JetStream Racing

JetStream Racing

Thursday, February 11, 2010

2010 SSS Three Bridge Fiasco Race Report

This past Saturday we had the first race of the SSS season. Mark came
back as crew to try to defend our double handed season championship
from last year. This year it will be good challenge with the regular
top contenders of Timberwolf, Arcadia and Great White, and the
addition of the singlehanded season winner Outsider, coming out to
challenge the doublehanders.

Berthin in Alameda, the races starting at the Golden Gate Yacht Club, tend to be a long day, with almost 2 hours of transit (motoring) each way. In ourboat and our engine that is a torturous
affair, as you feel and it sound like you are inside a blender.
I hadn't seen Mark for a couple of month, so after a 7 AM dock call,
we tried to catch up on our lives over the sound of the engine.
We got to the starting area around 9:30 with an hour to kill before
our start, and double and triple guess our strategy for the day.
Where is our competition? which way are they going? where is Kame and
Yucca? With over 350 boats entered for the race, it wasn't
necessarily easy to find the boats of interest. With about 20 minutes
for our start the wind pretty much died. We had stayed plenty clear
of the starting area and now got a bit worried that we wouldn't make
it to the line and went to start the outboard. Outboard didn't want
to play... After a few minutes of trying to get the engine started I
went back to concentrating on getting the boat moving towards the
starting line and Mark took the position at the back of the boat to
work on the engine. After a few more stressful minutes, Mark got the
engine going and we started looking for a spot to position ourselves
for the start.

There was a huge pileup at the pin end of the line with boats drifting
in all directions. Even though the current would be more favorable
outside (on the pin side), with our small rig we needed to find a
clear lane and headed towards shore on the west side of the line in
preparation for a counter clockwise run of the course. We found some
familiar faces in the vicinity with Yucca, Timberwolf and True North
in the same area and the same idea.

We had an uneventful first leg towards TI, picking up a few boats
along the way. Closer to the Bay Bridge it got a bit weird with boats
inside and outside of us doing better... The boats giving a wider
berth to TI seemed to be having a bit more pressure so we headed that
way. As soon as we cleared the southern end of TI we immediately set
the kite for our run down to Red Rock. Kite went up with a twist.
After a few seconds we got it untwisted, but something still looked
wrong. Tack and clew were attached incorrectly, so kite down, swap
the lines and back up. We were racing again. By this time it was
already ebbing on the eastern side of TI. We jibed early on an angle
that was pointing us exactly to the northeastern tip of TI. Moving
well in the light conditions. As soon as we cleared TI we got a nice
header that put our course straight to Red Rock Weather was
beautiful, boat was moving well, so it felt right to pop a beer! Not
bad sailing in T-shirt (long sleeve t-shirt) weather in the middle of
the winter.

As we approached Richmond, the ebb was already flowing from the north
bay. We stayed a little too long on the deep water and lost some
ground to the guys closer to shore. About this time we could see
Outsider coming... I wasn't sure we would see them all day, since
after we started they seemed to be lined up to go on a clockwise
run. They must have changed their minds at their start. Now we had
a fight in our hands racing both Ousider and the Antrim 27, Always
Friday which seemed to be attached to us with a rubber band. The gaps
would change but every 20 - 30 minutes they would be there again.
This will go on all the way to the finish.

Although the natural course would suggest a port rounding of Red Rock,
due to the conditions and the current a starboard rounding looked
favorable. It really felt counter intuitive and risky, but that is
the way we went and it payed off huge. I was hoping Outsider would
split and go the other way, but they were right there with us rounding
RR to starboard.

From RR to Blackaller we had some very favorable currents, averaging 8
to 9 knots over ground going upwind. Another tricky leg.. It was a
bit light for our boat and we were a bit underpowered. So the focus
was not to loose too much ground to our competition. Some of the
folks getting close to Tiburon seemed to have done well. It's always
tricky on that shore, I've had both great successes there and some
memorable failures. So I played it safe. After looking at the race
track, probably needed to go a bit deeper into the deep water channel
to get the most benefit from the current. But mostly focused on
playing the significant shifts that came along. It was a conveyor
belt through Racoon Straits, getting spat out on the Sausalito side in
no time. Here we stayed on the river as long as possible. The wind
picked up a bit on our reach across the bay and JetStream turned on
its afterburners passing a handful of boats on that leg and recording
our top speed of the day at 10+ knots.

Now we just had the short leg from Blackaller to the finish at GGYC.
Not a fun leg for use as we lost as many places as we gained on the
previous leg. The ebb was in full rage at this time and quite a bit
of boats converged in the area at the time of our rounding. The
strategy here was to stay as close to shore as possible to avoid the
worst of the current. It not always easy on our boat with a mixed
fleet of symmetrical and asymmetrical spinnakers. We need to keep a
hotter angle to keep moving and it was made more difficult with the
narrow runway and more than a few boats being able to square back
their poles and aim straight down the runway. Both Outsider and
Sapphire got back ahead of us in this leg, and we dropped a couple of
places on the Sportsboat division on the last mile.

We finished the race and kept the kite up all the way to TI. Made it
first to the hoist in Alameda (not a gun at the finish, but a good
reward nevertheless).

As of this writing the results are not yet posted. I'm hoping we will do top 10% on the fleet and I think we are looking at a 5th place in our class. Thanks Mark for a great day and great work.