JetStream Racing

JetStream Racing

Monday, July 25, 2011

Second Half Opener

The YRA Second Half Opener hosted by the Encinal Yacht Club is the second installment of the YRA Party Circuit 3 race series.  Andrew and Rob will join me for this weekend of racing.  Rob has been spending some time playing with the camera angles for this GoPros and we were lock and loaded.  Question was, would we be recording our success or our failures...  I was hoping for the former, as when the cameras go on, they stay on until the run out of juice.

Why mess with what ain't broke.  Breakfast at Ole's before heading out racing.  As there was going to be a long downwind leg to this race we were packing light, so outside of a bottle water each, the only consumables on board would be the ones you packed up in your belly before the race.  The race finishes right at the club docks so the cooler would be waiting for us there.

We had a better fleet of boats for this race with a couple of 1D35s, a couple of FT10s, the Henderson, a J90 and our JS9000.  We had a clean conservative start with plenty of room to leeward as we still continue to struggle to point with the fleet.   We sail a few degrees lower so its critical to keep some room.  Our strategy was to work on covering the fleet.  After a clearing tack to get away from the 1D that sailed over us we were back on starboard tack heading left.  As we entered the deep water most of the fleet tacked north towards Angel Island.  At this point we decided to stay on course as we were closer to enter the South ebb.  At this point we were behind both 1Ds and the J90, which all tacked to port.  We stayed on starboard with the Henderson and one of the FTs.   We hit the layline to Alcatraz and decided to go back and consolidate with the fleet now that we were in the strong current.  The Henderson kept going left a bit longer and that will pay off for them huge as the wind kept clocking left throughout the race.  When the fleet converged near the GG Bridge, the Henderson had a strong lead, and we had made up for our deficit when the fleet split and now were just ahead of the leading 1D and comfortably ahead of the J90.    We crossed a few tacks with the 1Ds around the GG and they eventually got ahead again.  The Henderson rounded Pt. Bonita first well ahead of the fleet, and we were close behind the 1Ds.

It was pretty mellow around Pt. Bonita, compare to the other times this year that we sneaked our bow out.  But still enough pressure to get a few surfs down a few 'smallish' swells.  We were sailing hot keeping up our speed and doing what we could to connect with some of the faces.  As we approached the bridge the pressure increased and the fun meter started recording high teens.  We pull a 'windsurfing' jibe down the face of a wave just before the bridge.  The boat accelerated throughout the jibe and the kite was in full trim as we exited.  FUN!

Jetstream Racing - Second Half Opener from rob blackmore on Vimeo.


We were having a good run down the city front trying to avoid what was left of the ebb, but kept running into light spots.  So we took one jibe out where we found better pressure and made our way towards Treasure Island.  We had good pressure all the way to the Bay Bridge where it started to lighten up.   We stretched our lead nicely on the windy section between the bridges, but now we could see the folks behind us getting bigger.  We could only hope that the pressure would hold in the Estuary before everyone rolled down on us.  We had to pull 17 jibes in the Estuary to make sure we kept our speed up.  But the pressure held and we got the gun at the finish.  Our competitors pushing hard behind us.

The great racing of the day was made even better by the hospitality at the club and the arrival of the family.   Gave AJ a tour of the docks and the boats before taking him to the club pool for a little fun time.  He then proceeded to spend the rest of his afternoon playing and wrestling with his future sailing friends.

Sunday we would repeat the day, but with a shorter race around Alcatraz, finishing back near the starting area.

Monday, July 18, 2011

West Point Regatta


July 16th was the 3rd Annual running of this regatta and our first appearance.  This time I would be joined by Rob and Erik.  The race is a tour of the Central Bay with a run down most of the length of the South Bay.  The race started at the NE end of Treasure Island, with Alcatraz as a rounding mark with the finish at the entrance of the Redwood City channel.  For me, it will be the first race South of San Francisco, but luckily the South Bay is Rob's home waters so we had all the local knowledge we needed for the second half of the race.

We started with the traditional feast at Ole's just to ensure we had enough energy for the race.  With a later start, there was no need to rush through the breakfast.  After loading up the boat we headed off to our delivery to the starting area.  I'm sure we got more than our usual share of stares as we had a few cameras mounted on the boat.  Both Rob and Erik like their cameras, so after a failed attempt of mounting a GoPro on the spreaders, we ended up with a GoPro mounted on the bow, another GoPro on Erik's head, a GoPro and a Flip on the stern antenna mast, and a handheld Flip with Erik.  I'm waiting for the editing of hours of footage, but I'll be posting the results in the future.

