2010 SSS Richmond to South Beach

Courtesy of Stephen Buckingham

On Saturday we had the continuation of the SSS race series with the Richmond to South Beach race.  This is the  penultimate race of the SSS calendar with the culmination of the series in a month time with the Vallejo 1-2 race.    I'm racing the series in the doublehanded division, but my crew couldn't make it this time and a last minute attempt to find a replacement wasn't fruitful, making Saturday a day for me and the autopilot to get to know each other a little better.  The forecast for the day was for a mellow 5 - 15 possibly going to 15 - 25 later in the afternoon, and most of the race would be in a light ebb.

Good start to the day with an early breakfast at Ole's in Alameda with Greg and Karl.  And then we were off to the long delivery from Alameda to Richmond.  I'm using a borrowed outboard while I sort out a replacement for my now defunct outboard.  It is an old 2-stroke 2-cylinder 4HP Evinrude.  It runs like a dream.  The 2-cylinders make for a very smooth and quiet ride compared to my previous 1-cylinder 3.5HP Nissan.  It was an uneventful delivery with a flat bay and minimal currents.

The start of the race is inside the Richmond breakwater.  We setup for the start in lightening conditions and we suffered a bit.  A few boats with genoas roll over us and we are sagging and falling behind.  Had to take a painful clearing tack to get on a lane with clear air and little by little started picking boats back up.  But the damage was already done.  Both Outsider and Flight Risk were able to stretch a few hundred yards ahead of us on the light conditions.  After clearing the restricted areas around the Richmond fuel docks, I set the kite and start heading towards The Brothers.  I start catching a few of the slower boats that started  ahead of us and soon join the procession of boats rounding The Brothers and heading back upwind towards Little Harding.

I head towards the right hand side of the course staying right of a current line under the Richmond Bridge.  SOG confirms that we are doing better on this side.  We finally catch Flight Risk after the Richmond Bridge.  I probably came a little closer than I should have, prompting Flight Risk to try to pinch me out, but we were able to hold our lane and get ahead.  I see Arcadia and Uno in the distance and focus on them as the main targets.  Can't tell where Outsider is, but hopefully we'll be back in contact again.  Keep playing the right hand side footing down a bit to avoid getting too close to shore and fall prey of any windholes.  As I approach Racoon Straights I get a glimpse of Outsider crossing on port from the left side of the course a half mile ahead of us.  Not good, we have some serious catching up to do.  We have a fast traverse of the Straights, first staying close to the Tiburon side and crossing over to the Angel Island side mid Straight..  I nailed the lay-line to Little Harding and catch a few more boats in the process, and we are off on a reach above Alcatraz towards 2NAS.  I was hoping the wind would have built up a bit more my now, but we were still sailing in about 10 - 12 knots.  We are still doing 8 and 9 knots on the white sail reach, but not the full potential of the boat had it been blowing 15+.

Here we start to reel in the Wylie Cats and some of the bigger boats, and I can now see Outsider and Sweet Jane ahead.  We set the kite around Alcatraz.  It is still a beam reach.  I try to keep the sheet on the ratchet only to have a bit more control of the kite, but after a few minutes I'm spent and my driving is suffering, so I give it a wrap around the winch and settle down.  I'll probably get some snide comments from my crew, but the winch works better when singlehanding the boat.

We are able to sail a bit higher and hold the spinnaker quite a bit longer than Outsider and Sweet Jane.  We significantly cut their leads, with Outsider maybe a quarter mile ahead and just behind Sweet Jane as we round the last mark and head towards the finish.  This area of the South Bay is notorious for shifty and gusty winds, but only the shifts materialize and the winds stay on the moderate side.  It turns into a cat and mouse game, playing the shifts and trying to make some gains.  But I'm unable to get ahead of Sweet Jane and we finish in that order for our class.  Outsider, Sweet Jane, Jetstream.  The resutls aren't yet in, but I think I still corrected over Sweet Jane.  But Outsider, finishing around 5 minutes ahead should have covered his handicap.

A good, long day on the bay.

A weekend of seconds

Labor Day weekend is a busy sailing weekend.  This year we had planned to do back to back races.  Friday is the traditional Windjammers Race from San Francisco to Santa Cruz.  We would do Windjammers aboard Ocelot which normally means that with a 9 AM start we can be in Santa Cruz before sunset.  Enough time to drive back home get a few hours of sleep and get JetStream on the water Saturday morning in time for the Jazz Cup.  The Jazz Cup takes us from Treasure Island to the Benicia around 26 miles.

