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2006 Sunset – Race #10 |
June 28th - Crew tonight was Dick, Art, Demitri, Frank, Jim and Reggie. At 5:30-5:35 the wind was somewhat south at 220-225°. When we checked it again 10 minutes later it seemed to have gone even farther south to 215-220°. The RC set the starting line square to ~220-225°. That meant the pin end was slightly favored. For the PH-A and PH-B classes the boats on the south seemed to have more wind so initially we figured to go for the pin end at the start. But, about 7-8 minutes before our start there was a big shift to the south (with the wind at ~180°). That made the pin hugely favored. But, with about 3 minutes to go the wind took another big shift, this time to the right so the line was once again fairly square. Figuring that most of our class would miss the last shift and go for the pin end we decided to start near the middle of the line so we could get clear air.
With maybe 30-40 seconds until our start we almost had a collision with Joy Ride. They were coming to the line on port tack and simply ignored the fact that we were on starboard. We went head to wind and they tacked and reached down the line so that we had a large hole to leeward at the start. We were right on the line at the gun with speed - another great start.
We only went a short ways on starboard tack. We seemed to have a good lead on all the boats to our left so the wind was probably somewhat north of 225° at the start (meaning we had been closer to the favored end at the start). After we tacked over to port most of the boats behind us did the same relatively quickly. There was a J/80 on our hip (Athena) and in a good position. Our boat did not want to go well in the slop but at least initially there was enough wind to power through. The wind got lighter as we went farther from shore and that made the problem worse. We loosened everything we could to keep the power and speed up and moved bodies off the windward rail. With the lighter wind all of the boats behind us started to fall down into our wake - making our position look really good.
As we got close to a layline for A Mark, we saw several of the PH-C boats tack over to starboard (they were going to the same mark). But, the wind was lightening even more and so we decided to go a bit farther. When our GPS had a bearing of 172° to A Mark we decided to tack over to starboard. Initially, we were heading well below the windward mark. But, as we got closer the wind strengthened and we were able to head up enough to fetch the mark. What luck! The J/80 behind us wasn't so lucky and had to tack twice to make the mark. As we came to A Mark, Grace O.Malley, a J/105, crossed ahead of us and tacked. We rounded together, with us to leeward and on the inside of the J/105.
After rounding we were concerned about the J/105. However, because we were sailing slightly lower they were able to gybe and pass behind us. That was fortunate as we didn't want to get into a luffing contest with them and we certainly didn't want to gybe and go north. Initially, we had a hard time getting the spinnaker to be efficient. The light air and chop kept knocking the wind out of the sail. We could see Superstar ahead of us and despite the trim difficulties we seemed to be catching them (they wound up 2nd in PH-C). We gybed a couple of times with starboard tack being somewhat easier to trim then port tack. That was probably because on port tack the waves were closer to the beam and thus had a larger impact on spinnaker trim. Avet was the closest boat in our class and they seemed to be gaining quite fast. However, as we came closer to the shore the wind picked up maybe 1/2 to one knot and that meant we could sail deeper and faster. Most importantly, it meant Avet stopped gaining quite so quickly. As a result, we got to the breakwater slightly ahead of them (not quite overlapped).
The rest of the race was pretty straight-forward. The tide was coming in so we tried to stay in the middle of the entrance channel. We were wing-and-wing at that point. Avet got closer for a while in the entrance channel but then sailed near another boat and we were able to pull ahead significantly. After the turning mark Avet was much faster and really started to close the gap again. But then they got traffic and we were able to sail wing-and-wing (because the wind was so far south and because we had to sail down to finish short at Burton Chase Park). We are significantly slower when sailing on a reach so we always like to sail wing-and-wing if we can. We finished just ahead of Grace O'Malley with Avet behind them.