1st GC
2nd by corrected 37 seconds
3rd Rebel by 5 minutes 18 seconds corrected
SJE/LKE/JV/SV/DV
Wind was 8 knots or so gusting to 15 knots
#3 jib
No reef
DV pulled the spinnaker up much faster by pulling from the opening at the mast down to as low as he could go - replacing the sideways motion.
The Mast jam cleats are a problem - they catch the spinnaker halyard - SJE will tape them up.
The race was a Start/#4/#2/#4/#2/Finish.
The RC set the line so it could not be crossed on stbd.
The Tartan24/GC21/us ran the line on Stbd with the intention of tacking to port on the gun as we reached the pin.
Rebel was on port and approached the pin fast. I believe that both the Tartan and GC21 should have protested Rebel for a port/stbd at the line - but they didn’t.
Strangely Rebel after crossing in front of the Tartan and GC21 rounded the pin and restarted - after some chaos.
The Tartan was below the GC and it did not push the GC over the line - I don’t know why. We were behind both by a few feet a little further down the line but right on it.
The tartan was trapped by the GC. And both were slowed by Rebel.
At bang we flipped to port and took off. Higher and faster than Rebel
The course was a single tack close hauled from the start to the windward mark. Th shifts were extreme - 25-35 degrees. Lulls were headers, puffs were lifts. I worked the boat upwind.
With its longer water line and #2 sail (instead of a #3) Rebel sailed under us near the windward mark.
They rounded and went high - but that was into the mess of the white sail boats and they had to weave their way through them.
We went low and had our own air. Lynn pointed out pressure and directed us toward it.
At the leeward mark we were on the heels of Rebel.
Rebel had a disastrous rounding, Jib flogging, spinnaker half way up, and they drifted to leeward. We were more than a minute ahead and to windward by the time they got going again.
At the windward mark we were still well ahead of Rebel. The wind velocity picked up so we were more competitive with the #3 that the first time to windward.
Final downwind we hit 8.5 knots and generally maintained good speed. We stayed ahead of Rebel. Bare Necessities a CC99 white sail does well, but we passed her in the middle of this leg with a wide berth so as not to tempt her into messing with us. As Rebel approached her too close she did mess with her and slowed Rebel down further.
Our rounding was poor (the others were quite good). The spinnaker halyard was binding - I expect SV was standing on it or it was not prepared to feed through the spinlock properly. We have to reminder her to make this preparation every time.
The wind had shifted to the right and we couldn’t make the finish line on a single tack. We sailed the wind we had as quickly as we could.
Rebel rounded and sailed higher that we were - perhaps different wind, perhaps the boat set up wasn’t as good on our boat this time.
We flipped right at the RC boat - PIN line to stbd - we had about 300’ to go.
At the RC we flipped over and got the gun right away. First boat to finish.
Rebel while higher than us, missed the line and tacked right at the RC - badly. They slowed down, tried to cross on stbd, couldn’t and so tacked again at low speed over to port and crossed. A terrible finish for them
We had one challenge - last leeward mark spinnaker down issue.
Rebel had issues all around the course. Start line, mark rounding, finishing. Not pretty. They were almost 5 minutes corrected time behind us. And 30 seconds behind us elapsed.
The GC won because it is an asym boat, one long reach down wind both times. They went out on stbd tack both times on the windward leg - which I didn’t understand - the stbd tack was almost a dead lost of VMG.
Dave Lanning who drives the GC said that they were working their VMG numbers going upwind. Luffing the sails and pointing the boat higher into the wind to take height instead of speed when they were too fast. I don’t think they had wind instruments so I don’t know who he was deciding his polars. Guessing perhaps.
All in all the team is coming together and pretty much knows what to do. SV needs more time studying the location of the lines, port and stbd sides of the boat and terminology.
JV did a pretty good job flying the spinnaker. He worked the tack (spin guy) back as often as he could. Because were were close reaching we had a lot of pressure on the sheet and guy. SV worked the sheet winch and DV worked the guy winch when JV called for it. That worked reasonably well. It might be more efficient to have JV on the deck running the Spin Sheet only and perhaps DV in the cockpit running the Spin guy and providing grind for the Spin Sheet.