Royal Ocean Racing Club, London, England – August 16, 2001 – We [Ashley Perrin and Fastwave II] finished at 14:26:03 third in class, 11th overall, 0.7% off first and just under four days – which was the quickest anyone on the boat had done the course. It was an interesting race where the rich got richer. The beat up to the Lizard was very important – if you came out of that in front there was little or no beating on the leg from the Lizard up to the rock. Downwind from the rock we caught up Courier Nord (although initially we thought it was not going to be a leg with any passing lanes) by an hour elapsed. However, the Swan with a large masthead kite also caught us by an hour. Placing where we did means that we have now won the RORC Offshore Season Championships and therefore do not have to go offshore for the rest of the year. Overall a successful race, but next time I will do it double handed or on a maxi – I’ve paid my dues!’

DAY THREE Royal Ocean Racing Club, London, England – August 15, 2001 – It is 10:50 GMT and ahead is the loom of Bishop’s Rock Lighthouse; it is a clear relatively warm fourth night at sea. We [Ashley Perrin and Fastwave II] rounded the Fastnet last night at 1:34 a.m. – I was in my bunk at that point for three hours off watch. From the Lizard till about 30 miles from the Rock we reached with a heavy one, and five kittiwakes swooped around our stern light making a very pretty sight. However, we then crossed the cold front which brought little wind, lots of rain which chilled us to the bone, and 100 degree wind shift making the last 30 miles a light air beat. We sat on the side of the boat like miserable pigeons as one of the crew suggested – all hunkered down talking about places we would rather be and planning holidays in warmer places. The sunset was beautiful – pretty surprising as the sun wasn’t seen all day!! The boats around us at this point all owe us 25 minutes per day, so it looks like we are in for 2nd place unless things change dramatically. Unfortunately barring an act of nature first place is unlikely – we lost it when the cold front came through leaving us beating last night. We hoisted the 0.5 oz. kite after rounding the spacer mark seven miles from the rock – it was added in 1997 for safety – stopping people from hitting each other’s boats in the night as they head to and from the mark. Around midday we had eight or so porpoises join us for 20 minutes playing around the bow. It has been a dead run for the Lizard which is unusual – normally a jib reach – and we peeled to a 0.75 oz. kite this afternoon. We have just been joined by the fourth lot of porpoises this trip – they look like express trains in the night as they are lit up with phosphorescence – very beautiful and elegant creatures. Tonight the sky is lit up with satellites and shooting stars – as Cam Geer (from San Francisco) mentioned, this is why we sail at night. We should arrive in Plymouth sometime around midday on Thursday. Check out the Royal Ocean Racing Club website at www.rorc.org for our finishing position and time.

DAY TWO Royal Ocean Racing Club, London, England – August 13, 2001

– At this point I [Ashley Perrin] miss the warmth and fresh water of the Great Lakes! The Rolex Fastnet 2001 race started yesterday at 4:40 p.m. with winds gusting 35 knots and confused seas in the Solent. The waves increased to 10 feet in the Needles Channel. We started on the line with a four and full main and beat out of the Solent¯pretty miserable on the foredeck. The V60s – Tyco, the two Assa Abloy boats, SEB and Illbruck – powered through the fleet with full water ballast. Watching the 70-footers pass, I promised that if I ever did my 5th time round the Fastnet it would be on a boat no shorter than 60 feet. Since this morning the wind has dropped to around 15 knots – still on the nose though. We will pass Lands End in an hour or so and expect to be at the rock early Wednesday morning. Have managed to dry off a little today – got wet changing last night from the 4 to 3 – ended up almost needing a snorkel! The life of a foredeck – shouldnÂ’t complain as it is part of the job description. We should be able to crack off at LandÂ’s End to a fetch along the rhumb line at which point it is 170 miles or so.

 The team competed in both the Chicago to Mackinac and the Bayview Port Huron Mackinac races as well as the Bay Harbor regatta. The ‘salt water’ sailors from the Bay Area competed in the world’s longest freshwater races. The ‘freshwater’ experience is definitely different – you don’t have to recoil from the bow wave as it WILL dry, the boat sits lower in the water (density difference), you can wash your cloths, happily go for a swim (needed as it was hot and humid), there is no ‘sea’ smell and there are many many many insects and not enough birds to eat them all!!!

