The Spring Keel was Elise's first weekend round-the-buoys regatta. With 18 E27's signed up, it was also a great chance to practice working busy start lines and mark roundings.
The first day (Saturday) was discouraging because the weather lived up to its forecast of "dead". The hoped-for westerly never materialized, and the forecast easterly died. Sunday was much better, and the committee amended the sailing instructions to include three races (vs 2). The breeze was up and down (mostly down) but enough to run credible races and at times to give a good, exciting feel to the upwinds.
Unfortunately, the wind was blowing perpendicular to the main channel, and the RC had to send us out into the middle for some quick windward-leeward courses rather than up and down the cityfront (mostly out of the channel, ducking inshore in one direction and towards the channel for current aid/avoidance) as would normally be expected.
The courses were all W-L, once around with an offset, leeward gate, finish to windward. The only difference was that the committee switched from port to startboard roundings after the first race.
Out of the three starts, the second two were quite good for us. We were able to keep pace on the upwind for a change (a pleasant payoff to the losses in the Berkeley midwinters). Our tacking and gybing is still a little off the pace versus the experienced boats, so we generally avoided close fights.
Cyling in the wind velocity made it relatively hard to call laylines and favored courses (if you were planning on 3 minutes in a current to lay a mark, and suddenly get an extra couple of knots of wind, all of a sudden you've either overstood or have to do an extra tack and give the bow no setup time).
In general, it paid to play a bit more on position and current than on wind and short distances. Ups and downs in the wind made "safe" moves valuable. A few times, we split from the fleet to mixed results: as an example, in the last race hopping a few hundred yards to the side to get into Alcatraz's sheltering cone, gaining much distance against the two boats closest to us but losing distance to those a bit in front.
Our finishes were quite encouraging (out of 16 starters, 12 overall with individual finishes 13, 10, 12m two points behind the overall 11th boat). We were much more competitive in the light than the drifting conditions. When the breeze came up another notch (requiring everyone on the windward side with the #1 up), we started to lose a bit again. There's lots of tuning to do, but now we're solidly in the game.
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