Today’s Sailfaster guest is Kristen Robinson. Kristy’s well-known on the east coast – part of a husband and wife duo who are not only devastatingly successful racers but also terrific fun. Kristy is a highly experienced and successful sailor, but also she’s a leader of multiple sailing organizations including board and president roles for J70 / 80 / 29 classes, and yacht clubs. On the water she’s always on or around the podium places whether Block Island Race Week on J/29s, 105s and 109s, or at North American Championships on her J/80 or J/109, or locally on the Chesapeake. She’s a really interesting guest given her experience racing so many boats - Laser, J/24, J/29, J/80, Vanguard, J/70, Etchells, J/105 and J/22 classes, J/35, J/109, J/88, J/24, Viper, Soveral 33, and Farr280…
But more than that, she’s a wonderfully warm and funny human being, who makes everyone feel welcome and included at whatever post-race sailing event is happening. Oh, and Kristy’s also doctoral candidate at Marymount University studying Business Administration.
[00:00:00] Hi, everybody, and it's time for another episode of Sail Faster, the podcast for those who
[00:00:14] obsess about sailing faster. If you haven't done so already, please subscribe and have
[00:00:20] a listen to some of our previous episodes is well known on the East Coast. She's part just reading that list. But more than that, Kristy's a wonderfully warm and funny human being who makes everybody feel welcome and included or whatever post race sailing event is happening and that she's probably organized. And also she tells me she's a doctoral candidate at Merrimount University studying
[00:03:04] business administration, but I don't believe she's a teenager and I decided I hated him. So I was going to do anything but the sport that he loved. So I played tennis
[00:04:20] through high school and college. And then I started dating my husband, he had a J-24 so we can't campaign to that for a few years. We then got married for some reason then thought that we needed to have a cruising boat. So for a very short time we had a Ranger 33, which was super cool because we completely restored it.
[00:05:43] It was going to be junkyard. So I learned a lot about restoring sailboats and building sailboats.
[00:06:41] So we were that into it. So we have that boat for a while and then we crashed it in Florida on our way to
[00:06:47] Key West race week and it was just totaled.
[00:06:49] It was never going to be the same.
[00:06:51] So in Key West race week, um, one of my mentors, Kerry Clinger was down there
[00:06:56] and I was trying to decide if I should get a Mel just 24 or J 80.
[00:07:00] And he told me to get a J 80 because Mel just 24 is we're disposable boats.
[00:08:04] coast and there are people who will give me credit for it so I was president of the class and I was really a go-getter at the time yeah pretty big we would go I
[00:08:11] mean yeah you could bank on us everywhere we'd be in Newport we'd go to
[00:08:15] San Francisco we always had a fleet at Key West Raceway and then not San
[00:08:18] Francisco st. Petersburg we had a fleet in st. Pete we had a fleet in they went
[00:08:23] up a sake New Hampshire New Jersey we were travel all up and down the east hated it from the moment he stepped on. The J-17 we're talking about. He only got it for me. So when I decided to sell that boat, he was over the moon. We then got an Echols and had a lot of fun with it for a while. Again, we restored it because we bought it from St. Mary's. But the fleet just fell apart completely not long after getting it. And then the pandemic hit.
[00:09:41] And I was like, we're about to get locked in our houses.
[00:09:45] I should buy a boat.
[00:09:46] And he's Yeah, yeah. Well also the boats are up to 20 odd years old aren't they? 25 years old. In that time they've been ridden hard and put away wet and all that sort of thing. Yeah in some
[00:11:00] cases yeah for sure. So then we donated the etch on it. Our parents are getting older and I love the fact that my 80 year old dad can go on the boat. And then I anticipate falling in love with the J22 after the world when I get to drive it again. And I loved the J70 because I loved driving. Sailing against
[00:12:25] like Terry Hutchinson would be on the line above me or something you know. Brad Butterworth into the boat with the J105, which is the most recent. We sailed it for like three, four years, took it to San Francisco and realized we were racing a dinosaur. Boat was old and it needed to not be old anymore to be fast. And so we invested smartly after having, like I said, owning the boat X amount of years and knowing, and we invest in it.
