A New Experience: Racing at Night

Created on Tuesday, 28 August 2012 10:28

By Airwaves writer  Elizabeth Dudley

Along with Match Racing, this summer, I had the pleasure of adding yet another new sailing experience to my growing list: racing at night.

I had two overnight races on my schedule: the race to Solomons Island and the Governors Cup, both of which originated in Annapolis and were 54 miles and 68.6 miles respectively.

Prior to sailing the race from Annapolis to Solomons Island, I had not sailed a long distance race over 30 miles nor had ever raced at night or even done much sailing at night for that matter.  I had certainly stayed up all night, but not in the capacity where I had to be fully alert and concentrating the whole time.  It was definitely more difficult to do so than I had anticipated; especially as the majority of the race was an upwind grind spent on the rail where we are all becoming increasingly more uncomfortable.

That first race, the race to Solomons, was on a particularly cloudy night—too cloudy for a moon or stars.  It made for a very dark race, interspersed only with the occasional red light from one of our flashlights used to grab snacks or check the sail.

In fact, it was so dark it was eerie.  There was not enough light even to see shadows.  At one point, we were coming closer and closer to a white light that was floating in the air, not moving.  At first, we had all correctly deduced that it was a boat, although we were at first unable to tell whether it was moving or anchored.  But as we continued to move closer to it, where we expected to see the outline of a hull, there was nothing.  As we sailed directly by it we were able to barely make out the form of an anchored sailboat.  But I think it safe to say that it spooked us.  The night was playing tricks on us.

Adding to the eeriness level of our trip was the fact that one of the marks we were to honor during the race was a lighthouse.  According to the charts, we should have been able to see the 4-second flashing white light of the lighthouse when we were 9 miles out.  The GPS was informing us in which direction the lighthouse ought to be and how far we were from it.  But as we got closer, within that 9 mile window, there was no 4-second flashing white light that we could see.

As boredom continued to set in, discussion would randomly break out as to why we were still unable to see this apparent lighthouse.  Most agreed that the light was probably out.  Ironic sure, but it made the most logical sense.  Others were convinced we just hadn’t seen it yet.  By 3am our skipper, tired of hearing the same discussion over and over, strongly stated that it was in fact a lighthouse, that there was no way the light could be out and that we needed to stop talking about it.

A couple hundred feet away from where the lighthouse was supposed to be, we watched the running lights of a boat just ahead of us pass behind a large dark mass—the lighthouse—the light was out.

That was the nature of my first overnight race.  Until the sun started to rise, we had to blindly trust our GPS and our own instincts.  It was hard to even see our other competitors.  And as distance races go, this was short and down the Chesapeake Bay, a rather confined course.  Competitors could not have physically been that far away from us.  Had it been daylight, we would have been able to see them.  Imagine being in open waters.

My second overnight race experience was the Governor’s Cup, a race from Annapolis to St. Mary’s.  For this race, there was zero cloud cover and a Full Moon.  What a difference that Full Moon makes.  We could actually see some of our competitors.  This time around, all of our mark’s lights were working as well.

But no mater how much moon there is, it is still difficult to see waves coming towards you and pretty much impossible to see the breeze on the water.  Darkness adds a completely different element to a sport that is already full of constantly changing factors.  It makes life a bit more difficult on a sailboat and even more so as sleep deprivation sets in.

Things that already happen quickly happen even quicker as you can not necessarily see them coming.  It can be genuinely difficult to stay awake.  And it is rather easy to let the night play tricks on your eyes.  But for me, these are take-aways from only one night spent on the water.  How do those that race much longer distances do it night after night?  And the two nights I spent on the water, minus the cloud cover, were perfect nights.  What if the weather had not been so cooperative?  I would be curious to here stories of those who did not have the best possible conditions on their overnight sails, we all know those stories are out there.

But as tiring and difficult as racing at night may be, I would still recommend that everyone try it at least once.  You see the sunset and then the sunrise and in the middle, assuming all is well on the boat, there is a calm that I am not sure I can properly put into words.  While everyone at home is asleep, you get to be out on the water, viewing the silent world from a different perspective.  The feeling of being on the water at night is a feeling that can not be replicated in another scenario.  The only way to experience it is to let the sun set and go for a sail.