Rance Remembers: A few weeks ago

A few weeks ago...how I remember it.

One thing I can say about working on cruise ships is that the in between time is harder when you know you're going on another one. Coming back from the ships means reestablishing yourself in the community. For me the hardest part is getting the headshot biz up and running again. It is based on word-of-mouth and if you're gone on a ship for 8 months you lose that momentum. So, in the meantime I have been helping out friends and doing other projects.

One of the "helping friends" things that also had a layer of "oh, and it's a job, so you'll get paid." All I was told I had to do was go out haul an anchor when needed. When I got to the harbor I found out that A: the ship I was supposed to haul anchor on was broken and B: I was going on a different ship...with an automated anchor.

This meant I was hired for three days to watch Far 40 Match Racing. What? That's what I thought too on day one. There were four ships competing in the Windy City Match Race. And I was on the signal ship on the Start/Finish line.

Day 1: Practice Rounds
The first day was a half day to practice. Not just practice for the teams sailing but for the people running the race as well.

First, how does it work? This is all according to what I gleaned while on the ship...not all can be trusted as fact, most can be trusted as accurate speculation. A yellow pyramid like buoy is placed near the signal ship (the ship I'm on), and by "near" I mean "about 100 feet away." The line between that buoy and the two orange flags on the front of our ship is the start/finish line. About 300-400 meters away from the start line is a white buoy that marks the turn around point. So, from the start the ship must go down to that far white buoy, go around it, and come back. BUT! There is ANOTHER white buoy up by the start line. They have to go around that too and then go all the way back down to the far white buoy again. Then cross the finish line. So, two laps. There are also a couple extra buoys. A red and a green. The goal seems to be to get the line from the far buoys to the finish line to match the wind direction. So, if the wind seems to be shifting a little there is a signal before the race that lets the teams know to go around the green buoy or red buoy instead of the white. If the wind shifts big time the whole course shifts to match before continuing racing. Please see the diagram.


It was pretty calm on this practice day. As I got to the job I remember thinking about cruising and wondering if my sea legs were still with me. No problems.

Day 2: Actual Racing
The second day was an actual racing day. Also, much more wind and choppiness. I thought for sure I would puke today.

There were four boats competing: Spaceman Spiff, Convexity, Flash Gordon, and Heart Breaker. Today was when I found out the exciting stuff. For me, the race isn't as exciting as the beginning of the race. On my boat there were about 6 people with various tasks. Every race started with 10 minutes worth of lead-in signaling via horns and flags (I was in charge of the "two" flag). At about 4 minutes to the actual start the two ships about to race would begin maneuvering around each other trying to draw penalties. From what I could gather a penalty happened if any ship broke any shipping laws. If you got a penalty you had to do a full 360 with your boat, after the start of the race, to get rid of the penalty.

A few times the tactical sailing worked well and a ship couldn't make it across the starting line without turning around. One time a ship was forced on the wrong side of the starting line and they had to get back across, turn around and start costing them valuable time.

In the high winds today one sail line broke and sent the ship's sail to the wind. A lot of leaning happened. Fun stuff.

And I didn't puke.

Day 3: Calmer winds
Final day for racing. The wind was much calmer. This mean more dangerous pre-start maneuvering. One of the ships liked the tactic of heading straight for our signal ship and turning at the last minute, missing our ship by inches.

All in all I learned about a new thing to me. Also, Match Racing is two ships at a time. Fleet racing is all ships at once and is less cat and mouse because you have to think about ALL the ships.

Here is video coverage:

2009 Windy City Match Race from Matt Gallagher on Vimeo.