JetStream Racing

JetStream Racing

Monday, October 21, 2013

Torturous Vallejo

This last weekend got complicated real quick.  A late season change to the SSS schedule meant that I was home alone with the kid for the weekend, a new Sportboat championship regatta was setup for Saturday (with my guidance) and the SSS season closer of the Vallejo 1-2 all coincided.  What would get dropped?  Well the kid trumped the sailing (what kind of sailor am I), it can only be a 1 day sailing weekend.  Next, what race to do, the sportboat regatta on Saturday or the return from Vallejo on Sunday.  Rob and I were leading the double handed season coming in to the last race, so we decided to try to secure it.  Babysitter lined up for Sunday with mom returning early afternoon, so Vallejo it was.  I had tried to line up skipper for Saturday Sportboat regatta but that didn't work out.

Thankfully Rob and his buddy Charlie were available to deliver the boat to Vallejo on Saturday.  They have their own story to tell about that.  Instead, I did soccer, pool, and a lot of driving.   We made a brief cameo to the race committee at the Vallejo Yacht Club taking some of the finishers of Saturday's racing.  That too was hard to watch as boats just yards from the finish got swept back from the strong current and the light breeze.   Sunday eventually arrived, little breeze and strong adverse current.  At least we didn't get stuck on the mud trying to exit the marina.  We were only leading the double handed fleet by a very narrow margin.  We would have to beat the second place boat, Arcadia, or finish behind them in corrected to keep our lead.   We knew it would be a torturous day that we will have to see through to the race deadline at 6:00 PM.

After a 30 minutes postponement the race got started.   I know the RC was hoping for more wind that we knew wouldn't come, so all it did was result in even more current.  Oh well, they had good intentions.  We had a good start, we decided to go with the Code 0 hoping for a more stable sail to catch the little wind available.   We thought we were going to escape the current, but with no place to seek relief in the river whenever the breeze dropped, so did we, back to the starting line.  Eventually, we switched over the A2 and did a little bit better.  At the end we lost track of how many times we switched sailplans, from Code0, to A2, to jib.  Only the Farr36 cleared the river on the first pass.   The rest of us saw G5 multiple times.  There was a transition zone at the river entrance that proved difficult to connect without getting dragged back.

Eventually we crossed it, but not before Arcadia had caught up to us, even after starting 10 minutes behind.  The lack of breeze and current pretty much erased that gap.  We probably had 8 lead changes (just between JetStream and Arcadia) before leaving the river.  We finally got past G1 at the river entrance, this was well past noon.  It had taken us over two hours to cover 2.5 miles.  An exhilarating 1knot VMG.  It wouldn't get better for the next hour, barely making over 1knot of VMG along the sea wall on the North side of the channel.  Short tacking on 5 knots of breeze against a 2 knot current its not JetStream strong point.  Sailing by brail trying to keep a couple of feet of water under the keel, Arcadia stretched out a lead to a few meters, and even the U20 started gaining on us.  We were trying hard, rolling every tack and fighting the ****ing battens to get them to pop to the new tack every 60 seconds.

At this point the odds were starting to switch agains us, given how much time we've already been on the water and not being anywhere close to the halfway point, the likelihood of us correcting ahead quickly diminished.  We started hoping the the clock would just run out.  But no, just to dig in the dagger a little deeper we could see the breeze filling in across San Pablo.  Both Arcadia and us got the breeze at the same time and we started making our way to the shallow water on the South side.  At this point we were the leads of the pack as the two trimarans in front of us retired.    The U20, just hanging around behind us.  Arcadia smartly kept a loose cover on us.  At this point it was still a light fill and we struggled to make any gains, but as the breeze continued to build we began gaining.  Just past Pinole we were to be beam to Arcadia about 100 yards to the North, in a bit deeper water and more (now favorable) current.  This was going to be a race to the finish if the conditions held, and they did.

