Roach Coach Racing Team

1ST Place Overall GMORA Winners in class C! RC was also 1st Western Region and 3rd Central Region.

What a great season! Remember in the last post I wrote that the PHRF New England’s gave us a couple of points, and that it was significant. Well, here’s why. The New England PHRF Championship was the last race on our schedule and was our last chance to get points for the season. At that point we were in 2nd place overall. Commotion was in first place by a fraction of a point! The spread between boats is usually anywhere from 20 to 50 points! And here we are the last race of the season and a fraction of a point different! Intense! Commotion and Roach Coach were in tight competition all year, both boats making every race they could. This race was no different and both boats were on their way, skippers and crew gritting their teeth, hungry for points. RC’s placement added several points to the season standings and RC ended up first for the season! Phew! That was amazingly close! I’m so proud of the crew and skipper for not choking in such tough race. We are expecting the same kind of competition and camaraderie this season so I’m hoping to see as many of the veteran crew back for the 2007 season. If RC is going to do as well or better (there is still the Dirigo Bowl to be had!) RC will need the entire team!

Thanks to;

Peter Farris
Rita Nappi
Scott Thomas
Pam Thomas
Gregg Carvel

And also thanks to our all guest crew members as there were quite a few and they all played an important role.

Guest crew;

Dyonisia (Gregg’s better half)
Linda Sheehy
Pam Stuppy
Shannon Fitzpatrick
Dave Thomas
Andrea Rand (and friend Fred)
Bruce Schwab
Cain Stevenson
Alexandria Stevenson

Cheers!

It’s been awhile, as the season heated up, so did the competition, so there wasn’t much time to update the web site. I’ll try to briefly summarize (according to my short term memory) how the rest of our season went.

PHRF Maine’s was not a spectacular race for us; I forget where we finished, I think 4th Place so it wasn’t good, what with a few fouls involved (but no protests).

Boothbay was spectacular, both for the racing and also for the overnight stay. There was a pre-feeder race for fun and we ended up sailing right into Boothbay Harbor through a bunch of traffic in plenty of breeze with the spinnaker up (surfing in the low teens during the gusts)…good times! Scott and Pam’s Inn had a dock (where RC docked) and veranda that overlooked the harbor and Yacht Club (also close to downtown bars) so we had great access to the boat between races. The racing was challenging with lots of boats, several starting lines and an island in the middle of the course! After two days of racing we ended up in 2nd place. Not bad!

Camden to Castine, another fantastic away race. We got in from the delivery to Camden at dusk just in time to watch a thunderstorm roll in, and then we all ducked into a cozy tavern for some chowder and beer. Great times! Saturdays race saw the wind behind us all the way….the Olson kicked her heals up and we blasted toward Castine carrying the spinnaker, dueling it out and even beating some class A boats! The next day, much to our surprise, saw wind blowing us right back to Camden. We carried the spinnaker the majority of the day with plenty of wind until Robinson Rock which we had to round to get to the finish. The wind died and it was an all out battle to get through the glassy waters surrounding Robinson Rock. I think the entire fleet (including class A and Tri’s) ended up there like a big parking lot. We worked hard to get to new air before the other class C boats and we did! We were off and gone while our competition had to be spitting nails watching it happen! It was a workout getting to the finish in wildly shifting breeze, but we persevered. Pete and I dropped the rest of the crew off and headed to Portland while the rest stayed for the awards. We received a cell phone call with limited reception, but we heard all we needed to hear…..1st place!

Monhegan! Every now and then I write an e-mail summarizing a race for those who didn’t make it. Here’s part of an e-mail sent to some crew who missed out on this years Monhegan aboard “Roach Coach”.

Thursday nights pre-race was pretty exiting so I’m adding the story here;

Crew on Thursday night…..Pete in cockpit for Monhegan Race training (He worries at times….”I don’t do well with lightning” and “if this is what sailings about, forget it!” but remembers priorities “Gregg brought Boddingtons’s Beer”), Greg on foredeck…. (Details matter to him even in the face of danger, “where exactly is the anchor?” and as you’ll understand later “I think the barge is tied off to both moorings!”..., Linda as mast-woman, (safety is always on her mind, “Shouldn’t we be wearing life jackets!”, Dianicia, she just pops up when you need her, “there’s a knot in the halyard!” and Rich driving, “please, calmly put the hatch board in and close the hatch…don’t worry, this is just a precaution”.

The race….While racing we watch a huge area of dark clouds approaching and discuss possible future events…...”I don’t do well with lightning”....we decide to go commando and stick to our strategy, we watch flashes of lighting and soon hear loud claps of canvas (carbon and Kevlar in some cases) getting ripped apart off to our left and dark shades covering the water coming our way and masts going horizontal (a J-29 decided to run before the weather and crossed our stern headed for the Hussy, the skipper reported a top speed somewhere near 14 knots under ripped main alone, we believe him). We got less than two minutes; get the spinnaker down…its down most of the way except…..”There’s a knot in the halyard!”....thank Neptune she found the problem, relax, untie, and finish the job just in time! Bam! 50 knot blasts, settling down to 30-35 knots until the next 50 knot blast! Sail the main, everyone on the high side, oops, there goes the main….”“where exactly is the anchor!”....not sure the racing anchor will do the job and what felt like to long babying a ripped main… “Please, calmly put the hatch board in and close the hatch, don’t worry, this is just a precaution” as we watch the boom drag through the water… and then… “Shouldn’t we be wearing life jackets”, while tacking back and forth….”I think the barge is tied off to both moorings”...so we tie off on the end of the barge, deep breath and “Gregg brought Boddingtons’s!”