[00:13:40] And that's when we started getting fast
[00:13:43] because you can't win with the slow boat.
[00:13:46] What were the main improvements that you saw? and I'm thrilled. And then when we went to California, we realized that everybody had replaced their roller furlings and they were super low profile. We also realized that we could be much more efficient in a new backstay because we had the old backstay where it was pump, return, pump, return. And because you're in such an awkward spot as it is in the back of the boat, we went to Oakley from Harkin and talked to him
[00:15:03] and did our homework and got one that goes pump, pump,
[00:15:06] pump, pump, pump, and it was newer, so it worked better. Like, you know, you're faster in the corners. If you can roll your jib up as the kite's going up, you're going to be faster. You're going to go downwind faster. You're going to be able to, you know, dive the boat down faster because you're going to be up to speed faster. So lots of work on the boat then.
[00:16:20] And I love that idea of you sort of get in tune with it
[00:16:23] for a few seasons or a few races to understand and then making the boat lighter. And then because it's such a bathtub, having a slick bottom has been really crucial for tax. We find we accelerate out of tax so much better than we used to. I think it's right, we'll call it a dump truck with four flat tires and you'll try and accelerate. Yes, the boat's terrible. The fleets are affordable, which is really nice
[00:17:41] because you don't need to be wealthy and rich
[00:17:44] to be able to make it's so heavy. We took the next step because I found we started getting the straight line speed and I wanted to keep the speed through the tacks and up the corners. So once we got the boat fast then the next step is how do you make the maneuvers fast? How do you make your tack
[00:19:03] amazing? You know when do you backwind? When do can just go. And I got the jib in, and Brian hadn't been up to speed, and the whole fleet just sailed right by us.
[00:20:21] And I was like, I did that, didn't I?
[00:20:23] And Reed's like, yep, you boned the jib when
[00:20:25] we had no speed yet. And then I'm just aware of in the boat, like is the winch wound up for the tack? Is, I even made a list. Let's see what that is. I'm gonna look at my list because I don't forget. Oh yeah, so are your spin sheets in the water? You know, if you just spent thousands of dollars on a new bottom and you're dragging a sheet in the water, you've just canceled that out.
[00:21:42] You know, is the halyard ready for a douse?
[00:21:45] Is the halyard in the right spot?
[00:21:46] When you're going down wind,
[00:21:47] has you've taken the halyard, to the boat totally and seeing what's going on. Yeah we really only use the tactician when necessary so usually we there's very few people I think who can be a good tactician and Trim. Reid can do it. My buddy Ben who's a great tactician he can't do anything other than called tactics. And he's great he's
[00:23:02] amazing I have him as a tactician all day long I think just there you have to
[00:23:05] know you have to know your crew and have and sort of quite pillar and all that sort of thing as you go around? And things will go wrong, but the thing is, we feel like we're prepared for it. Yeah. Like I hear as the kites going up, there's a wrap. I know I immediately have to go to the halyard and get that halyard off the mast.
[00:24:20] So if we have to dump it, it's in the camp cleat.
[00:24:24] So just listen and know's a new mark. I've just gotten in front of you there too. Yeah. There's a lot more to be gained than people think. People seem to think it's a parade from the offset, from the windward mark to the offset. And then the same thing at the gate. There's so much to be gained. It's like a whole chess match right there at the leeward gate.
[00:25:41] First of all, which gate do you go to?
[00:25:44] Everybody always picks the ones that's more upwind, right?
[00:25:47] That's not the right gate just going to be pushed down. I have to be behind him on the turn to maximize the speed and come out of the turn amazing, which means I have to work my little butt off. So we double team it. We have somebody tailing and I have, you know, somebody stronger than me and then I just grind the heck out of it and I, we get it in.
