Northwest Viper Roundup

[Trevor DiMarco]

If you have a Viper and a pulse, you should have been in Anacortes this weekend. These were days to forego mowing the lawn or painting the garage, as the Pacific Northwest Viper fleet knocked out thirteen races in nearly perfect conditions. The regatta drew a diverse crew of men and women, ranging in experience from brand new owners to veterans, and ranging in age from teens to one co-owner born in the Pleistocene epoch.

Saturday saw temps in the high 70s, with winds from five to eight knots. The combination of a favored leeward end and more pressure on the left side of the course led to some epic knife fights for the pin. Rafe Beswick, George Gluecksmann and Austin Hauter, sailing together for the first time, rocketed out of the gate and posted two tidy second places. Veteran locals Garrett Johns, Steve Orsini and Matt Lytle consistently found a way to connect the puffs and minimize their mistakes, posting finishes of 3-1-2-2-2-2 aboard Kaa. The tight courses kept the racing close and the mark roundings colorful, and teams improved on every lap. New owner Scott Wright, Vince Townrow, and Pat Barrett climbed the steepest learning curve, wrapping up Saturday's racing with a solid third place.

The fleet capped day one with some hard earned greasy bar food. The Canadian contingent relished the cultural exchange, eschewing Molson in favor of Northwest microbrews. Conversation focused on when to gybe when protecting a lead with the competition close behind. The consensus, in light of the day's results, was to gybe early and keep your air clear, even if that leaves you a little high of the layline.

Sunday arrived with more spectacular weather and a fresher breeze. The race committee raised the bar for boathandling by setting even shorter twice-around courses. The stubby first beats placed a premium on starts, especially carving out a clear lane to leeward. Several boats learned how tough it is to live with a Viper tight on your lee bow. Downwind, marginal planing conditions challenged teams to fish for their best VMG. The success of a planing or soaking strategy hinged upon the smallest change in windspeed between each leg. Moistened Bint's crew of John Leyland, Scott Meldrum, Chris Jay and Vivian Krause chose correctly most often, netting just 14 points over seven races. Their banner day was not quite enough to dislodge Dustin Johnson, Kent Morrow and Trevor DiMarco aboard Timeline. Despite a wrestling match with a crab pot wrapped around their keel, Timeline locked up first overall with 21 points, followed by Kaa at 34, and Moistened Bint at 36.

The fleet owes a debt to principle race officer Tom Glade, who ran an exceptional regatta – for free! Garrett and Steve continued their outstanding efforts to build the Northwest fleet, herding owners and wrangling crew to assemble a fantastic group of sailors. Our next event is the Howe Sound Regatta, September 17-18 in Vancouver. Clear your schedules, and get yourself to Canada for what is sure to be another awesome weekend of Viper sailing!

[Dave Nickerson]

Photos?

[Peter Beardsley]

Thanks Trevor for the recap.  A photo or two would be great, and maybe email the recap to Class Admin Buttons Padin for posting on the front page. 

The debate about when to gybe while in the lead is always an interesting one.  One technique is the one you mentioned, though in larger fleets, it won't work as well.  Another assuming there's enough wind for a blow through gybe is to just get your gybes really clean and fast for a move we call the stealth gybe.  The middle person will have sheets in hand long before assuming you've all talked about how there are guys bearing down on you who will want to simo-gybe as soon as you give some indication that you're going to gybe.  So the key is to not telegraph the maneuever.  I sit there with the sheets within seconds of the hoist and keep my hands low.  All motions are related solely to trimming.  We don't do anything unusual, but there's usually been a quiet conversation that says something like "stealth gybe in 10 seconds" and everyone focuses really hard on not making any movements that telegraph what's about to happen.  There's a quiet countdown and at zero the skipper throws the helm over before anyone has moved and we rip a quick blowthrough.  Assuming we've done it right, the boats behind weren't set up to gybe that quickly, and our apparent wind will be forward of theirs, so we're clean, but depending on who is behind and how paranoid we are, or how well we think they typically execute, we double down and also exit the gybe on a slightly higher than average angle and hit the hiking straps really hard out of the gybe so that we can come out a bit faster with an apparent wind angle that is even further forward to ensure that the trailing boat or boats have zero chance of jumping us (in which case we say "stealth gybe high exit in 10 seconds" or something to that effect).  It's pretty rare that we get jumped in general, but if we do, we just rip a gybe back before being blanketed.  For the reasons that you mentioned, it's advisable to never gybe right on the layline if you're the lead boat since you run out of options if someone does jump you successfully.  Of course, in a big fleet, you can overstand a bit more since there will be less wind on the laylines as you get into the cone, and if there's a leeward gate and a right-hand turn isn't wildly unfavored, you can get away with murder a lot of the time with a late layline and coming in hot and inside assuming you're overlapped or can establish an overlap in time. 

Now that we've just given away a few previously undiscussed panda program secrets, I'd love to hear Dave Nickerson and others chime in on this topic with their boat philosophies. 

[Dave Nickerson]

It's great when Peter shares info like this.  We have a stealth jibe move also, but not nearly as well planned and executed.  He's good at this and has definitely gotten us a few times.  Still a sucker...

Only key we've discovered is to get the spin sheets straightened out so no tangles.

[Trevor DiMarco]

Thanks Peter for a fantastic explanation. We will work on our sneakiness, and on knowing when we'll need our weight on the rail. It also seems to help to work just a little lower than the trailing boat prior to the gybe. Coupled with a stealth gybe and a high exit, that should make the angles challenging for a boat that wants to sit on us.

Sorry for the dearth of photos, Dave. We'll talk someone into snapping a few at Howe Sound.

[Peter Beardsley]

Working low downwind is generally advisable in non-planing conditions whether you're ahead or behind, but a lot of teams do this blindly without regard to other considerations.  We're certainly guilty of this, and were burned in an interesting scenario a couple of weeks ago where we were trailing but refused to gybe since we were lower of the boat in front of us and thought we'd have a good chance to jump them when they gybed.  This was a bad move for several reasons:

1. It was a tactical decision without regard to strategy - i.e., we were getting bogged down in how to pass a single boat vs. what was happening big picture on the course.  If you can gybe well it's worth playing shifts downwind in certain conditions and making big gains.

2. By staying a bit low, we were in the lead boat's quarter wave.  If they were a Melges 32, that'd be a nice ride since a faster boat would drag you along, but if you're very confident in your downwind speed, another Viper's quarter wave is an awful place to be since it's really hard to break out of that and close the gap.  We could have gone faster by gybing out earlier and sailing our own run. 

3. If you're low, depending how far in front the other boat is, you're still in their bad air a bit downwind, which also makes passing difficult.  The wind shadow will extend a bit with the apparent wind angle further forward than most teams realize.  Shroud telltales are key to understanding this.  Even if your sails aren't collapsed, it doesn't mean you're not in some dirt.

One move that can work well as a trailing boat positioned low that may be holding a lead boat out and preventing them from gybing is to not lose track of the layline, just as you would in a match race.  You don't have to wait for the simo gybe all the time - if you gybe on layline, the lead boat will need to wait a few more lengths to gybe after you so that they're not in your dirt once they gybe.  So now they've sailed extra distance, which if they've truly overstood and don't come in screaming hot at an opportune time, will mean that you've gained. 

Definitely practice the high exit move a few times before trying this in a race situation.  If you oversteer out of a high exit and/or if the crew doesn't understand what's happening and hit the straps really hard, you've just dramatically increased the odds of wiping out.