2006 Around Long Island Race

The Around Long Island Regatta in late July is a 190-mile race which actually goes around 90% of the island. Racing through the East River is not an option. We start off Rockaway Point in Brooklyn, go east 90 nautical miles to Montauk, and leave that to port. Then it's about 18 miles to Orient Point. Leave that to port, and it's west down Long Island Sound to the finish at the Glen Cove breakwater in Heampstead Harbor. The race usually suffers from lack of breeze but not this year!

Dock call was 10:30 AM on Thursday. We met in North Cove in lower Manhattan. The marina is owned or operated or leased (or something) by Dennis Connor. In the shadow of the skyscrapers of the World Financial Center it's an impressive place. Capt. Robbie, Chris (or Matt?) and Jeromy had delivered the boat to NYC from Stamford the day before. We had a talented crew of 11.

Justin checks out the Manhattan skyline as we leave the island behind us.

Robbie Kane steers us down the Hudson River past the Statue of Liberty. Robbie is our boat captain, in charge of preparation, maintenance & logistics. Dennis supervises.

Team meeting. Lady Liberty in the background.

Leaving Las Vegas. Er ... Manhattan.

We motored under the Verrazano Bridge and made a left turn. The start of the race is off Rockaway. We got to the starting area just after the first starting group departed. We were in the last group to start (the fastest boats).

Race documents and information are here: http://www.alir.org/
There were about 60 boats in the race, divided in 9 divisions. We were in division 8 with the fastest monohulls. Division 9 had three multihull boats.

Flying Goose, a Derecktor 56. I've known some folks who sail on her.

Avra, a J-120. I've raced against them a bunch. Nice folks.



Vamp, J-44. Lenny Sitar is the skipper. He's done about 27 of these ALIR races.

Conditions at the start were a fresh southerly breeze. Since the first 90 miles of the race are almost exactly due East this meant fast beam reaching conditions.

We were pretty serious about winning this race. These were our competitors in our division (8) and the almost-as-fast division. Vamp and Hell Hound were our teammates in the team competition and we hoped they would do well (say, second and third!) :)

Division 7
Boat Name	Skipper	PHRF	Sail #	Model	Hull Color
Crazy Horse	Ron Weiss	39	51169	frers comp 45	wh
Hell Hound	Brendan J. Brownyard	33	35038	nelson marek 35	wh
Charlie V	Norm Schulman, MD	30	42844	j 44	wh
Vamp	Leonard J. Sitar	30	43600	j 44	blue
Avocation	Hank Schmitt	27	51235	Swan 48	wh
Christopher Dragon	Andrew Weiss	24	50500	j 130	black
Flying Goose	Daniel VanStarrenburg	21	us58	custom 56	red
Division 8
Boat Name	Skipper	PHRF	Sail #	Model	Hull Color
Cabaret	Robert Limoggio	-6	4155	Trupp 47	blue
Sea wolf	Leigh Loesel	3	usa888	Farr 40	wh
Wahoo	Hank Fretz	3	2655	vision 41.5	claret
Little Wing	Jim Aronson	-12		concordia 47	red
High Noon	Dennis Collins	-15	1200	Tripp	red
Polaris	Chris Schubert	-27	usa 7119	Taylor 49	navy blue

For those of you who are not sail racers, the PHRF number refers to a handicap in seconds per mile. The lower the number, the faster the boat.

In our division we were focusing on Cabaret. That's a very fast boat and Bob Limoggio won the race last year. Polaris and Sea Wolf were raced by midshipmen of the US Naval Academy. They are fast boats, but the Navy doesn't buy them new. Boats are donated to the academy and often have been used hard prior to the donation. Wahoo and Little Wing we hadn't raced against and didn't know.

We calculated that the pin end of the line was favored. We timed our approach nicely, protected our position from an attack by Crazy Horse, and made a clean and fast start.

Moments after the start: we are ahead of Crazy Horse, Vamp's behind them.

Crazy Horse chasing us. I raced with them twice last month. Real nice folks.
Vamp
Horse chasing us. We are significantly faster. They didn't catch us.

These were the boats to windward (and behind us). Our successful start allowed us to sail in clean air indefinitely. Hell Hound is leading Christopher Dragon. Go Hell Hound!

