2010 YRA Fall 1 Race

On Saturday, Andrew and Rob joined me for the YRA HDA Fall-1 Race. It was going to be a day on central San Francisco Bay, which in the summer means big winds. It didn't dissapoint. We started on the western edge of the Berkeley Circle. We had a fun sail up to the start (once we cleared Treasure Island from Alameda) with Andrew and Rob taking the boat on a power reach up the slot, the boat doing an easy 9 and 10 knots. Here is a short clip of that reach, showing off the new mainsail from Doyle. The mainsail still needs a bit of tunning for the upwind trim, though in this reaching shot it looks great.



Just before the start we notice that the rubber joint connecting the tiller to the tiller extension is split and only has a bit of rubber holding the whole thing together. Andrew gets to work and we do an 'ankle tape job' on it. I think we spent half a roll of tape. It was all a bit stiff but it held perfectly for the full race. In the conditions we were expecting, loosing the extension during one of the downwind runs could have been catastrophic. This is something I will be keeping a spare of in the boat from now on.

We got going on the first start with about 12 - 15 knots of breeze. In the sportboats class we could see the Antrim 27 "Head Rush" and Henderson 30 "Family Hour" and a small Viper. The Flying Tigers didn't come out to play, so our focus would be on the Antrim who always gives us a good fight.

During our pre-start we decide to go for the pin end as it was favored both in angle and distance to the windward mark, but I got distracted during the sequence and only managed to get a quarter of the way down the line before the start gun. Who do I see starting at the pin? the Antrim boat... So much for execution.

We started a bit behind the competition. We do a clearing tack to get a clear lane and quickly come back to join the rest of the fleet on starboard. On the beat from the start to Point Blunt we are trailing the Antrim, with the Henderson right on our heels. On the moderate conditions we are as fast as the Antrim but dont quite have the point. We manage to stay in touch. A bit of a problem with the main halyard slipping from the clutch costs us a few seconds, but Andrew and Rob quickly get it fixed. Near Angel Island we lee-bow the Antrim and with better speed and point manage to get in front. The rest of the way to Little Harding we play loose cover with the Antrim. We round the windward mark first on the Sportsboat fleet and with a perfect set we are off to the races.

We are averaging 12 - 14 knots downwind. By the time I look back and see the Antrim and the Henderson set their kites we are easily 300 yards in front. We focus on keeping the boat on its feet and looking for the downwind mark. On the upwind leg we spotted the downwind mark and decided at that point we wanted to be on port tack at Pt. Blunt. For a few seconds, while we struggle with the GPS we are heading to the wrong mark, but just in time we spot the leward mark and jibe for it. Right after the jibe we get a blast of wind and we are now barrelling towards the mark at 16 and 17 knots. Things are coming up real quick. Jib out and kite down... oh, why isn't the kite coming down... the tack line got a bit tangled up and in a few seconds Rob and Andrew had it all figured out. It was a good day to have 3 on board as this could have been a bit complicated if we were only double handling the boat. One last jibe to get around the mark for our second upwind leg and suddenly a BANG!

What was that? The mast still up, good, but the boom is skyed. We blew the vang on the jibe. All my fault as I should have been ready to release some of the main after the jibe. Worst of all the night before we had spotted some fraying on the cover of the loop holding the vang together and decided the the core was intact and it would hold for another day of racing. We guessed wrong. Not a big deal, we wouldn't need to vang for the next upwind leg and Andrew got to work on a jury rig for our next downwind run.

After rounding we start looking for our competition. We can only see the Antrim and they are struggling with their kite and go into a broach. It takes them a while to recover, they drop their kite and continue racing. We can see where the Henderson or the Viper are. We carry on the second upwind leg pretty much on our own. By now the current has turned and we are in a slight ebb so we can play a bit more towards the center of the bay. The wind is now building to the mid 20s so we start preparing for our next downwind ride. We really just come out for these downwind runs, they are a rush. We have a video camera on board, but there is just too much going on to get one of us to mess with it. I think it will be great footage, so need a way to mount it on the boat (or strap it to my head).