Being Erik's first ride on the boat we decided to get the kite up before the start for a practice run.  Good thing we did as we fixed a few bugs in the process.  We focused back on the race and started planning for out start and upwind strategy.

The pin was biased and I wanted a port start, but with a large number of boats and a smallish start line my first option was to lead the starboard boats and close the door on anyone attempting the port start at the pin.  We measured the 50 second line and came back early to the boat at the 1 minute mark.   Most of the boats windward of us were positioning for a boat end start, so we broke loose and reached down to the pin to go for our port start.  It worked perfectly.  We got enough separation from the starboard group and tacked on top of the only other boat at the pin end, crossing the fleet on port tack.  Our initial strategy called for hugging the TI shore for current relief, so after consolidating our port start we tacked back towards the island.  We found a stronger current near the island than expected, so we abandoned that strategy and headed towards the right side.  The runoff from the North Bay must still be quite strong as we had pretty good current until we reached the edge of Angel Island.  There we found the main flood coming in from the Gate.  At this point we had gained a substantial lead over the folks that stayed on the TI side of the course.  You only really get one shot to call the layline before getting into the 'river' and we went of what we thought was a very conservative layline.  But the river was really flowing and we weren't even close to clearing Alcatraz.  At this point you are pretty much stuck in the current and your only hope is that the rest of the fleet misses the layline as well.  After three more attempts we finally cleared Alcatraz and luckily hadn't lost too much to the rest of the fleet.

It was good to be done with the upwind part of the Race.  This race was billed as the South Bay downwind run, so we were ready to bear away and set some kites.  This course takes you through some of the most popular windsurfing and kiting venues in the San Francisco Bay, so we were excited about the wind possibilities.  Though the forecasts were pretty mild we still had high hopes.  So after clearing the edge of Alcatraz we set our A2 and head towards the Bay Bridge.  It is a beam reach but we are holding the kite and start separating from the rest of the fleet.  This is our sweet spot on the JS (well this and nuking downwind runs).  As we get closer to the bridge, we need to come up higher to stay on course so we decide to drop down to the A5 (probably should have called that to begin with anticipating the course change).  As we only have a single spin halyard and tack line, there is no peeling.  So we unfurl the jib, drop the big kite, hook the small kite, hoist and furl back the jib.  This is a process that we will end up doing a few times during the race as we would either be forced to change course and or the wind changed.

We really only had two tactical choices on the leg from the city to the San Mateo Bridge.   Either sail low of the rhumb line to keep the kite up, or stick to the rhumb line course.  With the flood current, the rhumb line course would give us a shorter distance plus better current.  The lower course would allow us to keep the kite up and take advantage of the right hand shift at the bottom of the course to make the channel for the bridge.   The low course also meant that you had to deal with a couple of shoals, so we decided to stick with the rhumb line.  That just meant that we had to keep changing gears between the reaching kite and white sails depending on the pressure and changes to the apparent wind angle.

We had built a nice lead on the reaching section of the course, but when the wind finally clocked a couple of miles before the San Mateo bridge, we could see the boat behind us sailing a deeper course with their symmetrical kites start to make some gains.  The pressure never really materialized and we were averaging around 8 - 8.5 knots on our run (in comparison to the 14 - 18s we can sustained in the 20+ knots known in this area).  But we were still ahead and not complaining (much).

After a couple of jibes we were under the bridge and on our final approach to the finish.  Rob called a perfect layline to the finish from across the bay and we gave ourselves and imaginary gun salute (you take your own finish time for this race as there is no RC on station).  After double checking and recording our finish time we enjoy a nice spinnaker run down the Redwood City channel.  We hit our top speed of the day at 13 knots (of course after we are done racing) and are having a great time in the new scenery.

We sail on to the guest dock of the Sequoia YC, where we are received with frosty cold beers by the Rear Commodore.  The results come out and it turned out to be much closer than we originally thought with the top 3 boats in the spinnaker division within a minute of each other after a 25 mile race.    Great day, great race with both first on time to finish and corrected.  I think we'll  be back.