tf, Do you think the vortex was vertical?
Tahoe, when the winds are high, will have the winds from the west detach from the step slopes roll over like a giant breaking wave hitting the lake as a down burst several hundred yards offshore. Just for fun it's not a stable condition so it dances around. The winds fan out from the down point with some feeding an eddy flow going back west and the remainder going east like the source. I lost a race at the C22 Nationals one year when we got stomped on just after setting the pole for a run to the finish. I felt the boat twitch looked up at the Windex and watched it do a 180 and then back as a second twitch. I yelled at the crew, who was still at the mast, to take the pole down (that's a 30+ knot wind yell) they looked at me either like I was crazy (or they couldn't hear me). They still had a blank stare the second time I yelled out then the third twitch went solid and they knew what I'd been yelling as sail plaster into the mast and we came to a screeching halt. The boat directly behind us, that we could here an angry skipper yelling fouled lines preventing the spinnaker launch, sheeted in the genoa they hadn't struck and shot past us. Phil Agur s/v Wing Tip Commodore, Call Sign WCW3485 IC27/270A MMSI 366901790 www.catalina27.org Vessel Doc# 1039809 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 2:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: catalina27-talk: Can a C-27 turnover - part 2 > The moral is the skipper has to keep his head in the game even if that > means > not wearing cool polarized sunglasses. yes. and wind direction can be almost as important as wind speed. a few years back, we were tacking up into the harbor to finish a race. this was on the Evelyn, and you have to hike hard to keep her off her ears. I was at the helm, we had 12-18 and it was puffy and oscillating like mad. I think CHrisD was on board (C27 Toybox) and Carl Schaefer (C27 Cadence). I saw a disturbance off the bow about 2-3 boatlengths ahead, and before the 3 words of WTF were out of my mouth (I did get "what the" out) we auto-tacked in an instant and I had 3 crew, on the rail and between the lifelines, in the water up to their waists,one guy up to his armpits. This was in July, so there was no fear of hyypothermia, thank goodness. But the shift was a true 90 degrees and in another 30 seconds it went back 90 degrees to its original vector. Most probably, it was a vortex than formed off a cement elevator a few hundred yards to weather that landed in front of us. but boy what a wake up call!!...I take weird looking surface activity much more seriously these days. tf be careful out dare
