Whidbey Island Race Week 2006

The month leading up to Whidbey was a blurrr!! The boys in the shop had just finished #7 and were starting on hull #8. I was in the process of trying to pull together 4 Rockets and crews together in order to have a presence at Whidbey. The logisics of replacing old rigs with the new ones, making sure that all the sails were One Design size, getting their PHRF-NW certs and delivering them, grew exponentially larger, the closer the time came to leave for the regatta.

The burdon fell squarely on the shoulders of Ken, Sheldon and Darin in the shop with a special thanks (have I thanked you guys yet?) to Bryce and Terry coming in at the last minute to get us over the top! If you have a couple of hours to spare, any one of them can fill you in on the details.

After talking to the owners, it was decided to race the regatta with the class assos only. After much consultation with Charles Tolman, the bean counter for PHRF-NW the magic number came to 96!! What the He--!! We OWE 3 sec to Melges 24 and Olson 30!! But as someone said "you can't fight beaurocracy"! We assumed the position that made Kevin Bacon famous and said "Thankyou Sir, may I have another".

NOTE: This is the first regatta that a Rocket has raced with an asso. The learning curve was vertical. Do we sail hot? Deep? When do you pull out the sprit? What's a sprit?? Out of the 4 crews only one had sailed together before as a unit.

The fleet consisted of 2 Melges 24, 2 Olson 30, a Sonic 30, J 27,Humbolt 30 and 4 Rockets. Besides the J 27 the gap was only 12 sec from quickest to slowest.

From the onset, two trends appeared. The two Melges, the Olson Lunchbox and the Sonic, Violator were doing exactly that to the rest of us!

The other trend that became apparently clear to me, as I religiously rushed to the right side of the course, was that someone forgot to flush the tiolet!! I have come to believe in two things in my many trips to Whidbey Race Week: 1/ You WILL have a hangover every morning and 2/ Penn Cove acts like a tiolet bowl being flushed (counter clockwise). The first was still happening but what the Hell happened to the second!! I was confused. Comments from the winners were alien to me, like "playing the shifts up the middle" and even more outlandish things like "playing the shore up Coopsville!!". Global warming must have something to do with it.

One by one the rest of the of the fleet started to click in. The J 27 Stranger started to make a move, then it was the Rocket Diavola from Calafornia and even the inconsistent Olson, Deuces Wild had flashes of brilliance. But not I!! The only thing to save my ass was the asso. I was astounded by how much distance I could make up down hill!!

By the end of day three, Gary Stuntz in his Melges 24 "Cool Beans" was giving the rest of us a clinic on "How to win regatta and make it look easy". You know, the boring old stuff like clean, conservative starts, play the shifts, loose cover the fleet and great boathandling. The other boat that thorughly impressed me was Violator. From my view in the cheap seats, whenever I looked up they were always in the right place on the lifted tack.

By day 4 Penn Cove started to flush but the writing was on the wall, the pecking order had been established. One comment I heard over coffee at around the middle of the week " WIRW is just like the movie 'Ground Hog Day 'you wake up and its the same as the day before and the day before that."

PS Sorry about the lack of photos but the photographer didn't take one down wind shot of the Rockets with their new assos. I will work on that.