Andante's Sailing Blog

June 2013

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I've been to Philadelphia twice.  On the first visit I spent some time with my daughter, went to the dentist, met with a co-author on a research project, and met with the lawyer representing the Philly firefighters in their contract dispute with the city.  On the second visit I went to the endodontist. Dr. Barry Rhome did two root canals in under an hour and no pain before or after. If you need this kind of work go see him!  Two root canals you ask?  I don't know how it happened but the nerve and circulatory tissue in two adjacent teeth had died even though there had been no previous decay in those teeth.

One day I went out sailing just for the heck of it.   The wind was SSW at 15 knots true. A fine day out on the Bay.

On Friday, May, 1 I crewed for Jason Novak on Magic in the Rock Hall Friday evening series.  I think we were second across the line and may have won on corrected time.  On Saturday some of us met Jason at the Eastport Yacht Club in Annapolis to crew for him in the Leukemia Cup Regatta. Eastport Yacht Club did a great job organizing an event that was run with many boat classes on three different courses on the waters off Annapolis.

In our class we finished third.  We had a great day. Our Tartan 33 was beaten by a German Frers and a Wauquiez, both 40 ft. Margin was so big, 5 minutes, I think PHRF is not quite right for some boats. The two big boats had corrected times that were separated by mere seconds.  Magic, Cheap Sunglasses (a brand new Beneteau 367, purported to be quite fast) and Witch's Flower (all within a few feet of one another in waterline length) were separated on corrected time by a thin margin. The Performance Handicap Racing Formula is supposed to be a method for correcting a boat's time on the course so that all boats would finish even on corrected time if they were all sailed by the same skipper and crew.  I.e., differences in corrected time would be attributable to skipper and crew error, not the attributes of the boat.

I'm so bothered by the race results and PHRF system that I looked up the ratings for Magic and Andante. Jason's Tartan 33 is a much lighter and faster boat than Andante, even though I have a longer waterline. With a deeper keel he can point closer to the wind. With a spade rudder and shorter keel (fore and aft) he can come about faster. Yet, our PHRF ratings are nearly the same. In fact Andante is rated as the faster boat. I have just two words to say: IMM POSSIBLE.

You can tell from the above two paragraphs that I am an avid competitor.  I brought that to bike racing and to some degree to my career.

Magic's Crew: Wolfgang, Erle, Kim, Jason (owner and skipper), an unknown person that jumped in the picture and distracted Jason's Dad Gene.

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