Stinger Blog

It appears that the diesel is fixed. While I was there, in my old age, I pretty much stood around as Uzi

Cleaned out the file tank, which from my perspective looked clean as a whistle
Replaced the Racor, which also looked clean as a whistle
Replaced the fuel filter, which see above
Replaced all the belts, which actually were the originals and needed to be replaced
Added a much needed quart of oil
Probably worked his hand to a pulp trying to bleed the system by hand. I bet he wishes he hadn't done that.
Had me add 5 gallons of marine grade diesel to the spotlessly clean tank.
Had me run the starter with the compression off for what seem an amazing long time until IT STARTED!

We let it idle for 40+ minutes while we had a bit to eat at the club and all seems well.

Now the questions:

What the hell happened to get that much air in the fuel system?
Will this happen again?
Do we actually need to keep the tank full?

Hmm.

Bee

Another fabulous January day. Great winds nice temps and great crew. Drank too much of the black elixir but other then that all was good. First leg was a bit of an upwind slog with relatively slow speeds and a terrible tack call by yours truly. Still managed to round E just behind Uzi and finish him off on the last leg. Fourth is better then nothing and after all this we are in second place. Will not be able to do Icicle 5 so have no idea where we will wind up be I think this year's Icicle was as good as it gets.

Only real negative was the fact that the engine would not run. Uzi towed us out and and back in so all was good.

Crew: Bee, Kevin, Charles, Murat, and Daniel

All political ideology must be popular in tone and must keep its intellectual level to the capacity of the LEAST intelligent.

The future of any movement depends on the intolerance, even the fanaticism, with which its followers defend it as the only true one, and establish it as against other groups of a similar sort.

Political parties are given to compromise; we never compromise. Political parties recognize opponents; we declare their infallibility!

Another gorgeous day on the Bay. Light 5-10 SW winds gave us two chute legs for a nice third place spin around the course. We learned that in these winds we could fly the kite even with a TWA of 90 degrees.

Crew work was superb and a goodly time was had by all.

Crew: Bee, Kevin, Charles, Murat, Paul, Cody, and Daniel

Slight bit of a late start, but very nice light winds and a bottom as smooth as a baby's butt saw us blow past everybody but Gambler. Another one of those shoulda coulda taken 1st place races. On the other hand, second was OK since we did not have to wait around for the rest of the finishers. Uzi says that damn C&C kite is just a bit too much for him.

It certainly would have helped if Broaddus and I hadn't gotten so damn drunk. Will have to avoid that next time.

Crew: Bee, Kevin, Charles, and newbie Daniel Erklauer

Lost another one today. Charley Dolezal, husband of my wife's favorite cousin bought the bullet today. Charles was famous for building hot rods and this was a talent he really perfected. 1931 Chev, 1932 Duece, and several hot rodded sedans were some of his best. Was fabulous to fire up one of the small block chevies he managed to cram into those small places. He will be missed.

Hard to reach this wonderful age. Too many old pharts disappear.

Icicle:

If we hadn't hoisted the red VMG backward we certainly would have taken 1st place. As it was we still managed 4th. Pretty darn good crew work overall. Can't really complain. Was a very nice finish -- J109, J105, J109, J105, J109, J105. JBoats can't get much more dominant then that.

Crew: Bee, Kevin, Charles, Cynthia, Cherlyn, John Dees.

Practice:

Four 105's participated. Our newbie Brian Uffleman drove Solaris and did a very respectable job.

Jay Lutz really put us through our paces. Started us in a staggered line with leeward boats about 2 boat lengths ahead of the leeward boat. After holding a line for speed we tacked over on port and repeated the exercise. After a bit we did the same thing downwind. He had us do some 360's just to make sure we were all in sync.

Bit biased but I think Stinger was the best boat out there. We had really good speed and did some really nice roll tacks. Not having Murat on the nose may for some interesting gybes but we got through those as well. Also managed to fly Ed's new class legal 89. Jury is still out on this puppy. Kevin says its kind of twitchy, but I could not see that anyone had any speed differences on us. Will have to learn how to fly it so its the preferred chute for next week's icicle.

Boat seemed to be a bit out of sync. Starboard tack was definitely easier to sail to then port. This was true with the kite as well. probably means the rig tune was off somewhat. Been a long time since that "feel" was there. Kevin will have to retune for the next icicle.

Crew:

Bee, Kevin, Daryl, Charles, Tony, and Lee

Tom got 'er done. Finished late Friday evening and we managed to do the Icicle on Jan. 7 and the J105 Practice on Jan 8. Very smooth and very fast. Noticeable difference in boat speed. Lot's of bucks down the drain so to speak, but certainly worth the fun.

On January 3rd pretty Stinger discovered that she was in the water without her bottom on. Suddenly she found herself sliding between powerful arms of a four legged travel lift. Thinking it could take advantage it moved her steadily toward a less then queenly hard spot. Not wanting to lie within the cruising hoard she brandished her cutlass to fight it off. Unfortunately in the process she discovered that her cutlass was no longer able to cut the shaft and her bearing was so loose she could barely move. Giving up the ghost, she submitted. She is now in surgery.

Although there is some potential that pretty Stinger will not be able to show her rear to anyone this weekend, she is quite optimistic that her bottom will be rewetted on Friday. If so, she plans to run it through the water during the coming Icicle. She is in great anticipation of the wonderful feelings that should arouse.

What a nasty ride up to HYC. Wind out of the North 25+, big rollers, and lots and lots of spray. I think that was enough to keep us from getting our act together. Even managed to broach once. Not sure how we finished but probably close to the bottom in the spin fleet.

