Memories of the jibe mark graveyard

by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt Sailing News
The 1995 Snipe US National Championship was on San Francisco Bay, which is reliably windy in the summer. To attract apprehensive inland lake sailors, the locals assured how the racing would be under Angel Island to significantly reduce the wind and wave condition.

The upwind legs may have gotten some relief, but the jibe mark was beyond the wind shadow and felt the full fury of Bay conditions. I nearly won this Nationals with my under-sized wife, which I felt pretty good about, particularly as we never fell prey to that graveyard.

This letter in Latitude 38 by Vince Casalaina brought back the memories:

It was summer 1995, and the Snipe Nationals were at Richmond Yacht Club — on a typical summer day. About halfway between the breakwater entrance and the Berkeley Circle, the winds were in the high teens with an ebb tide and lots of chop. My crew and I were sailing the best race I’d ever driven in a Nationals. On the reach to the jibe mark, we had passed one of the best sailors in our local fleet and were setting up to jibe.

I told my crew I was waiting for a flat spot, looked over my shoulder, pulled the tiller and yelled “jibing.” As the boom comes crashing over, she’s looking up at me from the low side as the boat lies down. Things get worse as the mast sticks in the mud. We can’t get the boat up. We both get a little hypothermia and ask the crash boat to take us in.

By the time we warm up and get back out on the course, the daggerboard is gone (retaining line snapped) and the mast is bent in two directions beyond redemption. What did I learn? Make sure you get a “ready” call from your crew before executing a maneuver. You are more likely to get the maneuver to happen cleanly and that almost always saves you money for sail and/or boat repairs.