Good News Bad News...

Mid-Winters and Spring Dinghy 2012!

San Francisco Bay sailors are spoiled, gorgeous scenery, great wind, challenging weather and oh yeah we can sail year round! It is a common happening in the winter time that sailing conditions are the warmest. We had several days this winter out on the 505 where I was wearing a rash guard and board shorts. Where as in the Summer on the 505 in the Bay I would wear a full wet suit, board shorts and two-three upper layers.

Enough rubbing it in on the rest of the sailing world, let's get back to the Richmond Mid-Winters. This time around I decided to compete in my 505 in preparation to the North Americans that are coming up in September. The first couple events we did not have enough boats to get our own start so we were forced to duke it out in the "Open Fleet," which consisted of Lightnings, I-14's International Canoes, and a handful of random dinghy's. The clubs rating system did not align with real life boats, i.e. we owed I 14's and Weta's time??? None the less this was great a great opportunity for my new crew Luther to learn the boat and get the rigging dialed. For all four events we were plagued with light winds under ten knots, followed up by a long paddle back to the club. But hey we were racing in the middle of winter and we were not wearing dry suits. For the last couple events we had a fleet of 11 505's which made for some great racing to finish off the series. We finished in second place overall and enjoyed every minute of it!

St. Francis Spring Dinghy!

I have competed in this regatta with my 505 a half dozen or so times. In all of those appearances I have never been able to complete all of the races in the event, whether it is boat break down, crew problems, or scary sailing conditions. I call it the "Curse of St. Francis Yacht Club." So my goal for the weekend was to finish all of the races. Easy enough...

Start of Race One

Day one: 12-20 knots of shifty breeze, 4 knot flood, and flat water. We played the day conservative wanting to preserve the boat and ourselves. This was the first time I raced the boat on the City front with Luther, and our heavy weather techniques together are still in the their infancy. So we mixed it up with the fleet a little bit, for the most part we went conservative and banged the corners instead of thirty plus tacks up the city front.

So much for being conservative. After the second race we "hove to" with intent of catching our breath and cleaning up the rigging. While carrying out these duties an F-18 Catamaran who was drifting on starboard and to leeward of us was not paying attention until I hailed them. There response was to power up and tack away, they miss judged their acceleration and t-boned us, causing substantial damage to the deck of my boat... While trying to pry ourselves off of them, the skipper still had not eased the main, the result was their bow repeatably smashing into our boom and transom. Good Times! This should have been a "Day Ender," I gave the boat thorough inspection and we decided that the boat was structurally able to carry on racing. We finished all three races on Saturday and were sitting in ninth out of thirteen, this was no easy feat. This was the good news!

Day two: 5-15 knots of extremely shifty breeze, 4+ knot flood, and flat water. A little bit of epoxy and some duck tape and we were ready to go racing. I had the worse start of the weekend, misjudged the extreme current and we crossed the line thirty plus seconds late. Arg! So we decided to go for a flyer... Huge shot in the dark, and even bigger mistake. after the first lap we decided to play follow the leader with everyone else short tacking up the city front. The damage was already done and we finished the race in last place. Double Arg!

Bad News! I forgot to mention that Luther, in a post race celebration on Saturday decided to eat an egg salad sandwich... The result was a night of him getting down to a good fighting weight... After very frustrating first race, even more frustrating shifty wind, and a persistent bad sandwich we decided to call it a day. We finished the regatta in 12th place, the boat survived with out any breakdowns, both of us are still alive and we had a ton of fun racing on the city front in good breeze on Saturday. In the end it was a good start to the season, and I look forward to shaking the "Curse of St. Francis Yacht Club" next year!

Refitting my 505

For those of you who know me, and those who don't, I am very gung ho about anything I do. So when I'm not spending time with my family, sailing or at work, I love getting my hands dirty tweaking my boats. yes I said boats..

Currently I have two Lasers, a 505, Hobie 18 and the family boat a 1961 36'

Trojan Sea breeze Classic Woody, power boat/stink pot. I have spent countless hours keeping all them in tip top condition. Did I mention that I work on boats for a living and what do I do on my day off...

Over the past ten years I have raced and abused the heck out of my 505.

One of the most recent ongoing substantial projects that I have done was refitting/rebuilding my 505. It is a 1981 Rondar 505 Fiberglass construction with a combo of balsa and foam

core. At least that is what it was... I have spent countless hours upgrading and reinforcing it so that It can be competitive with the modern all carbon boats. Here are a selection of pictures from the process:

Go Team Korea!

