It was supposed to be the Three Bridge Fiasco. Rob is rejoining the doublehanded crew on JetStream. We had a very frustrating day. We knew this was going to be a race to finish in time and not necessarily to beat any particular boat. The whole day started wrong. Our racing day routine got broken up and we should have known these would be bad signs of things to come. I was running a bit late, and Rob had an early encounter with the law. We missed our breakfast window at Ole's and nothing good comes from that.
But we were encouraged by the early breeze. We tied up to GGYC before the race to get sorted out. I went upstairs for a quick look and already saw boats struggling sail against the ebb and it wasn’t even max ebb yet. We had a strategy in place, try to reach TI quickly to minimize our fight against the ebb. We would try to round TI clockwise as with the Easterly there was a nasty whole in the SW corner of TI which would make it impossible to round counterclockwise with the ebb. Take a little flush from the south bay with the left over ebb, get to RR on the current relief of the Berkeley flats and try to get to Blackaller with the late Westerly hopefully before the full flood started.
Well, needless to say that plan went down the drain pretty quickly, as most 3BF plans tend to do. We felt pretty good in our decision to hit TI first as we were in good company short tacking up the city front. We were making good progress and catching boats along Fort Mason and Aquatic Park. The light air machines Mumm30 and Azzura quickly caught up to us and passed us, but we were doing good against the rest of the fleet. After the Aquatic Park, Easom split left and Nelsen right along the shore. Starbuck also seemed to be doing well away from the city. We started getting diminishing returns short tacking in the easing breeze so we tried to find pressure further North. Well that didn’t work long. Soon the fickle breeze completely died and we started moving backwards. I’m happy to report that our anchor works fine in 55 feet of water. We had lunch and watched the non anchor boats drift towards the gate (Stephen how far did it take you?) and boats still shore tacking on the city front not really making any progress. There were two bunches, the crowd stuck at the Fisherman’s warf breakwater and the crowd that made it to the Pier39 corner.
Some of the folks ahead of us were showing some Northerly breeze so we were hoping for it to fill from there. Meanwhile our friends on the Wiley 24 had pull the plug after trying to go straight to RR and getting flushed to the Marin headlands. They joined us for a quick beer and a bit of a raft up. A fickle Easterly began to fill in and we gave it another shot. It still looked pretty light on the Bay Bridge so we decided to head North and see if we could knock RR. Had a great sail under Code 0 from Alcatraz to Pt. Blunt. There we made the mistake of staying close to Angel thinking the flood would push us across. What flood? It was 3PM and we were still fighting the f’ing ebb. Set the kite and head east on the lightening westerly that was now filling the central bay. At these point we could see the boats that managed to get past TI, lead by Nelsen way inshore with a private westerly breeze. They were cooking on tight fetch from TI all the way to Richmond. We also saw the 1D35 with their red kite, already around RR and headed to TI. A bit after that we saw the Can also on the run from RR to TI.
By know it was already 4 PM, we had reached the Southampton shoals, but had yet still to round any of the marks. Wind was looking that exciting around RR, reports from retiring boats on the South Bay with a building flood didn’t look encouraging either, and even with solid conditions it would be a miracle for us to get around the course in 3 hours. We still had 2 hours to get home, so we called it a day. Had a nice reach back down to TI but right after the bridge it was glass. A J111 was working TI to get around, and I think I saw Synthia in the Hawkfarm unsuccessfully fighting the flood trying to go West. I was happy to be able to crank the engine on and power home.
A bit disappointing. I believe this is the first 3BF that I didn’t finish. Kudos to Dark and Stormy.
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