If you ever go to any PNW Regattas and meet sailors from Squamish and wonder "why do they never take thier PFDs off"? Here is why:





Typical sailing in Squamish on a warm summer day

Video of the carnage at our "Inflow Express" finish where sailors from Vancouver race in for the next days distance race.



Great conditions for the J/30 though. In Sunday's return race (upwind) we started in 25 kts and finished in 15kts and we took second overall and 4th across the line. The only boats to finish ahead of us were a Hanse 40, J33, and Flying Tiger none of which are slouches. We walked away from anything rated over 90 that day, even with our 10 coats of rough bottom paint and 1986 sails

Awesome pics and video! Looks like you could suspend someone over the stbd side as an alternate hull cleaning technique, since you posted the other thread about tides.

...and this is supposed to make me want to race SOAR next year? Uuuuummmm maybe as crew on your boat.

Sometimes it is not so wild, but when it is it is more fun.

And afterwards there is a distinct "clinking" sound that appears when you walk.

Then again if I shredded all my sails then I'd have a perfect excuse to get new ones... hmmmmmm.

Fun times. I know when we practice for patois we go out and fly our spin up to 30 kn and the boat kicks up it's heals and flys.

Love it.

Well done on the race.
Can't wait to see how you do in Patos. This year. Then swift sure

I heard I was coming to crew on your boat for Patos... :P

I would be good with that if you want to see what the race is like. But It is always better to have more J30s.

Ken the race organizer told me though that he had some other J30s asking about the race. And then we could have our own class and we would not be beating up on the little boats like Fancy Free and Lastochka. Those poor Schock 35s are just so slow.

Crew is definitely an issue for me. I thought I had built a pretty dedicated team, but there is just too much to do in Squamish so they are either committed to other things or working on the weekends. This is the difficult thing for me for the regional races; I have to do all the deliveries myself and I don't know who or how many crew I have until the night before.

This is often the case.
I canvas all the good boats in my club and build a team motivated to a race.
I put out my race list in Jan and hand pick my crew. I always have two backups as you will eventually losse some one.

It is not the best as my round the buoy race crew know how to get the most out of the boat. But I know these people and they show up.

I have developed a reputation as well that draws them to my program. By being consistent they know I am going to the race if I say I'm going. And I don't quit. Some crew invest a lot of time and money to do a race and they don't want to squander that on a skipper that fails to Finnish. I am not thinking of gear failure here but rather of skippers like the owner of a Bavaria two years ago that could not even manage to be a part of the race team. He went down to bed and tried to get the crew to quit the race because it was a bit uncomfortable and he had better things to do. The crew took the boat when he went to bed and finished the race. But they will never sail with him again.

Also make the crew have a vested intrest in the race. Have them pay a share of the fees. Build the team comradery during practice.

I now have my long distance crew that I can depend on. If they say they are coming. I can set my watch on them and move on too planning to do well in the race.

So you want to see how this works for patos?