J World San Diego

Beer Can Race 3

admin — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:10:53 +0000

Well it was a pretty tough week at J World last week, but I think this is some of the best video we’ve produced. Enjoy.

Beer Can 2

Vince — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:13:29 +0000

Well it’s been a busy week, but we finally got this up on our YouTube Channel. See you all tomorrow.

Beer Can 1

Vince — Fri, 27 May 2011 01:29:36 +0000

Well it was a tough day on the water for me, but otherwise Beer Can 1 was a complete success. I hope everyone got to check out the line shots and other photos from the J World Markset/Pinboat Team, Channing and Marnie. Keep an eye out for them on the water. They’ll be tossing out t-shirts and other prizes. Starting next week, Channing and Marnie will give you their perspective from the pin end of the line, so stay tuned. Until then, enjoy out first Y-Cam video. PS: CRA, if a channel marker is the top mark, we won’t be able to get videos of spinnaker sets…

Beer Can Kickoff Party

admin — Sat, 21 May 2011 20:00:49 +0000

Great Beer Can Kickoff party last night. Thanks to North Sails San Diego and CRA.

Final Cabo Race Report

Will — Fri, 20 May 2011 18:08:10 +0000

Greetings from Cabo San Lucas. Sorry for the delay on this last race update, but much has happened and the last few days have been draining. After my last update, the race turned into a classic downhill ride with breeze in the 15 to 25 range. We were having a hell of a time surfing our way towards Cabo for the last 24 hours of the race. We were first in our class and in position to podium for the overall standings for the race, a cool accomplishment for a boat originally intended for day sailing on San Diego Bay! We had several noteworthy moments, including a sheet-tangling broach that morphed into a kite douse and then a back down and then again into a sail change. But I’ll save those stories for another time.
About forty miles from the finish line, we had a serious accident. During a jibe, Tom was struck in the head by the boom. Looking back from the bow to see Tom crumpled in the cockpit, bloody and unconscious, was one of the scariest moments of my life. Adrenalin kicked in and everybody on the boat fell smoothly into emergency roles. Andy and I letterboxed the kite, got the medical kit, and began stripping the boat, Erik fired up the engine and pointed us toward Cabo, John got on the satphone with race committee and the radio with Mexican Navy, and Jeff initiated first aid. We got the bleeding under control and positioned Tom in the cockpit with a heap of sleeping bags. The sun set quickly and we went barreling towards Cabo in steep seas, still surfing down wave faces at speeds up to 14 knots with just the main and the motor. John got on the satphone and organized an ambulance to meet us at the marina in Cabo. I got on the radio with the Mexican marina rescate and dredged up long-dormant Spanish vocabulary to figure out how to say things like, “The seas are too big for an airlift or boat transfer” en espanol. A Mexican marina rescate boat found us and escorted us to Cabo. I’m probably stating the boldly obvious, but that ride towards Cabo really sucked.
Once we got to Cabo, paramedics extracted Tom from the boat and rushed him to an AmeriMed clinic, where they found he had a fractured skull and went pretty quickly into an emergency surgery. I was able to visit Tom in the hospital yesterday and today, and he looks better with each visit. Talking to him in the ICU, he is in good spirits and already thinking about getting back out on the water. John actually got kicked out of visitation by a nurse because they started talking about the race and Tom got so excited that his heart rate got too high. Tom will be medflighting back to the US tomorrow and still has quite a bit of recovery, but I am so thankful that he is doing okay.
When I finally got into my hotel room around 4AM on Tuesday morning, exhaustion set in as I realized I had been running purely on adrenalin for about 24 hours. I have been running around for two days now getting Good Call into delivery mode to go back up the coast to San Diego, but I have found a few moments to sit and just reflect on this whole experience. I have a lot more thinking to do, but the event really got my wheels turning on quite a few subjects. Racing sailboats can be a sublime experience, but when something like this happens, it reminds you of the true priorities. In an instant, our focus on racing hard and sailing fast evaporated and the most important thing in the world became getting Tom to safety. This was also a sobering reminder that sailing—offshore racing in particular, but really any kind of sailing—is an inherently risky undertaking. Any time we go out on the water we are taking a risk. This shouldn’t make us afraid, but we should be aware of the risk, cognizant of the possible consequences, and be as prepared as possible for those days when things do go wrong.
I am sad that these race reports have to end on a dark note. I wish badly that I were closing this out with a story about Tom, Jeff, Erik, John, Andy and myself sitting on Good Call at the dock in Cabo, exhausted but happy, toasting a race well-sailed with cold Pacificos. But that’s not the reality. I am proud of the way that we sailed the race and thankful that our situation at the end was not worse and that we were able to handle the emergency well enough to get Tom to safety. And once Tom is back in fighting form, I look forward to getting out there and doing it again.
Many thanks to everybody on the boat. Tom, Jeff, Erik, Andy, and John were a great group of guys to sail with. Thanks to the folks at NHYC who helped coordinate the medical assistance in Cabo. Huge thanks to Dr. Teryn Clarke, the neurologist who stayed up all night in the hospital with Jeff. She was so kind and an invaluable help. And a particularly big thanks and many well-wishes to Tom. I really look forward to sailing together again in the future.

