2020 SSS Round the Rocks

Beginning of a New Era

There is not much good that can be said about 2020, it's been a challenging year and one that has required everyone to work outside their comfort zone and think outside the box.  Our normal routines have been upended, but if you look closely there are possibilities for new things to emerge.  In time of uncertainty, you best just play the odds.  We've taken some calculated gambles this year, but before we packed up for the Midwest we had a shot at one last sailboat race in the SF Bay.  The SSS Round the Rocks race is a nice Bay tour that starts us in the Berkley flats, takes us all the way near the South Tower of the Golden Gate, through the picturesque Racoon Straits in Tiburon, gives us a peak into San Pablo Bay as we round The Brothers and finishes up in the Richmond Harbor.

In any other year, one of my regular crew would have flown down to do this race doublehanded, but that wasn't going to happen this year, and further restrictions asked for doublehanded crews to be part of a household or 'social bubble'.   I could always do the race singlehanded, but there was another option.  My 10 yr old son had been lucky to join one of the only summer camps available this year, Encinal YC Sailing Camp.  He spent 4 days a week, for six weeks sailing up and down the Oakland Estuary on a little Opti.  He also joined me as crew for the Wed and Fri night races that started up mid summer in the Estuary.  He has been sailing/racing on board JetStream and Outsider in the Estuary for years, but the Central Bay is a different game.  After explaining to him that it would be a long day in the water, and windy and cold, he didn't hesitate when I asked him to crew for me on the race.

I'll let him tell the rest of the story:

MY AROUND THE ROCKS SAILING REGATTA

It began with a cloudy morning in Alameda, California, where me and my dad were getting prepared for the biggest sailboat race of my life. I was really excited for the race to start.

When me and my dad got out to the bay, it was really windy and wavy, and then I was starting to get a little nervous. But when it got sunny I started to feel better. At that point we were still motoring out to the start. But when my dad was lifting up the mainsail, the halyard broke, but luckily we got the sail up in time.

When it was our starting sequence we started lifting up the jib (the small sail in front of the boat) and I started cranking it in. When our start was at about 30 seconds I started taking deep deep breaths, Then our start was at 20 seconds, 10 seconds, 5,4,3,2,1 and then the start horn went off. We were off to a fine start at about 4th or 5th then started working our way up the fleet slowly. When we rounded the 1st windward mark we were currently in 1st place in our fleet rounding the mark and making our way upwind to the Golden Gate Bridge.

When we rounded Blackaller my dad handed me the tiller. We were moving quickly on the reach and hit a max speed of 19 kts on our way to these two islands called The Brothers. After The Brothers I handed the tiller back to my dad.

When rounding the brothers I thought to myself “almost there Alex, keep up the good work just 2 more legs to go”. The next mark we needed to round was Red Rock, and after that was the finish so this was the time we needed to concentrate, but when I looked back to see if there were any opponent boats, all I saw were some boats that weren't in our division, so that was a relief. Now all we needed to do now was focus and concentrate on rounding the next mark.

We finally rounded Red Rock and the finish was just a few hundred yards away and still no opponent in sight, and I started feeling good I just kept saying to myself almost there Alex, almost there. Then my dad stopped the timer and we finished the race at 2:36:05. But we can’t celebrate yet because we still need to sail all the way back to Alameda in even windier conditions than at the start of the race. When we were done sailing across the bay all we needed to do was sail down the estuary, park our boat at the docks and put the boat away and fix the halyard which would take my dad the rest of the day, as I went home to get warm. The day was complete. When I got home I was really happy and proud of myself, and stuffed myself full of candy.

Still in training, but he turned out to be an excellent crew, and yes, we won our division. That will keep him coming back.

2019 TBF

A happy TBF

Its been a while since we had an enjoyable Three Bridge Fiasco.  The last few years had been a story light or no wind, big currents and frustrating days.  With the bar set so low by the previous years, Rob and I were ready to go at it one more time.  With Rob doing the trek from Seattle just for the race (well and a little surfing on Sunday) the pressure was on to make it a worthwhile trip.   The forecast wasn't exactly encouraging, with a non-traditional NE flow.

