Fist Time

Tiger on the Loose

The much talked about Flying Tiger made its west Coast debut in the San Diego to Ensenada race. here is the story from owner Tim Chin. See a bunch of great pics from Da Woody.

The idea to do this race was really planted by Bill Stevens when he was originally planning the arrival of the three or four West Coat tigers around early September and we were going to have all the new Tigers in this race. Long story about how the other boats got stuck in customs and missed the time window to get ready for this 62 mile dash (or drift fest sometimes) down to the Mexican seaside town famous for fish tacos and of course Hussong's Cantina.

Tiger #8 was born lucky or something, it somehow made it into the container ahead of the other boats in Xiamen and also took the bullet in the competition for clearing customs and the container actually showed up ahead of schedule. The capable folks at the yard in King Harbor unloaded the boat out of the Maersk 40 feet high cube container and it was happily sitting on her cradle still heeling at 38 degrees by the time I picked up Jeff Fischer, who flew in from the factory to support us, and drove up from San Diego. Joe (EWS's dad) was there to greet us and gave us a blow by blow on the unload. This is 11 days plus a few hours before the Little Ensenada Race and the boat was in pieces while we were missing the wire rigging. Then later that evening, another SA'er, "Mobetter", shows up after a long drive out from Colorado to help us put the Tiger together. Hey, this speaks volumes about the SA community --- where a practical stranger drives hundreds of miles to come pitch in!!

For the next two days, we basically thrashed to get the trailer fitted to the boat and work on getting the boat put together enough to travel. Alex at AB Trailers was simply amazing knocking out custom pieces to make the perfect trailer for me. Mobetter and Jeff stayed on in Redondo Beach to help with the next two boats while I singlehand my Tiger on the brand new trailer down I-5 in rush hour LA traffic to "enhance the exposure"........9 days to go. The next 9 days was divided into work work and new boat work (leaving little time for sleep, eating ...etc). Luckily, an army of SA'ers would pitch in helping to launch her and step the mast after the wire rigging finally cleared customs.

Fast forward to the morning of the race -- fittingly, we had an international crew for a boat that was developed over the Internet -- A Swede, a Kiwi, a Croatian & two Americans. We symbolically stuck the Abacus lettering on just before we hoisted her in. We also received a call from Bob Perry with words of encouragement. The crew ended up tuning the rig, messing with the sails and getting the electronics to work on the way out to the line. We had to take it easy motoring out since the engine was brand new and I was supposed to break it in or something to that effect. The nice slippery hull shape with the well position engine well meant that we can easily make >5 kts even at half throttle. We were seeing 7.5 kts plus with more throttle.

With a provisional PHRF rating that placed us in the fast PHRF-SD group 2. Our competitors were boats like Nemesis, a Melges 30 turbo; USA17,a Mumm 30 (also from SGYC) plus a full compliment of bigger boats like the 40.7s & a bunch of 47.7s and a CM1200. These are all pretty well sailed boats that have competed hard all year. We're still trying to remember what the next guy's name is.......and needless to say without any tuning data and knowledge of the boat's sailing characteristics.

The wind was around 9 to 10 kts at our start. We took a pretty conservative approach at the start -- stay the "F" away from the big Beneteaus. Hate to scratch their anchors......so we ended up at the boat end with the Melges & the Mumm -- appears they all had the same logic. We lined up below the Mumm who were in turn under the Melges. We nailed the line pretty well with speed but the Melges was a fraction better than us and we found them trucking over us in no time while the Mumm trailed us. I bit the bullet & took his stern and went high in preparation for the class kite which we put up almost immediately. We went down to a tight reach under the class kite trying to stay with the Melges. The boat really liked this point of sail and rewarded us with decent speeds (8s, 9s, occasional 10s on our TackTick which was not yet calibrated) -- but the AP class kite was pretty strapped at these angles and a bit full for this task so we were pretty much sailing on the edge. The long slim rudder gave plenty of feedback and with sufficiently aggressive pumping will reattach flow and keep going. However, once or twice, we went a bit over the edge -- apparently"big ease" must sound like 'Big trim" in Croatian, so as I was losing the rudder, the kite got trimmed in further. So remembering how a Henderson would snap turn in that situation, I was grabbing the lifelines expecting to see wet spreaders. Instead, the Tiger keeps tracking nice and straight (thanks Bob!) sailing at what I would describe as at an "interesting heel angle" (and they call the boat tender -- they should see us now!!). We managed to convince the trimmer to give a big ease and we popped back up without losing much speed. Retrim the kite and the main and we're back on our way.

The Melges with twice the crew weight and bigger kite, started to inch away on a higher course. Our course pretty much meant hugging the coast. Our strategy looked like was paying off big time by the time the main fleet got into the lee of the Coronados. While they lost pressure, we were heated up and dodged the kelp paddies passing dozens of boats everytime I looked over to west of us. We knew we had something when the Melges came back across our bow 500 yards near the half way point and we were ahead of all the other boats in our fleet. Our prerace strategy was to stay inside and try a straight line to Ensenada -- we should have stuck with that......... But that all changed when the Melges again heats it up and walks off -- we had to put in a chase. Unfortunately for us, this also sealed our fate as we worked our way optimizing based on our polars we found ourselves in a "no man's land" when the wind shut down at around 5pm. Stuck between the sea breeze and the evening off shore.

We slatted around for an eternity breaking in our brand new class sails (gulp!) and drinking beers while the Melges being further offshore was able to keep drawing. Slowly the big Beneteaus started to crawl up on the outside as well while the Mumm and the CM1200 made progress near shore. We made attempts to head inshore under jib & main but with limited success since the angles put us sailing away from the finish. We eventually escape the hole going outside and we put up a chase for the nearest big Beneteau. On the approach to the finish around 1:30 am, we were within 500 yards of the 47.7 but as they almost finished, the wind shuts off completely and we see another boat slide up closer -- it was Hussong's Corsair trihull "Drei". They got within 5 BLs and joined us in the parking lot. I took a nap -- lasted for an hour plus and then took the helm just as a new wind picked up right on the nose. We outpointed the Corsair and limped across the line almost 3am to find the 47.7 waiting at the finish area for us.

The outcome. Abacus ended up 5th in the class of 12 starters in our first ever race, in spite of our stints in the parking lot. We ended up ahead of all the big Beneteaus except for one. The well sailed Mumm slipped past us to finish half an hour ahead of us for a respectable 3rd place while the Melges retired early in the evening since they had "other commitments" (rather than to slat around and drink beers).


All in all, we were happy with the outcome -- knowing that we were in the thick of things until the wind shut down and we had decent boat speed compared to similar boats (Melges, Mumm, Columbia). Many thanks to all the SA'ers who came out to lend a hand. There was no way for Abacus to make the line without all your help!! And the Tiger is (or should I say the Tigers are) on the loose!!

Tim Chin

10/10/06