Cabo Race Report 3

Will — Fri, 20 May 2011 18:05:32 +0000

Third Race Report

It’s about 2000 on Monday evening (had to think about the day for a few minutes) and we’re clipping along towards Bahia Magdalena at about ten knots on a deep reach. Last night and well into this morning were a long steady close reach with the genoa as we sailed through the less intense lower portion of the southerly wind that probably made for an interesting NOOD on Sunday back in San Diego and knocked the majority of the big boats out of our race. Despite the upwind sailing, we were all stoked this morning because of a) pancakes and bacon for breakfast and b) finding out at fleet roll call that we’re in a pretty good position on the course. The day warmed up beautifully and the weather started to feel like Baja. I finally got to peel off my wool base layers that I’d been wearing since the beginning of the race (hopefully for good) and spend the day in a Patagonia capilene and bare feet. Sticking close to the rhumb line paid off as we were able to close reach towards our mark at a steady pace until we got lifted enough to set a kite. We peeled between the 1A and 3A until about a half hour ago at the end of my watch when the wind had built enough to set the 2A and really start scooting down the coast. Kelp has been a big issue for the past 24 hours. We keep a sharp eye during the day, but there’s not much to be done at night. Our routine of dropping kites to the foredeck, backing down, and resetting has become well-practiced. Apparently Andy has a magical 6thsense in his butt that allows him to feel whether or not we are carrying kelp, no matter where he is on the boat. I’ll let your imagine run wild guessing what kinds of nicknames we have come up with for him. Also noteworthy was our second steak dinner of the trip—thick Nebraska t-bones this time. I was skeptical about them all fitting on our little grill, but Jeff made it happen. Right now Tom, Andy, and John are on deck reaching forward into a pitch black night. We’ve enjoyed the spectacular full moon every night; so bright it’s been like trimming sails in the sunlight. But every night the moon comes up a little later, so we deal with more and more blackness every night before the moon rises out of the water. We’re all getting mentally ready to buckle down, sail hard, and make our final push to Cabo. Hopefully tomorrow evening will be my last on-the-water race report before we get there.