We had the usual preparations, a nice meal and some beers to 'finalize' on the strategy.  A strategy that we nevertheless normally ignore by the start of the race.  With the veering of the breeze we were seeing on the wind charts for the day CCW seemed the best direction for us, IF we could make it past TI.  Many TBFs have ended for us by going to TI first, as it can be pretty light there in the mornings.

We made it to the start line with plenty of spare time and began re-strategizing.  With the large majority of the fleet choosing a CW direction, it put our original strategy in question.    We hung around the eastern side of the line to keep an eye on the boats headed to TI, while continuing to monitor the wind line pushing down from the North.  CW, CCW, CW, CCW, with 2 mins to our start, we could see the wind filling in to TI and we made the call to head CCW, as originally planned.

We had a nice close reach up the city front and soon after clearing Pier 39 we deployed the code.  The speedo jumped from 9 knots to 13 and we started reeling boats in.  Clearly we were having way too much fun to appreciate the size of the wind shadow behind Yerba Buena.  Even though we gave it a wide berth by going around the first tower, it was still too close and we ran straight into the vortex from hell.  We also showed everyone behind us where not to go, so the wise ones stayed way clear of us and ghosted around the wind hole around us.   We fought our way through the vortex but at a significant time cost.  We found a southerly behind YB that we rode way East, to get out of the current and trying to hook back up to the main NE flow.  We made that transition much more cleanly and made the Emeryville to Red Rock segment on a single tack.  At one point we tried to redeploy the code but the angle was too tight for us to hold, so we jib reached the rest of the way.  It was encouraging to only encounter boats coming from the other direction only past Richmond.   We were feeling pretty good about our position.  It was hard to see how many boats were in front of us until after we rounded Red Rock.

Next decision was whether to shoot through the straits or go around Angel.  The wind direction was pointing straight through the straits, so there wasn't much discussion.  We started picking up boats ahead of us, but we could still see some pesky little kites ahead.   We kept the pedal down and were able to pick about 10 more boats, but eventually ran out of runway.  We knew the Thompson was ahead of us, I had seen them on the back of YB when we ran into the wind hole, but they clearly had put enough distance ahead that we weren't able to see their finish.  So we ended up in second place for our Sportboats fleet and top 10 overall.   A pleasing day all around.  The big prize was within reach this time, just one bad transition.  We'll be back next year.

Be willing to throw away a perfectly laid plan

Its that time of the year again, last weekend of January and with it  comes the SSS Three Bridge Fiasco.  This years version attracted a record crowd of 368, all sailing single or double handed.  This year I entered JetStream in the singlehanded division.

We all knew it was going to be a tough race, with a strong ebb dominating the day and two wind main wind events during the day.  The first starters were to see a solid Northerly giving way to a Westerly at 'some point' later in the morning.

With the strong ebb in the middle of the race, the plan was set: take Red Rock out of the equation by knocking it out first.  For the other marks there is always a play regardless of the current, but getting around Red Rock on a full ebb can bring the toughest sailors to desperation.

I dropped and clean the boat Friday night as it would be an early start on Saturday.  All night Friday the wind was howling at our home on the Oakland Hills.   Good omen perhaps.   It was still blowing strong we I left at 6 am.  After breakfast at Oles with a few other crews we set off to the starting line.  A busier than normal delivery since there was no one else on the boat to rig it up and prepare it for racing.  Autopilot on, I got to the process of rigging everything up.  With a nice Northerly filling the bay I hoisted the main on the lee of Treasure Island and put the outboard away.  Took a quick detour to scout our escape lane.

The plan was after the start to head North over the top of Alcatraz and over towards the Berkeley flats (as a hedge for current relief).  Checked a few other boats on the earlier starts with the same plan and it was looking good.

