PACER 27 National Championships - 24 to 27 September, 2009 – Deneysville Aquatic Club, Vaal Dam, OFS.

Report by Trygve Roberts
Seriously close one design racing is what this event was all about. Despite the fairly small entry of six boats, those that were on the water enjoyed outstanding close quarters racing with many of the races seeing four Pacers finishing within 30 seconds of each other.

Felix the cat out in front in Race 1

Ant Wentworth’s ‘Felix the Cat’ ended up as the overall winners, notwithstanding the top four boats all finishing on 10 points each for a four way tie.
Second placed ‘Regent Express‘ ended with an identical scoreline to ‘Felix the cat’ where the tie was broken on the better position in the final race – the very race where ‘Regent Express‘ skippered by Trygve Roberts had a halyard break and sent them plummeting from a possible 1st place right down to last in the final race. They jury rigged a second halyard and fought back to finish 4th in the final race, but it was one point too little for the overall win.
Finishing 3rd overall was Andrea Giovaninni  on ‘Pacer 3‘ fresh from a similar podium finish in the Lipton Cup. He said after the event he could not believe how competitive the Pacer fleet was and had underestimated the quality of the racing.

What a pleasure to go sailing on absolutely flat water in fresh breeze in shorts and T Shirts. This is something the guys from the Cape seldom get to do. Conditions on the Vaal for the first two days suited the Pacers perfectly with fresh breezes and flat water which makes the Pacer 27 Sport a delight to sail.

Noticeable in this regatta was the number of boats sporting new sails from a range of sailmakers. Felix the cat had a new Genoa from Hyde Sails; Pacer 3 sported a new main, genoa and spinnaker from North Sails, Unruly has a new genoa from Hyde and Regent Express had a new genoa and spinnaker from Quantum. New sails in the fleet is always a sign of keen interest and competitiveness in a class.

Felix the Cat - hiking hard

This was the third Pacer 27 Nationals and certainly different from the first two, where Rick Nankin and Mark Sadler dominated the results. This event saw four of the six entries each winning a race. The regatta was never a foregone conclusion till the final day. Fresh to strong winds on the Vaal Dam (18 to 32 knots) saw the Pacers ripping through the fleet downwind reaching speeds above 16 knots and providing some spectacular broaches for those seeking visual thrills. The only non Pacer that could keep up was the Farrier trimaran. The weather was exceptionally good for the first two days, whereafter  it faded completely not allowing any additional races for the entire weekend – a first in the last six years that DAC have had no racing during this annual event on any given day. No-one really complained as the first two days were simply fantastic for keelboat racing.

Deneysville Aquatic Club hosted the Pacer Nationals as part of their annual Keel Boat Week regatta, which attracted some 50 entries of mixed classes, with the Mistral, J22 and Hunters all making class. Three Pacers undertook the long journey from Cape Town, as did one from Port Elizabeth with the final two being Vaal Dam based. Amongst the crews were some very good sailors, many who have sailed at world championship level. There was no question as to how tough the competition was going to be. On several of the boats there were sailmakers and hot-shots within the industry. It would be a tough event to win for sure.

D.A.C. as always proved to be a competent and friendly club who did a sterling job of feeding and entertaining the sailors, whilst Race Officer Trevor Hulleman competently and patiently ensured the required number of races were completed. There were one or two issues (listed at the end of the article) to assist organisers in getting it 100% right next time, but first let’s get down to the racing.

Hot, calm weather at the quayside

The entry list included ‘Sebago’ skippered by Guy Nottingham (DAC); ‘Unruly’ Iain Gibson (DAC); ‘Unmatched’ Graham Wentworth (ABYC); ‘Felix the cat’ Allan Lawrence (RCYC); ‘Pacer 3′ Andrea Giovaninni  (RCYC) and ‘Regent Express’ Trygve Roberts (RCYC).
With a moderate northerly forecast, the fleet set off for the middle of the dam on Heritage day (Sep 24th) to commence racing. The format was a simple windward/leeward course with an offset mark to port of the windward mark to help clear the fleet away from the usually congested weather mark. There were four separate starts for the Pacers, Gold, Silver and Cruising fleets each separated by a five minute gap.