Friday's forecast was for light winds in the ocean.  We started with a fresh breeze in the Bay, but as we worked our way through the Golden Gate into the ocean the breeze lightened up.  We went through quite a bit of our sail inventory.  Started out with our #2 jib, up to our #1 jib as we cleared Seal Rocks, to our Code 0 near Montara, momentarily to our jib top, back to the Code 0, to the A1 past Half Moon Bay, to the A2 by Pigeon Point, A2 plus stay sail by An~o Nuevo when the breeze finally picked up to 15 - 20 kts, finally back to the #1 jib as we made the turn into Santa Cruz for the last few hundred yards to the finish.

Most of the morning was a pretty close race with boats all around us.  But the race within the race was between Ocelot, the ID 48 and a Melges 32.  In this light to moderate conditions the Melges stayed close to us the whole way down the coast and would eventually correct out for 1st place in division and overall, leaving us on Ocelot on 2nd place in both division and overall.  Not a bad day in the ocean.  We finished just after sunset, with plenty of time to put the boat away and hit the Santa Cruz Yacht Club for a few rum drinks and some clam chowder before jumping on the car for the ride back to Alameda.

At home by midnight to get a few hours of sleep before the 8 AM dock call for JetStream and the Jazz Cup.

The Jazz Cup is a great race for JetStream, mostly reachy and downwind.  We were defending champions for our class so we were pretty psyched to get out racing.   This year Mike and Andrew rounded up the crew.  Conditions were to build to 15 - 25 for the afternoon, great conditions for us.  In our division this year we would have our friends from Head Rush (the Antrim 27), two Flying Tigers and Wasabi (a Kernan 44) amongst others.  Wasabi was the scratch boat with a -44 rating (compared to our 75), that means they will owe us 119 seconds, almost two minutes, a mile.  The Antrim rates the same as us and the tigers are on the 50s range.  Our strategy was to stay in touch with the Antrim and the Tigers as they were the more closely rated boats.

We had a great start, in a strong position mid line and a good lane.  After a couple of hundred yards we could clear the starboard boats to windward and we tack on port to head to the right side for more pressure.    As we approach the windward mark we are in a great position, we round in 4th place behind Wasabi, the ID35 and on the hip of Bloom County, with our Antrim and Tiger competition behind us.  The next part of the race is a reachy run across the central bay, these are prime conditions for JetStream and we are soon in second place after passing Bloom County and the ID35.   We now begin our effort to cover the fleet while avoiding entanglements with all the slower boats that started ahead of us.  We work on staying high and clear so we can more easily pass the slower boats.   Most of the boats in our fleet are now following us except for the Antrim who took a lower track towards Richmond.  On days with a strong ebb current this is a good strategy, but today we didn't have much current and we decided on the rhumb line to Red Rock.  As you approach Richmond the wind bends to the south and you get lifted, so we took an early jibe back to the east to be in a better position covering both sides of the fleet.   Boat was moving well, but as we got into more of a downwind run both the Tigers and the Antrim started to catch up some.  Next decision was to choose which side of Red Rock to go.  Traditionally most of the fleet leaves Red Rock to port.  Yucca was heading in that direction and more often than not, they are the boat to follow.  But looking at some of the catamarans well powered up on the left hand side, we decided to break tradition and leave Red Rock to starboard.  It paid off hugely, and we gain some of our loses back.

We have good pressure up to the Brothers and make our right turn into San Pablo Bay.  This section of the race was mostly a procession.  The wind angle locked you into a deep and slow downwind run.    Not our best point of sail, but we had clear air all the way through and were able to hang on to our position.

Half way to Pinole Point, the wind freshened and it helped moved our apparent wind to the beam.   This is the sweet spot for JetStream, we just accelerated and were off to the races.  We were on a drag race with a Melges 20 but we soon were able to pull a bit ahead of them.  In the next 20 minutes we would put about a 1/4 mile on the fleet behind us.  And for a while Wasabi, who was doing a horizon job on the fleet started to get larger and larger.    We were having a blast aboard JetStream.

