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.....
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