Overall it was a great three weeks of close racing. In the Port Huron-Mac after 24 hours of racing 10 Santa Cruz 70’s were within 4 miles of each other. The light and variable winds certainly kept us on our toes during the 285 mile race with a total of: 26 Spinnaker changes 31 Jib changes 3 Drifters 24 Daisy’s. That’s an average of 2.5 changes per hour! Needless to say the foredeck crew was well rehearsed by the end.

Overall it was a very interesting way to spend the month of July. Thank you to Terry Kohler and the Isaacson’s for their support which made it all possible.

The America True team consisted of myself (Dawn Riley), America True’s Volvo Ocean Race Coordinator, Ashley Perrin who is a big boat offshore sailor with significant shorthanded sailing and Krysia Pohl a Europe Dingy sailor who was just named to the US Olympic Sailing Team. As the week went on we started to improve as a team and learn how to sail the Santana 20’s in a wide variety of conditions. The first two days brought light and lumpy conditions outside that built to a nice strong breeze later in the day. Saturday dawned with torrential and frigid downpours that had us all stalling around the coffee pot waiting who was going to be the first to ‘spook the herd’ and start rigging their boat but for us that ended up being one of the most fun days on the water. We sailed in the harbor in shifty winds with big puffs and lots of current all of this combined with short courses kept the action close, aggressive and fun. We had a great race with fellow America True sailor, Katie Pettibone who had America 3 bowman Suzy Leech and import Ellie Hay sailing with her. Once again I am reminded that match racing is my favourite! You can go out and have a really bad race but you only get to wallow in your sorrow for about 15 minutes because there is another race to start and WIN! We ended up finishing in 3rd place with Pease Glaser in 2nd and Karen Johnson from Canada in 1st. The trophies at women’s’ regattas are always cool. This time we were presented with red, white and blue quilts with our finish embroidered on the blanket. Congratulations to the Club, Sponsors, Volunteers and other competitors. It was great.  by Dawn Riley

I got up at 4am to fly to New Zealand where I am now involved in a V60 Women’s Team for the Volvo Ocean Race starting next year (Sept 2001). I have had the weekend to be briefed and will start meetings on Tuesday – roll on September! Below are the J105 class results based on high points scoring system for Kenwood Cup:

Charade 65
Juxtapose 53
Jose Cuervo 44
Irrational Again 35
Puff 33
Tiburon 19

The boat was well cleaned up during the day including a full rig check and the sails packed to be shipped back to Quantum to be sold on.

The Kenwood Cup Awards dinner in the Sheraton banquet hall featured display of 150 expensive looking silver prizes to be divided up by the 29 boat fleet. The most were scooped up by Smile and Samba Pa Ti. Zamboni picked up their trophies and created a new Farr 40 seamanship trophy, which they awarded to Foundation in acknowledgement of the crew picking up a man overboard at night off the coast of Molokai. We took away our third place plates and a great photo of us arriving back from the Molokai race.

The triple-scoring Molokai Race (150 miles) was the last race of the regatta.

‘During the night, at around 0200 local time and somewhere off Molokai’s north coast Cha-Ching (Sydney 41, Scotter Simmons) lost the top part of her mast. In around 18 knots of breeze and with the towering sea cliffs of Molokai close under her lee, Cha Ching was for a time in some peril, through not actual danger. Big Apple III (Farr 45) and Smile (Beneteau 40.7) both pulled out of the race to stand by Cha-Ching. Cha-Ching suffered no casualties and eventually was able to proceed under her own engine power, allowing Big Apple and Smile to rejoin the race.”

