Hello everyone at C&C Yachts!
It has been another great year for Sea Raider, the 2005 C&C 110 (sprit), I have been racing for a while now. I just enjoy providing you a recap and letter of appreciation for the product that you built each year. Of course it doesn't hurt that the boat has done so well racing either.
This year my racing was a bit different from that of the past. I still sail all of the solo distance races available on Lake Michigan, even created and chaired one event this year, but have changed my racing section at our yacht clubs Wednesday night racing series from Jib & Main to Spinnaker. I sailed solo in the Jib & Main section 3 years, winning boat of the year 2 years and decided to up the challenge by sailing in the spinnaker section dual handed. At the beginning of the year our goal sailing dual handed was to be mid fleet. Our spinnaker section is very competitive wherever we go. We got 2nd overall last year and 3rd this year as a yacht club in the Chicago-Mac race. The section has 12 boats including a Farr 395, two N/M 36's, a Soveral 33, a Shock 35, and Shock 40 amongst others. There are quite a handful of boats rating close to Sea Raider's PHRF 81 making mark roundings and general competition interesting. I summed up the results.
SJRYC Rhumbline Regatta: 5th of 9 boats, sailed dual handed against fully crewed boats. Our results were significantly reduced as a result of 2 things. We had the light #1 head sail up on the furler and the wind increased from 10 to 16 knots 10 minutes before the start. The race was a random course with the first 2 legs 5 miles, the first one upwind. Since the furler was used, changing headsails meant to go headless. It was decided to just sail what we had since the wind was forecasted to die off. It never did. The second problem that we had was that we put a reef in to minimize our power and after about 5 minutes the tail of the reefing line came loose. It was a 1-2 minute set back getting that sorted out. Lesson learned. By the way, a first year owner of another C&C 110, Cantankerous, got 4th.
SJRYC Spring Series: 6th of 12 boats. This was my first year sailing dual handed and crew and I had issues to work out. There tends to be a lot going on at mark roundings and with 4 hands on 2 bodies things need to be well planned out. A small error typically ends up being a big problem when sailing short handed on a short course. We also didn't sail 2 races for due to training and another race attended. However we were learning to work together quite quickly and even took a second place, to everyone's disbelief including our own.
GLSS Chicago-Mackinac Island Solo Challenge (~June 18): 1st in section/4boats, 1st overall/19 boats. One of the biggest highlights of this race was coming within 9 miles of a DK46 (PHRF -33) 50 miles from the finish. I didn't need coffee to keep me going after seeing that boat in my binoculars. It was a 63 hr 17 min 57 sec race, with 45 minutes of sleep! Needless to say it was a very exhausting race for me this year, what a hoot!
Chicago-Mac race (~July19): 6th out of 11. We sailed in the dual handed section. We made 2 significant errors. One was in moding the boat for upwind which cost 1 hour on that error alone. Our biggest mistake was similar to that of Mich Des (Foncia) currently doing the Route de Rhum, we separated from the fleet and got beat by the weather/forecast I paid $250 for. Two lessons learned there: Beat the section before you beat the fleet, especially when you have an excellent sail inventory and a well prepared boat, and keep your money.
The inaugural King's Cup race (August 13): 1st in section (solo)/8 boats, 1st overall/10 boats. This 111nm race was from St. Joseph, MI, to Chicago and back. We had 8 entrants in the solo section and 2 in the dual handed section. The race had 8 hours of light wind and 10 hours of 15 knots with 3-5 hours of 20-25 downwind. It was a blast. Sailing at 11 knots in 22 knots of wind downwind, solo, in a t-shirt and shorts at 4 AM was something I won't forget anytime soon.
Tri-State regatta, St. Joseph to Michigan City leg: 4th of 7 boats. I sailed this solo against the crewed fleet. This was another race where the wind went from 11-16 near the start. The entire race was forecasted and resulted in being upwind. Since I was solo in a crewed section using an autopilot was not an option so I was stuck being significantly overpowered for most of the 30 nm leg. I got Cantankerous back!
GLSS Lake Michigan Solo Scramble: 1st in section/10 boats. This was a great race since I had the opportunity to sail close reaching for 6 hours in 20-25 knots of wind. The boat was pretty much locked in at 7.8 knots. Just for fun I took the boat hard upwind to see how it performed which resulted in sailing at 27 deg TWA at 7.1 knots. For sailing solo I was impressed.
SJRYC Summer Series: 2nd of 11 boats. Dual handed! We were ecstatic. Our competitors not so. We ended up with 1 first and 2 seconds in the series. We had the heaviest boat, almost the biggest spinnaker, and sailed dual handed. It took a lot of commitment, training, and perseverance to get this. We can't wait for next year...and we hear that we might get a Ben 36.7 to pounce on as well.
On the C&C 110 front, there is now a second boat (in addition to Cantankerous) in Michigan City which I will be racing solo against in the future. We almost have enough for a one design section in the tri-state.
Dirk Kruger