Off we go around Little Harding and set the kite again. This time we have a longer run all the way to mark D on the Circle. Quickly after rounding we figure out our initial vang jury rig is not working, so Andrew ties the tail of the main halyard to the boom vang strap through the bail at the base of the mast, and straight back to the winch. Grind it down and now we have a working vang. We now go into full speed mode and scream down the bay, holding 14 knots and bursting to the 17s in the gusts. Everyone is smiling and enjoying the ride. We nail our jibe angle to the leward mark (actually, we nailed all the laylines in the race), do a safe windward douse and head towards the finish line on a power reach. The boat holding 9 and 10 knots on white sails.

We get a gun at the finish line and head back towards Alameda. We were all hungry and thirsty after 2 1/2 hours on course, so we take it easy to make sure we empty up the cooler before we get to Alameda. We ended up covering 21.3nm on course on 2h27m for an average of 8.7 knots, not bad for W-L course.   A couple of things will need to get repaired, need a new tiller extension joint (plus a spare), need to fix the vang attachment (Andrew has a good idea to try out) and we blew one of the small spinlock cleats that needs to get replaced. Not too bad for a fun day in the water.

Race Results

New Main sail arrived

The new main was completed last week.  Andrew, Rob and I took it out for a spin at the Oakland YC Wednesday night beer can race and we pulled a bullet from behind.   The construction on the sail is pretty impressive.  The sail still needs some tweaking to the rid of a diagonal wrinkle along the edge of the battens.

New Main sail on the way

Time to replace the original main sail.  Going with Doyle and a carbon and kevlar 'Stratis' flat-top main.  Should give a little more sail area.

BAMA Racetrack 07/03/2010

The Bay Area Multihull Association has put forth an interesting challenge.  The have set up a course around the bay where you can race around any time you want and as many times you want to try to get the best time around the course.  You can find more information on their website at BAMA Racetrack.

Today, Andrew and I took our first stab at it on JetStream.  Winds were good, in the 15 to 20 range, so we were psyched to give it a go.  But early in the course we quickly discovered that the currents weren't favorable.  I had the feeling this was the wrong choice for the currents but it was the only time so far we had the chance to go out so we gave it a shot anyways.  It turned into a lot of upwind sailing, not the best to get the best lap time.

We started up at Blossom Rock heading north to YRA 8.  That was a fun, screaming reach, with the boat topping out at 13.4 knots with only white sails.   After YRA 8, we had to leave Alcatraz and Little Alcatraz to the north which resulted in a beat up to Alcatraz.  We played the Alcatraz 'cone' to avoid the worse of the current and made our way to Harding.   Harding was almost a beat, we maybe cracked off 10 degrees.

After Harding we had to make our way Blackaller, which meant crossing the entrance to the bay and the worse of the current.  Due to the current it also turned into a beat to windward given the SW winds today.

We got around Blackaller, and finally got to set the kite.   At this point we had done a lot of sailing and were looking forward to the spinnaker run.  The winds lightened up a bit, but the bay was nice and flat so we played our jibe angles.  A third of the way down the winds picked back up and we had a screaming run back to Blossom rock.

We'll be trying again with more favorable current conditions, which should greatly help us improve on our time across the course.  This time it took us 1hr 35m 35s to get around the track.   Over a 10 nm course (we sailed much more than that) we averaged 6.3 knots.  We can do better.  Oh, and next time we will probably have new sails as well.  Will post an update when the new sails arrive.

YRA HDA Spring 1

On May 22nd we had the first race of the HDA season.  We got enough interest from the Sportboats fleet to get our own division this year.  Hoping that a few more boats will join.

Forecast was looking very favorable with 15 - 25 knots in the bay for the afternoon racing.  Our preferable conditions.  Mark and Andrew joined me for the days racing.  The extra pair of hands would become a welcomed decision later in the afternoon.

