Club News

By Dan Aeling

The Prince of Wales Finals was hosted by Balboa Yacht Club on October 13-16, 2011.  Twelve skippers were invited to the event, including:

1. Shawn Bennett, Tiburon, CA
2. Taylor Canfield, St. Thomas, VI ISV
3. Mark Johnson, Appleton, WI
4. Chris Nesbitt, San Diego, CA
5. Dave Perry, Southport, CT
6. Spencer Powers, Boston, MA
7. Shawn Ryan, Metairie, LA
8. Nevin Snow, San Diego, CA
9. Dan Aeling, San Diego, CA
10. Bruce Stone, San Francisco, CA
11. Scott Dickson, Long Beach, CA
12. Brian Angel, El Segundo, CA

 
This list of competitors included several prior winners of the POW as well as internationally acclaimed match race skippers.  Needless to say, the competition was very strong.

My team consisted of Alex Jacobs and Bruno Bomati, two very good sailors with whom I have sailed in previous match race events.  Alex was in charge of jib and spinnaker trim and Bruno worked the bow and main sail trim.  We decided to arrive at the venue a day early so that we could get some practice time under our belts in the GovCup 21 boats.  This was instrumental to our doing well in the competition.

The format for the event was a single round robin, with the top (8) teams moving on to later one-on-one knockout stages.  The venue was on the ocean course, just off Newport Beach.  
The first day of racing proved to be very challenging, with extremely light wind conditions.  Only (2) flights were completed on the first day due to a lack of wind.  In the end, we had a record of (1) win and (1) loss for the day.

Day two was equally challenging, with racing postponed for several hours due to a heavy fog that blanketed the race course.  Our results improved, however, as we won (4) of our (5) matches for the day.  This placed us in a 4-way tie for 2nd place (along with Nevin Snow, Dave Perry, and Shawn Ryan) at the end of day two, with a win-loss record of 5-2.

The wind finally cooperated on day three and we were able to finish up the round robin stage with a record of (6) wins and (5) losses.  We were in 7th place at this point in the competition and thereby earned a spot to move on to the first knockout stage.

After making it past the first stage of the event (a single round robin), we were in a "first to 2 points" knockout round against Chris Nesbitt in the quarter finals.  In the first knockout match, we were able to hold Chris above the start line when the gun went off.  One might think that this would make the match easy, but there were truly no easy matches.  We had to fight to keep our air clear on the downwind runs when Chris tried to gas us and then keep the boat rumbling upwind as fast as we could go.  I stayed focused on the telltales upwind and I relied on my crew to keep me informed as to where Chris was behind us.  In the end, we were able to put some distance on Chris on all four legs of knockout match #1 and win by a nice margin.

In knockout match #2, we had a split start, with us at the pin end of the line.  We may have had a slight speed advantage as the gun went off, but not much.  We extended just a handful of lengths out to the left and then tacked onto port to stay with Chris.  As I recall, we ended up going pretty far to the right hand side of the course before Chris tacked to come back at us on starboard.  At the first encounter, however, we were able to cross and then tack on top of Chris to give him some bad air.  Naturally, Chris tacked immediately to go back out right.  We held for 3 to 4 lengths to get speed and then tacked onto port to follow Chris further to the right.

We then got into a tacking dual up the right hand side of the first leg, and I can't even remember how many times we tacked.  Finally, we tacked one last time onto the starboard tack layline to the windward mark and forced Chris to take one more hitch out to the right.  We led around the windward mark and did a bear away set.  Chris followed us around, maybe 4 or 5 lengths behind.  We went about 2/3 down the leg before gybing onto starboard and heading for the leeward gates.  (You noticed that I said "gates" and not "mark"...  the introduction of gates for the entire POW Finals added a whole new level of mind games at each leeward rounding that is a whole other chapter of discussion.)  Anyways, Chris had closed up the gap on us a bit, but we were still leading as we chose to go around the left gate (looking down wind).

Then disaster struck!  As we went around the mark, a portion of the kite went into the water!  We shrimped a big gulp of water and slowed down so instantly that I thought we had been lassoed by an underwater cowboy and we were the steer!  Chris meanwhile was able to go around the right gate in clear air and then tack onto port to head right.  When we got things going again on our boat, the lead had changed.  Chris was ahead and we were now the ones fighting for clear air.  We tacked numerous times to get out of phase and go for pure speed, but Chris was there to cover our every move.  Chris led around the weather mark by about 4 lengths.  We tried our best to get up onto his wind on the downwind leg, but Chris is pretty savvy when it comes to match racing and he was able to stay ahead and win knockout race #2.  The shrimping of our kite turned out to be a costly mistake!

