Part 1: "Narrow Escape" Goes to Ensenada

A photo album of the race and return trip can be viewed at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Ericson.NarrowEscape/NewportToEnsenada2008.

I entered my first Newport to Ensenada Race in 2003. It was a windy race and I finished in about 22:47 in the cruising gennaker class. The following two years were slower, but great compared to the last three years. My slowest time was about 26:49.

The significance of those earlier races was that they all were Saturday afternoon finishes. It was easy to have dinner in town while the sun was still shining. That was in my previous boat, a 1986 Cal 33, which was a faster boat than "Narrow Escape", but not hugely faster.

I entered my Ericson 30 in 2005 and dropped out after four hours and about four miles sailed. About 20% of the entrants gave up that year. Last year I was refinishing the boat and missed an even slower race in which about half the entrants failed to finish.

This year, about 19% again failed to make it, and I was among them.

We drifted across the start line at 0.2 kts. under a nylon windseeker jib and mainsail. We were the first or second boat across, but we weren't moving. The eventual winner, Fair Havens, a Newport 28, headed offshore farther than nearly everyone else and disappeared. Meanwhile we got the Ericson moving and stayed ahead of the rest of the 10 boats that started in our cruising non-spinnaker class. I was particularly pleased at our growing lead against the only other original model Ericson 30 in the race.

By late afternoon we had passed the latitude of Dana Point and the San Onofre nuclear power plant and were doing 5-6 kts. We also were trending west of the rhumb line course, and even west of a course to take us a couple miles outside the North Coronado Island.

But by 8:32 pm the wind had mostly died and we were down to 1-2 kts. The cruising class allows engine use between the hours of 8 pm and 8 am, not to exceed 12 hours total for the race. The penalty works out to about two minutes for every minute under power, which is added to the corrected time calculated on the boat's PHRF rating. It seems a worthwhile tradeoff when motoring is more than twice as fast as sailing.

But a quick review of past race results will reveal that the winners of cruising classes sail the whole race.

I had another consideration. My crew of five was larger than the number of berths available. In fact, I thought that two people would have to sleep in the cockpit because the v-berth up front seemed more suited to two people who wanted to maintain contact all night than for a couple of guys who value having their own space.

Thus in early February I was able to reserve a suite at the Hotel Coral, which conveniently also had a marina in which I intended to tie up rather than anchor inside Ensenada harbor. There is a two-night minimum on weekend room reservations. With tax, that woujld total a little over $400 US. So I had a strong economic incentive to get to Ensenada in time to enjoy my expensive hotel room.

We were able to stop the engine and raise it out of the water in the wee hours of Saturday morning for 1:05 hours of sailing at 4-5 kts. Then the wind disappeared and we restarted the engine.

Things didn't improve much after the mandatory 8 am sail-only cut-off. It wasn't until mid-morning that we were able to get above 2 kts., but it didn't last long. The wind died. Wind ruffles teased us on the water nearby, but seldom developed into anything useful.

Eventually, with me at the tiller, we did an uncontrolled (and uncommanded, I insist) 360-degree turn while the knotmeter indicated 0.0 kts.

Finally at about 1 pm Saturday and about 26 miles from Ensenada, I exercised my authority and decided we were dropping out and motoring the rest of the way. I did have support among the crew, but not enthusiastic support and maybe not universal support. There was no move to mutiny, however. Thankfully. I had allowed them to keep their riggers knives and it could have been ugly.

As we motored toward Ensenada, of course, the wind grew boisterous. It was windy where it isn't supposed to be windy according to race lore. That was along the shore, which has a reputation for being a graveyard. Some boats were sailing hard through that graveyard heeled strongly to starboard from the offshore, Santa Ana-like wind blowing down off the mountains north of Ensenada.

Meanwhile, we noticed that boats that did manage to struggle out to Todos Santos Island, from whence experienced skippers typically make their approach to the finish line, seemed not to be moving.

We arrived at the Hotel Coral Marina before sunset and had a good dinner in town at the Mahi Mahi restaurant.

Afterward, we sat on the fifth-floor balcony of my room and watched an endless stream of sailboats make their ways to the finish. Some were moving smartly. Some barely moved. We felt confident that it would have been sometime Sunday morning before we had arrived had we stayed in the race.