We set off to our long slog from the Oakland Estuary to the Golden Gate Yacht Club.  Got there with plenty of time to spare and sailed around waiting for our start.  By the start time the wind was well into the 20 knots and the ebb had been building, throwing up a decent chop in the bay.  We had a pretty clear start and soon tacked away to the center of the bay to take advantage of the ebb current.   Crossed a few boats, and rounded the first windward mark (Blackaller) in third place behind some of the longer waterline boats.    Had a perfect spinnaker set and the race was on.  We took off in the fresh conditions and soon were leading the fleet.   We were averaging between 14 and 15 knots of speed, with both Mark and Andrew doing an excellent job with the kite.  Looking behind I could see one of the Tigers struggling with their kite, but the fast Antrim  27 with their blue kite was quickly approaching.   We rounded the Blossom rock (the leward mark) in first position and headed back to the second lap.   The Antrim was the only boat in our fleet we could still see and they were following behind about 80 yards.   We would need to keep a watchful eye on them for the second downwind run.  However, they had to drop out of the race due to an emergency and we were left to race on our own.   We had a strong second upwind leg averaging around 7.5 knots, with some favorable current.   Soon we were back at Blackaller and readied for the next downwind run.

Another flawless set and we were again off the races.  The chop had built significantly from the first run and we were now constantly getting water over the decks.    You could feel the boat accelerate on every puff.  On one of the strongest puffs we plowed into the back of a wave, throwing a wall of water over the decks.  The water knocked the crew back and I lost control of the boat and rounded up into a broach.   We tried to bring the boat back, but it wouldn't come up with the spinnaker up.  So with a quick release of the halyard we brought the boat back and dragged the spinnaker back into the boat.   We thought we heard a tear on the spinnaker so didn't reset.  As we were far ahead in the fleet we finished the downwind leg with just our white sails.

We now just had our final upwind leg to the finish.   The wind had continued to build and we were seeing gusts in the upwards of 30 knots, so we played it conservatively.   Got a gun at the finish and turned the boat around to head back home.  Pretty tiring for a 2 hr race.   Got some cold beers from our wet bilge and settled for our sail home.  Good day out onboard JetStream and a good start for the HDA season.

Results for this race:

SAIL #	BOAT NAME	BOAT MODEL	RATING	FINISH	ELAPSED	CORRECTED
9045	Jet Stream	Custom JS 9000	78	13:50:20	1:50:20	1:54:12
15	CentoMiglia	Flying Tiger 10	54	14:11:03	2:11:03	2:21:02
41	Wild One	Flying Tiger 10	54	14:17:22	2:17:22	2:27:50
24	Ilex	Viper 640 ODR	96	DNF
21	Head Rush	Antrim 27 CM	75	DNF
46595	Family Hour	Henderson 30	48	DNF

2010 SSS Corinthian

On April 10th, Mark and I went out to race on the 2010 version of the SSS Corinthian race. It takes its name from the Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon where the race starts and ends. This race is a tour of the central San Francisco Bay.

We knew it was going to be exciting as it coincided with a storm arriving in the area. The forecast was for winds of 10 - 15 knots, with gusts in the 20s. Needless to say it was substantially off, as we were seeing gusts over 30 just before the start. Throughout the race we saw winds in the 15 - 25 range with gusts in the 30s.

Since Mark lives just up the hill from Tiburon I would just pick him up at the yacht club before the race. This meant that I would do the 2+ hours delivery from Alameda by myself. So it was an early start for me with a 6am wake up call. Well, more like a 4am wake up call since our 3 month old decided it was breakfast time. Already up, gathered my stuff and headed down to the boat. I left the dock by 8am, autopilot on and outboard purring nicely up the Estuary. The wind was already filled in and soon after I excited the Estuary I was able to turn off the outboard and jib sail all the way to TI. It got a little light around TI and we motor sailed the rest of the way to Tiburon. Arrived at the club around 10 AM for our 11:25 start. Lots of boats already sailing around of what would be a fleet of over 100 boats for the race. I tied up at the club, went up to chat with some of the other sailors and race committee and waited for Mark to arrive.

Mark soon arrived and we got dressed for the wet and cold weather, and got the boat ready. Already some strong gusts where hitting the marina. It would have been nice to raise the main in the protection of the marina, but it would have required a few turns in close quarters to get out. JetStream doesn't like tight turns, so we elected to back out of the marina and power out. All went smooth, except that it was gusting to 30 knots outside the marina and very bumpy, and we still needed to get the main up. We motored out to Angel Island to try to find some protection on the lee of the island, but there wasn't much to be found. But the main had to go up, so Mark and I got on task. After a few tries it was up and we were powered up.

