Greetings!
Superhuman efforts were made by all at Oakcliff and the rewards were bountiful! The Ker 50, Temptation/Oakcliff finished second in class and second overall for the Round Block Island Race and the Ker 11.3 with Vlad and Mike Tolsma on board were second in the double handed class. The 11.5 wasn't quite as successful on points but with Saplings getting their first taste of offshore racing along with some of our more regular supporters, it was all good. Below is a more detailed report.
Looking forward to this week we are sending three teams across the sound to a Melges 24 regatta. On Saturday and Sunday the classics will be sailing their third weekend. I plan on finally getting on board Dolphin on Saturday. On Sunday we will also have a weekend version of our Tuesday Match Race Drills from 12-3pm. This is a great opportunity to get your friends and potential team members out to Oakcliff without the hassle of sneaking out of work early. Sign up for any and all events by going to http://www.oakcliffsailing.org/calendar |
| Second in Class and Second Overall !!!!!!! |  As mentioned in the opening paragraph, the Ker 50 sponsored by Art Santry had a great race finishing 2nd in class and 2nd overall. Boat Captain, Mike "Koko" Komar was understandably nervous after leading a huge refit and having virtually no sea trial time. The great news is the boat held together and the new team created from Santry friends and family, newly minted Saplings and staff and supporters pulled together to sail through the pea-soup fog and onto victory. Koko reports that contrary to conventional wisdom, they stayed in the middle of the sound and jumped from puff to puff. Sapling Brock Krabel, weighing in at just under 145lbs spent a significant amount of time up the rig looking for puffs and connecting the dots. The fog was so thick that they relied on AIS for trying to track the other boat's positions and were still surprised when the sun came up to find themselves practically leading the fleet boat for boat.  | | Vlad Working Hard! |
Reports from the 11.3 were a bit more rough and tumble, with only two people on board they had to keep a sharp lookout for wind. It was a tough race physically and mentally. Mike Tolsma who is a welder and mountain climber did mention that it is like committing to climb a big wall: it sounds like a great idea when you say yes and half way through you are thinking ... what was I thinking ... this is REALLY hard! That's Type II fun for you.
Not to leave out our teammates, the start of the Ker 11.5 was brilliant. Port tack and going fast at the pin at the gun. In this short video you can see HOW foggy it was. Remember this was 3 in the afternoon.
Seriously congratulations to all who worked their butts off for us not only staff but contractors, boat builders, sail makers, measures, officials and sponsors - congratulations et al.
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Sailing Fully Crewed on a Double Handed Boat
|  As our regular readers know, Jeff MacFarlane has been jumping from Oakcliff straight into the top levels of short handed sailing. For the Atlantic Cup he has been racing with Seb Rogues on GDF SUEZ. Last weekend myself and Sea Logic's Dave Hommel joined Jeff, Seb and his girlfriend and brother to race in the final stage, a fully crewed 5 race series in Newport Harbor. PRO, Anderson Reggio meant 'in the harbor'. He set up some creative courses, some in the same pea soup fog our offshore teams were experiencing. We sailed very consistently and ended up fourth for the weekend racing giving the boat 6th overall for the series.
Some things jumped out to me as pretty cool. First of all they have an articulating prod  . Basically the 'pole' is attached to the deck and rotates around the headstay. You can grind it about 30 degrees to either side of the boat. It is good for spinnakers of course but where it is really cool is for the code zero. GDF's code zero is much more jib-like as opposed to spinnaker shaped and with the in-hauler, outboard lead, inboard lead plus the pole we were able to move the whole center of the sail plan inboard over a foot. There was so much to tweak and twist I had a great time. The cockpits are definitely set up for short handed sailing and doing maneuvers relatively slowly compared to fully crewed racing. With 4 people involved in maneuvers, it took a few tries before we weren't stepping on each other. One thing that DID help is a rather bizarre tiller design. It makes it a bit harder to 'feel' the boat but really cleaned out the cockpit for people to walk around. Here is a very short video which shows the layout.
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| Sapling Collin Headed to Team Race Nationals | 
Meet Collin Weston, one of our new crop of Saplings. Collin is imported from Texas and has only been with us for a short time, but he's is already taking a break. It's for a good reason though, he will be skippering at the team race nationals representing Texas A&M University at Galveston. Collin, a junior, is also the SEISA President and Team Captain. In a romantic twist, his significant other, Leslie will be his crew. So for all of the reasons above we wish him huge luck and hope to see him back here next week victorious. |
And we wish everyone on a Melges, Classic or Match 40 this weekend, good winds, no fog and lots of wins.
See you on Oyster Bay,
Dawn Riley
Oakcliff Sailing Center |
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