come home and see visiting relatives as well as my immediate family all at once. After spending a week at home I traveled back up North and am currently in Oyster Bay, NY training on foiling carbon Nacra 20 FCS, loving the entire experience.




BU campus during summer.
Earlier this summer I began taking a few classes at BU, staying after my spring semester had ended. After studying during the day I often sailed out of MIT or BU's boat houses in order to keep fresh and get out on the Charles River. On the weekends I competed in many regattas, borrowing boats from friends and traveling around to some of New England's many sailing venues. One weekend a few of my college sailing teammates and I drove down to Annapolis for a team racing event, which provided a nice opportunity to work on skills we learned during the year and see friends from other schools. This summer brought many new sailing experiences, including my first distance race in a catamaran. The Statue Race, held on the 4th of July, began at Sandy Hook, NJ and led us around the Statue of Liberty and back to the finish line, a total of 19 miles. With wind conditions ranging from zero to 15 knots and sunshine to pouring rain, this shorter distance race was full of challenges and I will definitely be sailing in it again. None of this would have been possible without the help of many friends in sailing: a huge thank you to Ryan Epprecht and his family as well as Mike Easton and Tripp Burd for lending their boats for many of this summer's events and to Jim Zellmer, Brendon Scanlon, Brian Firth, and other sailing friends for helping with other event details.

Now at the end of the summer I am focusing on training in the foiling catamarans before I head back to school to resume college sailing and classes. These boats are extremely fun and are among the fastest sailboats on the water, flying above it most of the time. The learning curve has been quite steep and initially there was a bit of a fear hurdle to overcome, but after a few more days on the boat and some building confidence it has become easier to push the boat harder and reach higher speeds. Crew work on this catamaran is different than others I have sailed in the past with tacking boards, constantly adjusting foil rake, and the rapid speed changes, but these challenges have elicited harder work and a much more rewarding sailing experience. Foiling is the future of high performance sailing and I am happy to be involved, I will be posting a video of sailing the foiling catamaran later this week.

I will be returning back to Boston soon and moving into my new housing accommodations. Classes this year will be more difficult, but I am ready to learn even more both in the classroom and on the water.

View from the Statue Race.
Ronstan Rocket at Newport Regatta.


Weight training in Oyster Bay.



Foiling catamaran training.



The Long Ride Home




We started our long drive home this past Monday and ended up stopping in Maryland near the D.C. area to visit some of my relatives. While we were there we saw some pretty neat landmarks, including the White House, the Washington Monument, and we even got to visit the International Spy Museum. Later on in the week we resumed our drive back home to Florida, stopping near Savannah, GA for a break Wednesday night, and arrived home on Thursday. After driving to Brant Beach, NJ last summer and Kemah, TX  the summer before that (both for Laser North Americans) this drive didn't seem too bad!

Final Day in Hyannis

          Today definitely DID NOT go as planned. The wind forecast for today was for a stronger 10-15 knot breeze in the morning dying off to a steady 10 knots as the day went on, but mother nature decided to not stick the plan and gave us a steady 10-15 knot breeze with some bigger gusts. The first race today was going well until the kite run downwind where we overstood the downwind mark. We dumped the traveler and kept pushing ourselves to keep the boat sailing high but we still couldn't make the mark. As soon as we decided to douse the kite we stuffed the bows and had one crazy pitchpole, with Erick flying completely around the bow and the sterns in the air for a bit. After about 10 minutes we finally got the kite doused and the boat unflipped but by that time the fleet was finishing. The next race came around and we were in a pretty good position in the top 10 when, while jibing and dousing the kite at the leeward gate mark, the spinnaker got wrapped around the end of the spin pole. We had to jibe back and as I went out to the bow to fix this mess the pole snapped because of the kite dragging in the water. After another 20 minutes I finally got the kite back in the bag and with a broker spin pole we decided it was time to go in.
          Not surprisingly we weren't the only ones with broken equipment! Another boat had a broken spin halyard and John Casey had been involved in a collision (I'm sure others had smaller technical failures). Today unfortunately may have been the most expensive day of the regatta! Overall, this trip has been a great learning experience. We worked extremely hard all weekend and it shows in our results from the past two days, excluding today's 4 DNF's. The most important skills I have worked on this weekend would have to be starts in a bigger fleet. With 26 boats on the line, our timing and boatspeed had to be perfect in order to get off the line in the first row and to pull away from the fleet with some of the more experienced teams. This event has been a memorable one and I will definitely consider coming up here to Hyannis to race next year!

Check out the final results here! (Bad last 4 races on day 3...)

Day 2 in Hyannis




The second day of racing has come to an end and we've landed ourselves in a happy 5th place overall so far. The day began with a lighter breeze around 5-10 knots which built up in today's last few races. The choppy waves really messed with our crew-work and boat handling throughout the day but made for a fun time downwind surfing over waves. The first two races today went well with a 2nd and a 3rd, even though we had poor starts both races and made a large comeback the second one. The third race didn't go so well for us but we quickly moved on and got a 3rd, 6th, and 3rd in the next three races. Even though we have good boatspeed, our starts are still our greatest weakness. During the beginning of the day we kept fighting with other boats for the boat end of the line with no success so we abandoned that plan and got better starts further down the line. We were able to get clear air and pull away from some of the other boats faster than before with this strategy. We're working hard to achieve our goal of better starts and hopefully will come off the line in good lanes tomorrow!

Check out the results here!

Hyannis Arrival and Day 1

We arrived in Hyannis yesterday and unloaded the boats as soon as we could (unfortunately they wouldn't let us into the park until 4, preventing us from practicing a day early). We ended up getting the boat tuned back to the settings we liked and messed around with rudder rake slightly. After getting a good night's sleep we prepared for our first day of racing. Overall the day went pretty well with drastic improvements as the day went on. The first race began with a poor start but we eventually climbed back up in the fleet to 12th place. We quickly learned from our mistakes though and had an excellent start the second race, winding up in 5th at the finish. Today's racing in medium breeze ranging from 5-15 knots and some choppy waves really pointed out our strengths and weaknesses. Our good boatspeed helped us maintain our position in the fleet but we are lacking in wave practice and big fleet starting. After some discussion on the water we determined our short term goal for the event was to be more aggressive on the starting line and come off in the first row. Tomorrow is an earlier day with an 11:00 start. Day 2 here we go!

Check out the results here!