But in this sport your best plans are often spoiled.  Not ten minutes after our start at 10:12 the Northerly on the Central Bay started to teeter off and five minutes later it was gone.  Shut down.  This left me drifting in 100 feet of water with no hope to anchor at the mercy of the building ebb.    And the ebb did build, putting us on a fast track towards the North Tower of the Golden Gate.  Would this be a repeat of last year??  It wasn't for the lack of trying... I tried the Code Zero, then the kite, then the Zero again, maybe the jib would be a better drifter, so we tried that again, as we continued on our West bound trajectory.  All that work got me pretty hungry so I decided to break for lunch before deciding my next move.  By this time the radio was already filling the air with drop out calls and things weren't looking that promising for me.  Around 11:45 the kites under the gate began to billow.  The Westerly was here, and in good time, as we were now just half a mile from exiting the bay.

What now, is almost two hours from our original start time and we are still nowhere from a racing perspective.   I was still hoping to get North and never thought of given my current position of abeam of Blackaller and less than a mile away to just knock that off (something to consider next time).  So kite up and we started working our way East, with an ebb already pushing pretty hard against us.   On my last gybe before heading North I noticed another parking lot just East of Pt. Blunt, while all the boats near Yerba Buena looked powered up.  I've lost races trying to get around Yerba Buena on a ebb but I though I had good boat speed to tackle it.  So there went the plan to take out Red Rock first.  Off to Yerba Buena.

I took another gybe just to make the approach on less current closer to Treasure Island.  It paid off, I made quite a bit of ground on the boats in front.  But at some point you need to stick your nose out, and the river was flowing....  The first attempt to clear the corner failed, but on the second try, only a few away from some really scary rocks we got through.

The next piece was some of the nicest sailing to be had.  Clear sky, nice 10 knots close reaching with full VMG towards Red Rock.  Took advantage of some ebb out of the South Bay, the hedging towards the Bekeley flats to avoid the ebb.    The ebb was there, as I quickly approached the whole Northern fleet just sitting there, a mile South of Red Rock, not able to make any more Northern progress.  And so we joined them.  It took us and hour and a half to cover that mile.  The 2 knots of boat speed just wasn't a match for the full ebb.  We finally managed to get around Red Rock at 4:30 pm.  Only two and a half ours to complete the course, we still needed to round Blackaller (wishing now I would have rounded it when the breeze first filled in).  We still had some (now) favorable current and so we started our beat towards Racoon Straits.  While most boats tacked South after RR, we stayed on port tack towards the Marin shore and better pressure.  This was the best move of the day.   It payed hugely.  We rode the last of the ebb to the South edge of Racoon Straits and played the shifts along the shore.  And as we exited the straits we got greeted by a solid SWesterly.  Even with the now building flood it was a fun and quick ride South across the Bay.   I started catching up some boats ahead of me.

It was dark now.  Even with an almost full moon it is nearly impossible to find the unlit Blackaller buoy.  There was an Antrim27 and a Synergy1000 just in front of me at mark, that did the mark finding for me.  They were both doublehanded so I wasn't officially racing them, but it was nice to pull a singlehanded gybe set at the mark, get out the flood first and beat them to the finish line.  It was an exciting last run to close the race doing 12 knots in a moonlit night, finishing a little over 8 hours after we started.

Torturous Vallejo

This last weekend got complicated real quick.  A late season change to the SSS schedule meant that I was home alone with the kid for the weekend, a new Sportboat championship regatta was setup for Saturday (with my guidance) and the SSS season closer of the Vallejo 1-2 all coincided.  What would get dropped?  Well the kid trumped the sailing (what kind of sailor am I), it can only be a 1 day sailing weekend.  Next, what race to do, the sportboat regatta on Saturday or the return from Vallejo on Sunday.  Rob and I were leading the double handed season coming in to the last race, so we decided to try to secure it.  Babysitter lined up for Sunday with mom returning early afternoon, so Vallejo it was.  I had tried to line up skipper for Saturday Sportboat regatta but that didn't work out.

