 Dan Knox Consulting |
December 2007 |
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A view from the rear . . .OK well the first winter race at the South Beach Yacht Club seems like it took forever to start. Maybe that was because it was delayed a month because of a certain oil spill. Anyway at exactly 12:30 on Saturday December 15th they put up that little burgee that looks like something the Cat-in-the-Hat would wear and we were in postponement. About half an hour later the first boats were ready to go. For those of you that don’t know the SBYC races actually start in McCovey Cove so you can have a downwind or upwind start depending on which way the wind is blowing. The YC has included in the Sailing Instruction a rule that says all boats must be under power up until one minute from the start for safety reasons. Also you may not put up a Spinnaker before crossing the starting line for the same reason. In addition the boats not in that start sequence must stay clear of McCovey Cove and the start finish line. So exactly when the one minute flag goes down all the engines go off and the real starting starts. We had selected our starting line today to be in the middle of the course and we selected a port tack and it paid off. John and Freedom Won started near the pin end (actually near Pier 48) on a Starboard tack. Their strategy was to force us to tack right away and get the jump on us down to the first Mark (which was 34). However we got off to a good start and found quite a bit more wind in the center than they had at the pin end. We actually were first at the start. Really first across the line and in first place with the entire race to go . . . so this is the reason you need to know what the actual course is. We sailed out into the bay a couple of hundred yards in a whopping 5 knots of wind and continued to hold onto our lead even though some of the lighter boats were gaining on us. At that time the wind was coming directly from the east and we set a course directly south toward mark 34. This was a perfect beam reach. Since the winds were so light we decided to set the spinnaker and moved the pole forward almost to the forestay. We had a good set and kept it mostly full all the way to the mark. The wind however was not helping as it was a bit wanting and there were times when the our boat speed was almost as fast as the wind speed and this was not doing a lot to keep the spinnaker full. It is funny to look at the masthead fly and see its position recording the apparent wind as you have the spinnaker full. Still it was pulling the boat and we were making progress with the leaders. At the mark we decided to keep our spinnaker up and run past the mark about 2 boat lengths and then make the mark when we actually returned but as we did that the wind died and it stayed away. And it stayed away and it wasn’t coming back any time soon. A few boats decided to anchor as a one knot current was actually beginning to move everyone past the mark and as John later said moving Luna Sea toward Redwood City. Anchoring proved to be a good idea but it didn’t really matter as after waiting for more than an hour most boats just gave up and headed into back to the YC for refreshments and dock sailing. So about 3:30 or so Freedom Won and Luna Sea headed in too. Although for the record we gave up before John did. We almost got the best of John today but in the end we both were scored DNF. But there is always next time. --Dan
Pictures of the race . . . http://lyonsimaging.smugmug.com/gallery/4010816#233424499
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