Last race of the Singlehanded Sailing Society inside the Bay this spring! Round the Rocks starts at the Berkeley Olympic Circle, then clockwise in the Bay, rounding Alcatraz, Harding Rock, through Raccoon St, past the Red Rock, around the Brothers all the way in the North, back past Red Rock and to the finish at the Richmond YC.
Last year we were pretty successful, catching up with lots of boats that were parked in front of us. This year promised to be a nice day with enough wind to keep us moving around. When we got to the starting line, a gentle North wind was blowing, indicating a spinnaker start. The flood started flowing and this is where I made the first mistake, placing us down stream from the starting line.
There was already a big cluster of faster boats close to the starting line, they were starting in several groups ahead of us. With 5min to go I was about 200yrds from the starting line. That's when the wind completely shut off and everybody was drifting away from the starting line. Also the wind had switched from N to W, making it a classic upwind start. With the massive forests of masts parked in front of us there was not a chance any wisp of wind would reach us though!
I quickly got the spinnaker gear down and set the jib, but we didn't make any progress, maybe just 1kn through the water while the current was building and pushing back by about the same rate. It took us 50min (!) to cross the darn starting line, with the wind shutting off once in a while, while slowly building n general. Unfortunately the flood was building, too, so we were almost dead last out of the fleet of 100+ boats at the starting line.
 |
| Finally a wind field arrives! |
We managed to reel in a couple of boats on the way to Alcatraz as the wind finally went above 10kn and we stayed behind Alcatraz in the current cone. Rounding Harding Rock was another disaster as the current had build up to 4+ kn and we missed it by a hair, having to tack back forever against the current. Finally the spi went up and we went through Raccoon strait, looking at the fleet from behind. It kind of looked as though we would be able to catch up, as everybody was parked by the Brother Islands.
Alas, no such luck, the wind just picked up enough for everybody to squeeze around and finish way ahead of us. We got 5th last out of doublehanded monohull (#53 out of 66 started boats), and last to finish in our division. Even Galaxsea, a big gigantic Nauticat 44 full keel ketch that rates higher than us despite 1.5x the water line, corrected out on time in front of us. They usually have even more problems in light wind than we do, so that tells me how bad we were :-). Anyways, was a fun day on the water, beautiful weather despite the agonizing race. Learned something for next time!