To windward and ahead of us was Alchemy, the Andrews 77 Maxi. She wasn't listed on the PHRF scratch sheet because she was only racing under IRC (an alternate scoring system). She's awesomely fast. We were reaching at 9 knots and she's doing about 15. No long after this she was out of sight.

Hell Hound leads Charlie V, the other J-44 in the race.

Crazy Horse still chasing us.
I zoomed in a bit. It's not that they are closer.

Crazy Horse and Vamp have moved to windward of us. Our strategy here was to stay fairly close to Long Island. Although we are theoretically faster, the beam reaching conditions were great for these boats with their longer waterlines and large headsails.

We reached for a couple of hours with our jib top. Somebody (name omitted) forgot to bring the stay sail, which would have provided another quarter knot or so of boat speed. We picked our way through the slower boats and kept our air clean.

Robbie serves us dinner shortly after 6PM. Burritos. Yum! Everybody liked them. Nice job, Robbie. Thanks!
The camera doesn't work real well in the dark. My next photo is from Friday afternoon.

The wind remained fresh (15 - 22 knots). It was just a few knots too strong for us to carry our code zero, which was a bummer, because the code zero would have been perfect. By 7 or 8 PM it had backed and we were thinking about going to our 3A reaching spinnaker. Christopher Dragon was to windward and behind us, maybe 3/4 mile away. They went with a reaching kite. We watched them gain 20 degrees of gauge (and go ahead of us) in 10 minutes. OK ... kite time for us!

We hoisted the 3A and our boatspeed immediately went from 9 - 10 up to 12 - 14. We had everyone on the rail hiking We saw some kites behind us (Vamp and Charlie & Crazy Horse we guessed). We thought Polaris was well to seaward of us (we were still tight to the shore, following the 50-foot contour). As it got dark we pretty much lost track of our competition. The kites behind we walked away from.

Jeromy did a nice job of driving. The waves were just large enough to give us a bit of surfing now and then. I think we got up to 16 knots for one brief spurt. But it was a lot of steady 11 to 13.

We rounded Montauk point at 1:24 in the morning. I was down below carefully monitoring our progress between the rocky point to port and the field of underwater boulders to starboard. The fellows saw other boats ... analysis of the reported rounding times shows that in our group Chris Dragon rounded at 1:16, then Wahoo at 1:19, then Polaris at 1:21, and us at 1:24. Those rounding times make sense.

The current was adverse and getting worse. We changed sails and stayed close in to port for some current relief. I mostly stayed below carefully watching our progress on the computer and the chartplotting GPS. The shallower the water the less current we would have but I didn't want to put us "on the bricks". The fellows reported later that we took a more aggressive track than Polaris and gained on them because of it. Sometime in the next hour or two we crossed tacks with them and I heard yelling coming from our boat. I found out later that their lights had gone out and our fellows had been genuinely worried about a collision. They shouted their apologies.

We made good speed toward "the Gut", the narrow passage between Orient Point (Long Island) and Plum Island. The current got VERY adverse as we traversed that passage because a significant fraction of Long Island Sound was boiling through. But we were making 7 through the water and thus still making significant forward progress.

I had come up on desk and talked strategy with Dennis. We agreed that with the adverse current it would be foolish to try to cut across the sound toward the CT shore. Instead the obvious strategy was to stick REAL tight to the LI shore. The sun was coming up. We went through the gut hard on the wind on port tack and my job as navigator was to calculate (and call) the exact right moment to tack back onto starboard. If too soon then more tacks would be necessary. If too late then we would be too far from shore (and missing that current relief). I think I called it about 20 seconds too late but we were almost a quarter mile closer to shore than Polaris (we think). We passed them in the next hour as they sailed up the sound in fouler current than ours.

The wind had gone lighter and now we were sailing upwind. In 8 - 9 knots of breeze we were doing 6.5 - 7.2 knots of speed (a bit less over the bottom). Nobody had gotten much sleep. Some of us none at all. This was shaping up to be a REALLY fast race and we discussed staying with a "full court press" (meaning no set watch system, instead racing fully crewed all the time). That's pretty much what we did, although we allowed 1 -2 crew to grab a two hour nap at a time.

