2011 SSS Corinthian Race

A frustrating and sometimes even irritating day, with a decent ending.

@ Erik Simonson

Though light air sailing is not my favorite, nor my boat strength, its part of the sailors diet and you do the best with what you have.  Today, however, was a bit of a special day.  There was a gale blowing outside the gate, but inside the bay someone shut the switch.  How that can physically happen I still can't understand, but it was as if someone dropped a dome over the bay to shield it from the ferocious winds just outside.  My disappointment on the conditions was partly my own fault as I allowed myself to believe the forecast from the National Weather Service.  Last night calling for 15 to 30 knots, and this morning still calling for 10 to 20 with a Small Craft Warning for the bay.  None of which materialized.



But on to the racing.  Tom (aka Luchador Perro de Guerra) would complete the crew for today as we were sailing doublehanded.  We got to the club a bit early so had time to tie up and go to the upper deck to scout the conditions for the start.  LIGHT, with a decent flood near Angel Island.  We had chosen to do a pin start on port tack.  We were decently positioned with only one other boat to contend, a yellow Moore 24, also planning the same start.  He was a bit better positioned than us clear ahead and to leeward at the gun.  He was sailing singlehanded, so effectively we are not racing each other.  There was an opportunity for both boats to have a great start, but then he shut the door on us.  Now, I'm the first one to shut the door on bargers, but not at the cost of my own start.  The Moore had to pretty much luff head to wind to shut the door, which he effectively did.  I wasn't thrilled about that choice and probably had a few unfortunate words to share with the other skipper.  I just didn't see the point.  But we did a bailing tack in time to avoid a bad situation and got on with our start.

The leg to Little Harding was the traditional upwind to Point Belvedere, and staying North away from the worse of the current.  At this point the winds must have been around 8 - 10 knots from the Southwest, so the layline was more Alcatraz than Little Harding itself.   We recovered a bit from our late start, but still had some boats from our fleet ahead of us, both the Tiger and the ID35 were clear ahead by quite a bit.  We followed the procession towards Alcatraz on the way to Blossom Rock.  At the level of Alcatraz we set the kite.  Well, we had a bit of a problem with our first attempt, but got things sorted and got the kite up and pulling a couple minutes later.  We now started picking up boats, trying to get clean lanes through the fleet of boats in front of us.

We had  a clean rounding around Blossom and started headed towards Blackaller buoy.  Most of the boats ahead were headed towards the city front, but we found good pressure and current in the middle.  We picked a few more boats on the upwind leg, there was a bit more pressure on the southern edge of they bay.  We were know within striking distance of the leading boats.  We had a flawless set and started our run towards Point Blunt.  I allowed ourselves to get a bit tangled up with a couple of J boats and the Tiger, pinning us on port tack for longer than we wanted.  Eventually we were able to gybe away to better pressure and a better angle.   We were feeling pretty good now, we were with the leading boats with only Arcadia and Roshambo ahead of us.   We got to Arcadia just before Alcatraz.   The winds were now lightening up as we started sailing towards the northern edge of the bay.  We had to keep having to gybe onto starboard to avoid getting sucked into the hole in the lee of Angel Island.  These were painful gybes with negative VMG, but the alternative was to sit on a hole.  Sit on a hole we eventually did as the wind died a few hundred yards from South Hampton Shoals.  Any time we gybe towards the mark we will run out of wind.  Even giving the mark a wide berth did help us much.  Eventually the rest of the fleet caught up to us at the SHS restart.  This is the infuriating part.  At this point we are about 2/3rds of the way into the race, and having to make up your handicap in the last 1/3rd of the race would be a challenge.

Race wasn't over yet.  With these light conditions another big decision still had to be made.  Do we try Racoons Straits to sail around the South side of Angel Island.  By now the wind had filled from the South East.  Yes, the South East, it is not a typo.  So we gybed around SHS and aimed for the North end of the entrance to the Straits.   The choice wasn't easy, as there wasn't much sign of wind inside the Straits and the majority of the fleet had chosen the other way.  Surprisingly the wind held, and we were able to carry the spinnaker halfway down the Straits.   A new one for me, going West through Racoon's Straits with the kite up.....  Halfway down the Straits we met the Westerly, dropped the kite, and got on the ebb conveyor belt all the way to Little Harding. With this bit of luck, we had a huge gain over the folks that sailed around Angel Island.

One last set around Little Harding an on to the finish.  At this point we were the second boat in the fleet behind Roshambo and the first Monohull.   We finished in this order and got the gun for our class.   A nice reward for a very challenging day.

The results are already up, and though not bad, not as good as I had expected.  We finished 2nd in our DoubleHanded Sportsboat division just 5 seconds out of first.  We finished 5th Overall