|
First Fall Members Regatta: A Resounding Success
By Greg Azzaretti
The first ever Fall Members Regatta was held on the weekend of
October 3rd and it was a huge success! Over 40 HRCS members were
greeted with a potpourri of conditions throughout the entire weekend.
Saturday began with mostly cloudy conditions paired with a steady 8-12
knots southerly. Tight mark roundings with even tighter finishes made
the first four races of the day some of the best HRCS racers had seen
all season. Race five is where things went south, including the
current. Racers were faced with a lessening breeze, ebb current, and
rain at the start of Race 5 which resulted in a lightning fast upwind
but a near motionless downwind. Even a shortened course provided only
a temporary relief to those struggling to sail downwind against the
current. Racing was then postponed and abandoned due to lack of wind
and strength of current. However, in typical HRCS fashion, the clouds
broke, the sun came out, and the temperature rose as racers decided to
finish their day of racing on the Frying Pan.
Sunday began with temperatures in the 70's and not a cloud in the
sky or a puff of wind. It wasn't until 1230 that Race 6 began in a
light northerly which quickly became a southerly half way through the
first leg. This allowed for an exciting windward (leeward) mark
rounding having all eight boats round in a gigantic pinwheel. The
beautiful weather held on as a strong 15 knot southerly picked up and
allowed for a fantastic day of racing. Increased traffic on the river
due to the Sunday weather made things interesting as the Race Committee
was constantly on lookout for barges, weekend yahoos, and one cruise
ship. The same ebb current which had plagued the fleet the day before
became more of an issue later on in the day and by 4pm, with ten races
completed in total, racing was finished for the regatta.
Ten races over two days yielded some great performances by both
the racers and the race committee. We'd like to thank all those who
participated in making this a great regatta to end the season. Special
thanks goes out to our volunteers who without them the regatta would
not have worked. First, thank you to Chris Pachios who lent us his
whaler to act as a mark boat which proved to be invaluable to race
management. Thank you also to Joe Tully, Taryn Bregstein, and Helena de
Vengoechea for their help on the markboat and race committee.
Congratulations to the members who sailed with John Baum, Alex
Fridell/Dave Verchere, and Tom Dyas who placed 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
respectively.
|
Sailing: What it meant to me
By Jahid Mowla
A metal pole about 100
pounds horizontal came rushing to my face at a speed of 15 0 mph. I met eyes
with the attacker, and automatically bent down to save myself from the
treacherous blow. The pole cut through the air over my head so fast that I felt
the wind in my hair; the loud sound it made when it extended all the way to the
other side made a clash that sounded like two cars crashing into each other.
This was my first experience with the boom, which almost knocked my head off.
At first, sailing seemed like a battlefield and the boat was the enemy.
Sometimes the boat didn't scare me when I would be driving, but then I would be
scaring my group members because I would always tilt the boat or do something
I'm not supposed to do.
The first day I stepped into the boat I kept trying to figure out in my head
how many times I would fall in by the end of the course. The boat was shaking
and the wind was blowing, even the dock was shaking, but Alex assured me that
this was normal; Alex was my group's leader. He taught us how to do many of the
different jobs of sailing a boat. Our boat was a J24 - it was called this
because it was 24 feet long. I regret not taking no pictures of me in it with
my group because now it's too late to do this. I don't want to forget that I
went sailing. And the idea of sailing a boat actually seems cool, I actually
went to New Jersey; some days we passed the New York border of water and
crossed into the border of New Jersey . That's pretty cool.
Some days, I would message friends that I was in NJ. Many of my friends would
message me and ask what I was doing in NJ. I would reply back that I would be
back in a hour I'm in the water. This remark used to raise even more questions
from my friends who would laugh at my answer and ask what was I doing swimming
to NJ in the cold. I would say I'm sailing. When I told many of my friends
about the sailing program and the math credit that I would receive from it, all
of them would all say the same thing: "Your school lets you sail? That's cool,
I wish I could sail. I want to sail for free too."
I used to also tell my friends that sailing isn't only fun like you expect.
It's a lot of hard work. You have to prepare the boat, which takes time, and
then you have to drive it and take care of the sail. I used to tell my friends
that sailing is something everyone should try at least once in their life time,
because overall it's not that bad as long as its not too cold. I recommend this
sailing class to everyone. I think everyone should try it out. Its really fun
and cool and worth giving a try. Try your luck.
|
After School Program Steps Back in Time
By Alex Baum
One of the most important
critiques received after the Spring AASP was that the program was
not hands-on enough. As
a result, we decided to up the bar, and up it has gone. Since its inception
in the fall of 2008, the program has always tried to make math more interesting
and less abstract for students. In the past, it was believed that simply
teaching kids to sail would reveal the inherent math concepts so fundamental to
sailing. We quickly realized that the program needed something more. Much of the
summer was spent trying to figure out how to give certain lessons like sailing
in current and apparent vs. true wind more life. At first it was believed
that we would need to spend thousands of dollars on high-tech equipment to give
kids the opportunity to measure things like boat speed, wind speed, current
speed, and wind direction. This was quickly scrapped due to lack of
funds and the realization that sailors had been doing these same calculations
that we were doing for thousands of years without any expensive
equipment. We decided to try doing it the old-fashioned way. In
redesigning the curriculum around these older methods, we realized that
sailors, much more so than now, really knew what they were doing and truly understood the math behind sailing.
We wanted students to discover this intimate relationship between math and
sailing on their own and as a result enjoy both much more.
For calculating
boat speed, we turned to the chip log or chip block used by sailors up until
the invention of the modern speedometer. The idea was to drop a piece of
wood into the water tied to a rope with knots placed at specific
intervals. As the rope was pulled behind and away from the boat by the
chip block, the knots would run through one sailors hand while another sailor
held an hourglass to measure the time. When the hourglass ran out, the
sailor holding the rope would stop the rope and announce how many knots had
gone through. This is where the term "knots" comes from as a
measurement of speed over water. "Knots" does not come from, as
many believe, an abbreviation of "nautical miles per hour". Using weighted blocks of wood
connected to ropes with specifically placed knots, the students in the AASP
attempted the same thing. It was clearly demonstrated that day that despite the
centuries gone by and all the new technology, the chip log still works!
|