Not having a reef on the main, during some of the stronger gusts the thought came to my mind to pull the plug. The rig didn't look too happy with the sails thrashing around, so we took it easy on the pre-start staying out of the way and waiting for our sequence. We had a great start, close to the pin, and within a few minutes we were leading our fleet. We stayed on the ebb all the way to Little Harding and cracked off on a course east of Alcatraz on our way to Blossom Rock. We went a little deeper than the rest of the fleet. This would be a good leg for us and I knew we would be passing a few boats on the reach and wanted to avoid a string of luffing duels. It paid off as we gave Alcatraz a wider berth and were able to catch a few boats that fell into the windhole on the east of Alcatraz. The wind had moderated a bit from that of the start and we were pretty comfortable aboard JetStream....

The conditions made for an easy trip to Blackaller. With the SW winds you could almost lay the mark. A quick short tack to make up the difference and we were around Blackaller. On the way to the mark we had some very strong puffs, so we were debating whether to set the kite after the rounding towards South Hapmpton Shoals. But it felt light enough after we rounded and the kite quickly went up. What a ride.... we had a couple of moments of pure speed and adrenaline. We don't have a knotmeter on board so we can't say how fast we were going and during our top speeds we had no free hands to look at the GPS, but if we didn't hit 20 knots, we were at the very top end of the teens... The only boat with a kite up ahead of us was the F-24 Tri and they were putting up a lot of spray.... During the run a ferry crossed right in front of us putting up a huge wake. I was worried the the boat would just plow into the wave with negative consequences... but it punched through the first wake and skipped over the next and we were off again. I overstood the layline to our next mark and jibed too late. We couldn't hold the tighter course with the kite up and crashed the boat in a broach. Mark released the kite, but it took releasing the vang to get the boat back on its feet. We got the boat going full speed again and prepared to drop the kite. At this point it was really blowing, upper 20s, but Mark pull a great windward douse.

After rounding SH, we had an upwind leg up Racoon Straits back to Little Harding (again). It was blowing now, easily 30 knots on the beam and whitecaps everywhere. No risk today of the dreaded wind hole behind Angel Island. On the contrary, seems the SW winds were compressing and accelerating in the gap between Angel Island and Tiburon. With the help of the ebb, it made for a quick leg back to Little Harding. All that was left now, was the downwind finish. We felt pretty comfortable at this point and again reconsider putting up the kite, but someone else had already set theirs and ours went up immediately. There were only a couple of trimarans and 2 or 3 larger monohulls ahead of us at this point. After a couple of jibes we crossed the finish line with an elapsed time of about 2 hours and 30 minutes on an 18 mile course, a 7.2 knot average over the course. Not bad for a 30 foot boat.

We pulled back into the marina to drop off Mark and enjoy some well deserved cold beers. We were tired and sore from the challenging conditions, but full of adrenaline from our performance. After about an hour I couldn't further delay the inevitable delivery back to Alameda. I wanted to take it easy so the main was off the boom. I jib sailed all the way to TI and motor sailed the rest of the way. Half way down the Estuary the sun came out and helped dry things off. With the help from Andrew put the boat away and got on my way home. Got home around 7 PM, 12 hours after I left.... Long day.

4/12 -- Results are in.  JetStream finished 1st in Sportboats Class, and 2nd Overall in the Doublehanded division, with the fastest elapsed time for a monohull.

2010 SSS Three Bridge Fiasco Race Report

This past Saturday we had the first race of the SSS season. Mark came
back as crew to try to defend our double handed season championship
from last year. This year it will be good challenge with the regular
top contenders of Timberwolf, Arcadia and Great White, and the
addition of the singlehanded season winner Outsider, coming out to
challenge the doublehanders.

Berthin in Alameda, the races starting at the Golden Gate Yacht Club, tend to be a long day, with almost 2 hours of transit (motoring) each way. In ourboat and our engine that is a torturous
affair, as you feel and it sound like you are inside a blender.
I hadn't seen Mark for a couple of month, so after a 7 AM dock call,
we tried to catch up on our lives over the sound of the engine.
We got to the starting area around 9:30 with an hour to kill before
our start, and double and triple guess our strategy for the day.
Where is our competition? which way are they going? where is Kame and
Yucca? With over 350 boats entered for the race, it wasn't
necessarily easy to find the boats of interest. With about 20 minutes
for our start the wind pretty much died. We had stayed plenty clear
of the starting area and now got a bit worried that we wouldn't make
it to the line and went to start the outboard. Outboard didn't want
to play... After a few minutes of trying to get the engine started I
went back to concentrating on getting the boat moving towards the
starting line and Mark took the position at the back of the boat to
work on the engine. After a few more stressful minutes, Mark got the
engine going and we started looking for a spot to position ourselves
for the start.

