The Possession Point Race: I Probably Shouldn’t Have Done That

It’s the morning after the Possession Point Race and I think my whole body is sore. I’m covered in bruises across my arms, legs and ego. In short, it was a punishing race.

Just like last year, it started off mild enough to fool most of us into going out and giving it a try. The sound was flat with a tame 10-12 knots coming out of the south east. There were occasional 15-16 knot puffs rolling through, but nothing menacing. It was a lovely downwind start and Blur jumped to a quick lead in our class. We soon discovered that those puffs I mentioned each came with a fairly significant wind shift hidden in them. This caused the boat to roll pretty strongly. We took it in stride, but driving and trimming was quickly becoming a full concentration job. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sails for even a second for fear of a puff hitting us and rolling us into a gybe to windward. The breeze steadily increased as we moved north (just like @#$^%$ last year) and soon we were surfing down big rollers at an average of 12 knots (that’s twice Blur’s hull speed boys and girls). In short: we were screaming along.

The wind had now picked up to about 17-18 knots with occasional puffs up around 23-24. We decided to play cautious and waited for a lull before we gybed around the Richmond Beach area and headed back out toward the middle of the sound. At this point we found it was just LXVII, us and I think Aurora in the lead of our class. It was around this time that we heard the Person(s) Overboard incident down near Edmonds. Apparently 2 people were in the water. A group of the fast boats was responding (Freya, Smoke, etc.) as well as the Edmonds ferry boat. It was a scary incident because it seemed like it took a while to retrieve them. We monitored the VHF, but were too far away to render assistance. In the meantime, the wind had picked up further and was now firmly around 23-24 knots with occasional puffs to 30. We were hitting top speeds easily around 15 knots as we surfed down the ever increasing rollers. We moved everyone to the back of the boat in an effort to keep things stable.

Blur’s Wild Ride

At around 12 knots of boat speed, Blur starts to make a humming noise. The whole boat starts to sing. We call it Blur’s happy noise. I don’t know where it comes from. Most likely from the rigging and the backstay. It starts almost subliminally and you feel it in your bones. Blur was singing all the way from Richmond Beach down to the Possession Point Buoy. We made down there in 90 minutes flat.

The good news was, that I was having no difficulty driving and keeping the boat on its feet. The bad news? With the emergency in progress and the big rollers, I no longer felt confident gybing in those conditions. When Blur gets into a 3-5 chop, gybing our big masthead symmetrical chute becomes pretty dicey. I didn’t want to lose anyone overboard so I called for a douse and we pulled the chute down and gybed over to point back toward Possession Point. I’d like to note that Blur was the smallest and lightest boat in the race (25 ft, 2000 lbs). We get knocked about in the big seas a bit worse than many of the bigger, heavier boats. So, everyone on Blur wears life jackets all the time. Before we had left the dock, we even rigged jack lines and our foredeck crew were wearing (and using) a safety tether. At the dock I remember thinking, “Maybe, I’m over-preparing, it doesn’t really look that bad…” and as we were screaming down the rollers North of Edmonds, bow submerging in the waves, I was thinking, “Thank GOD we rigged the jack lines!”

It turns out we had some challenges getting the chute back up: re-rigging after the gybe was a mess. But we finally got it back up and were once more flying toward our halfway mark. We rounded up once or twice, just to keep everyone on their toes. The puffs were strong as hell and kept trying to spin us out. But we surfed and fought our way down to the bell buoy.

The Upwind Slog

Rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment, I was feeling a sense of dread: now we had to go back upwind and against the current. It was going to be a slow, hard slog home. We doused the chute and rounded the mark and there were already signs of chaos: Some boats were already motoring back, some had torn headsails. All of the TP52s had retired. Yikes!

First thing we did was tack over toward the Edmonds shore. Jesus, what a meat grinder that was! 25 knots gusting to 30. 3 foot waves with the occasional 5 foot beast mixed in. I’ll describe it in one word: yuck. We had brand new upwind sails courtesy of our friends at Ballard Sails. But we must have spent the first 20 minutes of that ride just re-learning how to trim for the conditions. We were on our ear most of the way. Blur was heeled over so hard that I had to hook one arm over the lifeline and steer with the other in order not to fall across the boat. We put a reef in the main, and that helped a little bit. At one point, we got slammed with a particularly vicious 30 knot gust and we were blown completely on our side. The mast was close to parallel with the water. I’m quite sure our keel was out of the water. Suddenly, I had this gut feeling that we were right on the cusp of Blur’s “point of diminishing stability.” We were now literally dragging sideways downwind in the water.

I did not like it. Not one bit.

We were completely pancaked on our side and not bouncing back up. I was convinced that if we didn’t do something fast we ran the very real risk of rolling the boat. I recall yelling at the jib trimmer to blow the jib sheet (the main was already blown). They blew the sheet and the boat promptly stood back up with water cascading from the rigging (phew). Yelling was the only way to communicate at this point over the howling of the wind and the flogging of the sails. To say that we struggled in these conditions is to abuse the wrong adjective. We survived. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so dramatic, but that’s how it felt at the time. In retrospect, my Vakaros instrument says we only heeled over 45 degrees. What a dumb instrument.

