LLSC Keelboat Fleet

Well I'm not sure if this email should be shorter or longer. We had some pretty killer breeze on the way out to the line this week but it really didn't stick around did it? It seems y'all did make an effort to keep me quiet, but I think you're going to have to try a little harder... I'm not quite satisfied until Papa Doug is proper rail meat.

Now Dana did call me out last week. She said her crew would be reading my email along with their daily religious readings and that my verbose nature might make it a little harder to lead the pack. WELL, she was right. Dana swooped in with a come from behind win last week as the GOAT and Highlander Teams got tumbled around in the midst of some big boat leeward roundings. Props to Dana and crew for being the first out of the crummy air and therefore the first to the new pressure on the left side of the last leg. Sometimes simple is best - a clean bow is a fast bow.

But the leeward mark isn't the only place one needs to focus on clean air. The start is 100 percent the most important time for clean air and the most effective time to establish a lead and control a race. I'm sure many of you say 'let's just get off the line clean' each and every week. Is that old adage or something you determined after a start left you looking for an extra pair of shorts? I'd venture to say it's something you heard before and then started to do after you had one too many buff and polishing days on Thursday. But have you been interpreting the meaning incorrectly? Getting of the line clean is important. Hitting a boat leads to turns, bad air, and a lot of ground to make up. But not getting on the line also leads to two of the three - bad air, and ground to make up.

So this week I challenge you to stop giving up boat lengths above the boat and exchange them for beam widths on the line. Good luck but be nice and don't crash. Those of you that like to barge at the boat... Here's your warning. There's gonna be someone in your fleet that nails the layline this week. And now they know you don't get room at the boat.

Big thanks to RC this week! Mike Ivone, the Strega crew, and Stefan Schulze and his Hitchhiker crew got us another good Wednesday race

Well I hope you paid attention last week! Yep it really felt like some deja vu out there. Same direction, same dying breeze, but this week managed to stay a little steadier and have much larger connected lines than the localized puffs of last week. This made it a little easier to stay in the breeze, and that was definitely goal #1 on the upwind. Stay in the dark water and don't get too close to the edge. Leaving more wind above you kept the boat winding up and rolling, but going too far meant you lost lanes trying to power up in the lull to get back to the dark water.

Downwind had similar strategy but manipulation of the apparent breeze became more important as the breeze died off. If you could start to generate your own breeze, you could pull away as others struggled to keep moving. This requires a lot of communication back and forth between trimmer and skippers. It's important to not begin to collapse the spinnaker. It's much easier to keep flow when it still exists than regenerate flow from nothing.

Every boat has a different set of communication protocols but what's important is you keep talking. The driver should be vocalizing every turn before it happens and the trimmer should be vocalizing every pressure change as it happens. Both of them have to keep talking as the boat turns to keep the sails turning at the same rate as the boat. All of this while managing the wind vane. Keep it high enough to get the speed fast enough so that the wind vane clocks forward and then drive it down until it clocks backward or the pressure dies. The smoother you can do this, the longer your downs will be and the shorter your ups will be.

Sorry for the long email but the lack of breeze may have driven me to babbling insanity. If you'd like shorter emails, please increase your donations to the wind gods this week.

Big thanks to our RC this week! Bill Jestel and the Crush Crew for getting a solid race in with not so solid conditions!

Looking forward to seeing everyone next week! Let us know if there is any corrections!

https://llsc.com/regatta/ufT4PJYvJa/results?list_view=true

Welcome back Sailors!

I'm sure everyone was just as eager as I was to get back on the water and it was a great night for it! Although it's probably safe to say that the best sailing was had in warm ups for the race... but I'm sure that there's plenty of relieved souls that were able to shake the rust off in a little bit lighter racing conditions. As the breeze died, it became a game of finding the miracle puff that would scoot you across the finish like further ahead than behind. And no, I don't really have any good advice on that front.... It really felt like a game of luck as you went back and forth with your fleet on any given puff. Yes, it was a bummer that the breeze died off as the night went on, but we still got a race in, had another classic Wednesday night sunset, and a wonderful dinner to top it all off!

Big thanks to the Breakaway and She-Devil crews for running RC this week and the Lamorak team for cooking up some delicious burgers and dogs! Next week, we will have the food truck option from Home Spice available.

Friendly reminder that there's only one drop per series this year. However, if you're interested in cooking a future dinner, sign up with Will Brown and you will get a scoring average for volunteering!

I'd also like to thank Jonathan for covering for me while traveling to Race Week and knocking out the scores for last week! We've moved the scoring to club-spot for this year so they're available at this link:
https://llsc.com/regatta/ufT4PJYvJa/results?list_view=true
If you have troubles accessing, let me know!

