Trey Sheehan, Hooligan: Flat Stanley Racing

What a fun season! What a great group of people in this fleet!  What a terrific boat to sail! The final T-10 regatta of the year, the 2019 North American Championship, proved to be a fabulous week for the Hooligan family.  We were blessed with perfect conditions a well prepared boat and crew, a fabulously planned and executed regatta by the Mentor Harbor folks.  Above all, we also received our fair share of lucky breaks.  

History

A little history might be helpful.  Chuck Simon, Terry McSweeney and I bought the Black Boat (Hull 376) in 2012 we named Hooligan for the season.  The three of us spent years with Bill Buckles and the rest of the team racing Liquor Box successfully all over the country.  Liquor Box and its’ blender became synonymous with Lake Erie racing and pushed us to new levels of Class and PHRF racing. When Chuck decided to focus more time in Key West and travel the boat was sold and now sits in Winnipeg.  Shortly after Terry and I made the jump into the Melges 32 Flat Stanley and still enjoy sailing that boat.  

We bought Hull 376 in 2012 with the intention of “getting the band back together”.  Unfortunately, the problem with owning two boats in different classes that generally race the same weekends, in different cities, caused us to never really get everybody together at the same time. I think we also felt buying a third of a boat relieved us of having to admit same to our spouses.  The boat was sailed competitively by The Sheehan and McSweeney kids, Bill Buckles with his teams, and a women’s group every Tuesday night, but the boat was not getting some of the attention it needed.  

In January of 2014 we started to sail the J-70 (Hooligan as well) to work on boat handling and get more big fleet experience for me.  I had been a crew member for most of my life and effectively had zero helm time in those 46 years. Brad Boston and I would set out to deliberately attend regattas with 60 plus boats to get more comfortable with my driving.  He has been working on getting me up to speed while keeping everything fun at the same time.

The Plan?

The chance to sail the 2018 T-Ten season with a group of my regular Hooligan J-70 crew and some of my kids was starting to take shape and we planned to make the trip to Port Huron.  Life eventually got in the way and we could not attend.  We put the T-10 away in the Fall of 2018 on a borrowed Team Pursue Trailer, (see?, this fleet rocks!). We had every intention of tearing the boat apart that winter and making it ready for the 2019 season.  In January of 2019 we started evaluating the condition of the boat and decided the free swinging bulkheads and lack of any attention down below would be a hindrance to a serious run at a winning season.  Our decision was to gut the boat and rebuild it.  Time was not our friend and the boat proved to have surprises for us when we finally started to take it apart.

While sailing the J-70 in Miami in January I mentioned to Brad and Curtis Florence that I would like to bring not just one but possibly two of my three children along for the Tartan Ten campaign the upcoming summer.  Brad, Curtis, Terry and I have spent the last five years together in the J-70 and the Melges 32 working hard to teach me how to handle a boat in close quarters.  It has been an exercise in patience for these fellas.  My legitimate Attention Deficit Disorder and the onshore and offshore antics that are part of Hooligan Life and a host of other distractions that go along with it have created a chaotic, but fun, Team Hooligan, for all involved.  So just mentioning the addition of two more similarly afflicted Sheehans into the boat raised the anxiety level for Brad and Curtis for sure.  Frankly, I wasn’t certain there was enough room on the boat for all this “personality”.  The seed was planted to sail with more family.  

Back in the barn in early spring we decided to squeeze in a couple of regattas down south in the J-70 and put off the boat work.  This turned out to be a mistake as we started the work around April 16th.   Thirty five years of wear and tear, and wiring that had been spliced and re-used, required replacing everything inside the boat.  The panel, electronics, breakers, load distribution and through hulls were ripped out and replaced.  The boat was no longer identifiable down below.  It really was a disaster.  Ziggy Beatty a longtime friend and Flat Stanley/Hooligan crew member came to Cleveland the third week of May to help push the boat along.  Griffin Sheehan dug in and learned how to lay glass and worked on his upper body and core strength by sanding every chance he could get.  It was crunch time.  

The season started off in Detroit with Bayview One Design and of course two of my “rockstar” family members could not attend at the last minute.  Dad was not looking like a champion with the remaining crew, but we pulled the boat together and got it ready and on the starting line in Detroit.  It was not pretty and by no means completed but we took the T-Ten Class load cell with us, weighed the boat and queried the owners there with the progress we had made and invited everyone aboard and to express any concerns they had with our work and the boats’ punchlist of work  to be completed.  We were able to do very well at Bayview One Design and we knew the boat was getting better each week. After the practice afternoon in Detroit I remembered how much fun the boat was.  It all felt great, and the first tack ever driving a Tartan Ten was ugly as hell!  But we got it sorted out and every tack got better. The regatta was a lot of fun, but we knew there was more work to be done before Cleveland Race Week.