Big Weekend

It was a big weekend for Narrow Escape. On Saturday, it was the committee boat for the first race of the season to be hosted by my club, Little Ships Fleet Yacht Club, and I was the Principal Race Officer.

Then on Sunday, the club hosted its Opening Day ceremonies, and Narrow Escape, proudly decorated, was tied at the center of the Long Dock to takes its place in our planned afternoon boat parade.

Our Saturday race was named the Murray Gordon Memorial, after a long-time member of our 71-year-old club who passed away. It was the second race of the season in the nine-race Long Beach Harbor Invitational series that is sponsored by three clubs, each club responsible for separate races.

The wind was 5-6 knots out of the southeast as we gave separate starts to three classes, sending them on courses of 10.6 nm and 11.6 nm. By the time they finished three to three and a half hours later it was in the upper teens and building, having clocked around toward the southwest.

It took three men on the bow to wrestle the Bruce anchor out of the sticky clay bottom of the harbor. That put the boat bow down, and the outboard bounced in and out of the 1-2 foot chop as I asked the remaining two crew members to stand at the stern to try to get the engine to spend more time in the water. Once the foredeck crew secured the anchor and rode at the bow and moved aft, the boat motored well through the building conditions as we returned to Alamitos Bay.

I spent the night aboard at my slip and awakened to drizzle, threatening skies and cool temperatures. After dressing the boat with strings of signal flags and colored pennants, I motored over to the Long Dock and assisted with preparations for our midday ceremonies.

Decorated and ready to go to Opening Day

We are a club without a club house, a so-called paper club, existing mainly as a venue for official entry into sanctioned yacht races, and bi-monthly dinner meetings of our members as guests at facilities of larger clubs. We do claim as part of our long history, however, a substantial contribution to the origins of the PHRF racing handicap system for sailboats.

Our only facility is a storage shed, leased from the city-owned marina, where we store our racing equipment, our barbeque for after-race festivities, and the paraphernalia we use once a year to convert the adjacent marina parking lot into an outdoor yacht club for our opening day ceremony.

The setting is far more glorious than it sounds. This small section of parking lot is set near a point on Alamitos Bay. The point itself is bordered with the grass lawn and white picket fence of the Navy Yacht Club of Long Beach, where we set up our luncheon tables. Beyond is the small bay itself, bordered by docks full of large yachts on the east, and fine homes of the Long Beach Peninsula and Naples Island on the south and west. In the distance between the two rises San Pedro Hill. And, of course, boats of all sizes are plying the water in between.

It is, however, subject to the weather of the day. On Sunday, that weather was cool, mostly cloudy, and blustery. Speakers had to take care their notes did not blow away. But it was dry. Forecast rain failed to appear.

The opening was well attended by flag officers from other clubs, large and small, and our own members. Our officers were introduced to canon salutes simulated by 12-gauge shotgun blanks, and a pair of pipers played a couple of stirring numbers, finishing with Amazing Grace. Afterwards, perfectly-grilled hamburgers were served on paper plates. As the burgers were consumed it became more and more difficult to keep the plates on the tables.

In the end, the boat parade was cancelled as whitecaps driven across Alamitos Bay by winds upwards of 20 knots pinned the eight-boat fleet hard against each other and the Long Dock.

Extricating the boats from that lee shore was skillfully handled by a combination of crews manning boat hooks from adjacent boats, pushing bows off while others kept stern lines tight, and skippers gunned their engines. The light Santa Cruz 27, a class-winner Saturday, powered by a small 2.5 hp outboard managed to avoid scraping the newly-painted Cal 40, a 2005 Transpac veteran. The Ranger 26 got cleanly away from its sidetie to the J-30, and the J-30 escaped unharmed from alongside the Mirage K-30. The Catalina 310 stepped smartly away from the side of the Ericson 38.

Finally it was Narrow Escape's turn. Three helpers walked her forward along the dock to the end. With a shove at the bow, a tug on the stern line and a healthy dose of forward throttle, she left the dock unscathed and soon was tied quietly in her slip once again.

A yachting season which never ends in Southern California had symbolically begun once more.

Principal Race Officer

Last Saturday was my first time as the Principal Race Officer (PRO) of a sailboat race. I was a bit surprised to learn how demanding the job is. The feedback was positive. Participants seemed to be having fun. I certainly did.

