Corinthian Redemption

The Corinthian Race, hosted by the Singlehanded Sailing Society, is a tour of the central San Francisco Bay with a Start/Finish line off the deck of the Corinthian YC in Tiburon.  Over 130 boats signed up for the race and with the new jib on hand we were ready to go.

From the Start, we head to Little Harding, followed by Blossom Rock, to Blackaller, up the North bay to Southampton Shoals, back to Little Harding before the finish.  Today the forecast was for light winds 5-10, starting from the North and eventually shifting to the West around 2 PM.

The start proved to be a bit of a fiasco.  With the wind blowing from the NE through Raccoon Straits it made for a light downwind start with a strong flood pushing East.  We, along a handful of other boats setup south of the line and approached it on starboard.  Most of the fleet was approaching from the East on port.  We were a few seconds late and were forced to gybe onto port as the fleet didn't budge at our right of way.  This unfortunately left us to windward of the fleet, and the same folks that fouled us by making us gybe closed the door on us at the pin end of the line.  The T650 just in front of us also got squeezed and touched the mark and had to come around as well.  By the time we got turned around and made our way back to the line against the flood we were the last boat to start the race.  Not how we wanted to start the day.

But we had some opportunities to make up.  By the time we reach Pt Belvedere we were back in the middle of it, getting around half of the fleet that have gone too far into the current.  Around Belvedere the wind filled in from the North and the spinnaker went up for the sail down to Blossom.   We intentionally overstood Little Harding to stay in the current relieve on the Sausalito side before cutting across to the San Francisco shore.   The boats in the middle of the bay closer to Alcatraz weren't looking that great so we kept working our way South.   By the time we reached Blossom we were on the top 5.

The leg from Blossom to Blackaller was a white sail close reach.  We edged towards the SF shore to get out of the worse of the current and it payed off well.  It was a drag race between ourselves, the Flying Tiger, Outsider, a couple of J boats close to shore and a couple of Trimarans enjoying the reaching conditions.  There was no hoisting of the kite around Blackaller (as we usually do) as the wind was still Northerly.  It was close hauled all the way up to Southampton.  There was  a wind transition between Pt Blunt and Alcatraz that only a few of us got through.   Roshambo had broken free early and had stretched.  The FT followed, with ourselves, the yellow tri, Jarlen and Outsider chasing.    There was no one else near. By the time we hit SH, Jarlen had gotten ahead of us and the Tiger being able to hold a higher line with their big genoa.  Initially both the Tiger and Jarlen looked to be headed on the South side of Angel Is, but after seeing we were headed through Raccoon they both came back.

We played the current and the N to W wind transition right through Raccoon and got ahead of both Jarlen and the FT before rounding our last mark on the way to the finish.   We saw Roshambo on the way to the finish as we were approaching Little Harding.  They will get the first to finish gun, but we would be the first monohull to finish, division winner and overall winner in corrected time.  A rewarding day after a frustrating start.