lies: Two kinds of people. :-) Source Before the start of the…

Sunday, March 18th, 2018

lies:

Two kinds of people. :-)

Source

Before the start of the 2014/15 edition of the race. Stacey and Sophie are both competing again in this edition.

Stacey is aboard Vestas 11th Hour Racing, now returned to the race after retiring from Leg 4 and missing Legs 5 and 6 due to the collision and fatality they were involved in during the approach to Hong Kong. They are currently ranked 5th overall, and are in 6th on the live Leg 7 tracker as the boats head south along the coast of New Zealand.

Sophie is aboard MAPRE, currently ranked 1st overall and leading the fleet on Leg 7.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/171997822076.

Team SCA bow women Stacey Jackson, Liz Wardley, and Sophie…

Wednesday, March 11th, 2015

Team SCA bow women Stacey Jackson, Liz Wardley, and Sophie Ciszek.

I mentioned my surprise at Sophie getting her wish to be back on the boat for leg 5. I noticed in the final crew roster that both Stacey Jackson and Liz Wardley (the boat’s #1 and #2 bow persons) would be on board too, and then Dee Caffari’s better half, who’s a regular on the Sailing Anarchy forums, pointed out to me that Sophie wasn’t on the boat for this leg as a bow person, but as a driver, based on her previously discussed talent for surfing big waves. Hopefully being at the back of the boat will help her protect her back.

The other crew switch they’re doing between Saturday’s in-port race and the leg 5 start (now scheduled for no earlier than Monday, to give Cyclone Pam time to get out of the way) is that they’re taking off Sally Barkow (who’s arguably one of the best around-the-buoys tacticians on the team) and replacing her with Sara Hastreiter, who sat out leg 4. Presumably Sara will be working the pit, but she’s also worked the bow on previous legs.

I think it’s smart for them to load up the boat with bow people for this leg. They’re the kind of sailors who get a lot of practice staying on board when waves are trying to wash them off, and they’re generally good at wrestling angry sails into submission and imposing order on chaos. All of those skills are going to be really useful over the next few weeks.

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Stacey Jackson, 100 feet up. Source. Stacey is bow person aboard…

Sunday, January 18th, 2015

Stacey Jackson, 100 feet up. Source.

Stacey is bow person aboard SCA, currently entering the Malacca Strait on Leg 3 of the 38,000-mile Volvo Ocean Race.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1IYT7CR.

Some great video off SCA. First we see an accidental gybe that…

Friday, November 21st, 2014

Some great video off SCA. First we see an accidental gybe that interrupted an interview with Libby down below, with shouts from the deck to “Put the vang on! Put the vang on!”

I’m guessing that quickly tensioning the hydraulic boom vang might be helpful in terms of supporting the mast, or in keeping the main free of the old (now leeward) running backstay, or something like that.

In the view from the stern camera you can hear the helmswoman shouting, “I haven’t got it! I haven’t got it!” as the gybe is beginning. Maybe turbulence under the stern lessened the effectiveness of the rudder. The rudders on the Volvo 65 are small, to reduce drag, but that makes control an issue.

I’m surprised they were able to recover so quickly. I credit the helmswoman for that; she must have been able to use whatever steerageway she had from the boat’s forward motion to crank them back onto starboard gybe before the lee helm of being heeled over forced them around to the point of no return.

From the subsequent discussion by Libby it sounds like SCA’s poor performance relative to the other boats over the past day has been due in part to working out what the most effective “modes” are, in the sense of which sail combinations to use and how far off the wind to sail. The wipeout at the start of the video apparently reflected their having decided to switch to the A3 gennaker, the boat’s largest sail, in a bid for speed.

So they’d been sailing slightly conservatively, sacrificing power in return for control, as they rode the bucking bronco of the Agulhas current.

At the end of the video is some intense footage from Stacey Jackson up the mast, apparently making a repair on one of the mainsail batten cars. I’ve mentioned before what a wild ride it is going aloft in a rough sea. I can definitely tell you that the GoPro footage doesn’t do it justice. The boat’s apparent motion down at deck level is minimized by the wide-angle lens, and there’s no real frame of reference; she’s gripping onto the halyard and shrouds for dear life, and since she’s doing it successfully it all looks quite ho-hum.

It’s not. That mast is whipping back and forth violently. Stacey’s clinging to the end of a 100-foot stick while an angry giant tries to shake her off. You can hear the stress in her voice, along with the nausea.

Later, in today’s “Inside Track” episode, Genny Tulloch interviewed her. Stacey said:

I actually felt really bad. I cut Corinna off just after I got down. I was about to have a moment, and I didn’t really need it recorded. It wasn’t an enjoyable trip yesterday, it was quite bumpy, but it was the last chance to do it before it got worse.

It’s hard to describe it to compare it to something on shore. It’d be a little bit like a roller coaster ride where you just hang on with your hands rather than sitting in a seat. You sort of pirouette around the mast at times. There’s nothing to hold you to the mast. I used some short straps on my own harness, but otherwise you adopt the koala bear technique quite a bit when you need to work with your hands. So you wrap your legs around the mast where you can.

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majagray: #Repost from @team_sca —- @staceyjackson26 living…

Saturday, November 8th, 2014

majagray:

#Repost from @team_sca

—-

@staceyjackson26 living the dream up the mast on SCA yesterday arriving into CapeTown, what Leg1 means to her #inspire #elleperteamsca #teamwork

As a teenager, at first because I was light and the easiest to hoist, later because I was working the bow and going aloft was my job, I went up the mast a lot.

This was only an 80-foot mast, not the 100-foot mast of a VOR 65. Still, especially at first, it was high enough to be scary. Usually I was going up at the dock, when the boat was stationary. Once in a while, though, I’d go up during a race. Since the motions of the boat are magnified up there, going aloft in rougher conditions (something I only did a couple of times) was a wild ride.

But the view was amazing.

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Two kinds of people. :-) Source

Monday, October 13th, 2014

Two kinds of people. :-)

Source

Reposted from http://ift.tt/1sExXH0.