I started the race wth full foul weather gear as the first 11 hours (overnight) was spent on the rail. I as relieved of the wave breaker position (bowman) for two hours to trim main a difficult job in the pitch black especially as I was unfamiliar with the traveller system. During the night, we saw up to 28 knot headwinds during a 75 mile thrash to Maui. The initial strategy was to leave the Oahu shore at Koko head however, the wind was more northerly going easterly so the fleet set off for Molokai. We were headed badly on that shore, the wind decreased and the sea conditions were simlar to the potatoe patch of San Francisco. By dawn, we were half way along the nothern Molokai coast and the view was amazing. As we headed toward the sea cliffs (highest in the world) on port tack we were lifted and tacked at their base in over 90 feet of water. This area is not inhabited due to the awe inspiring topography of densely forested near vertical slopes. The IMS fleet was only just starting to come back from the mark at Maui, we had expected the to pass us on their way back during the night. This was the first indication of our position on the water in terms of the other J105’s – Tiburon and Jose were behind us and we stretched our lead. What we tought was a J105 was in fact Smile the Beneteau, which we crossed tacks with for an hour. As we bore off for a short reach to Maui, everuone was concious of the rock, which had claimed the life of a Japanese woman in the 1996 race it was detectable from the desciption in the report we had read of the incident. To our surprise, we saw Big Apple II half way down the reach, at this point we didn’t know about the Cha-Ching incident and thought they had had a very bad race.

It was a great feeling to strip down to shorts and t-shirt after the night as the sun blazed down and the steady trades continued to blow at 18-10 knots. The obligatory factor 50 sun tan cream was smothered all over and we hoisted the kite to surf down the white capped blue rollers. We were picked up on each overtaking crest and the front third of the boat lifted clear of the water as we pumped the main and bore down to start planing like a dinghy. The spinnaker strained and as the boat surfed it had to be trimmed into deal with the change in apparent wind angle. The speedo steadily increased from 9 to 18 knots while the boat hummed. I was grinding and the trimmer and I did not even have to talk as we were totally co-ordinated, everyone on the boat knowing what to do to keep the boat on her feet. The remaining two crew were hiked out with one ready to release the vang if we lost it in the gusts, which reached 27 knots. A wide lane of white foam showed our path down the waves and some of the spray went over the timmers head where he was standing at the rigging. Approaching Makapu head, the wind headed us allowing us to obtain even greater speeds. Unfortunately, Jose had had a great downwind leg and having been 30 minutes behing Tiburon at Maui was now threatening our lead. We heard later that they reported 21 knot surfs and they created a 15 minute lead over Tiburon. We never caught Irrational despite great surfing and not collapsing the kite once. The 150 miles took just under 24 hours of what I think was the best sailing of the whole event.

A day of weaker trade winds, a result no doubt of us finding another crew member light enough to fill the remaining 121lbs left by the owner (we replace him with two people) again beng unable to race. The racing was fantastic leading to us taking 3rd place in the first race by under a second. We came back from two boat lengths behind Walloping Swede into a gybing duel, which lasted the complete downwind leg to the finish. We snuck in a very quick gybe 25 yards from the finish which caught them off guard as we swapped positions to do it – I took the new sheet instead of moving from the grinding position to foredeck which they were watching for as a clue to us being about to gybe. We managed to surf one last wave to the finish and by under sheeting the kit we were able to project it over the finish at the favoured end of the line.

At the start of the second race during pre start manoevres, Tiburon protested us for tacking in their water onto starboard. The mainsheet fine tune block broken during the incident and therefore the coarse mainsheet unreaved itself from all the boom blocks. The boom remained on the port side, which suggested to me that the main had filled heavily while we were on starboard and that Tiburon was therefore burdened boat as it established overlap rom beind on our windward quarter. I fixed the mainsheet by lashing the fine tube to the boom strap thus allowing me to rereave the coarse tune. This time I tied a knot in the coarse tune close to where I reattached it to the fine tune so that if the fine tune again disconnected itself (as it was tide on with Kev cord) it would not unreave itself as the end would not pass through the boom block. On the last leg downwind to the finish we were on starboard and Tiburon gybed onto port and not being able to pass ahead of us luffed up to pass our stern. In the process, their spinnaker hit our backstay as a puff of wind heeled them towards us. We set our protest flag immediately.

