This year's Three Bridge Fiasco started out much better than last year's. We had a nice NE breeze at the starting line which brought us trucking past Alcatraz towards TI in very little time. The plan was to go first around TI clockwise before the main ebb tide would make it impossible, then reach Red Rock, then go back through the Raccoon channel between Angel Island and Marin, riding the tail of the ebb tide, and finally finish rounding Blackaller next to the Golden Gate and back to the finish. The weather forecast predicted a dying gradient NE, which would be later be replaced by a westerly sea breeze.
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| Starting line 3BF 2015 |
The weather was absolutely beautiful, sun shining, temperatures way up in the 60s. Not bad for a January 31st! At the northern tip of Treasure Island we set Big Blue, the new gennaker. By that time we had well above 10kn of wind and I was a little flustered on the pitching and tilting foredeck. Sure enough, I let go of the snuffer line and with a sudden puff the gennaker filled and pulled the sock all the way up, including snuffer line. Oops. That meant a complicated dowsing operation underneath the bridge, something I was not looking forward to. We went all the way across the channel to get out of the current and made nice progress towards the Bay Bridge. Sure enough the wind died closer to the bridge and our progress came down to inches. The good news: The gennaker snuffed itself without any outside help, so I was able to grab the snuffer line and set it up correctly. That was a very lucky turn of events! Some other boats that stayed in the channel and initially had pulled away, were now slowly swept back and eventually abandoned the idea of crossing the Bay Bridge. We made it all the way to just outside the Alameda channel, where we had to anchor for a little while. Eventually the westerly set in and we were able to make it past the southern tip of Yerba Buena island, sweeping at great speed under the western span of the Bay Bridge, woohoo!
So far so good, it took a little longer to get around the Bay Bridge obstacle as it was already noon now. The way to Red Rock was initially easy, first close hauled, then the wind was gradually clocking back and we could set the gennaker again. As we past Angel Island, the main fiasco fleet emerged out of the Raccoon strait. Apparently, the wind had died just after our start and everybody else was forced to go downstream with the tide towards Blackaller buoy. Many unfortunate boats got swept out of the Golden Gate, just like us last year, but some 100+ boats made it through Raccoon.
Unfortunately, as we neared Red Rock, the wind got less and less and completely shut down about a mile south of it. A huge parking lot of boats desperately trying to dodge the current and catch some wisp of wind emerged just south of the rock. That's where we stayed for about 5 hours until we called it a day at 5:30p, with no chance to reach the finish line any longer (7p was the cut off). Looks like only a little more than 40 boats out of about 350 starting boats actually finished. Those were mostly fat boats that picked Red Rock as the first mark and made it around before the wind shut off. Not sure if we would have been able to make it tough with Constance, she is just a bit too heavy to excel in light winds.
Still, we had a lot of fun, and spend some nice days on the water! Next year we'll make it all the way around!
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| Making our way towards Red Rock (thanks to Mike from Roxanne!) |
