Summer Race #6

Wednesday 8/24/2011

Healthy SSW flow in the 15-25 knot range. Current was flooding. Division C course was from H to K to G and back to H. A&B substituted C for G.

This Wednesday was the start of a few days off from work. The wife and I decided to take the kids sailing for the day. We arrived at the marina and the southerly was beginning to fill in. We sailed south against the wind, but with the current. Around Croton point, the real SSW breeze filled in with puffs up to 25 knots. We were still beating at this point and the natives were getting restless. Somewhere past Ossining, we turned around, rolled in the jib and flew downwind in the building breeze.

It was windy enough that instead of a regular gybe, we did chicken gybes downwind. A chicken gybe is when you are sailing downwind and decide to tack around to the other board rather than gybe around. With just the wife and kids aboard, chicken gybing was our best option.

We then sailed into the calm behind Croton point and anchored for a while. When it was time to go, I simply had to weigh anchor and we started moving at 2 knots bare poled. I unfurled a sliver of jib and we were doing in excess of 5 knots towards Haverstraw.

Docking was extremely difficult in these conditions. The wind was pushing us into the slip away from our pier into the boat next to us. The spring line I had rigged to stop the forward motion saved us from colliding with the dock forward and the boat next to us. Once safely docked, I prepped the boat for the race.

Two of us set out around 17:30 for the race. We hoisted the main to get out there and the wind was still in the 20-knot area. We only unfurled the jib right before the start. The start was uneventful and we sailed with the fleet up to K. Zoom got ahead of us and rounded the mark about 2 minutes in front.

As Zoom and Jazz got close G, we had closed some of the gap between us. Zoom was the first to get into the area of G and when they realized it was washed up on the eastern shore, they turned south and circled. About a minute later, we were in the same spot and decided to drop the sails and attempt to anchor before the next boat got to the area. With some good crew work, we had the sails down and anchor set in about 3 minutes. Our race was done for the evening as we decided to be G.

We announced to the C fleet that we were now the mark and everyone used us as the mark. Zoom kept racing and indicated on the radio that they thought they were far enough ahead to correct over Jazz. I doubted this claim, but did not respond.  We were about a minute behind and they owed us 3.5 minutes for the course.

I would have preferred to keep racing, but I felt that there is an obligation and precedent to become the mark. This precedent has been set by Breakout and Surprise who have also become the mark when they were the first to arrive at its coordinates and found it missing.

After the last boat rounded us, I weighed anchor for the second time this day and hoisted full sail. We cruised in the heavy air on a nice broad reach before calling it an evening and sailing in. We also took the opportunity to switch places. This is always a helpful thing to do on the boat so everyone can walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.