Back ashore outside the protest room one of the Tiburon crew was abusive to me after we won both protests – he believed we had lied in the protest room about the way they had flow their flag. However, they had stated themselves that it was hard to unfurl their flag from teh backstay as tape was securing it and therefore had not flown it until as least 45 seconds after the incident had occureed which automatically meant the protest was invalid. The jury had also seen a video of the incident and stated that there had been no infringement of the rules by us and that we had completed our tack in good time.

The race committee finally rectified the results; they had omitted to award us third place for race 1 and to double the points of the middle distance race.

‘The Sydney 41 Glama! owned by Seth Radow T-boned the Farr 40 Zamboni in what appears to have been a classic port and starboard gone wrong. Glama! apparently saw Zamboni and tried, but failed to bear away, hitting the Farr just where the cabin and cockpit join and bashing a considerable hole in both topsides and deck. More seriously Zamboni’s owner Dough Taylor, steering, was flung from the wheel to the front end of the cockpit and suffered a bad gash to the head. He was taken off and delivered to a waiting ambulance, but was reported in satisfactory condition on arrival at the hospital.”

To our surprise this morning the committee had reinstated the fleet’s positions. When we asked why we were told that the race committee was ducking out of it’s responsibility to enforce the rule and therefore we sould have to protest the whole fleet. There was a split amoungst the crew of whether we should pursue the protest. My feeling is that rules are rules – I have myself lost a position due to not filing in time at Cowes Week. I was two minutes late after fighting a spring tide of 4 knots in the Solent with an outboard engine which cracked open the stern allowing water to come aboard despite an appeal I did not receive my position back. The rest of the fleet had simply not read the Sailng Instructions.

The Trades eased to between 14 and 16 knots and we only had one breakage today when the winch stopped working upwind. I took it apart on the downwind leg to find that the brand new springs in the port primary were not working. I replaced them with old springs and did not have a problem for the rest of the regatta. Irrational Again protested us for a mark rounding – they came in on the starboard layline after over standing and we came in on port. We won the protest and were not disqualified. The owner had to stay home due to a back injury so we took on his mainsheet trimmer who lived in Honolulu.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of yelling on the dock about the general protest, which was very distasteful. The other crews felt we were being unsportsmanlike and suggested that this was teh only way we could win trophies. After another bad set of results and a crew vote, we decided to withdraw our protest over the declaration issue. When we went to the jury to withdraw our protest we were told it was not possible, as we would win the protest as it as based on undeniable fact. We finally were allowed to withdraw it after much persuasion and teh race director was ”dressed down’ by the international jury for not enforcing the rules. We were disappointed with this lack of professionalism in an international event and had I been in the other crew’s position I would have requested to be withdrawn from the results, as I had obviously not followed the rules.

We competed in the Plywood Cup; a team builds a boat of 1/4″ ply capable of carrying two people around a triangular course in the turning basin. We won the design trophy despite sinking in the first 10 meters and having to swim it around the course. The boat was too narrow with a tall rig (aka America’s Cup) and without a keel was very unstable; a keel was not possible as the start was in 1 foot deep water.

We were surprised by comments from another J105 of being unsportsmenlike. After asking why they felt like this we found that the race committee had given all the J105s except us a DSQ for racing on August 3rd. This was a result of the other boats having not declared their finishes in writing as required in the sailing instructions. We were used to this procedure, as it has to be done after every race in Cowes Week and Cork Week. We were therefore awarded a 1st.

The long distance race of 55 miles from Diamond Head round the corner of Oahu to Kaneohe and return. We were in last position as we rounded the mark in Kaneohe bay, as again we had no boat speed upwind. Our pointing was better as we decreased halyard tension and increased backstay and brought our jib cars back to twist the sail off and open up the entry for power over the waves. The halyards have to be so loose that there are nasty horizontal lines almost into the 2nd panels of the jib and 1/3 of the way back in the main. After rounding the mark we picked up two places by hitting the shore hard and sailing rhum line coarse on the reach and downwind. We were one minute behind 2nd place ending up in 4th.