May 5th - Crew for tonight's race was Dick, Jim, Art, Bill (Herrschaft), Demitri and Reggie. We checked the wind just before 5:30 when leaving the harbor entrance and got 235°. Later, at about 5:55pm we checked again and got ~210-215°, a shift to the south of 20°. With the starting line square to 245° that meant the pin end was well favored. With a ligthening wind we figured maybe the wind might tend to go farther south. So the plan before our warning signal was to start at the pin end and protect the south side of the course.

While that was a good plan we never really had much choice in where we started. The wind started to lighten drastically and the PHRF A boats (two starts ahead of us) were having trouble simply getting across the line. The problem seemed to get even worse for the PHRF B boats (the start ahead of us). Just before our warning signal we were at the left end of the line and decided to start anywhere that we could with any kind of boat speed. It took us almost three minutes to sail from the pin end to about one quarter of the way to the RC boat. With no boats between us and the pin we tacked back and started maybe 2-3 boatlengths from the pin at full speed (which was maybe 1.5 - 2 knots).

We wound up leading Creeper, another boat, Crimson Star and Avet toward the south. We had Bill Herrschaft (of North Sails - MDR) as helmsman and Bill had set up a new North 3DL #1 before the race. So, we were able to outpoint Creeper and even had a bit of boatspeed on her. Boy do great sails make us look like better sailors - thanks Bill and North Sails! Because the wind was light we had three secret weapons in the bilge - Jim, Dimitri and Reggie. That left just three of us on deck - Bill on the helm with Art and Dick trimming sails and trying to induce heel.

We basically went to the port-tack layline and tacked for S mark. We choose exactly where to tack based on a bit more breeze and a flat spot in the seas, rather than wind direction. As we went further out from shore we got a bit more breeze at first and then quite a bit more. By the time we got to the windward mark we had 3 crew on the windward rail whereas just after we tacked onto port we had everyone in the middle of the boat or to leeward. We overstood the mark by a couple of degrees and came in on starboard tack with good speed - good thing because there was quite a current at the mark and we had to shoot to get around. The race started out with serious doubt as to whether we would make the 8:30pm cutoff but by the time we got to the windward mark the wind had filled in and stabilized somewhat. Thank goodness.

Downwind was pretty straight-forward. The wind speed was high enough so we didn't have to reach up high. We sailed about 7/10s of a mile on port-tack and then gybed to cover Avet, who had gybed north maybe 5 minutes earlier. She is FAST downwind and a potent threat anytime we can see her behind us at the windward mark. As it turned out, we got headed down to the detached breakwater, which with a bit more wind we were able to just make without gybing again. Creeper rounded behind us with Spirit and Avet behind him. With a bit of a gap behind us we were able to basically sail our own race to the main channel turning buoy, where we passed two smaller slower boats by sailing well to leeward of them. We finished just after 7:00pm with Creeper about 25 seconds behind us. What a change from the start - when we thought we might not be able to finish before 8:30.

There is a friendly rivalry among the Lizzie B helmsman and with our first win of 2004 Bill Herrschaft now has the officially largest winning margin so far in 2004 (which isn't saying a lot as he has the only win to date). The crew felt good about the win because last year we kind of let Bill down when we got a 4th the week he was helmsman. And, of course, the first win of the year always makes the crew a bit happier. We are looking forward to getting Bill back on the helm later in the season.

Last updated: May 5, 2004