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Around the World of Sailing
4 April 2001
Racing News: College Sailing's Spring Season
For reasons of climate, college sailing has spring and fall competitive
seasons. Of the two seasons, spring is the most important. The various
regions hold elimination regattas. Teams qualify for the Women's
Dinghy National Championship May 29-31 (18 teams), the Team Race
Championship June 3-5 (12 teams) and the Co-ed Dinghy Championship
June 6-8 with 18 teams. The regattas will be sailed in Boston.
A major team racing regatta was held 24-25 February in Charleston.
Host Charleston College won with Harvard 2nd.
March 10 & 11 a Women's Intersectional regatta was hosted by Navy.
St Mary's College was the winner over Tufts.
March 17 & 18 was the Truxten Umsted co ed dinghy regatta at Navy.
Teams sailed 420's, FJ's and Lasers. College of Charleston won this
regatta over Queens College.
With these results in mind, Charleston is the top ranked co-ed team.
St. Mary's is the top women's team. St. Mary's is also the defending
co-ed winner, Darthmouth the defender in the womem's dingy regatta,
St. Mary's the two time defending team racing champion. Look for
updates in ATWOS.
Links:
Schedule
http://www.collegesailing.org/00intersx/index.shtml
Truxten Umsted
http://www.collegesailing.org/00intersx/s01/trux.htm
Navy Women's Intersectional
http://www.collegesailing.org/00intersx/s01/navy_womens.htm
Charleston Team Race Regatta
http://www.collegesailing.org/00intersx/s01/cocteam.htm
Theme Article: Docklines
March's series of theme articles is on Docking and Docklines.
The series will cover: docklines, fenders, handling your boat near the
dock and securing your boat to the dock.
This Sunday Torresen Marine is offering a Docking and Docklines
seminar. Unfortunately this seminar is full. However, if you have a
question on docking and docklines please email it to ike@torresen.com.
The question may be used in the seminar and will definately receive an
answer via email!
Realistically many boats are at the dock 5 or 6 days per
week. Often time you are too far away to monitor it closely during
a storm.
For these reasons you should always chose proper docklines
and moor your boat properly. It's not the most glamorous investment,
but an important one.
An appropriate dockline is both strong and elastic. This rules
out sheet lines, ski ropes, clotheslines and other assorted cordage.
The best type of dockline is referred to as 3-strand. This is
made of three strands of twisted nylon. Along with good strength nylon
is sufficiently elastic for a dockline.
A 3-strand nylon dockline 30 feet in length can be expected
to have up to 3 feet of stretch in it. This allows the boat to move
and the docklines with it.
Once you have the proper material we can move onto sizing.
A rule is 1/8" per 9 feet of boat. This equates to 3/8" for a
20 footer, 1/2" for a 35 footer, 5/8" for a 50 footer and so on.
Assuming the line will fit on your mooring cleats, a size bigger can't
hurt and may get you through a storm.
After you have sized your dock lines, you need to buy the
proper length. An easy way to get a set of lines with great utility
is to buy them all roughly the length of your boat. This allows each
line to be a bow, stern or spring line.
A more precise standard for length is 2/3 the length of your
boat for bow and stern lines, and equal to the length for spring lines.
Once on board start by attaching the dockline to a cleat in a
proper way. At the boat end take the eye splice and put it through
the eye of the mooring cleat and then around the horns. At the dock
end use a proper cleat hitch with a round turn, loop and a locking
half hitch.
Your boat should have a minimum of 2 bow and 2 stern lines.
Bow and stern lines run diagonally from bow and stern mooring cleats.
Think of them as your four corner lines. They keep the boat away from
the dock and cut down side to side motion.
Bow and stern lines ideally leave the boat at about 45 degrees.
This, depending on the length of the boat and slip, is seldom
attainable. The bow and stern lines primary function is to keep the
boat from moving too far sideways.
Spring lines keep fore and aft motion down. Ideally you will
have a spring line running from the forward part of the boat aft to a
dock or a post. Your other spring line will run from the aft part of
the boat forward to the dock.
Spring lines can keep a boat from pushing forward towards the
dock or aft out of the slip. They can also help steady a boat with a
wind over the bow.
Spring lines keep the boat from moving fore and aft. They
should be as long as possible and as close to parallel to the boat as
possible. The spring lines should be trying to turn the boat into
predictable waves. If those waves are expected to impinge on the boat's
port bow, for example, the spring line from the back of the boat to
the dock at the front of the boat should be on the port side.
Line chafe should be considered. The further away from a wear
point, such as a fairlead, the attaching point (cleat) is, the greater
the wear at that point because of the stretch between. Chafe gear can
be installed and secured to the lines at the wear points. Wear points
and cleats should be a smooth as possible to reduce line damage.
With the right type of line, properly attached to boat and
dock, in the right positions on your boat you will take good care of
the boat the majority of the time- when tied to the dock.
Event News: The Race, Duo Staggers Home
Already past the organizers deadline and without a chance at a top
3 postion the 'vintag' portion of the Race fleet sails on.
Warta-Polpharma which underwent hull and deck repair in Brazil is
sailing on. They are north of the equator and expected to finish in
approximately one week.
The news is not as pleasant for Team Legato. Whilest 320 miles ahead
of Warta-Polpharma, Team Legato's mast step ball joint failed. This
allowed the mast to drop down. The crew affected a jury rig and is
heading for the Canary Islands. Their trip to port will elongated by
having to beat.
Meanwhile the top 3 finishers have left the finish port of Marseilles.
Team Adventure is being prepped for a summer of sailing. Club Med and
Innovation Explorer have headed to La Ciotat where there masts will be
unstepped and the boats will be overhauled.
Links:
Team Legato's problem
http://www.therace.org/asp/une1.asp?NewsId=3503&LangId=
Team Adventure update
http://www.teamadventure.org/pages/Larry_gram_0402bh.htm