Race one got underway with an individual recall in the Pacer fleet with the errant party returning to restart correctly. The course was short with a middle of the course start/finish line to facilitate rapid race restarts with the Pacer and Gold fleet boats having to complete three laps with the smaller boats doing only two laps. Notwithstanding the short courses, it provided for a huge amount of action in the Pacer fleet, who would end up completing the downwind legs in only three minutes. This left many of the crews questioning their lack of fitness at the end of the first day’s racing. Going up the first beat  it was Regent Express and Pacer 3 reaching the weather mark first. Just before the weather mark Pacer 3 caught ‘Felix the cat’ port/starboard. Felix tacked in front of Pacer 3 and a collision occurred. This incident would become an issue throughout the regatta and was only resolved after the main prize  giving was completed. This was a pity, as the niggle between the two boats continued for the entire regatta. Neither boat retired nor did a penalty. Pacer 3 protested and hurriedly hoisted a red T-Shirt in place of a protest flag. More about the protest later, but there are many lessons for everyone to be learned from this incident. The main lesson is that if a collision has occurred one of the boats must do penalty turns or retire.

Pacer 3 were a little slow getting their spinnaker drawing, allowing Regent Express to take the lead but all the boats wanted to gybe onto port leaving Regent Express with no options but to wait until the fleet had gybed. By the time she gybed she was blanketed by three boats to windward and she immediately lost that number of places. Just about that time a 30 knot gust whipped over the dam leaving all the Pacer’s on their ear with spinnakers flapping, but no-one broached and soon all were underway again screeching downwind at 15 knots trying to avoid the smaller boats still coming upwind on their first beat. It must have been an intimidating sight.
At the leeward mark five of the boats arrived simultaneously, highlighting the one design racing aspect of these boats. The next beat saw the lead changing hands with Felix the cat getting a little ahead. The wind steadied into a solid 20 knot breeze which had most of the Pacers hard pressed under No.1 genoas. The finishing order was:

1st Felix the cat (Protest pending)
2nd Pacer 3
3rd Unruly
4th Regent Express
5th Sebago
6th Unmatched

After the protest on the final day this result changed to:

1st Pacer 3
2nd Unruly
3rd Regent Express
4th Sebago
5th Unmatched
6th Felix the cat (DSQ)

Unruly - Iain Gibson

Race 2 was sailed back to back in a steady northerly. This time all the Pacers started cleanly with Regent Express, Sebago and Felix all showing good upwind speed, arriving in rapid order at the weather mark. The boats remained within seconds of each other for most of the race with Regent Express slowly gaining on Felix the cat. Guy Nottingham and his crew on Sebago had some gear failure which saw them at the tail end of the fleet. Finishing times of the first four boats were under 30 seconds. Felix had notched up their second bullet and were establishing a pattern which would be difficult to get them unseated. Owner Ant Wentworth had Hobie skipper, Allan Lawrence,  on the helm proving his worth.

Finishing order was:

1st Felix the cat
2nd Pacer 3
3rd Unruly
4th Regent Express
5th Unmatched
6th Sebago

That evening the protest between Pacer 3 and Felix the cat was heard. During the validation procedure Felix the cat objected that Pacer 3’s protest flag had not been conventional (too big). On that basis the protest was disallowed (which raised many an eyebrow). Pacer 3 then withdrew their protest but they were very unhappy about the protest committee’s decision and thought it to not to be in the spirit of the sport. After discussing the incident and looking up the rules governing protest flags, no clear rule could be found as to whether there was any limitation on the size of a protest flag. The youngsters on Pacer 3 decided to request for the hearing to be re-opened the following day.

That night DAC had laid on an entertainer – a one man band singing to backing tapes. This poor unfortunate soul did not manage a single note in key  the entire evening, but his party personality carried him through and by late evening he had the multitude singing deafiningly out of tune with him – all of this in a highly inebriated state. No-one seemed to care as he belted his own tone deaf renditions of Sinatra favourites from yester-year.
For the more serious competitors sleep came with difficulty as the noise levels soared into the early hours of the morning over a wind still and dark Vaal Dam.

Friday 25th Sep

We awoke to a steady northerly and a positive forecast for the day where the breeze would peak at a 32 knot gust. And who said there is no real wind on the Vaal?

Pacer 3 - Best broach of the event.

By the scheduled 10am start the wind was well into the 22 knot range so some of the Pacer skippers decided to go for a smaller headsail. Amongst those were Regent Express and Unmatched. This is a fairly big risk as changing a headsail on a downwind leg on such a short course is simply not possible in 3 minutes. If the breeze drops during the race, you are toast.

The fleet hit the line on cue for a clean start. At the weather mark, it was Felix the cat,  Unruly, Pacer 3 and Regent Express around the top mark. The first three all gybed early heading for the left side of the course whilst Regent Express continued on the starboard gybe heading towards the right hand layline. They timed their gybe perfectly and came belting down on the port reach at 16 knots to take a 20 boat length lead out of the opposition. Going up the beat, it became clear that they were as fast as the rest of the fleet with a smaller headsail and more under control, but not pointing quite as high, except in the gusts. Unruly was steadily eroding their lead upwind, but the moment the downwind leg started Regent Express increased their lead again. At the final leeward mark rounding Regent Express did a slow spinnaker strike, resulting with the kite going in the water and slowing them down. By the time they recovered, Unruly was two boat lengths astern. A clever bit of covering got Regent Express over the line first but by the narrowest of margins.

