Sugar and Spencer Win Bellingham Bay One Design Regatta with Three Bullets!
Team Port Townsend 505 represented well September 18th and 19th at the Dale Jepsen Bellingham Bay One Design Regatta hosted by the Bellingham Yacht Club. Port Townsend 505 sailors Sugar Flanagan, Spencer Snap, Sean Rankins, Charlie Dore and Erik Coburn (who drove for Whidbey Island’s Paul Von Grey) made up the team. It was a fine event which was comprised of many Lasers (sailing their District Champs), Flying Scots, A-Cats, Tasars and 505s sailing on two courses. Though the forecast called for rain both days, Saturday was warm and sunny with a light-but-steady four to six knot breeze. [...]
Is This the Future of the America’s Cup?
Reflecting the trades of the folks aboard, there is lots of car chatter on my boat. When it comes to racing, while the majority tend to praise the beauty of Formula 1, some of us raised in the desert watching the Unser's - fathers, sons, grandsons - flip sprint cars in the dust of a New Mexico night tend to champion a little more action. Sprint cars may lack the elegance of a perfect Formula 1 race, but they are a heck of a lot less boring. Which seems to be the thought behind Coutts and Ellison's revision of the [...]
Pete Langley Video Interview from Three Sheets NW
Three Sheets Northwest has a new article and video interview with Pete Langley of Port Townsend Foundry here.
Night Cap 2
7 boats came out with hopes of sailing in the second race of the fall season. A short course–Indian Point and back to City Dock (hopefully twice)–was used. The start was almost on time, but the wind died 2 minutes before the final horn. The second try was 20 minutes later and the wind actually began to fill from the NW just before the start. All boats finished the first lap within 30 minutes, but then things began to fall apart. The wind greatly diminished for the last boats to round. The boats in the lead were returning from Indian [...]
Fast, spectacular, wingsail catamaran unveiled for 34th America’s Cup
The draft rule for the spectacular AC72 Class has been published, following the announcement on 13 September that a catamaran would be used for the 34th America’s Cup. Encapsulating the 34th America’s Cup – the best sailors in the world on the fastest boats – the AC72 will be a physically demanding boat capable of top speeds twice the windspeed. The new AC72 class is the first-ever wingsail catamaran class for the America’s Cup and the fastest-ever class in the iconic 159-year-old competition. It replaces the ACC monohull class, which was created in 1988 and first raced in [...]
Nightcap Series: Race 1
5 boats ventured out for an afternoon with less rain than predicted, and, unfortunately, less wind as well. A short course from City Dock to the trestle mark was used with enough breeze to start after a 5 minute postponement. There was a lot of drifting and a very spread out fleet at the finish. Results follow after the break. […]
High Performance Sailboat Takes Shape at Boat School
From David Blessing It can be hard to give up some of the things we enjoyed when we were younger. Sometimes these things need to be translated into terms that meet our present situation. Some years ago I loved high speed sailing on my 505 in the summer on Chesapeake Bay. From time to time, I would have to swim alongside the capsized the boat to get the thing back under control. With warm water, this was not a problem. Now I live in Puget Sound country where the prospect of landing in the water is not as [...]
Fall Night Cap Series Kicks Off This Sunday
The fourth and final PTSA series of the year kicks off this Sunday, September 19th, with a 1 PM start off City Dock. It's a 6 race series and a great way to end the year. With no Race Committee boat to set marks expect to tour the Bay with a full range of reaching, running and beating. If you need a chart showing the position of the race marks, go to "Downloads" under the "Racing" tab. See you on the water.
Meeting Meteor
When the doors to Sea Marine opened for the Wooden Boat Festival, there was Meteor. The revolutionary 38-foot Meteor was designed and built in 1938 by the Jensen family, owners of Seattle’s Jensen Motorboat Company, for themselves. With double-planked hull and triple-planked superstructure, she has a beautifully flared bow and torpedo-like stern, far ahead of her time. The “streamlined” Meteor was cutting edge boat design in 1938 for she had hardly a straight line and absolutely no sharp corners. To some eyes, she reminds you most of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion car of 1933. The Jensens had [...]