So now we were down to the final knockout match #3 with the stakes being do-or-die for each of us.  For this prestart, we were the port entry boat.  As we had done all day, we had good timing on the entry, but could not cross below Chris, and we ended up in a dial up.  We held in the dialed-up position briefly before I decided to put the bow down and sail close-hauled to windward on starboard tack.  Chris had fallen off onto port tack and he too started sailing upwind.  We were probably 4 or 5 lengths above the start line when I tacked onto port.  Chris tacked onto starboard to attack us.  As we converged, I could see that it was going to be close as to whether we could cross.  My gut was telling me to tack, but my crew thought we could cross, so I held course.  Unfortunately, sailing can be a game of inches, and this was one of those times.  97% of our boat was able to cross, but the last 8 inches did not make it.  Chris hit us on our starboard stern quarter where the transom angles downward to the waterline.  Chris immediately flew a Y-flag and I bought the penalty.  I tried to yell over to the umpires to inform them that Chris had come up slightly at the end, but it was to no avail.  I had just received my first penalty for the entire event, and, unfortunately, it was going to come out of my security deposit!

It is really hard to shake off an incident like that, but shake it off is what we had to do.  The rest of the prestart was your normal circling and posturing until we had killed enough time that I decided to lead back to the start line.  Heading for the line, we threw in a couple hard luffs and some steep turn downs, such that as the gun went off, we led across the start line with Chris just a few feet behind us.  Soon off the line, Chris tacked onto port to head right, and we did the same.  The windward leg was classic textbook with Chris tacking and us tacking to cover.  We led Chris around the first windward mark.  We maintained our lead on the downwind leg and once again chose to go around the left gate.  This time there was no shrimping of the kite and we had a nice rounding and headed off to the right.  

Soon after rounding, we tacked to get up on top of Chris and give him some bad air.  Again we had a textbook windward leg where Chris would tack and we would tack to cover, all the while trying to extend our lead as we were still carrying a penalty from the pre-start incident.  Our tacks were smooth and effective, such that as we approached the windward mark, we thought we could burn our pre-start penalty on the upwind leg on the port tack layline to the mark.  So we went for it.  It was a nice turndown, gybe and come up to close hauled on port tack.  Our penalty was gone!  But, in the process we allowed Chris to come into the weather mark with starboard right of way and a slight lead.

As Chris tacked to go around the mark, we were literally just inches away from his stern.  Chris bore away and set his kite.  We did the same and were just slightly to weather of Chris.  This is where Chris' experience at attacking in match racing kicked into high gear.  Left unchecked, we were in a very strong position to roll over the top of Chris and win the race.  He, of course, recognized the danger and he luffed us up very hard.  In fact, we ended up luffing so hard that our spinnaker collapsed.  Chris' kite had also collapsed and we were side-by-side, with us as the weather "keep-clear" boat.  

I knew we were in a horrible spot, as we were nearly dead in the water in the luffed up position.  Suddenly, our kite caught a gust of wind and instead of accelerating forward, the bow of our boat was forced to turn down.  At that moment, there was nothing I could do.  I tried to hold the helm over in order to keep clear, but GovCup 21 boats simply don't move forward when they have an opportunity to slip sideways instead (the keel is just a thin blade and the rudder is a very high aspect ratio foil).  So we slipped down onto Chris and I received another penalty, my 2nd for the entire event!!!  Two penalties in one race is hard to overcome.  At that point, Chris bore away knowing that we had to burn another penalty and finish ahead of him to win the match.  We never gave up, however, and we kept trying to get on top of Chris' wind and slow him down.  But we just couldn't get ahead and we certainly had no time to burn the second penalty.  Consequently, we lost the 3rd knockout match.

Once the race was completed, the umpires came over to inspect both our boat and Chris' boat for damage.  Even though it was going to cost me money, I was still hoping for one last chance of staying in the game.  If the umpires had decided that the damage was serious enough, they could penalize Chris after the race by subtracting 1/2 point (or more) from his total score for a Rule 14 violation, being that Chris had done nothing to avoid the collision in the pre-start.  Unfortunately, the umpires decided that the damage was not serious enough to penalize the right-of-way boat for not avoiding the collision.  Our participation in the POW Finals was over.  Had we won that 3rd race, we would have ended up in at least 4th place (as a minimum), but it just wasn't meant to be.  Instead, we ended up in 7th place out of 12.

I have relived that knockout match #3 in my head over and over.  I even had an in depth discussion that evening with Dave Perry about the entire race.  We came up with options that could have resulted in a different outcome, but I won't go into those at this time.  Let's just say I lost the match but gained lots of valuable match racing experience.

I decided to stay up in Corona Del Mar to watch the semi-final and final matches on Sunday and I was not disappointed!  The racing was truly phenomenal.  I saw some awesome tactical moves by Dave Perry to win 3-straight matches against Chris Nesbitt to advance to the finals.  Dave then went on to win (2) straight matches against Taylor Canfield to take the title.   It was Dave Perry's fourth time for winning the Prince of Wales!  I took lots of notes while watching those matches on Sunday and I plan on using some of those moves in future match races.

Here are the final results for the 2011 Prince of Wales:

All in all, this was one of the best regattas I have ever had the privilege of sailing in.  I know that it has made me a better match racer!

Thanks again for all your support from folks in San Diego!