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| Courtesy of pressure-drop.us |
Rob joined me for this Doublehanded race. The race was postponed by 30 mins to wait for the Westerlies to build, and though they made a valiant effort by the time of our start 25 minutes later they had mostly faded away. We had a clean, good start, but in the light conditions we lost some ground to the better light air boats. Both the 1D35 stretched ahead and even some the Moore24 with their overlapping genoas managed to beat us to the first mark. By the time we reached Little Harding the Westerly was building to the mid teens and we had a good screaming reach across the Bay towards Blossom. We deployed the Code 0 halfway down the reach, once I knew I could clear Alcatraz and we started picking up boats. I tried twice to get through a couple of boats lees, but that failed both times making us loose a little time.
But by the time we reached Blossom we had passed the Moore's that were ahead of us and where within striking distance of the 1D35s. Here we split the majority of the fleet headed towards the city front. It was still early in the flood and we decided to head towards Alcatraz and head to the city front later in the leg. This payed off, by the time we crossed with the city front group we had significantly shortened the gap.
The tighter fleet resulted in a first for me in over ten years of racing in the SSS, I protested a competitor. Not that I have anything against calling fouls and throwing a red flag, it is part of the sport and how the rules are enforced. But the culture of the SSS, given that everyone is sailing shorthanded, is to avoid close situations. In this particular case one of the 1D35 on port tack failed to give us right of way as the starboard boat. Attempting this close pass was a bit uncalled for, but fine you try, but the reaction of the other skipper at failing the pass and fouling us was just ridiculous. Not only did the other skipper did not attempt to avoid us (didn't even bother to change course) resulting in us having to do a crash tack, but later refusing to do his penalty circles and claiming to us later down the course that we had altered course. Our two boats continued to cross tacks up the city front without further incident, until closer to the windward mark where they again failed to give us right of way as the starboard boat. At the end of the day they withdrew from the race (DNF), but the protest form was ready to go.
The stress of short tacking up the city front gone, we rounded the windward mark and set the kite towards South Hampton. We took a quick gybe to take advantage of the stronger pressure on the San Francisco side and that paid hugely. By the time we got to Alcatraz there were only two monohulls and 2 multihulls ahead of us. The multihulls we wouldn't see again, those two F-31s were gone, but we caught up to the two monohulls (Q and a J-44) before reaching South Hampton. This was some of the nicest sailing I have done in a while. Sunny, flat water, powered up with 12 - 15 knots of boat speed, without a care. I could have just kept going.
Now came the big decision, to Racoon-it or not. You normally can get a better VMG going through Racoon Straits, as long as you can quickly navigate around the wind hole in the lee of Angel Island. As the first monohull the decision was up to us, though we had seen the two leading multihulls choosing not to go through Racoon. With a visible windhole and a flood current, we decided to stay in the breeze and go around Angel Island avoiding the Racoon Straits.
We tried to protect our position with the boats behind us, but with the longer waterline the J-44 passed us before Pt Blunt, and Q with its incredible pointing ability was closing the gap rapidly. We managed to keep Q behind us, but by the time we reached Little Harding again they were only a few boatlengths behind us.
We prepared ourselves for a screaming run to the finish. Rounder the mark, hoisted the kite and ..... WTF, what is going on, the kite is not filling, the wind is on our nose. Took us a few seconds to realize that we are in a massive wind hole. The whole area between Little Harding and the finish is dead, nada. We drop the kite get the jib up and try to work the zephyrs. It is a very delicate breeze and we get into ghosting mode. With the current in our favor, our main concern is to try to stay upcurrent of the finish line to ensure the current doesn't sweep us past the line without finishing.
I do feel for the guys on the J-44, they were clear ahead of us, maybe 2/3rs from the finish by the time we rounded Little Harding, but in these conditions they were just parked while we were ghosting at around 2 knots and were able to pass them within a couple hundred yards from the finish. Close to the finish the breeze backed again and we hoisted the kite again and two gybes later we finished the race under spinnaker.
We probably could have hoisted a little earlier, though not clear if that would have covered the time needed to beat the two Moore 24 that got us on corrected time. We did get the win in our division and were the first monohull to finish, with a respectable 3rd Overall behind the two Moore's that got us. Great day on JetStream.