As we approach Vallejo the wind shifted right a bit more and lighten up a bit and we were back in downwind mode.   In this mode, the other boats in our division with larger spinnakers tend to do better than us, so it is always a bit nerve recking.  We continue to play our angles and keep the boat moving fast, but as we enter the Carquinez Straight they are back within striking distance.   We head to the North side of the channel as we are getting great pressure and a good angle from the breeze reflecting off the hills.   We decide to go back in for another run of these winds into the Glen Cove area.  This is were we lost the race....  As you can see from the charts, the shallow waters come out quite a bit at Glen Cove.  Something that I should have been paying attention too as well.   Just as we start our jibe back out, we slowly come to a complete stop.    Andrew turns to ask 'what am I doing?' and the realization that we have run aground quickly sets in.  Immediately we bring down the spinnaker, shift all our weight to one side to help heel the boat and start the process of coercing the boat to point towards the deep water.  After a few more minutes of back-winding the jib we get the boat pointing back at the channel but still stuck.  At the same time, both Andrew and I say, "lets rehoist the kite".  We were beam to the wind and it will both give us more power and heel to drive the boat back to deep water.  Moments after hoisting the kite the boat start to move forward and soon we are back sailing.  Not soon enough though....  By this time we have let the Antrim, one Tiger and the ID 35 get ahead of us.  There goes first place.   Our mood on board changed immediately.  There was no need to be so aggressive to the edge of the channel as the currents were pretty negligible at this time.  We were far ahead enough of the competition that we just needed to play it safe to keep our front spot.  I also had my iPhone chartplotter available, which should have had out.  That would have avoided this mistake.  For the next few minutes we were all pretty bummed at what we allowed to happen.

But the breeze started to fill up and the boat started to go fast again, and we were soon having fun.  We were crossing jibes with a trimaran and the Melges 20 (yes, they too caught up after our grounding).   We pass the ID 35 as we approach the finish area.  For this race, to finish you have to leave mark G"25" to port and go around 2 temporary marks before crossing the finish line.  The temporary marks are small and hard to see.  For a moment both the Antrim and the Tiger ahead us, ahead in the fleet and with no one to follow, started going straight to the finish instead of the required temporary marks.   They discovered the errors of their way before giving us a chance to catch back up.  So we finished behind both of them.

Ultimately however we corrected to second place behind Head Rush in our division.  We also finished 11th overall for the race, and the second monohull overall.  Don't really want to think what the results would have looked like had we not spent 9 1/2 minutes on the mud...  So it was to be a weekend of second places for us.

2010 SSS HMB, non-race

A bit of disappointment....

Spend weeks of preparation for the first offshore race on JetStream.  Since this was to be the first ocean outing, I decided I would go on my own, didn't want to be responsible for anyone else.  A few additional pieces of equipment needed to be added and many friends chipped in.  Andrew converted my jacklines from Travieso to fit on JetStream.  Mike gave me a spare 25W VHF radio he had.  Greg went on to fabricate a real cool carbon hard cover for the hatch opening.  I had some lifelines made for the boat, got a new tether for my harness, got a new battery for my EPIRB (these aren't AAs, read $$$).  The new main was ready with a reefing point and so was the skipper.

All week I had been monitoring the forecast, early on the week 10 - 20 knots, perfect for our first ocean outing. But later on the week, first 15 - 25 kts then 20 - 30 kts....  Even though we have easily handled the boat in >35 kts in the bay, the big North Pacific is a different story.  You can start feeling pretty small out there and on JetStream you are pretty exposed as well.  I drew the line at 20 - 30 kts, if it would blow that much we would just stay home.  As we got closer to race day, the forecast moderated to 15 - 25 again, but all day Friday the buoys off the shore were all recording >20 kts.  Needless to stay, I didn't get much sleep Friday night.  I would wake up every couple of hours and check the buoy readings on my iPhone.  By about 2 AM the buoys started reading 17 and decreasing, so it was game on.

It was an early morning call on Sat 4:40, which normally coincides with AJ's feeding, but not this morning.  Pack up the car and ready to head to Alameda by 5:15.  Have to wait for the grocery store to open at 6 AM to get some provisions for the day.  By 6:30 I'm at the yard ready to drop the boat.  Hook it up to the hoist, engage the card reader and 5 seconds later it shuts down.  WTF?  Its supposed to work for 15 minutes at a time from each swapping of the card.   Not good.  It takes me over 20 minutes to get the boat in the water, by myself, having to run back and forth between the card reader and the guy lines for the boat.  What a nightmare, its not yet 7 AM and I'm already covered in sweat.

Load up to boat and start to motor to the start of the race, a good 1 1/2 hours away.  Rig all of the life lines and jacklines on my way to the start.  Its a nice motor out of the Estuary, but we are welcomed by 20 knots on the nose and a nasty chop just outside.  Thank goodness we have a favorable current, as the little 3.5hp outboard pushing us is not happy on the hobby-horsing on the chop and the 20 knot head winds.   We aim west to try to get to the SF side as quickly as possible and get a bit of protection.  We are following Uno who just motored by us, we try to exchange a few words but with the wind and the rumbling of my outboard I can't hear a thing.  We wave and continue on our way to the start area.

