Overall we are in the running. Still. In a 6 race series, we have 3 more to win. We are tied for first but the Ranger 22 wins the tie break because it has more 1sts than we do. We get to drop 2 of the races of a complete 6. So its anyone’s game right now.
SJE/LKE/JV/DV/JN
Wind 6-8 knots, diminishing from the South moving South East during the race
Course Start/2/4/Finish - once around in the interest of darkness.
1/main/purple&Black Spinnaker
We have this routine where, because the FS starts after the NFS, we take our gennie down and watch the 1st start carefully. We watch how the boats test the wind, how they make a run upwind so see if the left or the right side pays. We see pressure and we see tacking angle. Its very helpful - just watching.
We also make our own judgements about left or right and the pin or boat side of the line for the start.
This time we decided go toward the pin for the start and head left - the wind was supposed to move left so we wanted to protect that side.
A little tussle with the Ranger 22 at the start, they lost and were forced to tack at the boat and head right. We executed our plan.
When we crossed with the Ranger 22 half way to the windward mark, they were in front of us. So was the GC21. Ok so left was a bad idea…
We played the game and worked the shifts we had and we were ahead of both as we made the final approach to the windward mark.
We had time to set the pole and cheat out the clew of the spinnaker before the hoist, but only just.
The spinnaker went up and we stayed on stbd heading to the fast approaching eastern shore in order to sail around the white sail folk that were simply wing on wing heading dead down wind.
Once we were clear we gybed.
During the long 2 to 4 leg we steadily ground through the rest of the fleet. Passing everyone, except Rebel and Lickety who both had a good upwind leg (going right of course) and they had separated from the rest of the white sail fleet.
At the leeward mark, Rebel got around and away but we almost caught Lickety. They rounded in front by 2-3 boat lengths.
We had a challenging rounding. The jib wasn’t getting in quickly. This was the story of the night, we just couldn’t seem to do an efficient tack. I believe we lost 10 seconds every time we tacked all evening.
On the last part of the downwind run we saw a wind shift, finally to the east (course left). To take advantage of that we did not follow Rebel and Lickety to the right but we tacked.
We were headed and headed. From 180 course down to 160 before we tacked and had one tack into the mark. We went perhaps 2 minutes on this increasingly headed tack.
So then we were on the inside of the shift while Rebel and Lickety were outside.
We beat Lickety by a minute and half after trailing them. Upwind they have the water line length advantage so we did well. We didn’t catch Rebel, but we reeled them in.
In fact the leftie continued and we were close reaching by the time we got to the finish line - that meant we over stood on our earlier tack - but who knew?
This wasn’t our genius sailing technique or our terrible tacks, it was being on the correct side of a wind shift.
But that wind shift applied to everyone. The fleet that we, Rebel and Lickety had separated from on the downwind leg, finally got to the leeward mark. The leftie has settled in.
Bobby Peat asked me at the dock, why we tacked at the mark and took the header? I explained, and he said, they just tacked and headed straight to the finish line.
So the 2 minutes we spent on the headed tack - the rest of the fleet didn’t have to do.
They caught up with a straight shot from mark to finish.
Another situation where non-one design racing leads to different situations for faster and slower boats.
The mistake at the start going left, and the way the wind changed at the leeward mark for the following boats, allowed the Ranger 22 to beat us by almost 3 corrected minutes.
The results say we would have needed a rating of 136 (instead of our 108) to beat the Ranger. That might suggest we weren’t sailing to our potential. And yes, with tacks we certainly were not. But the big difference was the call at the start (mine) and the wind shift at the bottom (the god’s).
So there it is. A wonderful evening sailing in lovely breeze and sunshine.
We have some work to do but the journey is the reward.
S