Thankfully Rob and his buddy Charlie were available to deliver the boat to Vallejo on Saturday.  They have their own story to tell about that.  Instead, I did soccer, pool, and a lot of driving.   We made a brief cameo to the race committee at the Vallejo Yacht Club taking some of the finishers of Saturday's racing.  That too was hard to watch as boats just yards from the finish got swept back from the strong current and the light breeze.   Sunday eventually arrived, little breeze and strong adverse current.  At least we didn't get stuck on the mud trying to exit the marina.  We were only leading the double handed fleet by a very narrow margin.  We would have to beat the second place boat, Arcadia, or finish behind them in corrected to keep our lead.   We knew it would be a torturous day that we will have to see through to the race deadline at 6:00 PM.

After a 30 minutes postponement the race got started.   I know the RC was hoping for more wind that we knew wouldn't come, so all it did was result in even more current.  Oh well, they had good intentions.  We had a good start, we decided to go with the Code 0 hoping for a more stable sail to catch the little wind available.   We thought we were going to escape the current, but with no place to seek relief in the river whenever the breeze dropped, so did we, back to the starting line.  Eventually, we switched over the A2 and did a little bit better.  At the end we lost track of how many times we switched sailplans, from Code0, to A2, to jib.  Only the Farr36 cleared the river on the first pass.   The rest of us saw G5 multiple times.  There was a transition zone at the river entrance that proved difficult to connect without getting dragged back.

Eventually we crossed it, but not before Arcadia had caught up to us, even after starting 10 minutes behind.  The lack of breeze and current pretty much erased that gap.  We probably had 8 lead changes (just between JetStream and Arcadia) before leaving the river.  We finally got past G1 at the river entrance, this was well past noon.  It had taken us over two hours to cover 2.5 miles.  An exhilarating 1knot VMG.  It wouldn't get better for the next hour, barely making over 1knot of VMG along the sea wall on the North side of the channel.  Short tacking on 5 knots of breeze against a 2 knot current its not JetStream strong point.  Sailing by brail trying to keep a couple of feet of water under the keel, Arcadia stretched out a lead to a few meters, and even the U20 started gaining on us.  We were trying hard, rolling every tack and fighting the ****ing battens to get them to pop to the new tack every 60 seconds.

At this point the odds were starting to switch agains us, given how much time we've already been on the water and not being anywhere close to the halfway point, the likelihood of us correcting ahead quickly diminished.  We started hoping the the clock would just run out.  But no, just to dig in the dagger a little deeper we could see the breeze filling in across San Pablo.  Both Arcadia and us got the breeze at the same time and we started making our way to the shallow water on the South side.  At this point we were the leads of the pack as the two trimarans in front of us retired.    The U20, just hanging around behind us.  Arcadia smartly kept a loose cover on us.  At this point it was still a light fill and we struggled to make any gains, but as the breeze continued to build we began gaining.  Just past Pinole we were to be beam to Arcadia about 100 yards to the North, in a bit deeper water and more (now favorable) current.  This was going to be a race to the finish if the conditions held, and they did.

By the time we hit the Brothers we had gotten a bit of a lead.   We wouldn't beat Arcadia, so the plan now was to get to the finish as quickly as possible and hope that the time would run out for the rest of the fleet.   But the same current that conspired against us at the start of the race by holding us back, would conspire again with a favorable current to allow the boats behind to finish in time.  And so it went.  Arcadia had a hell of a race and so did the U20.  Ultimately, three boats would place between JetStream and Arcadia, more than enough to secure Arcadia's win for the DH season, a well deserved win.   We gave it a good fight in difficult conditions.  It was a nice consolation to be the first boat over the finish line, but that wasn't the ultimate goal.

Big thanks to Rob for awesome crew work, movie making and overall great attitude.

SSS Corinthian - got Moorified

Courtesy of pressure-drop.us

Saturday proved to be a beautiful day for sailing in the San Francisco Bay.  The SSS Corinthian Race is an 18 mile tour of the central bay.  The race starts off the deck of the Corinthian YC in Tiburon, sends up past Alcatraz and along the San Francisco city front, over towards Richmond to South Hampton Shoals and back around to Tiburon.

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.

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.