It was a clear day with a light southwesterly breeze. Another reason to stick to the LI shore was that if the wind clocked as expected we would be lifted. One school of thought held that there might be more breeze on the CT side of the sound. The water was very flat and there was a light haze. A few of us slept on the rail (including me). One crew told me a few days later that my snoring was pretty bad. Every time it got unbearable someone would shake me and ask "where are we?" I would flip on the computer, provide a status update, and nod off again.

We thought Polaris and Cabaret (it was actually Polaris and Chris Dragon I think) were having a private race a bit ahead of us and closer to the CT shore. As the tide changed from ebb to flood we positioned ourselves in the left-center of the sound. Approaching Stratford Shoal those boats on starboard tack couldn't clear the shallows and had to tack to port (going north toward CT). As we were juts south of the shoal we got headed and used that as an opportunity to head in to the LI shore. The wind was getting lighter everywhere and we were hunting for pressure.

My only picture from Friday afternoon. Duncan jumps the halyard as we change from the light 1 headsail to the medium 1. Justin works the pit. Robbie's on point.

Perhaps those boats found better breeze in toward CT. As the afternoon wore on we made progress down the sound toward the finish line. At first we thought we were ahead of Polaris but as we approached Glen Cove it became apparent that they were a bit ahead of us. Not a killer because they owed us a big batch of time (37 minutes) ... but a disappointment.

They crossed us and a few minutes later crossed the finish line. They got the gun -- great news. We hadn't been sure that we were ahead of all other competitors. Four minutes later at 3:45 PM we crossed the line. WOW. Fast race! My fastest ALIR by about 5 hours!

Here's Polaris a few minutes after the finish. We congratulated them, and they congratulated us.

We are folding sails after the finish. The sky is rapidly getting dark with angry clouds.
Polaris. This boat used to be Numbers, frequently racing in New England.

Here's the race committee. Without them none of this would be possible. Thanks, folks.

We motored out of Glen Cove back toward Stamford. We saw this boat (Chris Dragon) sailing in toward the finish line. Oh well. They would correct over us. They would up winning the entire regatta. Well done, fellows.

A couple of minutes after that the skies opened up with a nasty rainstorm. We saw over 30 knots of breeze (maybe over 40, I'm not sure). Two of us were on deck and the rest huddled below (eating, and sleeping). We got back to Stamford, cleaned up the boat, and went home.


Sunday was the Regatta Party & Awards Ceremony at the Sea Cliff Yacht Club.
The food was decent but the line for beverages was too long. Oh well. Soon the prizes were awarded by Regatta Chairmen Carl Larsen. Here Bob Limoggio accepts third place in our division. He didn't stop to pose. Congrats, Cabaret.

Here's my skipper Dennis Collins accepting prize for third overall in IRC.
Dennis & High Noon win second in division. Go High Noon!

The crew of Alchemy accepts first place in IRC. They crushed the opposition.

Norm Shulman accepts second in Division 7 (and Charlie V was third overall in PHRF).

Skipper Andrew Weiss and crew of Christopher Dragon accept FIRST overall in the PHRF fleet. They were also first in division 7 and second overall in IRC. Well done, folks.

Alchemy, accepting first-to-finish award.
Alchemy with their third trophy. They lowered the record for fastest ALIR race ever by almost four hours. WOW. Nice job!

One of the US Naval Academy midshipmen accepts the Navy's prize for best academy team. Their team of Polaris, Sea Wolf and Flirt was faster than the USMMA's team.
Andrew Weiss chatting with Carl Larsen.

Weiss & Larsen.

Chatting with a competitor.

Here's the crew of Vitamin Sea, a Nonsuch which finished second in division 1.

I went to the same grade school as the Bodine brothers (who crewed for their dad on Vitamin Sea). They were a couple of years behind me. Nice to see you fellows again after our last reunion 19 years ago! I'm the fellow on the right.

My teammate Pat Croke chatting with Claudia. He was one of our helmsmen.

Here's the "battle board" showing Montauk rounding times, finish times, and corrected finish times for PHRF and IRC handicap.

So we had a very good race. We were second in division, I think fifth in the 63-boat PHRF fleet (behind Chris Dragon, Wahoo (which won our division, beating us by 17 minutes corrected), Charlie V, and Jalacor). We were third overall in the 13-boat IRC fleet. We did better than High Noon's performance in 2005, and it was the fastest ALIR race for all of us.

Well Done, High Noon!