On Saturday, June 6th, the Twenty Hundred Club held its annual Around Aquidneck Race. This event starts just southwest of the Mt. Hope Bridge, races down the East Passage, out into Rhode Island Sound, and up the Sakonnet, ending at Tiverton Yacht Club. The forecast called for a building breeze all day and beautiful sunshine. As this event is an annual favorite for club members and bay sailors alike and with the promising forecast, twenty-five boats lined up for the start.
The start was lighter than forecasted and boats that found themselves on the pin end of the line sailed into a significant hole. Those that started at the boat worked to maintain low-speed driving lanes. The name of the game was to find breeze and current relief in the significant ebb tide and that was found on the Prudence shore. Further south boats split east and west trying to find something, anything, to keep moving with hopes of more breeze ahead after the exit of the Narragansett Bay. It was a game of chutes and ladders until the breeze started picking up and made for any absolutely beautiful sail up the Sakonnet.
25 boats started and 24 finished with plenty of time to enjoy the camaraderie (and food and libations) at the Tiverton Yacht Club that draws sailors to this race each year in big breeze and little breeze year after year. The one boat that didn’t finish found a nice little piece of too shallow water, just south of Dyer Island, but that didn’t stop him from the party.
Line honors and the multihull class honors went to Sandy Takacs’s Caribbean Dreamin’ followed shortly thereafter by Bill Kneller’s Vento Solare who took Spinnaker A honors. Commodore Tim Grimes’s Zephyros took Spinnaker B honors. After acting as Race Committee and starting ten minutes after the fleet (as provided in the Sis), Gregg Morash’s Miss Molly took Cruising 1 honors and to round it out Timothy Fallon’s Kathleen took Cruising 2 honors. Race reports below:
Here’s a short blurb from the KATHLEEN crew:
At the turn of the 19th century, several large catboats, strikingly similar to KATHLEEN, might have been enjoying a fun race around Aquidneck Island and here we are over a century later, still enjoying the same waters of Narragansett Bay. While the 28′ wooden catboat KATHLEEN has that racing pedigree, she typically takes the form of a family cruising boat, towing one (or two!) dinghies from port to port. So she doesn’t get raced often, but I had the treat to race her with a crack crew including 3 of my brothers at this year’s 20HC race around Aquidneck. With only 2 PHRF races under our belt, our finish position is still entirely decided on our difficult to pin down rating, rather than our sailing prowess. Nonetheless, here’s how we approached the race: Getting out the East Passage against the tide and wind was hardly straightforward. There were 15 degree shifts up the course, some were oscillations, some were geographical and some may have been persistent – it was hard for us to tell. We tried to stay in phase and tried to stay out of the current but didn’t do either too well. The one strategy we used was, “if in doubt, sail where we’d have the most fetch”. This paid off when the wind veered to the south halfway up the leg. We held a long port tack across the torpedo range and onward until we ran into the Jamestown shore. Prior to that split, we’d been matching LEAD MINE’s strategy nearly tack for tack but they chose left at this juncture, likely to get out of the current, and we gained in the exchange. With the forecast for increasing breeze, we were planning to pause and reef somewhere around Conanicut but surprisingly the wind softened for that leg out to Bretton reef, saving us a time consuming maneuver with her old school reefing gear. On the downwind, there was little decision making but to let her nearly 1000 sq ft of sail do the work. The main takeaway from the race for me was that no matter if it’s 1896, 1946 or 2026, racing sailboats is still a heck of a lot of fun!
And a short blurb from Vento Solare:
J/109 Vento Solare crew was augmented by four students attending the Naval War College, including officers from Italy, Columbia. The wind gods delivered great conditions, particularly when compared to the previous year. Our strategy was to look where the best winds were and try to take advantage of maximizing the winds versus the tidal currents.
The Winning Strategy
- Prioritize wind over current where conditions supported
- Look where others are across the course and assess what conditions look better
- Minimize interaction with other boats for clean air
- Change sail trim for changing conditions – don’t just set and forget
- Downwind beer!
- Get to the party early for guaranteed dock space
The Details:
The start line was favored on a port tack, but we didn’t want to give up any rights, so we approached on starboard and made a last-minute tack to start on port. That put us ahead of two boats who had to duck us before we tacked and allowed us to cover Spirit who was to leeward of us.
Due to the predicted light winds at the start, the original plan was to hug the shore along Aquidneck Island heading south to minimize the impact of incoming current. That strategy quickly changed when the winds on the west side of the bay looked to be stronger than the east. The fleet split with half the boats following the original plan, and a few heading toward Prudence Island. We slowly reeled in most of the boats in the fleet across all classes by the time we reached the South end of Prudence Island. Mischief was further West and decided to take the West side of Gould Island, while we remained on the East side. Mischief made a better call as they were clearly ahead when we passed Gould Island. We played the wind shifts and by the time we were at Hammersmith Farm were almost even with Mischief. A key tactical decision made was to sail away from Castle Hill as the wind looked more consistent, further out with the shore by Castle Hill alternating with luffs and puffs, and stronger adverse currents. This decision to sail further out although adding some mileage to the course allowed us to pass and build a lead over Mischief as they fought lulls and adverse currents.
By the time we rounded the mark off Breton Reef we were leading all fleets and a full minute ahead to Mischief. We raised the spinnaker and didn’t douse it until we finished. The reach to the Sakonnet was mostly straight line, sailing slightly South for optimum speed. We traded leads with the two multi-hulls and made the decision to hug the Aquidneck Island side of the Sakonnet while the multi-hulls went to the far shore. It was apparent that the two edges had better wind than the center of the channel. Our decision to stay on the Aquidneck Island side initially paid off versus the multihulls and as we sailed up the Sakonnet the winds increased due to the funnel effect as the river got narrower. This allowed us to increase our lead on the rest of the fleet before they entered the Sakonnet. The multihulls passed us once again, but all the other boats were well astern. We finished with line honors for the mono-hulls and met our strategic goal of being 1st at the dock for the party!