Get to the start area about ten past 9, our start is not until 9:50 or so.  A quick check of the offshore buoys, still showing a moderate 15 knots, though in side the bay is blowing around 20.  So I kill some time to conserve energy for the race.  Bad idea....  As it would have it, I should have worked on getting the main up as soon as I got there.   As 9:30 approaches I start to get ready.  On Travieso I could get the main up in no time.  A reliable inboard, a mainsail with slugs on the mast, cake.  JetStream, different story.  There is no protection on the start area, so the outboard is struggling to stay in the water and keep the boat moving at a slow pace.  The main on JetStream has a luff rope, and as soon as I unrolled it I knew trouble will follow.  We hit a couple of nasty pieces of chop and the boat lost momentum and got sideways to the wind.  Even the autopilot couldn't help us there.  The unrolled mainsail is now everywhere including the some of it in the water.  In the rush of gathering the main, I let go of the halyard and now it is streaming off the top of the mast.  Great..  We turn the boat back downwind, I recover the halyard and re-attempt to raise the main.   Now I have a pile of sail everywhere so we try the exercise again as I hear the 5 minute warning signal for our start.  Second attempt also fails, I need to keep the sail under control in those conditions so I scramble to get a couple more sail ties on it.

At this point I just want to start the race, so I unfurl the jib and start racing.  Takes me a good ten minutes just to cross the start line.  To be an official entry I had to turn off the engine on the five minute warning so now I need another approach to getting the unruly mainsail up.  As it would have it, sailing upwind with the jib up is not a bad strategy for getting the main up.  Its not as fast as motoring into the wind when another pair of hands is available but it worked.  I just had to slide the sail ties back enough for a good pull of the halyard and go about 5 feet at a time.  After a few minutes the main is up and we are now sailing.  I'm sure a few of the folks on the Race Deck were amused by this exercise...

Right after the start, since I knew I had no chances of placing anymore I immediately withdrew from the race. Not a great option for the season scoring, but being that far back already it was likely going to be DFL for me anyways.  No point in enduring the delivery back on Sunday for that.  Best to spend the rest of the weekend with the family.  But after getting the main up and going through all that trouble and preparation I figure I would go on my own private race.  How many boats could I catch before Seal Rocks...  So we continue racing towards the Golden Gate.  Catch a few of the late starters and one of the slower cruisers, and I'm feeling a lot better.  The boat is handling great, though I should really have the main reefed (not that I didn't try, but as the reef was just done this last week I didn't have a chance to rig it on the dock.  My clew line is all twisted and the tack strop doesn't reach the hook -- this is all getting fixed now) but we are still well in control.  After getting close the the North tower of the bridge I tack back to starboard and the a loud 'BANG'.  My first thought is that I just dropped the mast, but I look up and it is still there.   I ease off the main and bear off to ease the load on the rig and try to spot the damage.  Nothing up top, but the jib is looser than it should be.  Looking over the deck I see the problem, the jib track is bent and done.  Well, that put an end to my little private race.  I furl the jib and point the boat back to Alameda.  Under autopilot and main alone we are still doing over 10 knots.

Looking back I think I know what did the jib traveler in....  I had the spinnaker tack line secured to the chainplate and tightened.  This prevented the jib car to slide down towards the edge of the track where all the support is.  Instead it was stuck midspan on the track where there is no support and it wasn't able to hold the load.  This is the result:

Certainly a few lessons handed down by the boat and some new sail handling techniques learned.   Next singlehanded race is Vallejo in October, we will be ready.

A few pictures from last week's Wednesday night beercan

Courtesy of Slackwater SF

Main sail getting there

After some great support from the sailmakers at Doyle the mainsail is really starting to look good.  The problem seems to have been matching of the luff curve between the mast and sail.    Before we started adjusting the luff curve on the main we decided to have a go at the rig.  From day one I really hadn't been happy with the mast prebend and curvature on the lower half.  Even with the lowers all the way out, it wasn't enough to induce mast bend.  After discussing with Glenn at Hansen Rigging, we simply added a toggle to the lowers to extend them an extra inch and a half and see the results.  We went from a pretty straight mast section to a nice even curve.

Loading the main really showed the difference.  The initial wrinkle coming from the full size bottom batten disappeared by better matching the mast bend to the luff curve.  A quick sail and a little tunning had us looking really good.

A bit more work to be done to figure out the various rig settings for a range of conditions, but looks like the main is good to go.  We took it out for the Oakland YC Wednesday night races and it took us to a win and a gun.  Nice debut!

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.