elf
07-21-2008, 12:27 PM
http://www.landsedgephoto.com/enterprise/index.html
This is a long gallery. We sailed 3 races, the 1st for show with all 13 boats trying to get across the start in a neat line for Dan Nerney, the Rolex photographer. Courageous hugged the committee boat so closely that Freedom and Intrepid (I think) had to go 'round...
Betsy Allison was our skipper. We competed against Courageous, Freedom, Intrepid and Valiant. The whole process was high energy, noisy, strenuous. It was really neat to go below while Jay was stuffing the chute back into its bag, just so that it could come back out on the next run. Someone did that 5 times during the day.
The deck was pretty slippery, as was the interior of the boat. You may notice at a point along in the third race that the bowwoman is touching the jib? She's actually leaning on it. A couple frames later one of her mates is holding on to her harness as she works her way forward.
I spent a certain amount of time in the companionway, where I could face both forward and aft. I mostly shot with my short zoom, since everything is close together on the boat - except for what goes on on the bow. On the third race I used my long zoom so that I could try to get some of that, but the grinders were often in my line of view, and the person running the forward winches was often there in the well. At one point on one of the runs I was able to sneak up there a bit and get a better view.
Tacks were very short, course lengths were very short (1.5 miles). The jib made a terrific racket crossing over and those snappy yanks to trim it up that one can get on a smaller boat don't apply here. Instead there is a frantic but carefully controlled race to winch it in, followed by endless adjusting with the grinders. The vang ran on a very interesting oval track across the mid-deck. Boat speed was called continuously to get crew aware of speed lost in tacking. The boat made it to 10+knots some of the time, but mostly ran in the 9s. Sometimes it fell back almost to 7 right before regaining boat speed.
All in all, very interesting, and hard work.
This is a long gallery. We sailed 3 races, the 1st for show with all 13 boats trying to get across the start in a neat line for Dan Nerney, the Rolex photographer. Courageous hugged the committee boat so closely that Freedom and Intrepid (I think) had to go 'round...
Betsy Allison was our skipper. We competed against Courageous, Freedom, Intrepid and Valiant. The whole process was high energy, noisy, strenuous. It was really neat to go below while Jay was stuffing the chute back into its bag, just so that it could come back out on the next run. Someone did that 5 times during the day.
The deck was pretty slippery, as was the interior of the boat. You may notice at a point along in the third race that the bowwoman is touching the jib? She's actually leaning on it. A couple frames later one of her mates is holding on to her harness as she works her way forward.
I spent a certain amount of time in the companionway, where I could face both forward and aft. I mostly shot with my short zoom, since everything is close together on the boat - except for what goes on on the bow. On the third race I used my long zoom so that I could try to get some of that, but the grinders were often in my line of view, and the person running the forward winches was often there in the well. At one point on one of the runs I was able to sneak up there a bit and get a better view.
Tacks were very short, course lengths were very short (1.5 miles). The jib made a terrific racket crossing over and those snappy yanks to trim it up that one can get on a smaller boat don't apply here. Instead there is a frantic but carefully controlled race to winch it in, followed by endless adjusting with the grinders. The vang ran on a very interesting oval track across the mid-deck. Boat speed was called continuously to get crew aware of speed lost in tacking. The boat made it to 10+knots some of the time, but mostly ran in the 9s. Sometimes it fell back almost to 7 right before regaining boat speed.
All in all, very interesting, and hard work.