Happy to get the win this week, but in Shields racing in the Bay it’s never over till it’s over and we never felt comfortable until the S flag went up at Y. Conditions during the day had a moderate NW gradient dominating until the SW sea breeze took over in the harbor.
On the first beat, here’s the view from 156, eventual winner of Sept. 23 race
We dropped the mooring at 4:15 and sailed down to Rose Island in a SW wind to start our pre-race routine of getting our sail setup right, compass headings and guessing if the weather mark would be Hammersmith, Fort Weatherall or Dumplings. We took Dumplings off the list right away since the mark was out of the water and getting a bottom job on the deck of the Coast Guard buoy tender.
Pre race, the wind started to fade and shift right – the sea breeze was dying and the NW gradient was coming back in play. It looked light up the bay and any hope of sailing in the solid 10 – 12 we had when we left the mooring was gone so we eased the headstay ¾” and started to work on getting our line sights.
The RC did a nice job quickly resetting for the new NW direction. The playbook for a start just south of Rose Island in an outgoing current is to play the cone so getting off the line clean and tacking to port was our early strategy.
At 4 min to go the line was square but with 2:30 the breeze went left favoring the pin. It was getting light again and there were signs the sea breeze wasn’t giving up. The recalled first start was good practice for us trying to win the pin. The second I flag start was a clean one and we were able to get on the favored port tack immediately. With the left shift, boats starting at the pin had the benefit of a little more breeze but the length of the line put us outside any cone relief, unlike the boats that started on the right side.
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The long port tack was a boat speed test with the boats to the right in less current and the boats to the left getting short duration left puffs but in more current. There were two boats to the left of us who were always a little more bow up and benefitting from left puffs. About 40% up the beat we tacked back onto starboard crossed behind them and set up to be the left most boat, banking on what we hoped was a persistent left shift. Soon we were ahead of the two boats we crossed behind but as we got to the lay line 39 and I think 224 came out of the right ahead of us and we rounded 3rd.
With the kite up we were just about laying and we could see the boats moored in the harbor were pointing SW and there were a few cruising boats off Fort Adams in a solid sea breeze so knew the leeward mark was in the new SW breeze and stayed high in an attempt to meet it as it came down the channel. This all seemed like a good plan until we looked over and saw the boats to the deep left of us charging in the old NW breeze. But our strategy played out and we were continuously headed down towards Y in the building breeze. Happy to see the S flag up and happy to finish near the mooring.
With daughter Holley sailing IC 37’s and daughter Alie being in Maine, we had to reshuffle our friends and family crew. On board last night were Libby Toppa, Liza Toppa, Jeremy Wilmot and Suzy “you mean there are still boats that use spinnaker poles?” Leech. Another great Shields night on the bay.
—Mike Toppa, 156
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