Sailboat racing is viewed by many as an oxymoron, especially racing at the local club level where a really fast boat may occasionally hit 8 or 9 knots. Most sail at the 5 to 7 knot range in a 12-15-knot wind.

I’ve been racing sporadically since I bought my first sailing dinghy (Lehman 12) in 1965, in Denver. I read books from the Denver Public Library to learn how to sail it.

There are sailboat races for every kind of boat, and at all economic levels. Our club sponsors what could be called “run what you brung” events, and people bring every thing from affordable, older boats of 25-feet and up, to the latest 40-something-foot racing-cruising boats. They are able to compete with each other through a handicap rating system.

Racing your own sailboat has the same virtues of most kinds of competition. It makes you better at what you love to do. It imposes discipline. It provides a true measure of achievement. And it is fun.

I learned a lot by being in charge of a race. I saw some expert maneuvers. I saw some flawless teamwork. I saw what not to do the next time I’m racing. And I saw all of that sitting on the cabin top of Narrow Escape, anchored in the waves to form one end of the start-finish line.

It was unusually warm with light winds leading up to Saturday, and the marine weather forecast did not suggest much wind Saturday, either. But by 10 a.m. we already were measuring 6 knots from the south, and both the strength and direction held fairly consistent through the noon start for our series of three races for three separate classes of boats.

Yacht racing is a highly-disciplined sport. It has a set of international rules, and an international jury to which a dispute, even at a minor local level such as ours, could theoretically be appealed. In most cases, races are conducted without any sort of refereeing or judging. The rules are enforced only by the participants themselves through the right to file a protest against another yacht.

The race committee, of which I was chair, would have to hear the evidence, possibly view the damage, and render a binding judgment of right and wrong. There also is provision for a yacht in the wrong to tacitly admit it during the race and take a 360-degree penalty turn to wipe out the transgression.

There were no protests in Saturday’s race.

There are steps required to become the PRO for a race. First comes racing and serving on race committees. Then there is a day-long training course and test conducted under the auspices of US Sailing, which is the United States' member of the International Sailing Federation, and is the US Sailing Olympic Committee. Next was a race in which I served as the understudy to the PRO. Finally I got to be PRO, but with an experienced PRO aboard to coach me and keep things from becoming a complete shambles if I messed up.

The most important job of the PRO is to define a good race course for the participants; a course that will be challenging, fun, long enough to justify the considerable effort in gathering crew members and preparing for a race, yet not so long that few are able to finish within the time allotted. In other words, you have to do a little short-term weather forecasting and predict what the wind will do during the afternoon conduct of the race.

My race was midway along in a series of seven races called the Long Beach Harbor Invitational Series. Each event is run by one of the three local yacht clubs that created and sponsor the series. Saturday it was the turn of Little Ships Fleet Yacht Club, a seventy-year-old institution that can trace its history back through the beginning of modern-day handicap yacht racing.

There were no two boats alike among the thirteen that competed. Instead, each had a handicap rating issued by an organization, Performance Handicap Racing Fleet of Southern California, that exists to rate the relative performance of sailboats.

There were three start times, five minutes apart, one for each of the three classes. The finish time for each boat was recorded. Then the handicap rating was applied to their actual race times to calculate a corrected race time. The boat with the shortest corrected time in each class won that class.

The system seems to work more or less fairly, and has done so for many years, and throughout the country, from all three coasts to the Great Lakes.

Saturday’s course choices seemed to work. They ranged from 10.6 nautical miles for the fastest boats, to 6.6 nautical miles for the slowest. All the boats from all three classes finished with 35 minutes of each other. The boats took about 2 to 2.5 hours to complete their courses.

Depending on boat complexity and the skipper’s preference, the boats raced with three to six-person crews. On the committee boat, we had a six-person crew and everyone was busy with assigned tasks from the time we reached the start area about an hour before the racing began, until all three races were underway. The failure of any one of the six to perform his or her task properly could create an unfair situation for the racers. Race postponement could be the outcome. But there were no failures. The wind held. The races started as scheduled.

Then we relaxed, bobbed at the anchor, munched, read, talked, told tales, and waited to time the racers' finishes.

Afterward, our arrival back at the dock and the eventual posting of the results and awarding of trophies was much anticipated. Hamburgers, chips, beer and sodas, kept the racers occupied long enough to run the finish times through the computer and print the results.

I had never before realized that the PRO gets the last hamburger. If he’s lucky.