By the time we hit the Brothers we had gotten a bit of a lead.   We wouldn't beat Arcadia, so the plan now was to get to the finish as quickly as possible and hope that the time would run out for the rest of the fleet.   But the same current that conspired against us at the start of the race by holding us back, would conspire again with a favorable current to allow the boats behind to finish in time.  And so it went.  Arcadia had a hell of a race and so did the U20.  Ultimately, three boats would place between JetStream and Arcadia, more than enough to secure Arcadia's win for the DH season, a well deserved win.   We gave it a good fight in difficult conditions.  It was a nice consolation to be the first boat over the finish line, but that wasn't the ultimate goal.

Big thanks to Rob for awesome crew work, movie making and overall great attitude.

Monday, September 2, 2013

The right tool for the job

This last Saturday we participated in the 25th running of the Jazz Cup, a race from Treasure Island to Benicia.  It is about 26 miles of downwind sailing and one of our favorite races.  This year, Rob and Roscoe would join me for the run down.

The forecasted conditions called for a moderate breeze and a building ebb.  We needed to get to Benicia before 3:30 to have enough depth to enter the marina.  We got to the starting area early and watch the early fleets start.  There was some confusion on the early starters and many rounded the wrong windward mark.  We double checked our charts to make sure we knew where we had to go.   Start was a little exciting.  We wanted the pin end, preferably on port tack.  The Thompson 650 was also tooling around the pin end with similar intentions.  With a minute to go they switched tactics and decided to attack the pin on starboard tack.   We were committed to port.  I thought they were going to be a bit late and committed to the pin.  We didn't quite make it.   The Thompson had to bare away to avoid clipping our stern.  Its been a while since I've been in the wrong end of a crossing.  We cleared the rest of the fleet and once we had room we took care of our penalty.   Still, we had a smart upwind leg and managed to claw our way back rounding the windward mark in second place behind the Henderson 30.   There was a nice breeze in the mid teens, and after reaching for a 100 yards or so we sent the kite up.

The reach had us pointing straight to Richmond, lower than most of the fleet.  Always counting on the wind clocking left to clear the restricted area along the Richmond wharf.   With a new trimmer and me a little rusty we lost it a few times.  Can't remember wiping out so many times.  I might have been pushing a little too hard with the knot-meter showing 20 a couple of times.  But we had quick recoveries and continued the charge.    Near Richmond we hit the normal wind hole, dropped the kite and climbed upwind for a bit to get on the building westerly.  Kite back up, up the East side of Red Rock and along the Richmond side to San Pablo.   The folks at the Brothers decided to blast their fog horn (there was no fog) as we sailed by, making me almost jump off the boat.




Up to this point we still had a few boats in front of us, and the Melges 24 and Thompson 650 charging hard from behind, bringing more breeze with them.  It lighten up for a bit after rounding San Pablo, but the fun ride was a about to begin.  We could see the fog inland and could see the breeze filling in from the Southwest just ahead.  We quickly set up the secret weapon, our Code 0, for the reach across San Pablo bay.   That was the race for us.  We just took off pointing straight to Vallejo.  The folks behind, either struggle too deep with their kites or dropped down to white sails.  We still had some early starters in front of us, but we did a good job reeling them in.  The last boat in front was a well sailed Moore 24,  we came up their stern and used that opportunity to reset the kite.  We worked both sides of Carquinez Straits looking for breeze and managed to keep the charging 40+ footers behind us.  An uncrowded couple of roundings and the first monohull across the line.


Sailed to the dock slightly scraping the bottom on the entrance to the marina.  We finished by 3 so just enough water to let us in.  We stayed for drinks and the awards party, waiting for the tide to come back up and release us.  A 10 PM departure, a pleasant motor back under autopilot and crew and boat safely back in Alameda by 3:30 AM.  Long, but fruitful race.  I don't think we'll ever leave that Code 0 behind.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

A trying Silver Eagle Race

We pulled the plug at TI at around 6:30, If the wind cooperated there was going to be at least another 3 hours of racing, and if it didn't who knows. It was an up and down race. There were multiple races in the race, if I look at them independently we did great, but if you put it all together, well it would have sucked.

Day started with a jammed main halyard, had to pull into the GGYC marina. With a locking main the actual halyard is really small and light and if its breeze and we are not careful it can jump the sheave and jam. Well it was breeze and we weren't careful. Didn't have to climb the mast. If we get a long line (which we now carry) and enough angle on it, we can give it a good pull and pop it out.