The boat was constantly trying to round up or alternately lie down on her side. Driving was a freaking nightmare. I couldn’t find a stable groove to save my soul. We’re up. We’re down. And we’re up again. The tiller had taken on a life of its own and was making a concerted effort to wrench itself from my grasp. We were wildly overpowered. Nevertheless, through trial and error we made some modest progress upwind and kept with the fleet. We briefly considered switching from the #3 to the extra small #4 headsail, but at the time we decided not to because the rough conditions made a sail change seem like a good way for someone to get hurt or fall overboard.

There were two things that kept me going at this point. First, after abandoning last year’s Possession Point race, I really wanted to finish this one. Heavy upwind air is my nemesis on Blur, and I wanted myself and the crew to learn how to manage big air if possible. Second, I had a set of brand new sails. Although I hated to flog them (Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!), I also felt very confident that they were the best possible sails for the conditions. My old, blown-out sails would have made things even worse. So in the back of my mind, my mantra was “Hang in there, it’ll get better.” Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. As we got up to Edmonds the wind died down a bit to roughly 12-15 knots and we were given a small reprieve. We were able to work on trimming the sails and we could relax and just sail the boat for a good 30 minutes or so. We even shook the reef out. However, in the immortal words of Hagrid the giant, “I probably shouldn’t have done that…”

Just about the point where we were starting to think, “Hey, this isn’t so bad.” The wind decided to pick up again. F*ck (that’s pirate-speak for “I really wish that hadn’t happened”). The new breeze settled into a pattern of 15-17 knot lulls with 22-23 knot puffs. Not the worst conditions in the world by any means, but not easy going either. At this point, I slipped while driving a puff and took a bad fall across the cockpit. I think I might have caught air. I ended up lying on my back on top of the tiller, all four hooves in the air, and the boat immediately spun a circle. Grouchy and bruised, I got us back on track. Unfortunately, I repeated that performance 2 more times (without the spinout) as we worked our way back upwind. I really need to put some seatbelts in the driver’s station on Blur. I got the sh!t kicked out of me. The crew was starting to worry, “Dude, you OK?” The problem was that the boat was still getting heeled over hard in the puffs and the deck was slippery as snot. If I didn’t have an arm wrapped around the lifelines, I was more than likely going to get tossed around. I watched a big J/boat go powering past us with the skipper standing blithely and proudly at the helm station, seemingly without a care in the world, and I’m pretty sure I called him a few dirty names.

Sorry dude.

We kept that up all the way to the finish. There really isn’t much more to tell. At that point, everyone was exhausted. Me and the crew had started to form some pretty strong opinions about how to trim the sails in heavy air (I guess that’s the learning part) and we were all fairly cooked. So we did some rather average upwind sailing back to the finish and called it a day. We came in fourth in our class and I think 19th overall, so I’m pretty happy with that result. Satisfied? No, we can do better, but I’ll save that for next race.

We got back into the dock at Shilshole and that’s when I completely “bonked”. Yep, I hit the wall like bug hits a windshield. 5 hours of driving in those conditions and I was completely wasted. I was massively dehydrated and hadn’t eaten for the entire trip. Honestly, letting that happen was kind of stupid on my part. It was such a white knuckle ride for the entire race that I never even considered eating or drinking. I’d need a third hand to do it anyway, because I almost always had one arm wrapped around the lifeline and one on the tiller. Still, a power bar in my pocket would have been a good idea. I was driving like a zombie toward the end of the race. How do zombies drive you ask? Quite poorly.

Lessons Learned

Overall, this race was almost a repeat of last year’s race conditions minus the big 50+ knot squall. We got away lucky with regard to damage: 1 broken cabin house window and we lost one winch handle overboard.

Key learnings:

1. The #3 jib is good from about 14 knots up to 18-20. Above 20 knots we start getting overpowered very quickly. We can hold the #3 in about 23-24 if we use a lot of twist, but only for short periods with lots of feathering at the helm. Now that I have a #4 to work with (using a #4 is a new concept for me) I think I’ll try using it starting around 20 knots and see how that works. I’m actually REALLY curious now.
2. The new main is a dream, but it’s powerful as hell. It’s easy to keep flat, but if it’s even a little out of trim I can’t get a good groove at the helm. I might actually have to start talking to the main trimmer…
3. 30 knots is really starting to look like our bail out number. Between the sea state and the small size of our boat, that’s fast becoming the point where I confidently say, “Screw it. We’re done. Let’s pack up and seek shelter.” I’m glad we did this race. We pushed ourselves a bit and stayed safe. But we’re also on a small boat and there is always an upper limit. I won’t even go out if it’s already blowing 20-25 before I even start.
4. Eat and Drink. Yes, even the skipper. Fail to do so and you will get stupid. Don’t get stupid.

Congratulations to the other boats in our class who all finished including:

1. LXVIII
2. Aurora
3. Cherokee
4. Blur
5. Mata Hari
6. Bardo
7. Mara

I owe my crew, Brian, Julia and Jeremy a great deal of thanks. They were the secret ingredient that made the day great. I’m kind of hoping that next year it’s a little lighter. It’s hard to find crew this hardcore.