After a year’s absence, One Life and her intreprid crew regained a listing in 48° North’s Top 25 Race Boats of the Year (2024). All thanks to my crew for the year, without whom this would never have happened.
We had a good start to the 2024 season in terms of standings, even if the racing trended towards the brutal end of the scale. We didn’t finish all that strong late in the season, especially with work making me miss so many races, so it’s nice to see us make the list.
2024 was a memorable season in many ways. We started by taking several turns up on the forestay and dramatically tightening the side stays to try to adapt the rig to the original sail plan. This worked pretty well. As I noted in the last post, though, it really was a small bandage on a bigger problem.
The weather in 2024 was nasty.
In one race, we got caught in sustained 50k winds within sight of the marina. It was quite the experience. The weather shredded sails around the fleet and one of our competitors lost their mast (thankfully, everyone was OK). We blew out our J3 (again) and the clew ring broke on our dacron high wind mainsail (fortunately, we were about to reef anyway so we could continue.) The boat was heeled so far over we soaked the tablets mounted on the rear stanchions (this is more impressive when you see how far inboard they are mounted) and drowned our diesel heater when water was forced up the exhaust outlet.
In the Smith Island race, it was a bashfest north and south, and many people got sick. We lost the door to the head and cracked the companionway support handles.
In Swiftsure, four of the seven crew were seasick and we had to abandon even though we were leading our fleet (and perhaps ahead of everyone on corrected.) We were dialed in after the high-wind experiences earlier in the year and were passing boats in faster classes right and left. While having to abandon sounds like a tragedy, when the fourth (of seven) crewmembers finally succumbed to mal de mer, the wind was about to shut off and our brain trust didn’t think we’d reach the halfway point, much less the full course. When we left for home the following morning (after a night in a comfy hotel room bed), there were boats still MILES away trying (in vain) to finish. It was a good lesson for some on night-before-racing behavior on one hand, confirmation One Life can be plenty fast in miserable conditions on the other, and a good lesson is strategic abandonment on the third hand.
(Ironically, I never wanted to leave the dock for the Swiftsure race because I was pretty sure the suckage meter was going to be pegged since we had all the pain of high winds against strong current in the Strait of Juan de Fuca (aka Juan de Puka) followed by no wind to finish, but the crew really wanted to race.)
The double-handed Race to the Straits — one of my favorites each year — was a miserable bash fest heading north. That was followed by the wind shutting off within spitting distance of the finish (distance between worst bashing in 25k of breeze against tide and the finish line with 0k wind was MAYBE 2 nautical miles). Whee.
I swear throughout the first part of the season we did more racing miles reefed than under full sails. It’s all pretty much Type 2 fun, though if I never have to sail in sustained 40-50k breezes I’ll be fine with that.
In any case, we’re glad to be back on the Top 25 list. Thanks to all my crew during the season and to the 48° North team who has the unenviable job of combing through different YC websites to calculate these standings.