Double Handed Farallons, Apr 7 2007

Crew: Phil and Nathan

Forecast: 5-15, clocking hard to the right over the course of the day. Large swells, slightly mixed.

It's an unusual year when you can come off of the starting line on port tack and pass within a few tens of yards of the lightship without tacking, but that's what we had to begin with. After a slightly later beginning to our morning than expected, we crossed the line just slightly late (but not bad relative to the fleet), fenders proudly displayed.

The current was favorable both out and back, and we perhaps took slightly less advantage of it than we could have, starting towards the shore side of the line and staying slightly high to pass near the South Tower rather than going hard north. Our speed was reasonable, losing a bit to Paxton but keeping up and at times a bit faster than the boats trailing him.

Catching a strong ebb, the distance to Bonita rolled by quickly. The fleet spread out a bit at that point, with us furthest south (an even fleet spread, not a flyer). Closest over was El Raton, with whom we had a back-and-forth speed contest for miles.

At that point, the fog rolled in and we lost sight of everyone. A chunk of the fleet had gone hard north, but we had too hard a time sailing off course when we were literally laying the islands without even being fully hard on the wind. The expected wind shift then materialized, in the space of five minutes rather than hours. We had to tack over at that point to maintain a respectable VMG.

As we approached the Farallons, the fog cleared a bit and we began to see many boats coming in from the north, but no Expresses. We had to do a double tack to get up to the layline and around, but our speed held reasonable.

Coming around the far corner, we set the kite and bore roughly towards Bonita, in pursuit of what we suspected to be El Raton. Our downwind speed was reaonable, and Phil was a lot of help in figuring out the polars. There wasn't enough wind to really get going, but enough for a pleasant trip back to the entrance to the gate.

We still couldn't see any other Expresses, so at Bonita we decided to split with some other boats as an experiment. The current was good over near Mile Rock, but the south side was probably a loser in the net. Right at the South Tower, we noticed Magic Bus immediately behind us and setting up for her final gybe. Throwing in a snap gybe to stay inside of her, the lack of careful prep is visible in the pic Nat posted. We gained a bit on Bus on the way to the St. Francis, but not enough to make up for the lack of noticing and covering her early on or the wipeout.

Final finish: 6 out of 8 finishers and 10 racers, including Moxie (who I believe failed to round the ends after her premature start and Strega, who checked in late).