Moorage Tenants Union Annual Meeting
Bertram Levy sent along a meeting notification. Moorage tenants, there are some of you that may have not received this notice and we want to be sure we get as good a turnout for the annual meeting as possible. Mark your Calendars!! Moorage Tenants Union Annual Meeting Wednesday September 15th 7:00 to 9:00 PM Masonic Hall, Uptown Jefferson and Van Buren (behind Post Office) Agenda: election of officers update on new rate determination and proposed increases review events of the last year Port politics and the moorage tenants future directions for the tenants tenant survey
First West Coast R-Class Race in 70 Years
The first West Coast fleet race for R-Class yachts in 70 years took place on Port Townsend Bay on Friday, September 11th. In light air and a building flood they struggled out to the Pt Hudson buoy, spinnaker reached back along town to the "Y" buoy on the west end of Boat Haven, found a small wind line to the Tower, and beat back to the line. Lady Van took the horn followed by Aloha and Pirate. From the deck of the committee boat, Ev & Susan Diehl's Azure, the order of finish seemed less important than the [...]
2010 Reach For Hospice Race, SBYC
The Sequim Bay Yacht Club has invited members of the Port Townsend Sailing Association to join them for the 2010 Reach For Hospice Race to be sailed September 18th in Sequim Bay. The event promises to be a fun time and a worthy fund raiser for Hospice. Registration will start at 10:30 am in the SBYC Clubroom with a skippers meeting to follow at 11:00 in the great room. Final description of the courses and any modifications to the instructions will be made at this meeting. The full Entry and Sailing Instructions can be viewed here.
The Townsend Tern
Walking the docks at Point Hudson we ran into Chelcie Liu and Kees Prins putting the final touches on rigging the Townsend Tern. Maybe that could be better stated as the final touches of the first iteration. Talking to Chelcie you get the idea that this project is far from over as all around the boat are new ideas and theories looking to be tried, tested and improved. From Kees initial drawing of a smaller Raid boat, the Townsend Tern evolved into a carbon fiber masted, cat ketch, with a high tech electric outboard drive system that pulls [...]
Alexandra Cup Contestants Arrive in PT for WBF
With Aloha and Lady Van already in PT and Pirate on the way, this promises to be a very special WBF weekend on the Bay. If you have not seen these boats, you owe it to yourself to head to Pt Hudson and take a look. While the 6 Meters are essentially half-size 12 Meters, the R Boats are 1/3rd size J-Class boats and from the same era. In this case, 1/3rd size means 40 feet long and 9000 lbs displacement, of which 6000 lbs is in the keel. The other 3000 lbs supports a huge sail plan [...]
T-Bird Regionals
Hope you got to check out the T-Bird regionals on the Bay last weekend. Looking at the fleet at they came in to Pt. Hudson and hearing the distinctive crinkle of new sails being rolled, it was hard not to be struck by how trick some of the boats were. Photo by Marty McOmber of Three Sheets Northwest.
2010 Little America’s Cup in C Class Cats
If the next America's Cup is sailed in catamarans with hard wing sails, this could be a dress rehearsal. Video comes complete with fast boats, scenes of damage and destruction, annoying music, and rough language. What more could you want? Lifted from Sailing Anarchy.
Cleaning the brush: A Chemical Engineer’s perspective
Take a look around the docks and it’s clear that the Wooden Boat Festival is around the corner. There’s lots of last minute work going on to get already well tended boats even better tended. In that spirit, here’s a short item on cleaning your varnish brush from the blog Windborne in Puget Sound. Good varnishing brushes are definitely not cheap! The quickest way to ruin one is to let varnish dry in the brush – not something any of us wants to do. But cleaning a brush is not an easy task. You may think that after [...]