Around Long Island Race
190 nm
July 31, 1997
3rd in class, 11th of 92 in fleet)
Port            Watch
ALIR Logo
                   Starboard  
Watch 
Stovy Brown 
 Norm Dawley
Doug Perrygo
RJ Ward
Bob Lambert
Lizzi Fassman
Mike Dawley
 logo copyright 1997 Around Long Island Regatta, Ltd
Jean Myer 
 
 
 This year's ALIR was a great race in just about every sense, enough breeze to go fast, warm but not hot, nary a wave on deck,  always a hot competitor nearby, great food and a fine crew.  The weather (use the browser back button to return here) was light to moderate summer southwesterly with a westerly edge to it.

 

To begin at the beginning however, there are two factors: the race is not all the way around Long Island and to get from Larchmont to the start you actually complete the circumnavigation.
 
 
Throg's Neck Bridge 
The first bridge is the Throg's Neck		 The trip to the start, which is off Brooklyn takes you under the Throgs Neck, Whitestone, Hell Gate, Triborough, 59th Street, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Verrazano Narrows bridges as well as going by La Guardia Airport, Ryker's Island Prison, Gracy Mansion and all of Manhattan. 
 
 
The Brooklyn Bridge 
The next to last is the Brooklyn Bridge
 
 
Sky Scrapers! 
Beautiful buildings along the way.
 
 
Putting on stickers?? The committee thought that it would be a nice idea if we put on stickers with their logo identifying us as participants in the race.  The project, was attempted with poor results while underway.  I was very protective of the brand new topsides job and felt that  a coat of Pam spray cooking oil before applying would ensure easy removal.  It pretty much ensured no sticking also.  But, honest, we did try as you can see from Mike and Lizzi's concentration here.
 
 
RJ before the start checking 
things out.
Stovy and Bob getting us to the line on time.
Stovy and Bob getting us to the
line on time
We did actually get to the line in good order with plenty of time to view the competition.  There was plenty of competition.  We got a pretty good start on Bob Monro's Bye Bye Blues' weather hip and spent the next 3 hours getting from a half boat length astern to one boat length ahead.
 
Slipping awy from Bye Bye Blues... for now :-( In 10-12 true with asymmetric spinnakers I guess that Pursuit and J-120s are pretty even.  The picture here shows that when the wind came astern and we could set the symmetric .5 oz, we crept away  to leeward as they were constrained by the sprit to a centerline pole.
.
 
 
We had a really fine ride to Montauk in 12-20 knots from the WSW.  As best we could tell we were the 6th boat around Montauk at 3:45 am.  Those ahead included 3 multihulls.  We were very happy with our performance.  Pursuit really been moving off the wind this year.   If you take this link to the Reported Montauk Rounding Times were actually 13th.  Jean trimming? during the ALIR sunset. 
This sunset picture, taken by Doug, looks a bit 
posed to me!?
Dinner was terrific.  Wonderful jambalaya brought, prepared and served by Bob while singing the song Jambalaya.  Strange how much of the crew could not identify this 1953 Perry Como hit song :-)

 

Stovy and his watch did a great job of moving us up into the high priced seats on the way from Montauk to The Gut.  As we rounded Montauk we were trading tacks with Lighthorse and had left the J-120s miles astern.  The boats heading towards The Race and Fishers Island appeared to be going very slowly on port tack.  To stay in touch with Lighthorse (the scratch boat in our class) and in better wind we favored the Long Island side heading to The Gut.  Lighthorse and Pursuit pass all the boats ahead and to the left in light air.  Lighthorse then takes a long starboard in to the beach at Gardiner's, gets a great lift of the port leg to Plum Island and comes out substatially ahead entering The Gut.  Close tacking the Plum Island beach and lee-bowing the adverse current we enter  Long Island Sound just after dawn Friday morning with only Medallion, Encore and Lighthorse ahead of us.  Electing to stay in touch with the only boat in sight in our class, Lighthorse, we follow her up the Long Island shore in the foul tide.
After The Gut it was an 80 mile beat in light air with a foul tide going tack for tack with Lighthorse.  They had a lapper and eight burly crewmen.   We used our 153% light one which had  a much larger overlap and was bigger all around than the Melges jib.  We made over 100 tacks thoughout Friday.  By the end we good enough to only lose about a knot through a tack, ( 5.5 knots low point from our 6.6 knots full speed).  We really hung in there and even were ahead of them for a bit with Lizzi and Jean being the "grinders".
We finished just after dark Friday close behind Lighthorse and saved our time on her.  Unfortunately for us, Bye Bye Blues and Brown Eyed Girl went to Connecticut, sailed around us, beating us on both elapsed and corrected time.
Corrected Time Results - Class 9
Boat Type Owner Class Fleet Sec ahead (-) behind in class
Brown Eyed Girl X-119 Scott Dinhoffer 1 7 -3240
Bye Bye Blues J-120 Bob Monro 2 9 -2684
Pursuit Ctm 48 Norm Dawley 3 11        0
Barrister III Sov 43 Dennis Collins 4 12    525
Scaramouche Frers 45 Brian Krafjack 5 13    782
Lighthorse  Melges 30 Brendan Brownyard 6 14  1078
Chieftan Frers 45 Robert Chuda 7 17  2929
Skimmer Evelyn 42 Ted Sybertz 8 22  4873
 
Our elapsed time was 31h 53m 51s for an average seed over the 190nm course of 5.95 knots.  We had the 11th fastest elapsed time out of the 92 PHRF spinnaker fleet.  The boats in our fleet that sailed the course faster than use were: Surface Effects (3.3 hrs), Medallion, High Noon, Diane, Mensae, Defiance, Sirena, Brown Eyed Girl, Bye Bye Blues, Lighthorse (.019 hrs).  For the complete results in the PHRF spinnaker fleet click here, courtesy of ALIR, Ltd.