Three Bridge Fiasco!

As the reader of this blog already knows we're a big fan of the annual Three Bridge Fiasco race, even though we haven't been able to finish in the last 2 years, and have been last boat to finish in our first attempt in 2013. In 2014 we got sucked out of the Golden Gate and crossed under that bridge 9 times before giving up. Last year we went into a gigantic wind hole and never made it around Red Rock, after having rounded Treasure Island first. Still, it is really a fun race and quite a challenge to figure out the right course. 

To recap the rules: This is a shorthanded race (only 1-2 people allowed on the boat), takes place in the San Francisco Bay, and requires the participant to round three marks in the vicinity of the 3 big bridges, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Richmond Bridge, and the Bay Bridge. The order of which is up to the individual boat. Also, the direction in which you pass the start & finish line off the Golden Gate YC is up to the participant. On top of everything, this is a pursuit race, so each boat has an individual starting time, based on speed rating. With the huge popularity of the race (>300 boats), that creates quite some interesting scenario especially at the start, with boats going every which way. Hence Fiasco!

The other thing that complicates things tremendously is the tidal current situation. The SF Bay is a complex tidal system, with South Bay, North Bay, San Pablo Bay creating a harmonic oscillation of water flowing in and out. Throw in some islands and channels to make things more interesting. Also, (and more of that later) this year's El Nino winter has dumped quite some precipitation on the sierras, resulting in quite a runoff channeling through the Sacramento River and North Bay.

The 3BF starting area

Our starting time was 9:35:45 in the morning, with the ebb running until 11a. That, paired with the light winds made the first mark pretty clear: Blackaller Buoy next to the Golden Gate. We got a quite reasonable start among the mess of boats shutting down the wind on the starting line, and drifted/sailed slowly to our first mark.  The wind was supposed to fill in from the NW, changing to W, but when we rounded the mark it was really more like a North wind at 5-10kn. So, no need for the spinnaker, at least initially. I was thankful that we changed the foresail to the 125% #2 jib, past experience has taught us that the winds are fickle around this time of the year. The plan was to round the course clockwise, going to Red Rock 2nd and Treasure Island last.

When we went past Sausalito, the wind veered West and you saw the skipper running up front to hoist the spinnaker. Everything was already setup before the start of course, anticipating the westerly, and I had REALLY checked all the lines twice before we set off. The more stunned I was when the halyard was wrapped around the lifelines and the lazy sheet was wrapped around the bow pulpit. How could that have happened! While I was wrestling with the lines the wind kind of died and therefore we didn't lose too much, bareheaded with a tangle of lines on the foredeck. I finally got everything cleared only to realize that the wind had changed 180deg and we had to quickly gybe with hardly any wind. As soon as that was done, the wind changed back to N, so down came the spi as it was now upwind sailing again.

I probably burned about 5000 calories right there and achieved close to nothing. At least I had the mess of lines cleared up front, something that should pay off later. We went relatively uneventful through Raccoon channel and tried to harden up into the northerly breeze on the way to Red Rock. By now the ebb current should be abating, right? Unfortunately I found that despite a nice angle towards Red Rock we were pretty much crabbing sideways, swept down by a vicious ebb current of at least 2 knots. I didn't realize then that the Sierra run off was increasing the ebb current. As we were swept to the Richmond side, the current finally got less and we could point pretty well towards Red Rock. I saw that most people tried to round the island clockwise, but I thought to be smart and went counterclockwise, anticipating a flood current pushing us past the windless Eastern side of the Rock. Windless it was indeed, but there was absolutely no end to that ebb current! So everybody else sailed happily past us on the way to the next mark and I had to hear some sarcastic comments from the 1st mate what kind of fantastic plan I had come up with.

Constance on the way to Red Rock

The Red Rock. Notice the windhole on the right side
Richmond Bridge in the background

Last year we got stuck here too and I was already having deja-vues. But there was a little wind left and I stayed as much as I could out of the wind shadow of the rock. Some other boats tried to cut that corner and got helplessly stuck in there for a long time. So we finally rounded, and set the spinnaker. Like everybody else that had sailed away from us already. 

Looking at the fleet from behind

Now something very curious happened: I noticed that all the boats that had passed us earlier, were stuck in that nasty windhole we just emerged from next to the Richmond wharf. There was people calling the race committee to sign off as they had drifted into the exclusion zone next to the oil dock. No way I was going in there again! So I stayed as high as possible, supposedly driving into the building flood current of the main channel (which however never materialized). Also, the wind really started to fill in, from the West. It reached us with quite some vigor and miraculously never reached the remainder of the fleet parked by Richmond.  So we sped up handily and passed about 50 boats within less than 30min. They must have been totally agonizing to see us zoom past!

Catching up with Big Blue barely pulling

Halfway to TI the wind build up to 15kn so I quickly dowsed the spi as it was halfwind anyways, and the jib was going to do just as fine. Going around Treasure Island was relatively easy as the wind had build enough. Now we had to fight the building flood current on the way to the finish, and we decided to go into the cone behind Alcatraz instead of fighting the current with less wind along the SF Piers. That worked out pretty well even though we had to sail some longer distance. We eventually passed a couple of boats that were in front of us at TI. Totally exhausted, we passed the finish line 16:24:30, after sailing about 25 nautical miles total. 

Looking at the score, we couldn't believe it: We came in 5th out of 33 in our class! Overall #183 out of 304 doublehanded monohulls. Doesn't sound too great, but for us finishing at all is already a lot. For the night we anchored at Aquatic Park. Had some nice dinner and fell asleep like a rock :-)