Spring Race #9

Wednesday 7/7/2010 Hot night. Sea breeze filled in and brought 6-14 from SSE. Current flooding hard all night. A & B sailed to K, G and back to H. C sailed to K and back. This was shaping up to be a bad sailing night. An early summer heat wave had its grip on the area and temps were close to 100 with humidity high as well. The forecast hinted at a possible sea breeze making it up river, but there was nothing at 17:15. We motored out of the harbor early and saw some dark water to the south of us. We headed straight for it and hoisted the main. Once into the breeze, we unfurled the jib and began sailing nicely to weather. It was still light, but the 6-8 knots felt good on the warm day and the breeze was cooler than what we had back at the dock. When we turned downwind to get back to H, the committee boat was not on station yet. They were setting their anchor around 17:50. Check in was a bit of a mess as many boats like to radio in and the RC asks for sail numbers and stuff. It is funny because there are 2 or 3 new boats each season. Things don’t change much, but the check-ins sounds like it is an introduction for a first time regatta. The RC was nice enough to allow us to check in by sailing by. We prefer this as we do not have to battle for airtime and our sail number is clearly visible. A & B had a pretty good start. Surprise had a great leg and almost ran away with the race. Chi was solid in B. As our start approached, I was diligent to keep the current in mind as we approached. I went conservative again and started at the committee boat 10 seconds late. We were in a great position above and ahead of the fleet. In light air, A-Train is our biggest threat, so we tacked on them as they went off right. This soon proved to be the wrong tack, so we tacked on them again as they came back onto starboard. A-Train tacked a third time to clear their air, but we continued on, as the benefits of going left were now clear. We lost some time on Bugaboo in the exchange, but it is easier to keep up with them in light air than A-Train. We held out to almost the port lay-line. I do not know if we held our own on this side, but we did not seem to lose anything. Around the mark, we were a few minutes behind Bugaboo. It seemed like they might correct over us, but they sailed up and into the favorable current. I stayed on a straight course, as it seemed like the current difference was not worth sailing the extra distance. In the end, Bugaboo almost corrected over us. It was a tight race. Glory Days took the C2 class. They stayed left on the upwind leg and that seemed to pay off for them versus the fleet. I would have preferred the course that A & B sailed since it was reaching downwind, but that may have been too much for the C2 boats. It would be nice if C1 sailed different courses than C2. The divisions are broken out by performance and C1 boats are able to cover more ground than C2. Frank had an engagement to get to after the race, so we only sailed around for 30-40 minutes before heading in. It was a perfect night for cruising. The current was with the wind. We were able to sail a nice tight angle and keep the breeze on us. It was a perfect end to the heat wave we were in that week.