[00:27:02] I don't have a problem, but I'm always, and I'll yell the whole time, I'm just behind,
[00:27:06] I'm just behind, I'm just behind, I boat they're in that they go to again and again. Do you have like this is what we always do we're always X or Y. We definitely don't have something that we always do.
[00:29:24] suddenly you've got 20 J-105s coming straight out. I even look back at Brian, I'm like,
[00:29:25] I'm so glad I'm not driving right now.
[00:29:27] I'm like, this looks scary.
[00:29:32] It's not about a block island.
[00:29:34] Everybody was so good.
[00:29:35] And I was like, I am terrified right now.
[00:29:39] And I'm not even driving.
[00:29:41] So you were telling me earlier that you,
[00:29:44] you and Brian, you buy a boat,
[00:29:47] you work your way to the fleet. We have a bad start on purpose. Who cares? It's frostbite. We're drinking. We're having fun. And then when we want to put the hammer down and we want to do really well, we make a plan and we do it. The velvet hammer. Yeah. That's funny. We made a conscious decision when we got the J80 to make sure we took time to play with
[00:31:05] the toys.
[00:31:06] Not always try and win with the toys. new members. I mean I was a new member last year and there are probably four or five others who are also new. It's quite a healthy fleet in terms of the boats and the competition and the fact it's turning over and growing. Yeah it's great. What would be your best piece, we started with our theme song of Hammer Time. You know, you know, we, you just, you need to learn your boat. And there's so many nuances to each. That was a great bit of input. Absolutely, and we've been doing it so long now. I have lists upon lists. I know what to bring. I know we always bring a Doc Box that the waters are at the dock.
[00:35:00] We're not carrying them every day.
[00:35:02] I mean, just everything.
[00:35:03] Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:05] Can we go back to San Francisco?
[00:35:07] Because you talked about going from and then it just stuck with us. They were like, we're gonna go, we're gonna do this. And Brian and I bought, sold an investment property. You know, the market was really good. So we did the right thing with most of the money. And then we were like, we're just gonna buy a J105 trailer and we're taking that boat to San Francisco. So we bought the trailer. We had another friend who had a truck. He trucked it up. I mean, we probably had a team of like 20 people
[00:36:22] and that's how we got this boat to San Francisco
[00:36:23] and raced it.
[00:36:24] Scott Steele came out to help coach us.
[00:37:25] take things from San Francisco that you'd learned there to block on it was it was it just simply very different conditions that were completely different yeah I've
[00:37:30] done block island like a dozen times oh wow ten times about so I took the
[00:37:38] knowledge of having done block island before I knew exactly what I needed like
[00:37:41] I knew I needed to bring an ice maker like I'll do things like buy the more expensive beer. When we went to Block Island Race Week I actually bought a pony keg from forward. The guys loved it, you know. So I treat my crew like an extension of my boat that I need to invest in and I make sure to do things that other boats might not do so you want to come back to my boat.
[00:39:04] Yeah it's I haven't heard that well I and who are good at the jobs. And right now I've got three bigger guys who we want to sail with. So I can't stick one of them on the bow. So I'll go on the bow. I can tell you, I'm famous for, and I love it. I am famous for every major regatta. Like if you've taken off time, taken vacation
[00:40:22] from your family, you know, if you've done this to come to Block Island with me or to will drag the power boat, Brian will bring the sailboat. So and he's part of the team and he is invaluable. We were one point out of first at North Americans. He left. We had a bad day and we couldn't put it back together. And I think he was a big part of the reason we had a harder time putting it back together than we normally would have.
[00:41:42] Because he debriefs us, you know, he gives us lots of great advice.
[00:42:49] with SSA. And in partner with that, we are going to Southern Yak Club, which I'm really excited about because we've never raced out of New Orleans. I'm not racing, because Brian's
[00:42:53] building the team, but I'm going down to be an ambassador to get everybody to register
[00:42:57] for the world.
[00:42:58] Chrisy, it's wonderful to spend the last hour with you. Thank you so much. That was a brilliant,
[00:43:04] great content, basically, for other sailors. Really, really useful. So thank you for spending