There was a huge pileup at the pin end of the line with boats drifting
in all directions. Even though the current would be more favorable
outside (on the pin side), with our small rig we needed to find a
clear lane and headed towards shore on the west side of the line in
preparation for a counter clockwise run of the course. We found some
familiar faces in the vicinity with Yucca, Timberwolf and True North
in the same area and the same idea.

We had an uneventful first leg towards TI, picking up a few boats
along the way. Closer to the Bay Bridge it got a bit weird with boats
inside and outside of us doing better... The boats giving a wider
berth to TI seemed to be having a bit more pressure so we headed that
way. As soon as we cleared the southern end of TI we immediately set
the kite for our run down to Red Rock. Kite went up with a twist.
After a few seconds we got it untwisted, but something still looked
wrong. Tack and clew were attached incorrectly, so kite down, swap
the lines and back up. We were racing again. By this time it was
already ebbing on the eastern side of TI. We jibed early on an angle
that was pointing us exactly to the northeastern tip of TI. Moving
well in the light conditions. As soon as we cleared TI we got a nice
header that put our course straight to Red Rock Weather was
beautiful, boat was moving well, so it felt right to pop a beer! Not
bad sailing in T-shirt (long sleeve t-shirt) weather in the middle of
the winter.

As we approached Richmond, the ebb was already flowing from the north
bay. We stayed a little too long on the deep water and lost some
ground to the guys closer to shore. About this time we could see
Outsider coming... I wasn't sure we would see them all day, since
after we started they seemed to be lined up to go on a clockwise
run. They must have changed their minds at their start. Now we had
a fight in our hands racing both Ousider and the Antrim 27, Always
Friday which seemed to be attached to us with a rubber band. The gaps
would change but every 20 - 30 minutes they would be there again.
This will go on all the way to the finish.

Although the natural course would suggest a port rounding of Red Rock,
due to the conditions and the current a starboard rounding looked
favorable. It really felt counter intuitive and risky, but that is
the way we went and it payed off huge. I was hoping Outsider would
split and go the other way, but they were right there with us rounding
RR to starboard.

From RR to Blackaller we had some very favorable currents, averaging 8
to 9 knots over ground going upwind. Another tricky leg.. It was a
bit light for our boat and we were a bit underpowered. So the focus
was not to loose too much ground to our competition. Some of the
folks getting close to Tiburon seemed to have done well. It's always
tricky on that shore, I've had both great successes there and some
memorable failures. So I played it safe. After looking at the race
track, probably needed to go a bit deeper into the deep water channel
to get the most benefit from the current. But mostly focused on
playing the significant shifts that came along. It was a conveyor
belt through Racoon Straits, getting spat out on the Sausalito side in
no time. Here we stayed on the river as long as possible. The wind
picked up a bit on our reach across the bay and JetStream turned on
its afterburners passing a handful of boats on that leg and recording
our top speed of the day at 10+ knots.

Now we just had the short leg from Blackaller to the finish at GGYC.
Not a fun leg for use as we lost as many places as we gained on the
previous leg. The ebb was in full rage at this time and quite a bit
of boats converged in the area at the time of our rounding. The
strategy here was to stay as close to shore as possible to avoid the
worst of the current. It not always easy on our boat with a mixed
fleet of symmetrical and asymmetrical spinnakers. We need to keep a
hotter angle to keep moving and it was made more difficult with the
narrow runway and more than a few boats being able to square back
their poles and aim straight down the runway. Both Outsider and
Sapphire got back ahead of us in this leg, and we dropped a couple of
places on the Sportsboat division on the last mile.

We finished the race and kept the kite up all the way to TI. Made it
first to the hoist in Alameda (not a gun at the finish, but a good
reward nevertheless).

As of this writing the results are not yet posted. I'm hoping we will do top 10% on the fleet and I think we are looking at a 5th place in our class. Thanks Mark for a great day and great work.