Last week I got the dream opportunity to fly down to San Diego to represent GU Energy in a VIP experience with Team Korea at the Americas Cup World Series. This was a great opportunity for me to share the GU gospel with the top professionals in my industry. As well this was a chance to see the boats that I have been obsessing about for the past year and the chance to meet the guys that have my dream job that I have been obsessing about since I was a kid. Ok Ok you get it! I was stoked!The team was amazing from the skipper Chris Draper to Troy, Matt, Mark, Chris B.on the boat, and the guys on the shore crew Tom, Sean, Dan, Cameron, and Sebastian. No primadonna personalities on this team, everyone was very much hands on, dedicated to the cause and friendly as could be. I took full advantage of my situation and asked everyone a million questions. By the end of the day my brain was swollen with information and I had a permanent smile.Oh yeah did I mention I got to go for a ride on the Americas Cup 45 (AC45)! No big deal got to go for twenty minute of so ride. The cat did 15 knots in 7-8 knots of wind! When the guys set the code 0 sail, the acceleration was on par with a jet liner taking off! I have felt the jolt before on my 505, laser and Aussie 18, but man this boat keeps accelerating and accelerating! We did a few laps around the course and dialed up with another boat before I had to hand my helmet off to Brian Vaughn the owner of GU. He got the best ride of the day, a practice race with five other boats in some extremely close and fast paced racing. My view was not all that bad sitting on the bow of the Team Korea's support rib ripping along struggling to keep up with the fleet. Good Times! It has been four days and I still have not slept very well just thinking about the experience. Needless to say the guys on the boat work their butts off on the water and it very apparent that the GU products will give them a huge advantage over the competition.

I can't wait until the teams come to the bay! I wish Team Korea the best of luck and I look forward to working with and or hanging out with the guys in the future. I want to thank Brian at GU Energy for Supporting me over the years and involving me in such an amazing opportunity. I also want to thank Chris Draper and the rest of the guys on Team Korea for their great hospitality and for my smile, that wont go away!

Great Pumpkin!

Pumpkins?

So there we were in the top three out of two hundred and thirty boats sailing in the 2011 Richmond Yacht Clubs Great Pumpkin Regatta Pursuit race! This was the fourth time I made an attempt at this race and in the past I took it a bit to serious and it sucked the fun out of it. It is a long pursuit race from Richmond around Alcatraz Island, around Angel Island and then back to Richmond with the chance of picking up floating pumpkins that subtract time from your score. All four years that I have done it has been light and fluky wind with a ton of current and i have never seen a pumpkin This year was not much different, though my attitude was different. This year I did the event on Luther's J24 "Little Wing," with Marnie, myself and of course Luther. Short handed and plenty of liquid refreshments. Somehow with in the first hour of the race we found ourselves in the lead of the race looking like we were going to be the hero's of the day! We had our kite up the beer was rations were still plentiful and the rest of the fleet was stuck in a hole at the start! With in minutes we found our selves caught off guard. the wind shut down and the current was ripping, oh yeah and the entire fleet caught and passed us...
We still had a good attitude and made a sacrifice to the wind gods and pushed on. Over the next hour we tacked a few hundred time as well we did a dozen sets and drops only to move a half mile. Our hard work and sacrifices payed off by the time we rounded the front of angle island the breeze was on!15+! One more sacrifice to the wind gods and we rounded Alcatraz in a hurry with the finish line in sight, oh yeah and I finally saw a pumpkin! Unfortunately all of the sacrifices and wind dances could not make up for the fact that we chose the wrong way to go around the islands. We finished third in the J-24 fleet and 151st out of 230. It's all about next year!

What a summer!

Grow Your Own Crew?

Laser Slalom?
This year I applied and got accepted to the St. Francis Yacht Club Heavy Weather Laser Slalom 2011. It took place August 3 and 4, 2011, The course is short, two parallel rows, four buoys each, starting in front of the yacht club and heading west for only about 200 yards. In other words, all the action is easily seen from the race deck or along the shore in front of the club. Thirty two of the World’s best Laser sailors competed in this double elimination series for the honor of joining the small pantheon of luminaries who can say they have won this event (Paul Cayard, Morgan Larson, John Kostecki and Tom Blackhaller to name a few).
The first day it blew 15-25+ knots, I had the unfortunate first round random pick against Scott Ferguson, two time defending Laser Master world champion and Oracle Racing's wing designer. The race was close, though he got the best of me in the last couple gybes to take the lead. My second round was against a local Junior sailing prodigy Joe Carter. By this round the wind was in the 25+ knot range and it turned into a carnage fest. I flipped two or three times and Joe went over two or three times that, the result was my victory! Whew! I made through the first day and made to the second day, my goal besides overall victory.

Day two started out nuking! 25+! My third round pick was a local Finn sailor and Opti coach Andy Casey. The race was close, and I managed to hold a slight lead going into the last downwind leg when a film crew boat threw me a huge wake which managed to flip me... I followed it up with a quick recovery only to find myself losing the round.
Overall it was an amazing experience, getting to hang out with 2 time gold medalist Anna Tunnicliffe, Scott Ferguson and a bunch of the local legends. The overall victory went to East Coast Master Peter Shope.
Good Times! Check out the amazing video! http://www.sailingworld.com/brightcove_playlists/video/1117447013001

Wednesday Night Beer Cans with the 505!
This season I took the opportunity to race my 505 at the Wednesday Night Beer Cans at the Richmond Yacht Club. The competition consists of a couple other 505's various skiffs and about fifty or so keel boats ranging from Moore 24's to Farr 36's. Surprisingly we managed to finish in the top five in all but 2 of the 15 nights that we raced. This was a great opportunity to get my new crew Luther Strayer trained up in the insanity that is crewing on a 505, as well it was perfect for getting the boat dialed.

