2009 is off to a good start with
the Three Bridge Fiasco on Jan 31.
Photos courtesy of
Slackwater.
The start was sunny and almost windless. We had a great advantage to
starting near the end (at 11:00) in that we could see where the parking
lots
were. Unfortunately the entire bay was a parking lot. We
crossed the line and headed to Blackaller and pretty much
stopped (hence the flaccid spinnaker above). Over the next hour
we drifted towards the center of the
bay, not any closer to or farther from Blackaller. A few boats
retired even before we reached the first mark. Eventually we got
a bit
of breeze and rounded Blackaller. We headed towards Raccoon
Strait because the boats under the Bay Bridge weren't moving. But
before we got to the Strait, we noticed that nobody was moving there
either. So we turned around and headed past Alcatraz and towards
Yerba Buena. By TI we were drifting again but at least now it was
on a flood. Urs made some excellent tactical decisions through
the day but his best was when he got us around YB when nobody else was
moving. Somehow he found some wind about 30 feet from the island
and we passed a lot of boats under spinnaker. It was one of those
odd times when boats 100 yards away are on a different tack in a
different (or no) wind. Once under the bridge we stayed close to
TI and the wind started picking up. We had our first problem just
past TI when the wind had picked up probably into the teens. Our
screacher wouldn't furl because we ran out of line on the drum, so we
spent some time heading DDW towards Berkeley getting it lashed
down. Once we got it sorted out we could see another 31,
Roshambo, who we had passed at TI when the sea breeze came in from the
slot, way ahead and to windward. We also had some trouble with my
new mainsheet fine tune bracket, which was preventing the mainsheet
cleat from opening, so I had to jury rig that as well. We still
made fairly good time to Red Rock and left it to port, but the wind
went light again just as we rounded. We weren't pointing very
high and the 31 was almost out of sight, way up near Tiburon, and still
moving much faster than we were. We were also passed by Three
Sigma, who were pointing a lot higher. The wind picked up again
and the flood wasn't too strong, but then we had our next mishap: the
spinnaker in its sock on the foredeck decided to go for a swim, right
under the boat. We stopped dead in the water, and I ripped it
while dragging it back aboard. My spinnaker tack has an emergency
release: the tack line is double ended and runs to clutches on the
cockpit coamings, just in case the spinny needs to be blown in a hurry,
but the line isn't quite long enough to store the spinnaker on the
tramp. The to-do list grows ever longer. After we finished
our marine biology survey and tossed the halibut overboard, we got
underway and started thinking about which way to round Angel
Island. There was probably flood current in Raccoon Strait but
there was a huge shadow behind AI, so we went up the strait. The
wind was at least 12 knots from there to the finish. We managed
to catch up to the 27 (3S) and it appeared that they and the 31 still
had to
round Blackaller, so our finish wouldn't be as bad as I expected.
We ended up 12th out of 350-some starters.
On March 14th I was back in SF for the weekend for the Doublehanded
Lightship race. We launched Friday and it was breezy and remained
breezy all night so we knew there would be some wind and swell the next
day. Tom interviewed me for his documentary on Friday.
Saturday, Urs was late, and we ran the engine dry and had to switch to
the other gas tank near the end of the estuary. We had a decent
start, Urs driving, almost caught up with Roshambo
after the Gate when they seemed to get out of the current on the north
side, but then we stuffed the bow into a wave and snapped the hold-up
tube on the bowsprit. Should have had the spin halyard attached
to the
end but didn't, and spent the next
20 minutes
trying to sail backwards to get the tube unfolded and the screacher out
of the water. We were pretty far back by then but decided to
continue. We had one comber go right over the deck coming down
off a
wave and it made me think of a conversation I had with Mike Leneman
several years ago about how I didn't think my hatch design was very
watertight, and he said, "You'll never take a wave that far
back!"
We
overstood the finish more because we were trying to hit the line
between the fleet of 505s and the fleet of Lasers, both on starboard,
then we jibed around the line and had to thread our way through the
Lasers. One guy tacked right in front of us and got a significant
"Oh shit!" look on his face
before he tacked back a second later. Later I checked the log and
we
were doing 16 knots at the time. Whose idea was it to have our
finish
and their race in the same place at the same time?
I was happy to find a picture of Tatiana in the norcalsailing.com race
report
here.
Our results weren't so pleasing. Last multihull to finish, mainly
because of our 20-minute pit stop and because we didn't set the
screacher until after we came back under the bridge. Still, we
finished before the first monohull. I was also pleased that we
didn't break anything major in the rough conditions, and that we
maintained 10 knots to weather in steep breaking waves. That was
probably mostly due to Urs' driving, but it's nice not to be wallowing
along at 3 knots like we would in the Avalon.
Back in Ohio, I'm working on some small part
repairs.
