Shooting The Vineyard Race 2010

Although Hurricane Earl barely gave us a drop of rain or a gust of wind, the cold front that came through on its tail provided a lot more drama for those sailing the Vineyard Race, and those photographing it. The 25 knots from the West with gusts to 30 at the start of the race provided the opportunity for a quick spinnaker run down the Sound, many boats breaking personal speed records.

We were contracted to provide an 8x10 photo for each class winner. For a distance race, this means we have to really focus on catching every boat at the start. For this race, we knew it would mean focusing on catching all 70 boats as they sail downwind at 8-20 knots, depending on the size/design. Our strategy was to use two dinghies and each cover a side of the Sound about 1/2 mile East of the start, and communicate via VHF about who covers which boat as they sail towards us. Because there's a tendency to travel downwind extremely quickly in these situations, and end up dozens of miles away from our starting point with a long, painful upwind trip in heavy seas, we avoided this by being quick and efficient with our photos and motoring back upwind after every start. Two hours after the first gun, the last class started and we finished out the day with photos of photos of all but 3 boats that started.

This would normally be enough of an effort, but with the addition of Kattack Live tracking, our ability to see exactly where all the boats were and how fast they were going introduced a new temptation to us. We got in the car with a dinghy in tow and headed towards the turning mark, which was in the Groton area. Though we should have had an easy time beating all the boats- and leader Vela Veloce- to Groton, when we reached terrible holiday-weekend traffic in the New Haven area, things changed. We were now in a race with Vela Veloce, and it was apparent that we might lose.

We plugged along on I-95, carefully watching Vela Veloce on Kattack and making every move we could to win. As we pulled off 95 in Waterford, with the self-imposed race down to the wire, we sped towards the boat ramp we had picked out- one we had never been to before, but selected because it was a state ramp and had easy access to the Sound. We are always in search of ramps that do not require us to go down a river, through a 5-mile no-wake zone.

This ramp was, in fact, right on the Sound. However, it faced Southwest, and there were 3-foot waves breaking over it and a lot of rocks in the area. Nobody in their right mind would have launched from this ramp. In fact, a few cars pulled up with boats in tow and left while we were there. But we were still in the middle of a race with Vela Veloce and if we didn't launch now, we'd lose. We had a crowd of people watching, including a police officer, as I put the trailer just barely in the water and Allen waited for a wave to crash into his transom and float him enough to reverse off of the trailer and turn quickly in reverse to avoid the rocks. It was a success and as he went off to get some great shots of Vela Veloce and a number of the other faster boats, I reasearched another boat ramp where I'd pick him up at sunset.

Step 3: why not catch a few boats finishing. Putting the Stamford lighthouse in the background made for some great shots and another angle on a race to remember.