Swim break! Unfortunately, we didn't get to race this week, but we were still treated to a phenomenal sunset (check out this photo from Linda Hoopes) and good times with fellow sailors.

If you looked at the forecast and decided to skip on hanging out with us, you missed out on a perfect night for some swimming! If you're thinking, well I'm only here to compete and flinking (yup, floating and drinking at the same time) isn't for me... Well you're missing out on some of the best parts of sailing. But if you're that competitive, then you also know that a clean boat is a fast boat.

Papa Doug has always said that the mark of a good crew is someone who's always cleaning loose lines up. And he's right. It keeps the maneuvers quick. Less kinks in ropes mean easier douses and tacks, and when every rope is where it's supposed to be, you can keep your eyes on the course rather than in the boat trying to find the right rope.

However, this Wednesday was not a crew cleanup day, it was a skipper cleanup day. On a perfect night for swimming, it was time for the skipper to get in the water with a scrub brush or a sponge and knock off the slime! Time for them to stop barking orders and do some work for once am I right?

I did take the opportunity to give the 22 a scrub this week and found that it probably needed a full-blown wash. I was astonished at how much grime I found on the bottom of our dry-sailed boat. But I think that goes to show that we've been blessed with fantastic breeze all summer and great sailing! I haven't had a night in the water to scrub the bottom. So keep up your prayers for wind cause even though they didn't work this week, they have been working.

Thanks to the Race Committee team of Kurt Stadele and the Ole Sole Mio crew and Matt Perry, Dave Pritchard and the Fellowship crew for giving it the ol college try this week. (PS College football is back, GO JACKETS!).

Also Will Brown let me know that last week dinner was actually led by newcomers Kristen Trapp and Cameron Chandler! Idk about y'all but I'm still dreaming about that pudding, so please introduce yourself if you see them again and thank them for the dinner!

The competition is heating up in series 2! Race 6 is in the books! Oh also the sunsets have been gorgeous 😍

Writeup for Race 2-6:
Y'all I'm so mad!
I was determined to get a BUNCH of sick photos from RC this week and then my dang phone died after the 3rd fleet rounded the windward mark... (I've put some of my fav pics here but I'll post the full library to the Facebook group)
But let me tell you what.... I talked last week about making sure that you take a moment to enjoy the beauty of what we do every week. Look outside your boat and be cognizant of the sunset and spinnakers and smiling faces all around you. Y'all I was jealous because of the pictures but they don't do it justice.
I was fortunate enough to be on the mark boat for RC this week (if you didn't notice X is missing, so we had to make do). And after my phone died and a few more boats rounded the windward mark, the sunset poked through the clouds and lit up a rainbow of spinnakers running all the way down the lake. We motored around the edges of the course to go watch the leeward roundings and check in with the barge and to glide across the water and watch the spinnakers and sunset almost rotate around you is one of the most majestic scenes anyone could dream of.
So this week I would like to thank all of y'all for showing up and showing out with your beautiful kites. If you haven't done RC or if you haven't brought a safety boat with you for RC. Do it. It's amazing. Volunteering is totally worth it!
Speaking of volunteers, I need to thank Mike Harrington for organizing dinner last week! Yes, it can be as easy as ordering pizza to volunteer for dinner. If you're interested in helping out, reach out to the officers. We can always use more volunteers!
This week, our RC was Davis MacLeod, David Reddaway, Wheeler Sutton, Matthew Simpson, Tim DeWitt, and Team Highlander. We apologize for the difficulties with the radio (note to future RCs, the front radio on the barge apparently has a VERY limited range. use the one in the back of the boat). That being said, I'm proud of y'all for figuring it out the old school way.
As always let me know if there are any corrections!

Just some awesome photos taken by our awesome fleet members during the first 2 weeks of series 2!

A good night for boiled peanuts if you ask me! At least that's what we were consuming through the very drifty first half of the race on the J22. I heard stories of other boats choosing a much more liquid diet on the water though.

Unfortunately we did not have our usual stash of rum on the 22 due to Papa Doug being just a little under the weather. We had settled for beer to accompany our boiled peanuts. Turns out this was a critical mistake as we found ourselves entering a port/starboard situation with Ole Sole Mio. We had seen Ol' Bullit make a cross that we didn't think was going to be as feasible as it turned out to be. This gave us hopes for keeping our miniscule sail plan from getting stuck behind the giant Beneteau.

As we approached though, we heard the dreaded call "Starboard" and had to make what felt like a mile long duck to avoid the skyscraper floating through the water in front of us. As we passed by, we were informed that our unfortunate situation could have been remedied with transfer of the amber liquid nourishment we not so salty dogs refer to as rum.(we're lake sailors, do we get the old salts title? Let me know in the comments below.). 