Race 3

1st Regent Express
2nd Unruly
3rd Pacer 3
4th Felix the cat
5th Sebago
6th Unmatched

Pacer 3 & Unruly - close racing

Race 4 was sailed back to back in a stiff breeze well into the mid twenty knot range. Regent Express changed up to their number one genoa. Another smooth start for the Pacer fleet got underway. Local boat Sebago handled the first beat very well to round first and hung on to their narrow lead for the whole race but they were hard pressed by the rest of the fleet. There were plenty of mini broaches, but in general the Pacer crews were handling the boats well with good gybes on the downwind legs. Felix managed a solid 2nd place, whilst Regent Express had a bad kite strike and scored their worst result of the regatta.

1st Sebago
2nd Felix the cat
3rd Pacer 3
4th Unruly
5th Regent Express
6th Unmatched

One of the peculiarities of this regatta was racing in a mixed fleet of mostly very old and very slow small boats. Approaching the leeward mark doing 16 knots with 500 meters to go with several smaller boats almost at the leeward mark, decision making was crucial as the Pacers would come hurtling in to the mark doing five times the speed of the slower boats and calling for rights became a very stressful exercise. In general most of the slower boats were graceful in allowing the Pacers room to pass. There was one occasion as we were approaching the offset weather mark with a Vivacity 24 to leeward of us, where we called to the skipper (very politely) if it would be OK if we gybed in front of him. He was so polite and accommodating, that he sailed straight into the offset mark and gybed himself, sailing back towards where he had just come from. We located the hapless skipper on shore some time later, to explain that he did not have to do what he did, but “thank you very much anyway”. Nice people at DAC, I tell you.

Start line action

Race 5 – Another back to back race on the same day with crews starting to get distinctly weary. The short legs meant the crews were working very hard with many gybes and tacks in the mix. A cracking start once again for the Pacers, but suddenly with a minute to go and all the Pacers lining up under the committee boat, two ladies on a J22, Savannah’s in hand, found themselves unwittingly in trouble and in irons right in front of the Pacers. Regent Express was forced to bear away and gybe to get out of the J22’s way. The fleet was tightly bunched as usual at the weather mark with Sebago, Regent Express and Unruly leading the way. Just after rounding the leeward mark, lying a close second behind Sebago, Regent Express had a jib halyard failure. In a few seconds they lost their place to end at the tail of the fleet with their headsail on the foredeck, sruggling upwind with only their mainsail. They then rehoisted the genoa on the spinnaker halyard – not ideal as the spinnaker halyard is a masthead variety and got underway to chase the pack down. Of course hoists and strikes were slow as each time they had to re-attach the halyard to whichever sail had to be used next. The old adage of the ‘the show ain’t over till the fat lady has sung’ came into play, as on the final downwind leg Pacer 3 did a bad strike and broached at the leeward mark, putting the kite under boat. So bad was the result of the broach that they decided to retire. Regent Express rounded and managed to chase down Unmatched and claim a 4th place despite the halyard handicap. But it was Sebago who had found the magic with two excellent bullets in the final two races. Unfortunately it was too little too late as the fates had already been cast to the wind. Sebago was the only boat to score more than one first place.

Felix the cat

After racing Pacer 3’s request to reopen the protest hearing was denied on the grounds that it had been withdrawn by them the previous day, so there was technically no protest to reopen. This made the youngsters very unhappy and the situation was starting to get uncomfortable. It was clear to most of the skippers and crews that the original protest hearing had been somewhat flawed and probably unfair.

Crossing tacks

That night the party animals were in full swing again as a discotheque belted out a mix of old favourites and modern hip hop, but oh man we were so bushed that sleep overwhelmed us by 10pm. The noise from the clubhouse woke us and most of the competitors camping there at 1.30am. A power outage would surely solve the problem. And so it was that the main power mysteriously tripped a very short while later, which killed the party. The next night there was a big padlock on the power box. Say no more!

Saturday 26th:

The morning dawned in it’s usual pattern with a flock of rowdy Ibis “hah de dahing” in the trees above our tents at 0600. There was an air of anticipation as the fleet headed out towards Beacon Island which, with the dam at 94% capacity, was nothing more than a simple trig beacon sticking out the water in an unexpected place. Sailing past the beacon, our depth sounder went from 22m depth rapidly to 2.0m. It was about that time that we discussed whether the sounder was set for depth below the transducer or depth below the bottom of the keel. There was no bump, so whatever it was, we were clear.
The dam was nothing at all like the previous two days. The organisers must have known that this would be the case as each boat had been issued with a large volume water canon. After an hour’s wait for the non existent breeze to fill in, the crews soon got the water canons employed and a huge water fight ensued which included the bridge boat getting doused. Not to be outgunned, large capacity buckets were hauled on deck in place of heavy artillery.