We took Hooligan back to Cleveland and put it right back into the shop at my office.  We worked day and night getting the boat finished and when I wasn’t working in my office I would come down to the boat shop and interrupt everyone’s flow… ☺  

Cleveland Race Week was at our home club so we were able to really dig in and fine tune our speed and really work on tuning.  Luckily we had the identical sail designs as the Proper Villain guys so we knew the tools were there but just needed to see for ourselves how the boat set up in all ranges, up and down.  The line-ups in Detroit showed us the boat was certainly faster than before the work and that speed gave us some confidence to get ourselves out of trouble when necessary.  During Cleveland Race Week my 24 year old daughter Audrey and 21 year old, Josie joined us to round out the crew.  With roughly nine weeks to go before the North Americans Josie bluntly asked why she wasn’t being considered for the NAC crew?!  I did not expect this as her school/work schedule had kept her from being able to commit to any other sailing and now we had a dilemma….The difficult part of the summer was telling a winning crew member that we were moving people around.  The weight limit issues made our focus on crew work even more important.  Saying there is no room, to any member of the team, is not a comfortable situation.   Eight weeks until the NACs and we were feeling the pressure of picking the right team.  The next couple of weeks we would have to see if there was room for all four Sheehans on board.

So before the NAC’s we would have some fun during Bayweek at Put-in-Bay.  For me this is really a home club event, as well, as my wife grew up there and we have a couple of small businesses there.  The kids have raced out of the Put-in-Bay Yacht Club since they were in diapers.   The key to Bayweek has always been, to have fun.  This week was no exception and we worked on making sure all rigging and fittings were working and all purchases were just right.  We sailed well and learned that we were all able to get along on the boat.  It wasn’t until the last day of Bayweek that I finally wired the electrical panel to the batteries permanently.  We learned a whole lot about the boat, good and bad.  We installed new B&G Vulcan instruments and fitted an acceptable Hooligan-worthy stereo.  Did I mention that Bayweek was fun?

Curtis, Zyggy and I towed the Ten home 51 miles to Cleveland with a center console at 18.5 knots on a perfectly flat lake.  We were almost ready for NAC’s.  The week was consumed with getting the boat measured-in and weighed and then it was off to Mentor for an outstanding week. The boat weighed-in and measured easily and now the work was paying dividends.  The boat work was over and we could go sail and have some fun. She still did not have a proper bottom and looks like hell, but it was fair and fast.

We moved two Tens to Mentor on Sunday and prepared to get the circus on the road Monday.  

And a circus it was.  We moved a four camper and tool trailer caravan into the beach area and set up a NASCAR like compound for the week ahead.  We had four families, and eighteen people moved in and working together to make the place our home for the week.  It felt good to be able to relax in the evening and not drive home.  Practice days on Monday and Tuesday gave us some strong opportunities  to line up with some other teams and get final adjustments completed.   In the evening we would gather in the middle of the compound and debrief and relax.  Sometimes we cooked meals and every evening we would chat and have a cocktail to discuss the day.  Wednesday we finished off our tuning with the Villains and prepared for the first race day on Thursday.

We started the regatta off OK, we came out with low score finishes with pretty conservative sailing. When you have speed you can do this.  The next day we went out with similar scores, still in the hunt and Team I-Ball leading the regatta posting very strong second day scores.  Day 3 we had everything line up for us! We had a perfect day.. We were still sailing conservative but had a gear that no one had consistently and we had some lucky breaks.  There was also a significant amount of hiking put in on the rail to keep the boat flat and balanced in all conditions. The final day was a bit of damage control or defense and we could watch our tuning partner and close friends finish second behind us. When you have two boats with the same set up and sails, it really makes it easier to tune and talk about settings.  Doyle Sails has really worked hard over the last 8 years and Brad and his group have supported me up a steep learning curve against the best sailors anywhere.  

The real secret behind these fabulous boats is the wonderful people who passionately support this class.  The regatta crew at Mentor Harbor went above and beyond to support and showcase a National Championship caliber event!  Kudos to the membership, MHYC Ten Class members and the Sackett and Pinkerton/Kubichek families in particular!  The set-up at Mentor was really sweet.  Allowing campers into the North Beach allowed us to construct a family style compound with my brother Michael’s team.  The parties they held, the accommodations, were all top notch. Kudos to the whole Organizing Committee and the Club.

This class really is strong and fun. I have been fortunate to spend some time in other classes and there is no doubt this class is special.  That is why we wanted to get back to the Ten and we had a fantastic summer. ….. 

The racing this season on the Tartan Ten proved to be the most rewarding and exciting we have ever had.  Sailing with my family made it special, winning with family made it spectacular. Huge thanks to all my Hooligans, Audrey, Josie and Griffin Sheehan, Brad Boston, Curtis Florence and Zyggy Beatty.  Special thanks as well to my wife, Sara, for putting up with our habit, Terry McSweeney, Abie McLauglin, Chuck Simon and of course, John, Jinder and the yard group at Edgewater YC for all their help. See you all next spring.