Vallejo 2

By Sue Estey

Sunday brought with it overcast conditions and some rain.  After a little breakfast with Mike at the Sardine Can, I met up with Mark at the Vallejo YC.   Mark crewed for the return trip to Richmond.  The forecast was to be from 10 to 20 knots again from the SW, but I don't think we saw more than 12 knots during the race with a few periods of no wind at all after some of the rain clouds passed overhead.

The wind at the start was just right to try out the new A5.  This is a reaching spinnaker, and with the wind just ahead of the beam it was perfect for the reach out of the straits.   We set up high on the start line to have some runway to set the kite, and as soon as we got a clear lane the kite went up.  We quickly passed most of the boats in our fleet and got to chase Outsider who got off to a clean start and was leading.   As far as I could tell we were the only boat flying a spinnaker and we were making good speed.  We got ahead of Outsider, but put the kite in the water during the douse and they caught up.  We again picked a high line to exit the river and it payed off well, leading the sportboat fleet out to San Pablo Bay.

We shore tacked off the north side of the channel to stay out of the main current, and took a hitch across before getting too close to the restricted area.  We were now chasing Arcadia and some of the Wylie 30's.  We had wanted to keep a loose cover on Outsider but we split sides at this point.  Initially the split worked for Outsider as they found some favorable current closer to the channel (a bit counter intuitive as it should have been flooding), but the angle was better on the left side and the wind eventually filled from the South ultimately giving us an advantage.

Around Pt. Pinole, a couple of rain bands started to pass through making things a bit miserable onboard, with the light winds and soaking conditions.  We found some emergency rum onboard to keep us warm through the worst of it.  We stayed patient and continued working the left side (South) of the course.  For the conditions we were holding our own as the lighter conditions upwind are not very favorable for JetStream.  The Hobbie 33, Olson30 and Express27, with their larger genoas were not far behind and well within the corrected credits.

We cleared the Richmond restricted area and set the reaching kite one more time to the finish.  It payed off again, allowing us to pass a few more boats in route.  We had a good finish boat for boat, but didn't quite put enough time on our competitors to correct strongly.  So the success of Saturday was not repeated on Sunday, but a good time was had nevertheless.  For the regatta we would finish 2nd behind the Express 27 Motorcycle Irene.  Link to preliminary results and race article in norcalsailing.

Closing the 2010 Season - Vallejo 1

This past weekend we had our final race of the Singlehanded Sailing Society 2010 Season.  The Vallejo 1-2  is a 2-day race.  The first day the whole fleet sails singlehanded from the Berkley Circle to the Vallejo Yacht Club, and on Sunday we reverse courses and sail doublehanded from the Vallejo Yacht Club to the Richmond Yacht Club.  Mark joined me on the Sunday race.  JetStream would have to defend its win last year.

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day.  Day started as our usual sailing days with an early breakfast with Mike at Ole's.  A little grease and grits to take us through the day.  The new (used) 6 HP outboard, although a bit heavier, is both smooth and quite and showed great reliability.  It also pushes the boat at 7 knots which makes for a bit quicker deliveries and has an external fuel tank which eliminates the need to continuously refill.  The forecast called for a strong 15 - 25 from the SW, so we prepared for a fast race.   SW winds meant that we would be reaching across San Pablo Bay so we initially set up with our reaching kite.  But ten minutes before our start, the earlier starters looked to be in very light air so we switched back to the large running spinnaker.  We had a decent start with the whole fleet starting on port reaching up towards Red Rock.  With the T650 to windward and Outsider to leeward I choose to stay in the middle and stay in touch with both boats.  Soon it looked like we could set the kite and hold our course above the buoy marking the restricted area off the Richmond fueling docks.  With the big kite up in a beam reach we started trucking and passing some of the earlier starters.  It would have been better to have the reaching kite up for this leg, but right after the restricted area we would have to bear off and be in a full downwind run.  The boat is not set up for spinnaker peels so we committed to the big kite.  It was some hard work to reach above the mark while holding the spinnaker, but our center position paid off putting some distance between ourselves and the rest of the sportsboat fleet.  Before getting to the Richmond Bridge we had caught up many of the early starters, and only had about a dozen boats still in front of us.  The winds had stayed pretty moderate with about 10 knots as we made our way to the Brothers.

After rounding the Brothers there were now just three boats in front of us.  'True North', 'Arcadia' and 'Ragtime!'.  True North was sailing non-spinnaker so we quickly passed them.  Halfway to Pinole Pt we caught up with Arcadia and by Pinole Pt we were in the lead.  The wind had know picked up to the low to mid teens and we were in a beam reach fully powered up.We were sail a hotter angle than the rest of the fleet and we extended our lead through this section.  We sailed conservatively the rest of the way, crossed over to the Vallejo side of the channel and prepared for our spinnaker douse as we entered the Mare Island Straights.  I could have kept the spinnaker up a little longer, but didn't want to risk and emergency take down inside the Straights.  But the winds were light and we lost some of our lead here.   Still, JetStream was the first boat to finish the race and was received with the blast of a gun.  We made record time for us, getting to Vallejo before 1:30 PM.  It was a good start for our title defense.

Sunday's race report to follow.....