The ride home was a blast. Old CB and BB got a little happy off some rum and tonic. CB managed to keep the crew laughing all the way back.

A goodly time was had by all

Crew: Bee, Kevin, Charles, Murat, Chris, John, Trent, and Jillian

Both www.3dbee.com (Stinger Site) and Fleet 17's websites have been updated. I tried to keep everything as simple as possible and hope there are no serious errors. If you find a link that does not work or something else out of kilter, let me know. The Fleet 17 Blog is about to appear, but be patient. I don't always do things as fast as I should.

Bee

Stinger has moved. She is now in slip 23 on G dock at Lakewood Yacht Club. 2012 will see us race out of there.

I've posted a new calendar for 2012 and am about to upgrade the site considerably. Will probably post some new pictures as well. If you want to see a preview of the new site go to

http://www.j105.org/fleet17/

Wow what a ride. What a big moon. What great crew work. What great speed. What a great boat in those conditions.

The race began with Stinger blasting off the line in full surf mode. We had the big C&C 110 up and were just flying. The 109 Hamburg was off to starboard and well behind while Rented Mule was above and close. You can imagine how good we felt when leaving the Freeport Outer Buoy to starboard just a fraction of a boat length behind Hamburg only a few minutes behind both Rented Mule and Hot Ticket but ahead of both Kenai and Gold Rush. Only boats that were truly clear ahead at that time were Musica (Aerodyne 38) and Aeolus (J120).

Over the course of the next several hours we kept our average speed around 9 knots as we slowly lost ground to Hamburg. Fortunately around 2:00 in the morning the winds came back to 17-20+ knots and we closed in on the 109. Coming up from behind we pushed her up until she almost lost her chute and then popped back down to fly clear ahead. We maintained that position until around 10 AM on Friday morning when the winds again started to die. Made a big mistake at that point but still managed to handicap over Hamburg.

Finished the race in 5th overall. That's 5th out of 31 boats in the Barcardi cup. Doubt if any of the other 181 boats handicapped over any of us, but who knows.

FUN

Interesting race after even more interesting Jay Lutz training. Having to return Jay to the dock after the training turned to be very fortuitous. Dousing the main we figured out that the top batten had again pushed through the pocket. True to the form of a pro, Jay fixed it on the spot so we did not have to skip the race.

After a little zig-zag duel, we managed to get a pretty good start with Uzi just below and a bit ahead. We set the red VMG kite and blasted our way to E pretty much ahead of the rest of the real competition (including ParrotTales). Knowing that the current was out-going we thought the best option was to stay as close to the ship channel as possible. Unfortunately the wind rotated right so we probably should have taken the right hand side of the course. We rounded J a boat length or two behind Uzi and maybe 4 or 5 behind da Tail. The J22 Flossie and the J24 Silver Bullet were also ahead but catchable. We got a clean hoist of the 110 and managed to draw even with Uzi about half way to marker 2. Great tactical move was to first force him high and then head down deep to get separation and take advantage of the big kite. We also picked off Silver Bullet along the way so Flossie and the da Tail were the only boats to finish ahead. I think we were catching da Tail but probably needed another couple miles to do it.

Crew: Bee, Kevin, Daniel, Judith, Charles, Murat

Saturday August 20th was a very interesting day. It started by Bee getting all hosed up with regard to home-to-boat traffic arriving just a few minutes late. Did not get the computer hooked up again for the upteenth time. Oh well better luck next time.

Training

Jay Lutz did show up, as did Judith Chang, Daniel Collins, Charles Broaddus, Kevin Bednar, and Murat Gorgon, right on time. I have to admit the training did not go as well as I would have expected. I should have waited until Daryl could make it. As it turns out, we made so many mistakes I suspect Jay went away wondering why he bothered to show up. We tacked poorly (mostly Bee's fault) hooked up the wrong chute and then managed to get the correct kite hooked up reversed and completely twisted in the lines. Wasted at least 30 minutes just trying to get it put back together. Fortunately this was at the end of the training session. I think maybe we were all pressing just a bit to much.

Here's kind of a point-by-point summary:

It was made very clear that the helmsman needs to focus entirely on driving. Jay went so far as to give the job of adjusting the backstay to the main trimmer. Means we will have to have a fairly agile main trimmer in the future.

It was also clear that he wanted each person to be responsible for a his specific task.

Jay had some very different ideas about how to trim the main. What he said sounded pretty much like what I thought correct, but I left figuring that out to Daniel. Sure wish Daryl had been there. Daryl was definitely the missing key.

He also told everyone to try to call the puffs. Worked while Jay was on board but quickly forgotten during the Rum Race. I guess I should say puff calling was not all that evident during the Rum Race.

Jay also tried to make sure that the jib trimmer faced forward during the tacks. His advice to me was that I should turn as slowly and smoothly as possible, that the crew should hold their positions during the turn until the boat was flat.

I did not understand exactly what he was telling Kevin when trimming the kite. It seemed that he again was concerned with where Kevin was looking, but he was adamant about Kevin telling me about pressure. Not telling me about pressure is going to be a hard habit to overcome.

Jay suggested that Charles post tacking angles where he can see them clearly. This is reminiscent of the old Tacktick capability that we never really took advantage of. There are grease pencils on board (or at least were on board) expressly for this purpose. Go for it Chuck.

Not sure what the response of the crew was to Jay, but a lot of what he said is exactly what we needed in order to get better. Will try to do this again as soon as we can. From my perspective, I really need to make sure that these points get reiterated as much as possible.