brooks&judy
New member
Here’s a photo link from the Port Townsend Leader of the start of the inaugural Race to Alaska (R2AK) in June, the tiny motor vessel Ticket (C-Dory 22 Cruiser) out in front of the race leaders across the starting line. The Ticket was serving as photo boat for veteran sail racing photographer/writer Dieter Loibner.
http://ptleader.mycapture.com/mycapture ... ryID=80927
Dieter told me where to position for the start - some 80 yards past the starting line in about the middle of the course. I thought that was putting us too far out front ~ then the start happened. The leading multi-hulls shot towards us making clear we were barely far enough from the line. As Dieter directed, I jammed the throttles to the stops and the Ticket took off.
At 22 knots, we were barely staying ahead of the fastest boats. They bore off of the true-wind as they rounded Pt. Hudson still sheeted tight for the apparent-wind, and accelerated. The leaders - and we - were soon out in the notorious, then-increasing Pt. Wilson slop. The sailors were charging through growing seas nearly as fast as the C-Dory could go at full-chat. Dieter directed we run along side each race boat, one after the other, than just ahead of it “close enough for me to get the expressions on their faces!” I edged close as I dared, sawing the throttles to keep pace, the modern tris and catamarans alternately punching through waves and going airborne, crews vanishing in spray, reappearing, vanishing again to come up grinning, pumping fists. Behind the charging boats lay the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the dark Olympic Mountains, their jagged snowy peaks lit gold by the new day’s sun, and just above those hung a big pale moon in a deep blue sky.
Before I knew it, we were well into big seas heaped high atop a broad shoal over which the fast-ebbing current runs and leaps, waves made higher still that day by strong contrary winds. Little Ticket was going nearly airborne too off wave tops and demanded a vigorous twitch of the wheel as each trough approached to keep from slamming into the next wave-face.
Dieter, who photographed the America’s Cup on blustery San Francisco Bay from a high-powered RIB, said he preferred the C-Dory as photo platform: He liked being dry and in relative calm in the lee of the C-Dory’s house as we punched to-weather, our own spray flying mostly away instead of over the boat.
By the time he’d gotten good shots of the likely winners we were well out into Admiralty Inlet, still in the ever-building Pt. Wilson maelstrom. Time to turn around and head for the lee of Ft. Warden’s hills and back into town. We’d been punching into it with bow trimmed down, which was not what we wanted it when running with those lumps. I slowed, counted the sets, saw the best smooth I thought we’d get, brought the boat’s nose up, and on the face of a fairly mild wave I spun the boat while gunning it and trimming bow all the way high. We proceeded to surf south toward Port Townsend, the boat’s bounding motions large but gentle. At one point I noticed on the plotter our speed through the water was 14 knots, but over the ground it showed but 4. Abreast of Point Wilson, the seas lay down as if commanded. I trimmed the bow down for greater speed and we skipped around and into the harbor.
We’d been out barely an hour. It felt like half a day.
~ Brooks Townes
Dieter's excellent work can be seen in a number of popular sailing publications and the online European `zine Yacht.
[use of the low resolution photo here on the C-Brats site by permission of Port Townsend Leader Publisher Scott Wilson]
http://ptleader.mycapture.com/mycapture ... ryID=80927
Dieter told me where to position for the start - some 80 yards past the starting line in about the middle of the course. I thought that was putting us too far out front ~ then the start happened. The leading multi-hulls shot towards us making clear we were barely far enough from the line. As Dieter directed, I jammed the throttles to the stops and the Ticket took off.
At 22 knots, we were barely staying ahead of the fastest boats. They bore off of the true-wind as they rounded Pt. Hudson still sheeted tight for the apparent-wind, and accelerated. The leaders - and we - were soon out in the notorious, then-increasing Pt. Wilson slop. The sailors were charging through growing seas nearly as fast as the C-Dory could go at full-chat. Dieter directed we run along side each race boat, one after the other, than just ahead of it “close enough for me to get the expressions on their faces!” I edged close as I dared, sawing the throttles to keep pace, the modern tris and catamarans alternately punching through waves and going airborne, crews vanishing in spray, reappearing, vanishing again to come up grinning, pumping fists. Behind the charging boats lay the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the dark Olympic Mountains, their jagged snowy peaks lit gold by the new day’s sun, and just above those hung a big pale moon in a deep blue sky.
Before I knew it, we were well into big seas heaped high atop a broad shoal over which the fast-ebbing current runs and leaps, waves made higher still that day by strong contrary winds. Little Ticket was going nearly airborne too off wave tops and demanded a vigorous twitch of the wheel as each trough approached to keep from slamming into the next wave-face.
Dieter, who photographed the America’s Cup on blustery San Francisco Bay from a high-powered RIB, said he preferred the C-Dory as photo platform: He liked being dry and in relative calm in the lee of the C-Dory’s house as we punched to-weather, our own spray flying mostly away instead of over the boat.
By the time he’d gotten good shots of the likely winners we were well out into Admiralty Inlet, still in the ever-building Pt. Wilson maelstrom. Time to turn around and head for the lee of Ft. Warden’s hills and back into town. We’d been punching into it with bow trimmed down, which was not what we wanted it when running with those lumps. I slowed, counted the sets, saw the best smooth I thought we’d get, brought the boat’s nose up, and on the face of a fairly mild wave I spun the boat while gunning it and trimming bow all the way high. We proceeded to surf south toward Port Townsend, the boat’s bounding motions large but gentle. At one point I noticed on the plotter our speed through the water was 14 knots, but over the ground it showed but 4. Abreast of Point Wilson, the seas lay down as if commanded. I trimmed the bow down for greater speed and we skipped around and into the harbor.
We’d been out barely an hour. It felt like half a day.
~ Brooks Townes
Dieter's excellent work can be seen in a number of popular sailing publications and the online European `zine Yacht.
[use of the low resolution photo here on the C-Brats site by permission of Port Townsend Leader Publisher Scott Wilson]