Will

Cabo Race Report 2

Will — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:24:58 +0000

It’s 1600 on Sunday and Jeff, Erik, and I have just come off an afternoon watch of dodging kelp hard on the wind with the genoa in just under ten knots. We are just past Isla Cedros now, roughly half way. The wind began to lighten up last night around dinner time. We had some fine Nebraska filets last night for dinner, cooked on a grill on the stern pulpit. The multi-talented Jeff Brown was even seen turning steaks with one hand while driving with the other as we peeled from the 2A back to the 1A. Last night in the early AM the breeze fell off completely. We set the staysail and drifted around before gradually getting the boat moving again around daybreak. The breeze filled in from the south, and we have spent the majority of the day on a tight reach or hard on the wind. Even though the breeze is out of the south, our position on the course is allowing us to fetch our mark. So even though the breeze is light out of the south, our boat speed is all VMG right now. This morning’s roll call report for the fleet showed us to be first in our class currently, despite some French trickery from a Beneteau. A typo in their position report showed them to have had a 250 mile day yesterday. Tom briefly considered trading in Good Call for a First 40 until we realized the error. The J111 is considerably inside of us now, in a pretty rough position if they are feeling the same south wind that we are. We think the Beneteau 40 is just outside and to the north of us, while the Beneteau 50 is about 20 to 30 miles outside of us. We also noticed a fair amount of attrition among the bigger boats that started today. Sounds like maybe they were experiencing a tough beat upwind back up in San Diego (hopefully that means there is some breeze providing some action for all our J80s back home in the NOOD). We’re hoping to have some building, right-shifting wind overnight so we can get a kite back up and turn this back into a downwind ride. I’ll check in again tomorrow. I hope everyone at JWorld had a great weekend of one design sailing.

Will

Cabo Race Report 1

Will — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:54:57 +0000

The weather is getting warmer and the water bluer as we head further south into Mexico on the J124 Good Call in the 2011 Newport-Cabo race. We are currently about 38 miles off of Bahia San Quintin, just over 24 hours into the race. We started yesterday at noon up in Newport in light southeast breeze, sailing under main and genoa for the first few hours until the breeze filled in from the right enough to hoist the 3A. Another few hours of light air reaching and the breeze went far enough to peel to the 1A. As night fell, we layered up and began settling into our watch system. We have two crews of three: Jeff, Erik and myself on one shift and John, Andy, and Tom on the other. We go four on and four off during the day and three on, three off at night. As the fleet began to spread out, we found ourselves sandwiched in the middle of two packs, one heading further inside and one further out. After dark we had a Beneteau first 40 within sight well into the night. We kept pace to windward of them before eventually dropping down and crossing their transom to head further inside. We jibed away from them earlier today, and they have just come in sight again several miles off our starboard quarter. Early last night we dropped the 1A and hoisted the 2A and had a chilly but nice night of breeze in the teens, pushing double digit boat speed. Daylight brought much appreciated warmth. We have been under the 2A since last night, pausing briefly to drop the kite onto the foredeck to back down and drop a long strand of kelp that had been nagging us (no kelp cutters on this boat). In some late morning light breeze, after a jibe back to starboard, we set up to peel back to the 1A, but were pleasantly confronted with a building breeze and decided to stick with the 2A. We have been sticking close to rhumb line, now trying to play a transition zone between the inside and the outside. The big question is when and where (and if) this southerly weather system will materialize. We are sailing hard trying to make our way down the coast to outrun and leave it to the bigger boats that started today to do the beating. John has been dutifully monitoring GRIBs on Expedition to keep us in the right place on the course. Jeff has kept us well-fed. There are currently six beautiful steaks thawing for tonight’s dinner. No freeze-dried food on this boat. I’ll report back tomorrow, hopefully well-progressed down the coast and ahead of that southerly weather system.

Oracle RC-44 Cup San Diego

admin — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:32:09 +0000

Here are some pretty exciting pics from the RC-44 racing going on this week just off Broadway Pier. Ceck out the event website for details (http://rc44cupsd.com/). The RC-44 is a one design racing yacht that is very similiar to a scaled-down International America’s Cup Class yacht, designed in-part by legendary America’s Cup skipper Russell Coutts. You learn more about the class at http://www.rc44.com/.

RC-44 Booth is up and running

admin — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:58:04 +0000

Come check us out at the Broadway Pier. We’re inside the new Cruise Ship Terminal in the Regatta Village.