The last of the SSS spring series races! Last year we did pretty well since the fast boats all parked in front of us until we had a chance to catch up. But this year that wouldn't happen, as the summer winds have already started. The race is fairly long at nominal 19.8 miles, plus we're on a new moon with raging currents in the SF Bay. Lots of work for a shorthanded crew! The start was at max flood, setting off from the Berkeley Olympic Circle towards Alcatraz (aka "The Rock)", then further up current to Harding buoy, then hopefully with some flood still pushing through beautiful Racoon strait, rounding Brother Rock all the way beyond Richmond bridge. Then past Red Rock and finally towards the finish line off Richmond YC.
We totally messed up the start (along with everybody else in our starting group), thanks to a huge current on the line. Took us a while to clear the line, but then off to the Rock! On the way there it breezed up quite a bit and over the radio we heard that Crissy field already had 23kn, so quickly in with the 1st reef! Took lots of tacks to finally clear Harding, but we weren't doing bad. The gennaker went up in a flash and we had a nice ride towards the Brothers. For some reason I set up the spi for outside gybes, and guess what, that works much better! We only messed up one gybe when there was little to no wind at the exit of Racoon. Lesson learned!
The last beat to the fish line was relatively easy, although we were pretty tired now. I was battling a Yankee 30 from our division which rates 20sec slower than us, so they had us beat on time for sure. When we were just about to pass the Richmond dock, a huuuge tanker decided to leave veery slowly, but of course you still cannot pass in front of him, so we probably lost another 5-10min there. In the end we were 2nd last in our division, but only 18min behind the leader, but 2nd overall on time, so I'm not too disappointed. Lots of fun sailing a technically challenging course! Results: here
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| Constance trucking upwind at 5.5kn |
