Race 4
At 4pm it was hot with no breeze. Off the porch in t-shirts and shorts was the call. Would we have yet another cancellation? As we realized nobody brought along foul-weather gear, we chuckled about the time last year (or the year before) we paddled off the mooring in similar conditions, but was hit with a good 18-20 knot blow in a matter of 10 minutes. Robin announced.. “Better to have one good one than two bad ones, so we’ll give it a go”. We came around the corner in a nice 6 knot Southerly, with super flat seas. Alright !!, finally.. our conditions! (Equus seems eerily fast the lighter it gets — don’t ask us.. we don’t know why.)
So we get a reading… and wait.. spins coming toward us from both directions? Big righty? RC boat moving again?.. the westerly finally fills in. With the flooding current, it seemed that the boat would be favored.. but a few top boats are hanging around the pin anyway. Hmm. We attempt a mid-line / clear air / running start.. but pushed too far and ended up in the pin end group. We had good speed and we were particularly pleased that a few of the leeward boats were over, giving us a pretty good lane. We march on over to the left, with Stubby on our hip, but are stuck over there until all the boats phase over, and a few just didn’t want to. So against our pre-race call, we made some good headway on the left, being conservative, minimizing tacks, and keeping clear air. Then, while anticipating the developing pile up at the mark we overstood just enough to have a fast approach, a little high, and we rolled over several boats all stalled together trying to round. Nice move Jed! At this point we hit our high of about 6th place. All downhill from there though. Our run wasn’t so hot. As they say, “we’re stuck in the middle…”.. as we tried to keep clear behind us, I think we might have been digging a bit too deep for the velocity, because the fleet compressed on both sides of us sailing at hotter angles. Or, the wind just did a nice job of super compressing us. We loose a few boats. With that, we found ourselves at the bottom pinwheeled on the outside and loose a few boats. We come out of the turn and… what’s this? The main won’t sheet in.. UGH.. it’s tangled tight in the blocks. We loose a few more boats. Our final blow to a decent finish? As we kept fighting for clean air, we committed to the pin end … with a heavily favored boat end finish. Final tally? Fro m 5th to 15th place. That was only our second outing on the boat this season.. and “Wow.. we are rusty!” It’s not bad to start at the bottom and work your way up to lower mid-fleet.. but to be upfront and go so far backwards… that hurts the most.
I couldn’t tell, but from the standings I see 226 and 224 fought it out for 1-2. Congratulations to both on what must have been a great race to the end. (I think we were dousing our spin at the time.) After we crossed the line, the talk on 222 immediately switched from the race.. to phrases like… “What a beautiful night?!” , “Ah what a great day for a sail?”, “Well that was fun, wasn’t it?!”.. “What’s for dinner?” and.. “So how was work today..?” and in the process, we covered just about all of the euphemisms for … “Dang we sucked, didn’t we?”
Race 5
But wait… there’s more!
Blue Square! Yippee! Time for some redemption. Robin and the tremendous RC team pulled it off. We were setting up for a second race. Same course. West wind. Thoughts on our boat? Well, whatever we just did.. do the opposite. We opted for a boat end start, but still fought for a good leeward space as momentum was going to be key. We flopped over heading for the current lee of Rose, but we were a bit too late. Our angle, even footed off a bit, along with a great lift, put us just outside of the island’s lee and into more current than we wanted. We hung on with 226 below us, but they were making much better speed in less current. As we tacked onto starboard toward the mark, we found a great lane as it seems the majority of the fleet went left this race. Okay.. what did we miss this time? Anyway, we’re getting lifted on Stbd, heading right for the mark, and moving fast. No sense tacking now as a slight change would put us above the lay line. We know we’d surely get set below it, but we just didn’t want to risk a corner spot this far out. So we mushed onward with clear air… and came into the mark about 6 boat lengths below and frantically looking for a hole over our right shoulder. This is the place you really never want to be… but there it was right behind Anthony K. sailing with the 224 guys and we’re pretty much within the top of the fleet !! (It’s been a while…) Bang, onto port in the hole just enough to cross the lay line and back to sbd. Again, we stayed high as the incoming fleet on port were all stacked up below us. We rounded about 5th. Now… let’s not blow it. Held on for more angles and this time went hard left at the bottom so we could come in on a tight, inside position, on stbd at the mark. Why didn’t we think of that last time? Anyway, with our heads a bit clearer, but still not quite 100%, we lost a few at the rounding but we were happy to just stay above Team FOX on 232 for the finish. Given our past season, we’re perfectly thrilled with an 8th place. Martini time on Washington Street was a bit sweeter thanks to that second race. Congrats to Team Edenbach on 36! Nice race — was anyone even close to them?
Thanks to Robin and all of our top-notch Race Committee for giving us yet another great night on the water.
Bill Doyle
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