In my spare time.
Back in April my buddy Chris Larsen and I designed and launched a 1/15 scale (3 foot long) radio controlled model of the Americas Cup AC 45 Catamaran. It is fully functional with rudder control, sail controls, and wing camber controls. The construction of the hulls and wing are hot knife c and c foam with vacumn bagged carbon over the top. She weighs in at just over two pounds and is crazy fast. I am constantly tweaking it to make it perform better. I will post a video as soon as possible! Here is a recent pick to tide you over.

Delta Dinghy Ditch
This is a race for dinghy's that starts in the California Delta and goes thirty five miles up river to Sacramento's Lake Washington Sailing Club. this is the fourth time that I have participated in the race. I have done it twice in a laser and once before in my 505 where my wife and i set the Barn Door record. This year I chose to do it again in the 505. The fleet consisted of of a handful of 505's, some Lasers, FD's, Lightnings and a bunch of Thistles. This time around I picked up my one of my laser buddies Will Lowe to fill in as crew.

So there we were, it was blowing 5-7 knots and with the reverse handicap we started at the back of the pack, about an hour and a half after the first boat. Once we shook the other 505's and the FD we spent the rest of the day reeling in boats and passing them like they were anchored. After four plus hours we managed to just reel in all but two boats! We finished the race third overall, missing first by less than four minutes! We did win the 505 division! Overall a great event that I look forward to next years and hopefully it will nuke!






















Thursday Night Laser Series
After thirty two nights, over a hundred races and twenty eight sailors I managed to defend my championship and win the overall title for two years in a row. My training partner and the US Women's Single Handed National Champion Christine Neville finished just behind me in second, followed closely by local heavy air legend Mike Bishop. Everyone stepped up their game this season, the fleet got stronger and stronger, as well most of the group purchased new boats and they were putting the time training for the worlds.All of this made it a tough season trying to defend my title. Good times! I can't wait for next season!
It's a boy!
My wife gave birth to my son Thomas Ruben Nelson on September 16th 2011 at 9:13 am weighing in at 7lbs 3oz and 19" tall. I am totally stoked! I don't want to put pressure on him, I have already been shopping around for an El Toro or an Opti for him... My plan is to get him out on the water with in the first six months. I am working on my theory, you know the whole grow your own crew thing... Whatever he wants to do in life I will support him, especially if it is sailing! :) Look foward to more post with Thomas!

So much sailing so little time to blog...

I will have updates soon...

J fest:
Elvestrom Zellerbach
Thursday Night Racing
Wednesday Night beer Cans with the 505
Bullship El Toro Regatta

Spring Dinghy!

Just when you thought sailing on the city front could not get any more challenging, they throw a tsunami in the mix.
The Spring Dinghy at the St Francis yacht club was one of the most tactically challenging regatta this season to date. All weekend long the tides were crazy unpredictable due to the aftermath of the previous days tsunami from Japan's 9.0 earthquake.
The water was acting screwy, the tide was flooding when it was supposed to be ebbing. Usually you can set your watch to the currents and plan your tactics accordingly. This past weekend the currents changed each leg of the race and to throw in another element there was a huge storm front rolling through that caused a lot of huge wind shifts and a bit of moisture. Good times!

Besides mother nature throwing a bunch of curve balls at us we had a good turnout of a solid twenty boats. I was filling fired up this weekend and eager to mix it up with the local big dogs.
All weekend I had great starts, great boat speed and even better boat handling. Minus a couple capsizes that were self induced by being to aggressive down wind, my short coming was my tactics, every single leg of each race was a roll of the dice. I constantly was finding myself in the top pack and then just when I thought I had the course dialed the fleet would split in different directions and in most cases I would choose the non-favored side of the course.

Man oh man was I loving short tacking up the city front! Zero too five boat lengths from the boulder riddled shore, ripping currents, gusting wind and nineteen other boats fighting for the same space. This was my bread and butter on Saturday and I found myself constantly passing multiple boats every time the fleet ventured to that side of the course. This part of the city front always makes me nervous but for some reason this weekend I was feeling in the groove, and loving every minute of it!

I had my moment of glory when I managed to lead most of the first race on Sunday. It always is nice looking back and having a few world champions and an Olympic medalist chomping at the bit to catch up to you. It was a long race so I was loving every minute of my glory, until the lead pack joined forces and chased me down and passed me on the last leg due to a slight tactical error. Arrrrg! So I have fired my tactician and am in search of a new one for my next regatta in a few weeks. Let me know if you have any leads...Despite my tactical short comings I managed to get few solid finishes in and finished the weekend in eight place overall. I am fired up and can't wait for next months Elvstrom regatta which is held on the same waters!