We knew it was going to be exciting as it coincided with a storm arriving in the area. The forecast was for winds of 10 - 15 knots, with gusts in the 20s. Needless to say it was substantially off, as we were seeing gusts over 30 just before the start. Throughout the race we saw winds in the 15 - 25 range with gusts in the 30s.
Since Mark lives just up the hill from Tiburon I would just pick him up at the yacht club before the race. This meant that I would do the 2+ hours delivery from Alameda by myself. So it was an early start for me with a 6am wake up call. Well, more like a 4am wake up call since our 3 month old decided it was breakfast time. Already up, gathered my stuff and headed down to the boat. I left the dock by 8am, autopilot on and outboard purring nicely up the Estuary. The wind was already filled in and soon after I excited the Estuary I was able to turn off the outboard and jib sail all the way to TI. It got a little light around TI and we motor sailed the rest of the way to Tiburon. Arrived at the club around 10 AM for our 11:25 start. Lots of boats already sailing around of what would be a fleet of over 100 boats for the race. I tied up at the club, went up to chat with some of the other sailors and race committee and waited for Mark to arrive.
Mark soon arrived and we got dressed for the wet and cold weather, and got the boat ready. Already some strong gusts where hitting the marina. It would have been nice to raise the main in the protection of the marina, but it would have required a few turns in close quarters to get out. JetStream doesn't like tight turns, so we elected to back out of the marina and power out. All went smooth, except that it was gusting to 30 knots outside the marina and very bumpy, and we still needed to get the main up. We motored out to Angel Island to try to find some protection on the lee of the island, but there wasn't much to be found. But the main had to go up, so Mark and I got on task. After a few tries it was up and we were powered up.
Not having a reef on the main, during some of the stronger gusts the thought came to my mind to pull the plug. The rig didn't look too happy with the sails thrashing around, so we took it easy on the pre-start staying out of the way and waiting for our sequence. We had a great start, close to the pin, and within a few minutes we were leading our fleet. We stayed on the ebb all the way to Little Harding and cracked off on a course east of Alcatraz on our way to Blossom Rock. We went a little deeper than the rest of the fleet. This would be a good leg for us and I knew we would be passing a few boats on the reach and wanted to avoid a string of luffing duels. It paid off as we gave Alcatraz a wider berth and were able to catch a few boats that fell into the windhole on the east of Alcatraz. The wind had moderated a bit from that of the start and we were pretty comfortable aboard JetStream....
The conditions made for an easy trip to Blackaller. With the SW winds you could almost lay the mark. A quick short tack to make up the difference and we were around Blackaller. On the way to the mark we had some very strong puffs, so we were debating whether to set the kite after the rounding towards South Hapmpton Shoals. But it felt light enough after we rounded and the kite quickly went up. What a ride.... we had a couple of moments of pure speed and adrenaline. We don't have a knotmeter on board so we can't say how fast we were going and during our top speeds we had no free hands to look at the GPS, but if we didn't hit 20 knots, we were at the very top end of the teens... The only boat with a kite up ahead of us was the F-24 Tri and they were putting up a lot of spray.... During the run a ferry crossed right in front of us putting up a huge wake. I was worried the the boat would just plow into the wave with negative consequences... but it punched through the first wake and skipped over the next and we were off again. I overstood the layline to our next mark and jibed too late. We couldn't hold the tighter course with the kite up and crashed the boat in a broach. Mark released the kite, but it took releasing the vang to get the boat back on its feet. We got the boat going full speed again and prepared to drop the kite. At this point it was really blowing, upper 20s, but Mark pull a great windward douse.
After rounding SH, we had an upwind leg up Racoon Straits back to Little Harding (again). It was blowing now, easily 30 knots on the beam and whitecaps everywhere. No risk today of the dreaded wind hole behind Angel Island. On the contrary, seems the SW winds were compressing and accelerating in the gap between Angel Island and Tiburon. With the help of the ebb, it made for a quick leg back to Little Harding. All that was left now, was the downwind finish. We felt pretty comfortable at this point and again reconsider putting up the kite, but someone else had already set theirs and ours went up immediately. There were only a couple of trimarans and 2 or 3 larger monohulls ahead of us at this point. After a couple of jibes we crossed the finish line with an elapsed time of about 2 hours and 30 minutes on an 18 mile course, a 7.2 knot average over the course. Not bad for a 30 foot boat.
We pulled back into the marina to drop off Mark and enjoy some well deserved cold beers. We were tired and sore from the challenging conditions, but full of adrenaline from our performance. After about an hour I couldn't further delay the inevitable delivery back to Alameda. I wanted to take it easy so the main was off the boom. I jib sailed all the way to TI and motor sailed the rest of the way. Half way down the Estuary the sun came out and helped dry things off. With the help from Andrew put the boat away and got on my way home. Got home around 7 PM, 12 hours after I left.... Long day.
4/12 -- Results are in. JetStream finished 1st in Sportboats Class, and 2nd Overall in the Doublehanded division, with the fastest elapsed time for a monohull.
