Greetings from the Fox team on 232, led by our skipper Jay “Ahab”
Gowell, who is obsessed with his quest for an elusive puff of white
smoke at the end of the race course. The best decision of the evening
came before we left the dock at CYC when Jay shanghaied not one but
two younger Gowells from their duties with the CYC Junior Program,
bringing our total crew to 6. We also shortened our headstay by a
half inch from the max long position that we like for most light to
moderate conditions.

Setting up for the start of the second race of the night, we judged
the committee boat to be about five degrees favored and with the new
windward mark “13” a bit to the right of directly upwind, so we wanted
to start toward the committee boat end and tack over to port once we
got a clear lane. With more breeze than the start of the first race
and lots of current keeping everyone back from the line, we had a
chance to do the rarest of things in a Shields; a dinghy style luffing
start. We tacked onto starboard about six boatlengths to astern of
the committee boat at 1:30 to the gun, then luffed our way up to the
line putting the bow down a couple of times to defend what turned out
to be a one and a half boatlength hole to leeward. Putting the bow
down for the last time at five seconds, we were able to get bow out on
the two boats to leeward and then blade out the sails and put the crew
weight to work generating lots of straightline speed.

It turned out that most of the fleet liked the boat end even more than
us, so about two thirds of the fleet tried to squeeze into the 1/3 on
the line to the right of us. This meant delaying our tack onto port
for about two minutes as we waited for the last of the boats to our
right to tack over. After getting pingponged a bit in the first race
trying to work the current relief on the left, we were happy to focus
on boatspeed while waiting for a nice clear lane to get across the
fleet on port. Patience paid off as we were able to take a port tack
all the way to the starboard layline without any ducks and tacked onto
starboard ahead of 254 about 15 boatlengths from the mark. We
overstood by two boatlenghts allowing 138 to tack below us and
threaten to get inside at the mark, but we managed to reach over them
and round just barely clear ahead.

Downwind we were left to defend our position in the lead. We stayed
on starboard briefly after the top mark to stay clear of the bad air
from the fleet on the starboard layline, then jibed to port with 138
to defend an inside position at the leeward mark. By staying low and
occasionally by the lee, the current carried us all the way to the
leeward mark on port tack with 138, 254, 108 and others nipping at our
heels.

On the final beat, we covered our closest competitors, 138 and 108, as
they went left while 254 and the next pack went right. We tacked
across about midway up the leg and were lucky that no big shifts came
through to give our competition a chance to use leverage against us.
Hearing the gun as we crossed the line was a relief after coming up
just short a few times earlier in the season.

BOTTOM LINE: a great start and a little edge in boat speed makes the
tactician’s life much easier, especially when there are no big wind
shifts to play. So always ask the generous skippers of Fleet 9 to
leave you a nice clear spot to leeward when coming up to the line!

Dexter Hoag

Fox

232

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