First race, start and central bay: OK start in good pressure. Had to do a couple clearing tacks to get on a good lane. A bit of a too close lee bow by a friendly competitor, way too early in a long race to call for a foul (and we didn't carry our protest flag anyways). Got to the windward mark first closely followed by the Melges 24 (those boats can point). Initially thought the reach to LH would be too tight to set so we had set up for a gibe set at LH, but we had it all wrong. Halfway up to LH we could have set but had everything in the wrong side. Kept high to give us enough room to gibe-set and and gibe back. Good pressure and started separating from the Melges and the FT. Gibed at LH and couldn't make Blossom with the big kite up. Kept on going a little ways to have a better angle to Blossom, dropped and had a fast white sail reach to Blossom. By the time we rounded Blossom we have built a healthy lead. We stayed middle-right to avoid the worst of the lee of Angel Island and as we neared Pt. Blunt we reset the kite to push us further East to try to get around the hole and avoid the remaining ebb. There was to getting around the hole and here we parked it for around 45 minutes, seeing all the folks behind us join us. We had lunch and waited and waited for enough of a breeze to get us to the other side. Kite up, kite down, jib up, jib down, repeat....


The folks on the island side got free first, but it quickly filled in to a let us loose too. We followed the Tiger for a bit and then broke to the right in search of more pressure near the Richmond restricted area. Not sure everyone respected the restricted area, but again, no flag and that one is a bit harder to proof unless you can get the right picture or have some witnesses. We quickly got in the lead again and led the fleet to PCM. Nice cruising conditions, flat water 10 - 12 knots. Good time to let the crew get some driving time. Got to PCM first and started to work our way back. We went right to try to avoid as much of the building flood as possible.


A pleasant upwind leg to the sisters, with the Melges making up some ground on us on the lightish conditions, we had a bit of speed on them but they had 5+ degrees of point on us. Decision time at the Sisters, stay North and try to run the edge of the current or cut across to San Pablo. North seemed a long way around to were we needed to be, so we cut across with the monohull fleet following. But 3/4 of the way to the shallows on the San Pablo side the wind shut down and we got caught in no-mans land. Center channel in a f&*% flood and no breeze. The folks behind saw it and tacked away. Eventually we worked our way to the shallows and short tacked up to San Pablo Pt. Played the cone on the Brothers and gained back some of what we had lost to the Tiger and Melges that were now in front of us. More shore tacking between the piers. While both the Melges and the Tiger continued short tacking up to the bridge, we broke out early and headed to Red Rock, with the eventual goal of getting to the westerlies first. This seemed to pay off. We crossed the Richmond Bridge first and got past Red Rock first. Us on the West side and the Tiger and the Melges on the East. We kept playing the right, but the two breezes were in constant fight right over us with neither dominating. The Melges committed way to the East, we played the West and the Tiger was in the middle. For a while we looked really good, but the Melges got the breeze first and shot off to the lead. Another wind hole around Southampton before we could catch up to the strong westerly in the slot. At this point we were on a tight reach to the West side of TI chasing down the Melges. Solid 20 - 25 knots in the slot, but the long day was wearing down on us.


We almost put the outboard on at the lee of Angel, but the Westerly filled in and we decided to continue racing and re-evaluate at TI. It was past 6 at the time we reached TI and we decided to pull the plug and head to the leeward side of TI towards Alameda. We were still sailing when we crossed the Bay Bridges and what we saw solidified our decision to call it a day. It looked really light on the South Bay. 


Well, that was that, motored down the Estuary, saw the Can and Ghost, ghosting down the Estuary on their way to finish. Hopefully a better run next year. Congrats to the finishers, it was certainly a trying day.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

SSS Corinthian - got Moorified

Courtesy of pressure-drop.us
Saturday proved to be a beautiful day for sailing in the San Francisco Bay.  The SSS Corinthian Race is an 18 mile tour of the central bay.  The race starts off the deck of the Corinthian YC in Tiburon, sends up past Alcatraz and along the San Francisco city front, over towards Richmond to South Hampton Shoals and back around to Tiburon.

