The Lightship is a buoy marking the center of the approach lanes into the San Francisco Bay. It extends another 9 miles past lands end in the middle of the Gulf of the Farallones. With the start at the Golden Gate Yacht Club, it made for a 25 mile race. Traditionally, we can have strong NW winds, that make for some upwind work out to the mark, rewarded by a screaming run back to the gate.
This is the doublehanded version of the race and Andrew had agreed to come out and play. We had been following the weather the whole week since there were a few storm systems approaching. The forecast continually deteriorated throughout the week from a southerly 15 - 25 knoter on Monday to 10 knots by Friday for our Saturday race. We missed the good winds by 10 hours. As they did clock the 25 knots Friday night but quickly diminished as the center of the storm passed us. We were left with light S-SE winds that clocked to the East throughout the day. If you have read any of my previous reports you know that 10 knots is not our ideal for the JS, but we had been looking forward to do this race and had all the tools in our inventory to be as competitive as we could.
Friday I spent some time getting the boat ready. We were modifying one of the halyards so that it would go through the mast exit more freely, but the splice ended up being too big to fit. So we would go with only one spinnaker halyard. This will come back to hunt us, as the reason we put the second halyard was for races like this one where we would want to quickly switch back and forth between the spinnakers and the Code0. Also with the weather in the area the battery hadn't fully charged with the solar panel so we were running a little light on juice.
We got to the start line in overcast and misty conditions. The rain started before the start and it never stopped, all day, even into the evening when we were putting the boat away. So needless to say it was a very wet day. At the start we had a light breeze from the NE. With the wind forecasted to be SE we opted to hoist our A2 at the start. With the north component and some of the bigger boats messing with our breeze we weren't doing too hot. Condor had a flat reaching kite up and Akyla had their Code0 and they both immediately stretched on the fleet. We switched to our Code0 and started to make some progress. By the Gate we had Akyla in our sight with only Truth (a modified Open50) and Condor (an Open 40) ahead. We played the middle on the way out to take advantage of the last of the ebb, hoping to get past lands end before the flood grabbed a hold of us. From the results, only 5 finishers out of 29 starters, it looks like only Condor, Truth, Akyla, Rufless (an 11 meter) and us were the only boats to escape before the flood. We worked the south side of the course. Truth had stretched ahead of us on the same line with Condor also ahead on a more northern track. That left Akyla, Rufless and us (the thirty somethings footer) sprinting to the mark. We were pretty much even the whole way with Rufless in the most northern track flying their kite, Akyla playing the middle and us on the Southern track, both of us flying our Code0s.
Did I say that it didn't stop raining? With the rain, cold and confused seas just outside the gate in the light air, I lost my crew to sea sickness around the channel makers. The right kind of foul weather gear is critical when it is expected to rain. Once you are wet and cold there is no return even on a relatively short race like this one. Based on our angle to the mark I should have switched over to one of the kites, but with the autopilot out of reach, I decided not to risk a mishap and carried on with the Code0. On the puffs I could sail down to the mark but on the mostly light stuff I had to keep on heating up to keep the boat moving. We ended up having to make a short gybe to get around mark. Out of our group of 3, Rufless rounded first and Akyla followed just a few boatlengths ahead of us.
It was around 12:30 when we rounded. I rolled up the Code and the jib came back out for our upwind return to the finish. The wind was still light and now from the SE, and we were still feeling under powered. There was a strong South to North current showing on the Lightship when we rounded. Now the race was to get back under the gate before the ebb was set to start around 3.
Speaking about foul weather gear (you thought I was done with that?), when going on the ocean must wear the ocean gear with zippers and shit. The inshore gear I took for the race is dry and warm enough, and it is much lighter which makes it much more comfortable to wear (and the reason I took it). The problem you ask, is that it makes some things not very accessible. If you need to fully undress to reach the critical bits, I have now learned, you just don't wear it when you are short handed on the ocean. I found myself having to pull a 'surfer move' when singlehanding the boat back after the turn. Not enough time to find and rig the autopilot, take the harness off, jacket off (and get wet in the rain), top of salopette off, etc.
Anyways back to sailing. The angle back had us pointing North of the entrance to the Bay but still was the favorable tack. Every once in a while we could point to Bonita, but the average angle was North of Bonita and with the forecast calling for the wind to clock to the East, it would get worse. We were on the heels of Akyla for the next few miles and could see Rufless ahead and to leeward about 1.5 miles ahead. We saw Rufless tacking ahead of the and Akyla quickly followed. We stayed on our course as we hadn't gotten a significant header yet and the wind seemed to be improving the closer we got to shore. We didn't go in as far as Rufless and when we got the header the port tack had us pointing straight to Seal Rocks on the Southern edge of the entrance to the Bay. This course had us on the shoals, but the conditions were pretty benign in the light offshore conditions (no whitecaps).
A few miles from Pt. Bonita I could see other boats still with their spinnakers up trying to sail out. We were already done with 3/4 of the race and some of these folks were still fighting to get through the first 1/4. Sure the flood locked them in. I think 10 to 15 minutes made the difference between being able to get out before the thick of the flood and not getting out at all.
There wasn't any significant change in the wind, other than it slowly continuing clocking to the East as predicted. The only variable now was the current. We were approaching the gate during the change in currents so it was going to get a little tricky to try to find the advantages. We hedged towards the south side and seem to have gained some on Akyla. I couldn't find Rufless, they gotten us, so we were now focusing on trying to make our time on Akyla. The entrance to the Bay greeted us with nice flat water, and it is not often that we have to beat into the wind on our way back into the Bay. It would have been enjoyable had it not been for the relentless rain and cold.
We were able to crack off a little from the Gate back to the finish line. I miscalculated a bit the current and was forced to take a short tack just before the finish line. We finished at 3:35 for and elapsed time of 6:25 minutes.
| Sail # | Boat Name | Place | Skipper | Rating | Finish Time | Elpased Time | Corrected Time | Club | Make | Comments | ||||||||||
| 246 | RUFLESS | 1 | Rufus Sjoberg | 69 | 14:54:59 | 05:54:59 | 05:26:14 | ryc | 11 Meter | |||||||||||
| 101 | TRUTH | 2 | Alex Mehran Jr | -123 | 13:51:54 | 04:51:54 | 05:43:09 | cca | Open 50 | |||||||||||
| 9045 | JETSTREAM | 3 | Daniel Alvarez | 63 | 15:25:31 | 06:25:31 | 05:59:16 | sss | Js 9000 | |||||||||||
| 163 | AKYLA | 4 | Zhenya Kirueshkin-stepano | 81 | 15:46:50 | 06:46:50 | 06:13:05 | santa cr | Hobie 33 | |
The boat is signed up to do next Saturday's DH Farallones. This is the big brother of the DH Lightship at around 55 miles roundtrip. We'll see what the weather brings before we make a call on that one. And yes, the battery will be fully charged, the autopilot at hand, the halyards fixed, and most importantly, I will be wearing my Ocean foulies.
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