REPORT CARD
Last week, the entire Paradise Village Resort was festooned with flags and banners proclaiming the 2007 UBS J/24 World Championship as “The Best Worlds Ever.” It was an extremely ambitious goal, and as I sit here waiting for the ro-ro ferry from Topolobampo to La Paz, I’m trying to decide whether they succeeded. In total, in was a fantastic event, but I’m going to break it down for the benefit of both the organizers of the event and for organizers of other big regattas so that these regattas keep improving for all of us. The Organizers did a lot of things incredibly well, and dropped the ball (hard) on some others. Tomorrow, I’ll give you the Report Card on everything from measurement to RC work to Parties, all with some outstanding pictures from Mer of all of it (including girls tattooing other girls with their tongues).
The Championship went to defending World Champ Mauricio Santacruz from Brazil, with a really professional program – their skill in all conditions, meticulous boat preparation, and a program that includes two boats in Brazil and one in Mexico, four masts, countless sails, and years of daily practice led to a runaway victory. Mauricio is a truly nice guy, and he was rewarded by first being thrown into the pool at the ceremony, and later by being knocked on the ground and kicked in the gut and face repeatedly by some scumbag bouncers at the downtown PV nightclub “The Zoo.” The battle for second was the real show, and going into the last day any one of Ingham, Snow, Southworth, Welles, Hillman, top Mexican Porter or top Japanese Sakamoto could have one it. Porter and Welles were Black-Flagged for the final race, and Chris Snow had a shocker of a final day with an 18 and a 36. Mike and his tactician Bobby came out on top by a hair, just edging out Mark Hillman’s great team in third, which included former J/24 world champ helm and Virgin Islands sailor Tony Kotoun on tactics and Michigan bro George “Bear” Peet (ABN AMRO 2) on the bow. Will and his Newport bunch won “first boat out of the water” as they pulled out just moments before we did. Black-flagging the final race does have it’s privileges. Here are the full RESULTS.
Now, let me bring you up to speed on how your favorite bottom-of-the-pack, team Rudy Project/Aussie Millions/Sailing Anarchy did. Cliick The LINKY for some awesome stories from the team site.
ALPHA(BET) DOGS My last front page update saw AUS 193 in a tough spot. Two 20% Z-Flag penalties (cumulative) before race 1 even started and a disqualification from Race 2 (despite a faulty notice procedure) were not quite the “boost from the starting block” that we were hoping for. A scoring penalty for Race 3 meant that we were finally leading the fleet…in total number of protests.
Races 5 and 6 on Wednesday brought early heat and a stronger seabreeze, and we just couldn’t hang with the heavier crews, but at least we kept ourselves out of the protest room so we could enjoy an awesome party that night. Thursday, the straw finally broke this big, bald camel’s back. Our best start of the regatta and a solid first beat had us somewhere around 20th as we beat up to the mark on a barely-laid starboard layline. That’s when the fun started: First, about 4 boatlengths from the mark, one of the Valle De Bravo (Mexico City) boats crossed us on port, without even a remote chance of getting across our bow. “Protest” and a flag, as Tim yanked the tiller up to avoid some glass work. After this big duck, we were forced to pinch pretty hard to try and lay the mark, and we were about 2 BLs from it when another Mexican boat came tearing down on a port broad reach, trying to squeeze between us and another starboard boat to windward. He didn’t have the room, and this little Macho banged and rubbed our topsides as he passed us. Another hail and some screaming ensued as we were pushed well down from the mark. Now we’re looking for a spot to gybe around and get back to the layline, and YET ANOTHER Valle De Bravo boat comes screaming in on YET ANOTHER port-tack broad reach, but this guy doesn’t even have the courtesy to get past us before he tacks for his hole, and as he turns to port, his transom pokes a lovely hole in the side of our poor little Asterix. As you can imagine, now I’m pretty pissed – nearly “cutlasses to the ready” pissed, as we watch a top-third position turn into yet another 40+ spot. To make matters worse, the guy who speared us then covered us all the way down the run, and basically took us out of the race.
Let’s step back a few days to the Skipper’s Meeting on Sunday: The Race Chairman, also a part of the Valle fleet, had his peers in mind when he told all the skippers, “This is a highly qualified international jury. If you foul, you will be thrown out.” His admonishment was largely ignored, as Mexican machismo trumped the rules and the idea of fair sailing. The few times we were in the top third of the fleet, the sailing was awesome – tactical, tricky, and respectful. But when less-then-ideal starts and boatspeed had us dueling with the mid and bottom-fleeters, the lack of respect for the rules and for other sailors was pretty shocking. One very experienced Canadian jury member (numerous Worlds in numerous classes) told me, “I’ve never seen so many boats on the port-tack layline.” Mexican juror Francisco said, “Mexican sailors like to settle things on the water, with shouting and screaming instead of protests.” That’s all well and good when you’re sailing with your pals on a lake, but at a World Championship? BULLSHIT. It turns out that they averaged something like 15 protests each day, which may be a record for a J/24 Worlds. You might remember that I’m a lawyer – not something I’m proud of, but a useful fact to remember if you ever find yourself in a port-starboard situation with me. If I’m not going to win, I dismiss the protest. The Racing Rules are simple, and arguing them is even simpler, especially in such basic cases. I got plenty of whining from the protested skippers, yet strangely, not even one offer to settle it over a drink;
Yeah, whatever. I had all three tossed in less than 30 minutes of hearings, and as a bonus, these three protests clinched it for AUS 193 – it’s just too bad they didn’t have a trophy for Most Litigious. If you can’t beat ‘em on the course, beat ‘em in the courtroom?