It sounds as if the Ol' Bullit crew had offered such refreshment to the Sole Mio crew in exchange for a cross. So this week's piece of advice is that sportsmanship is always the best way to compete.Oh, and always bring RUM!

This week's RC was headed by Stefan Schulze and Mike Iuvone. It included members Paul Stoeffer, Julie Stuart, Emma Smith, and Peter Kowalski. Thank you for your service!

As always, let me know if there are any corrections. Next week is a dinner week, we'll see you there!

Another gorgeous Wednesday night race brought to you by the members and volunteers of the LLSC Keelboat Fleer!

If you haven't noticed, the sport of sailing is pretty much run entirely by volunteers. It's really a special thing. So acknowledge them at every moment you can, and when you get your chance to give back, don't let it slip away,

This week we need to thank RC members Tiffany, Gary, Mike, Robert, Thomas, David Wright, David Schanck, Justin, and Rob for an outstanding job. We also need to thank Will Brown for helping lead our last-minute volunteers for dinner!

Dana is awesome! Dana is great!

It's not everyday you find yourself being threatened by a schoolteacher, and normally Dana is one of the kindest people I know. But I guess she turns into a devil on the water.... see what I did there?

Dana's competitive juices were flowing on wednesday and she sailed quite the killer race to put some proper distance between her and the remainder of the J24s and high PHRF boats. Following the race she said that I better put her in the write up, so here we are!

All joking aside, Dana kicked our butts. Talking to her after the race, we found out that she was just prioritizing clean air, and keeping the boat speed up. Sounds simple right? It's what everyone knows they should do in light air.

However, last night everyone's competitive juices were flowing. I don't think I heard a single start go off without some hooting and hollering back and forth between boats. Some of it was internal to the fleet, some of it was external. What all of these people had in common though is that they were not worried about their own boat speed, but rather other boats. Who wasn't worried about other boats? Dana. She was focused on boatspeed. And she won. By a lot.

Sometimes it pays to focus on yourselves and not get too worried about pushing other boats around. The J24s and high PHRF boats that started at the pin found themselves fighting with each other, fouling each other, and eventually getting stuck in each other's air, but Dana just started mid line, cleared her air and kept going fast.

So here's my advice: Keep Calm and Sail on. Make sure your boat is going fast before you worry about others and the rest takes care of itself.

Thanks to a stellar race committee from Melges 24: Area 51 and Beneteau 235: Slainte! Members included Ben, Danny, Kate, Caroline, Bill, Kyle, and Maggie! Next week is a dinner week! We'll See y'all there!

"I'm eating Header here" said the skipper to the crew. Or maybe the skipper hollered it... lol those back of the boat guys am I right?

Race 5 turned into yet another gorgeous night on Lanier. I packed my foulies and thought for sure I was going to need them based on the cloud cover on the way up. Of course when you pack them you never need them, so I guess you're welcome for warding off the rain.

What the dark clouds did bring was great breeze to start the night! It was blowing enough that we decided to finally try the headstay adjustment we've been wanting to do on the ol 22. Of course we didn't have time to measure the rig properly and do this so who knows what the shortening of the headstay did to the shrouds, but we said "There's breeze! Let's send it and see what happens." Of course the breeze slowly eased up through the night as the clouds passed over the lake, which led this back of the boat guy to do his fair share of complaining... Talking with other sailors at dinner led me to realize everyone had similar feelings to me of hunting for power and feeling headed.

"I can't get it going!" "Find me more breeze!" "Why are we so slow?!" "More header!?" Common words from those grouchy skippers on any Wednesday, but they might have been more prevalent this week than others.

This particular slowly dying breeze was yet another new condition for me to sail in, and it presented another new learning opportunity. Turns out my bickering was not because of our adjustment but because the eerily slow dissipation of wind velocity created an apparent header effect. Do you chase this header to try to keep boat velocity up? Hold course and wait for the breeze and boat speed to line up? Roll tack to gain momentum again? I'm not sure what the best course of action is and it is likely boat and situation dependent but this is one of the many challenges in sailing that allows the sport to keep giving. Our desire to learn more and master the conditions keeps us pushing. And a night like tonight had equal chances of stumping those crazy young whippersnappers like me as well as the old farts like Papa Doug (I suppose he's not that old yet but we still gotta poke at him).

Patience is key to sailing. I want to thank our race committee volunteers for their patience this week. The team headed by Christian Koerner and Randy Phillips and crew and supported by the Georgia Tech Sailing club did a phenomenal job to notice the movement in the clouds above the still water. They held off until the breeze came and we had yet another gorgeous Wednesday Night Race!