Miami Race Week: Tough day

(Jim Madden recently launched his new 66-foot canting keel Reichel/Pugh design named "Stark Raving Mad," and will be submitting reports from their first regatta: 2006 Acura Miami Race Week. This is Part Two of a five part series.)

Thursday, March 9, 2006: The good news - we now have our first race ever on the boat completed - the bad news is that we were only able to finish one of the three races today.

In race one, we were well ahead at the first leeward gate, but “shrimped” the kite on take-down after a wave caught the clew. Barreling along at 12 knots took the rest of the kite over the side quickly. It took a long while to untangle, so we were forced to drop out of race 1, sacrificing our 2A spinnaker along the way.

In race two, we were going fast while one third up the first upwind leg, and we had the bad luck to catch a submerged line on the keel bulb (we draw 15’), which would not break off – not a simple lobster pot as it was attached at two ends, and no buoy or floating part on the surface. That snag took us from 10 knots to 2 knots – feeling like we sailed into a rubber band. After repeated tries, we were unable to get the line untangled, so we had to turn on the motor to get free.

Race three was much improved - three times around with a nice elapsed time lead (lapping one of the boats), but not enough for a corrected time win. As we thought, a very steep learning curve, so we’ll just have to try harder days two through four.

Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five