Believe it or not, it didn’t stop there, we cleaned up the deck, let the race committee know we were ok (who by the way did a great job of locating and accounting for the racers, including a non-racing boat which capsized, crew swimming, got picked up by a lobster boat and attracted the attention of the coast guard) drank Boddingtons’s and when the wind dropped to around 25-30 knots, motored to the business end of Clapboard to get around the tip so we could be blown back to the mooring, only to be interrupted by the motion of the waves which splintered the motor mount to allow the outboard to do a cartwheel (first time I’ve seen an outboard run upside down with the engine gurgling under water and the prop mimicking a wind generator), anyway, Gregg took the helm and headed down wind, I realized as I had my head near the water off the stern wresting the outboard that it was blowing pretty hard as we had no sails up and no prop in the water, yet we had a wake. I then called up “jibe and head back to clapboard”.
Despite the apparent anarchy, I’m very proud to say that no one lost their cool and we systematically went to work on deck, took care of any unexpected events, offered assistance to the RC boat and even joked about calling the race committee to ask “hey we’re at the finish mark but can’t see the RC boat!” (We’re pretty confident not a single boat made it to the finish area…but we would have/could have if there was money or more beer involved!). We kept our priorities and ended up at our haunt at the Falmouth Grill for food and drinks.

To Monhegan;

Downwind start (Gryphon Solo, an Open 50, asks us for some egg and cheese sandwiches over easy….roach coach…get it?) we watched other fleets go, lots of round-ups, broaching…bla, bla…..we’re on it, order of the day is this is a long race, we have only three crew compared to their seven, lets do things slow and easy, no mistakes…chute goes up…we’re out of there, no broaches for the roaches! Dodge a tanker and the Cat (ferry to N.S.) changes course allowing us room (we owe them big, after we change our underwear, we’ll send them a thank you note). We’re first to the first mark hitting 12 knots… jibe/broach….back up around 11 knots+. Off Sequin…more wind…Pete witnesses 12+ knots…a few more waves and wind, we’re at what feels like somewhere above 13 knots, maybe up to 15, but we’re not lookin when the coach gets cookin (I like saying that). We needed all three of us concentrating on the spinnaker. Seas were getting bigger, but we were going faster than the waves, burying the bow on occasion, yeehaw! We put some distance on the fleet and round at Monhegan 11 minutes in front of the next boat in daylight! Strategy counts on the way back, we can only carry the 125% with only three on board, and others are carrying their big sails as the breeze lightens considerably. It’s dusk now. We go low and fast….see bunches of meteors and maybe a whale (whatever it was, it was a couple of feet from Pete and Gregg’s ankles as they sat on the rail). Rip Curl reports hitting a whale as does another boat. We watch Sequin for hours as usual, can’t see where the competition went (we are either doing well or need to start looking in front of us). Several hours later we find the finish, and listen for other folks calling in their time on the VHF. We are first to finish, but wait…...Go-Dog-Go calls in 1.5 miles from the finish…...they cross the line in the dark just before dawn 7 minutes after we do…drat…first on corrected time is theirs by 5 minutes. We listened for the other finishers but luckily keep our second place, but we also got line honors and the first to finish Ocean Midget Trophy (second year in a row).

In the end, the three of us sailed a marathon on this race and the crew earned lots of respect from the skipper. My hats off to Greg and Pete! Congrats guys!


MS Regatta, This is always a race worth doing, there are so many boats it’s like driving in rush hour traffic. Most boats have a sponsor and a theme with costumes and so-on. This year on RC, we decided to keep with our name and loaded up the grill with hotdogs; we zoomed around the fleet during the parade past Western Prom and fed as many of the fleet as we could, all the while dodging water balloons from attacking vessels. Good times! We ended up not placing well; I think 5th place, we’ll just blame it on being overfed!

PHRF New England’s. By far the most challenging all year, we’ll have to go back next season as we have no idea how we ended up where we did each race, which was usually inconsistent, and at the end of the regatta we were somewhere just below mid-fleet. If I knew the exact number I’d probably not report it! Surprisingly though, it gave us a couple of points for our season standings, and in the next post, you’ll understand why that’s so significant. This regatta saw two days of racing, romping around Marblehead, staying at a borrowed house (thanks Pam!) and rubbing elbows at the Corinthian Yacht Club. At one point, the crew and I were sitting in the trophy room hanging out and listening to Bruce Schwab “Ocean Planet” and Rich Wilson “Great American, II, and III” casually discussing Rich’s upcoming campaign for the Vendee Globe. Very cool! The delivery back to Maine took two days due to lots of wind and chop on the nose, the Olson really doesn’t like it, being so light and just me onboard. But it was still fun, getting to stop in York Harbor for a night and hanging out in a local bar that was decked out to look like the interior of an old ship. More good times!

So there it is, I tried to keep it short which was hard to do….I have to say there are so many great memories made this past season it was hard not to put them in print, it’s one of those things where you have to be there to appreciate how much went on, I’m sure the RC crew and all those racing know exactly what I’m talking about…so I guess I’ll see you all next year so you don’t miss out!