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2006 Sunset – Race #15 |
August 16th - Crew tonight was Dick, Art, Demitri, Frank, Jim and Reggie. As the left-hand end of the starting line was favored, we started down near the pin end. Avet was to our left, between us and the pin. They were much closer to the line than us and at the start they were heading down trying to keep from being over early. We were farther back and so close-hauled at full speed. Despite her efforts, Avet was over at the start and had to go back. That left us with no boats to our left.
Just after the start we seemed to be on a slight lift and so decided to keep going (we wouldn't have been able to cross the boats on our windward hip anyway). Hitchhiker tacked over to port and headed north pretty quickly - they were probably in bad air. Windfall and Mayhem went south with us. We never saw any significant windshifts but might have been headed slightly as we went out. We looked really good on the boats that went north right after the start. However, about a 1/2 mile from the starting line we figured we should tack onto port and get closer to the center of the course just in case the wind went north. We didn't want Hitchhiker killing us by being farther north. Windfall and Mayhem kept going a while further on starboard and then tacked over unto port as well.
On the long port tack we saw Windfall gradually fall down into our track. On the other hand, Mayhem seemed to be able to sail higher and almost as fast as Windfall. The boats to the north had not done as well. It might have been that we had slightly more wind to the south as the boats to the north didn't seem to be heeling quite as much. We got close to what we thought might be the layline and tacked. If the wind went north at all we figured we would make the mark. In fact, it didn't shift and we had to tack twice more. The boats behind us went well past our track. They went so far that we wondered whether they were going to a different mark. We think that many of the other boats behind us overstood. We were first around D Mark by maybe two minutes.
We did a bearaway set and started down the run. Behind us we could see Windfall gybing right after rounding and going north - we think she was probably the next boat behind us. Athena went south - she was probably the next boat to round after Windfall and we think was pretty close behind her at that time. After a 1/2 mile or so we gybed onto port and worked our way down the leg. We could see Athena well to the south and she didn't seem to be gaining. On the other hand, Windfall was slightly to the north of us and gaining. As we were sailing downwind on port we came upon a Cruising Class boat (Go Fly a Kite) on starboard. Rather than duck behind her we gybed to starboard and figured we would soon be far enough ahead to gybe back to port. However, Go Fly a Kite was sailing the same speed as us and we were trapped on her south side. We did get to the detached breakwater clear ahead of her but figured we lost time by being trapped on her right side.
We were the first boat in our class to round the detached breakwater. Windfall was next a couple of minutes back but because of her 6 feet more of waterline length she is much faster in the channel and we were pretty worried about her catching us. There wasn't much traffic near us so we just sailed fast. Windfall kept getting closer (within 20 seconds when we rounding the turning mark into the main channel). Fortunately for us, Windfall couldn't get by some cruiser traffic and we gained to have a 51-52 second lead at the finish at Burton Chase Park. By our calculations we owed Windfall 53 seconds so figured we probably lost by 1 or 2 seconds. In fact, we only owed them 52 seconds and so wound up tied. We felt pretty good to be tied for first after thinking we had lost by 1 second!