Rob joined me for this Doublehanded race.  The race was postponed by 30 mins to wait for the Westerlies to build, and though they made a valiant effort by the time of our start 25 minutes later they had mostly faded away.  We had a clean, good start, but in the light conditions we lost some ground to the better light air boats.  Both the 1D35 stretched ahead and even some the Moore24 with their overlapping genoas managed to beat us to the first mark.  By the time we reached Little Harding the Westerly was building to the mid teens and we had a good screaming reach across the Bay towards Blossom.  We deployed the Code 0 halfway down the reach, once I knew I could clear Alcatraz and we started picking up boats.    I tried twice to get through a couple of boats lees, but that failed both times making us loose a little time.

But by the time we reached Blossom we had passed the Moore's that were ahead of us and where within striking distance of the 1D35s.  Here we split the majority of the fleet headed towards the city front.  It was still early in the flood and we decided to head towards Alcatraz and head to the city front later in the leg.  This payed off, by the time we crossed with the city front group we had significantly shortened the gap.

The tighter fleet resulted in a first for me in over ten years of racing in the SSS, I protested a competitor.    Not that I have anything against calling fouls and throwing a red flag, it is part of the sport and how the rules are enforced.  But the culture of the SSS, given that everyone is sailing shorthanded, is to avoid close situations.  In this particular case one of the 1D35 on port tack failed to give us right of way as the starboard boat.  Attempting this close pass was a bit uncalled for, but fine you try, but the reaction of the other skipper at failing the pass and fouling us was just ridiculous.   Not only did the other skipper did not attempt to avoid us (didn't even bother to change course) resulting in us having to do a crash tack, but later refusing to do his penalty circles and claiming to us later down the course that we had altered course.  Our two boats continued to cross tacks up the city front without further incident, until closer to the windward mark where they again failed to give us right of way as the starboard boat.   At the end of the day they withdrew from the race (DNF), but the protest form was ready to go.

The stress of short tacking up the city front gone, we rounded the windward mark and set the kite towards South Hampton.  We took a quick gybe to take advantage of the stronger pressure on the San Francisco side and that paid hugely.   By the time we got to Alcatraz there were only two monohulls and 2 multihulls ahead of us.  The multihulls we wouldn't see again, those two F-31s were gone, but we caught up to the two monohulls (Q and a J-44)  before reaching South Hampton.  This was some of the nicest sailing I have done in a while.  Sunny, flat water, powered up with 12 - 15 knots of boat speed, without a care.  I could have just kept going.

Now came the big decision, to Racoon-it or not.  You normally can get a better VMG going through Racoon Straits, as long as you can quickly navigate around the wind hole in the lee of Angel Island.  As the first monohull the decision was up to us, though we had seen the two leading multihulls choosing not to go through Racoon.  With a visible windhole and a flood current, we decided to stay in the breeze and go around Angel Island avoiding the Racoon Straits.

We tried to protect our position with the boats behind us, but with the longer waterline the J-44  passed us before Pt Blunt, and Q with its incredible pointing ability was closing the gap rapidly.   We managed to keep Q behind us, but by the time we reached Little Harding again they were only a few boatlengths behind us.

We prepared ourselves for a screaming run to the finish.  Rounder the mark, hoisted the kite and ..... WTF, what is going on, the kite is not filling, the wind is on our nose.  Took us a few seconds to realize  that we are in a massive wind hole.  The whole area between Little Harding and the finish is dead, nada.  We drop the kite get the jib up and try to work the zephyrs.  It is a very delicate breeze and we get into ghosting mode.   With the current in our favor, our main concern is to try to stay upcurrent of the finish line to ensure the current doesn't sweep us past the line without finishing.

I do feel for the guys on the J-44, they were clear ahead of us, maybe 2/3rs from the finish by the time we rounded Little Harding, but in these conditions they were just parked while we were ghosting at around 2 knots and were able to pass them within a couple hundred yards from the finish.  Close to the finish the breeze backed again and we hoisted the kite again and two gybes later we finished the race under spinnaker.