Race 6

Regent Express leading a race

At 11h00 a gentle southerly sneaked across the dam – about 4 knots of it so a course was set and the start sequence started. There was some port bias on the line which most of the skippers picked up which put most of us at the pin end and under pressure. Regent Express had a good start and gradually inched ahead. They appeared to have good speed in the light breeze and rounded the weather mark first, ahead of Pacer 3 and Felix the cat. Regent Express and the rest of the fleet sailed towards the starboard side of the course, whilst Pacer 3 gybed away and back into the traffic. Regent Express was pulling out a big lead and about halfway to the leeward mark when the breeze died right across the course and the three hooters were sounded signalling racing abandoned for the day. The fleet headed back to base for  a lazy afternoon on the lawns and increased beer sales.

Later that day Pacer 3 initiated their third attempt at re-opening their protest hearing against Felix the cat. The problem had been festering from day one and just wouldn’t go away. For the third time their appeal was declined by the local protest committee. By that stage Andrea and his team of young crew were feeling highly frustrated and the failed protest had become unpleasant for everyone in the Pacer class. It was probably also affecting their on the water performance. Andrea refused to give up as a matter of principle and continued to seek advice from senior officials and sailors. Once the appeal was declined for the third time, the only option left open was for a witnessing competitor to lodge a protest as no penalty turns were done and one of the boats would have to be disqualified. This was done on Sunday morning the 27th September by Unruly who had been a witness to the incident.

That night it was yet again party night till the wee hours of the morning (2 am) making sleep difficult. The electrical control box had in the meantime been securely locked to prevent the good Samaritan who had killed the noise the previous night from repeating his good deed.

The following day was a repeat of the previous day with hot, breathless conditions on the Vaal. Some of the boats rafted up for a bit of socialising as the long wait for breeze continued, followed shortly by round two of the water canon wars. By noon race officer, Trevor Hulleman, called it off and sent the fleet back to moorings. The regatta was over and we had one discard.

Whilst the boats were being hauled out in preparation for the long journey home, the protest lodged by Unruly against Felix the cat and Pacer 3, was heard. This time by a fresh protest committee consisting of some of the most experienced legal sailing brains in the region.

Team Regent Express - 2nd overall

Prize giving commenced at 15h30 sharp as the audience were informed that the Pacer results could not be announced due to a protest being in session. By the end of the lengthy prize giving, the protest was still under way. The crowd dispersed leaving only the rest of the Pacer crews in attendance. This was not only a pity, but somewhat of an anti-climax and detracted from what should have been a pleasant moment for the winning teams.

Eventually the result of the protest was announced, which was that Felix the cat was disqualified in Race 1. Up till that point they had been the clear regatta leaders, but now the results were expected to change the standings. As things turned out, the first four boats all ended on 10 points after a single discard. Closer than that, one could not get.

Felix the cat and Regent Express had a full tie for 1st overall with both boats having a scoreline of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, but in such a tie the boat with the better result in the final race wins the tiebreaker. Felix the cat had a 3rd versus regent Express’s 4th (where they broke their jib halyard).

Gybing into trouble

Final Results

1st Felix the Cat 007 [Allan Lawrence] R1: DSQ,  R2 1st, R3  4th, R4  2nd, R5  3rd:  Total 17 Pts. less Discard 7 pts = 10 pts (Gold medals)
2nd Regent Express 017 [Trygve Roberts] R1  3rd, R2  2nd, R3  1st, R4  5th, R5  4th: Total 15 Pts less Discard 5 Pts = 10 pts (Silver medals)
3rd Pacer 3 003 (Andrea Giovaninni) R1  1st, R2  3rd, R3  3rd, R4  3rd, R5  DNF: Total 17 Pts less Discard 7 Pts =  10 pts
4th Unruly 011 [Iain Gibson]R1  2nd, R2  4th, R3  2nd, R4  4th, R5  2nd: Total 14 Pts less  Discard 4 Pts  =  10 pts
5th Sebago 010 [Guy Nottingham] R1  4th, R2  6th, R3  5th, R4  1st, R5  1st: Total 17 Pts less Discard 6 Pts = 11 Pts
6th Unmatched 001 [Graham, Wentworth] R1  5th, R2  5th, R3  DNF, R4  6th, R5  5th: Total 28 Pts less Discard 7 Pts = 21 Pts
Regatta Score: 80%