For Race 8, we put together another good first beat after switching to the jib just before the race start (in 17 knots of breeze). It was the right call for our light crew, but we stupidly held onto it on the second beat and got absolutely killed. It was excruciating to watch all the boats we passed squirt ahead of us, and we had to fight like hell just to get back into the 50s by the finish. For the final day, we got loose. The night before, I’d spent a couple of hours (and a couple dozen vodkas) with brother Bobby, Mike Ingham’s tactician on Brain Cramp, who would eventually finish second for the week. I asked Bobby what his start strategy had been, and his answer was a revelation, although it’s one that I’ve learned before and just keep forgetting. We spent so much time taking wind shots and line bearings and looking for shifts before the start that we forgot the basics, as Bobby reminded me, “We just start as far from everyone else that we can, and we make sure we’re moving.” In these dopey little boats with their stumpy little rigs, clear air really is everything. A few shots of tequila before the start helped us to follow Bobby’s suggestions, and we started well down toward the pin, a dozen boatlengths from Deke Klatt (who port-tacked the fleet on Tuesday). We sailed mellow and smart, stayed away from the yahoos, and found plenty of lanes. We ducked the World Champion Brazilians on the first beat, and in the four legs that followed, they pulled out maybe 15 boatlengths on us, and we finished in the 20’s, giggling the whole time
A good final race would have allowed us to leap another 5-7 teams, so we were amped up for race 10’s start – maybe a bit too amped up. The RC hoisted the Black Flag for the fourth or fifth time of the regatta, and one of the Japanese teams hooked us – and even the general recall couldn’t save us or the other 11 boats that were called over. While the fleet regrouped for another start, we milled around at the pin boat to watch them. We were definitely feeling a little dejected until we realized that, not only would we get to watch and photograph the start, but we could haul the boat, clean it up, turn it in to the owner (who was black-flagged aboard Microsoft), and start drinking before the rest of the racers even got off the course. Since we weren’t in contention for any honors, it turned out to be a great way to end the regatta. Our BFD finish also allowed us to add another dubious distinction to our “most protests” award: we won the “Alphabet Soup” award for most letters on our scorecard. Here’s the tally:
DEBRIEF
Before the award ceremony and party, I sat down with AUS 193 skipper Tim Bilham to get his impressions of the regatta. Tim was pretty happy overall, although obviously he’d like to have done better than 60 something out of 70 boats. Tim said, “Look, mate – we knew we weren’t going to set the world on fire – that wasn’t our goal. I’ve never sailed in a fleet this size and I’ve learned heaps about this kind of racing. We’ve got a lot of work to do before the Worlds next year in Italy, but now I think we know just where we need to improve. We also had an amazing holiday in perfect weather, we sailed our asses off with dolphins jumping around us and were treated like gold by the VYC and the sponsors. How could I complain?” Tim is a stellar dude, and Mer and I really enjoyed sailing with him. He’s just the kind of skipper you want: Soft-spoken but an intense competitor, full of skill and happy to improve using whatever information and tools he has. I’m harder on myself than Tim, though, so here’s my debrief: Before racing ever started, we had a fistful of obstacles (excuses?) to overcome:
Once we got the boat moving, we were consistently as fast or faster than half the fleet until the wind built to the point that our light weight became a factor. Our finishes in the 40’s and 50’s were a direct result of spending far too much time sailing in a big bunch of boats, and of being too aggressive with our laylines, leading to messes like the Thursday protest-fest. It took some time to learn how to handle a rounding where 6 boats have inside buoy room and 8 boats are just outside, but we finally learned that it’s faster to drop early and be fully trimmed and hiked at the gate than it is to trap the genoa sheet and flog as you try to poke the nose somewhere where it won’t fit. These boats are so slow that they stick together like the last few dozen Cheerios in a bowl of milk, and more than once we watched ten boats pass us at a lousy mark rounding. We also learned (yet again) that if you want to be at the front, you have to have a tactician who knows how to get you there and keep you there. It’ll be a few more years until I’m that guy, but I’m getting there. Finally, I learned how absolutely awesome it is to sail a Worlds with your hot little wife. I consider myself one of the luckiest guys on the planet. We’re headed back to San Diego to sail in the NOODs aboard Anarchy, but I’m sure we’ll be at another big-fleet event soon – I look forward to putting the lessons we’ve learned into action. Hopefully it’ll be something a little faster than these horrid little J/24s, and you know where you’ll read about it. -Mr. Clean
(with Pics from Mer and Jay Ailworth – grudgingly)
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