We probably could have hoisted a little earlier, though not clear if that would have covered the time needed to beat the two Moore 24 that got us on corrected time.  We did get the win in our division and were the first monohull to finish, with a respectable 3rd Overall behind the two Moore's that got us.  Great day on JetStream.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

2013 Three Bridge Fiasco

The biggest race in the US.  365 boats entered for this version of the race all racing either single or double handed only, run by the Singlehanded Sailing Society of San Francisco.  There is a lot of anticipation and this year was no different.  Rob will be returning to crew for JetStream.  I spent a bit of time crunching some numbers to see if there was a strategic advantage on which way to run the course. For a Westerly breeze, running the course counter clockwise showed a slight advantage for our start time and the angles our boat likes.  But it wasn't a deal breaker, so conditions at the start would ultimately determine our course strategy.

We made it up to the start area with plenty of time, so tied up to one of the nice new docks at the GGYC and got the boat rigged up for some racing.  On the motor over to the start we could see the breeze was already nicely filled in around Treasure Island at around 10 knots.  On the starting area it was already blowing around 12, and we could also see that there was little to no breeze on the northern side of the bay.  This determined our course for the day, we would go counter clockwise: TI, Red Rock, Blackaller.

We set up for our pursuit style start, set the kite and were off heading towards the middle to take advantage of the remaining flood.  We didn't see too many people follow us choosing to go the other route, but we soon saw the Farr 30 set the kite behind us and we knew the race was on.  We got around TI smoothly and started to work our way North on a tight reach.  Everything was progressing according to plan.  Even better, we could see the folks that went the other way parked at the exit of Raccoon Straits.  Then, we caught up to the fleet ahead of us and the wind hole blocking our path.  The  solid Westerly dissipated around the Berkeley pier.   We could see a wind line on the north and the shore side so we tried to head to that.  The Farr 30 stayed on the west side as they eliminated the lead we had and separated for us.  So now a waiting game to see who will get the new breeze first.

The first sign of the bad things to come was seeing the guys on Raccoon take off on a new NW breeze.    That wouldn't bade well for us going CCwise.  It will transform the TI to Red Rock race from a beam and broad reach to an upwind leg.  While the clockwise folks would get a dream downwind run.  Our only hope at this point was for the clockwise folks to find a wind hole around TI.  But that didn't happen.  In any case, we still had a race in our hands with the folks going CCwise with us.  The Farr 30 and Farr 36 both got ahead and rounded Red Rock ahead of us.    At least, we could bare away and set our kite again.  In our rush to get up and going I called for the setting of the A2.  Had I thought about it for a second or two, I would have probably realized that it was a pretty tight reach and the A5 would have been a better call.  But we set the kite and started reeling in boats, passing the Farr 36 and gaining some back on the Farr 30.  We couldn't hold the angle to Raccoon Straits and were forced to drop the kite halfway down the leg.

The entrance to Raccoon Straits delivered on our own personal, special gift.  Our own private wind hole.  Even though we were following the line of the Farr 30 in front of us, we magically ran into a wind hole that had plenty of breeze just a few minutes before.   I lost my cool momentarily as folks behind us, particularly the Farr36 tacking the corner tight, squeezed by in better current and just got away.  After a frustrating beat through the Straits we finally punched in to the breeze and the reach across the Bay to Blackaller.   We were reveling in the now breeze conditions on a white sail reach.    We caught up with a few Moore 24s in front of us and got to the mark around some boats.  A bit too congested for the conditions.

This time we set the right sail as it was now blowing 25+.  A couple close encounters in challenging conditions while jibing down the city front.  A hundred yards or so from the finish line we blew the vang during a jibe, but managed to keep things together (most importantly the rig) through the finished. We quickly dropped the kite and jury rigged the vang to get us safely home.  Finished a little after 1:40, on course for less than 3.5 hours in a beautiful January day in San Francisco Bay.    We didn't get the results we had hoped for but were pretty satisfied with the performance.

The results are still not in, so hard to tell how far back from the leaders we ended up.  We also had some GoPros on board so there should be some footage in the near future.  Look for updates here.

Here is our non-winning course (counter clockwise):
JetStream's 2013 counter clockwise track