Three Bridge Fiasco - 26th January 2008

This is a double-handed one-design race for the Express 27. Crew on "Elise" was Nathan and Nat. Nathan was the skipper on this race because he attended the skipper's meeting...(Nat was in Seattle for work on that important date)

I will try to do a little writeup even though I am the least qualified person for this.

The forecast was rain, wind between 20-25 knots with gusts of 30. The perfect storm for a long-distance double-handed race. We had 15-foot waves breaking on deck, had to constantly rely on the GPS not to head into one of the Bay Bridge towers. It was wild out there.
Just kidding. This bout of bad weather never materialized during the race. Instead, it waited until Sunday evening to make sure that my evening flight to Seattle would be nicely delayed. Hmpf.

We had winds of about 10 knots, gusting 15 from the SE to start with. Then, down to 5 knots from the same direction. Then down to nothing from no direction. Then up to 5 to 10 with the breeze filling in from the gate. We started with a light ebb and ended with a flood.

The first decision one has to make during this race is which bridge to go to first as we are free to choose the order in which we are rounding the marks. We opted for the Bay Bridge first as the leg between the Bay Bridge and the Richmond bridge is the longest and we wanted to be downwind for that. Also, the part in the ebb would be pretty short and we could get current relief after Treasure Island. So that's what we did.

The first upwind leg, we were slightly overpowered in gusts with a #3, little to no backstay and the main up, lacking weight on the rail. We tried to depower a little by adding some backstay, bringing the traveler down yet tucking the main sheet in hard. This seemed to help. I was hiking out as far as it is allowed in the class (not much :)) The boats near us at that time were Strega, Peaches and El Raton. Elise was keeping up.

We set the kite after turning in the direction of Berkeley/Richmond and we held it until Red Rock. Elise felt very good in the puffs and was going nicely. We were still keeping up with all the other boats. El Raton and Peaches opted for the Northwest side of the course and we sticked to the closest side to shore, far out enough to clear the Berkeley pier and jibed once to get to Red Rock. We seemed to have just as much wind as they did, favorable current and a nice short distance to the mark.

We noticed a current line and we stayed on the right side of it all the way to the island. The wind dropped dramatically before we got to Red Rock and we made tactical mistake. Even though, the wind had gotten very light, we didn't think of changing head sail while we were under spinnaker. We switched back to the #1 jib only after rounding the island and lost ground to the other Express 27, including El Raton and Peaches who had chosen the other course. We had all caught up at the mark so our choices seemed equally valid. This is where we lost time in the race. Elise uses hanks so it is costly to change sails upwind.

The next decision was whether or not to go up Raccoon Strait, or go around the other side of Angel Island. We could see the "hole" in Angel Island, as the wind seemed to be slowly shifting. Most other boats were also opting for the Strait and we committed to this direction. Sailing under the #1, Elise performed admirably. We were as fast or faster than some of the 30 footer in our neighborhood. We lost track of the Express 27 fleet. The wind dropped almost entirely while we were painfully making our way up the Golden Gate Bridge. We constantly trimmed our sail to take advantage of the tiniest bit of wind we could feel. Initially, I wasn't concentrated enough and this may have cost us a few more minutes. We were right next to Archimedes and both Joe and we agreed that no wind was no fun :) This is where we lost the last few minutes as the boats who were closer to shore got more wind at some point, a wind that never got to us. Hard to predict and we did try to get to that area, but couldn't because of wind shifts forcing us to tack several times and putting us in the wrong direction for a little too long.

After that, we sailed well to the finish. Toward the end of Raccoon, the wind picked up again and we could set the spinnaker. We had to drop as the wind dropped again and it was hard to keep it full but it was ready to go back up quickly, from the forward hatch. The wind picked up again which was just as well as we were facing a flood by then and still had to make our way up toward the Golden Gate. We rounded the last mark and headed toward the finish in a nice light but sustained breeze. We kept the spinnaker up as long as possible on a tight reach, then dropped and hoisted again the #1.

When we finished, we had no idea of our position in the fleet as we had lost sight of all the other Express 27.

After the race, I delivered the boat back to Berkeley, my first time single-handed on Elise - and we finished up a pretty perfect day with a treat at the Cheeseboard and a safari into a local used book store...

We didn't take any picture as we were too absorbed by the race...and too busy regretting not having brought wine on board for the Strait fiasco portion of the race, fearing it would be all rainy and cold. However, I noticed a Wyliecat who took picture of Elise. Perhaps we can get hold of those.

The results can be found here. Elise finished 10 out of 17 registered and 14 actually sailing. The great thing about this race though is that we are VERY close to the boats that finished right before us and only 10 minutes behind the leaders. If we had been more alert and changed to a #1 during our downwind leg, we may have been only a few minutes behind them, and a 4-6th place finish is not unrealistic at all. This was our first double-handed race so not so bad in the end.

Learning for us:
- Anticipate, always look forward to the next big thing in the race. Not foreseeing the sail change was so avoidable...
- Our manoeuvres went all well, with Nat doing most of the trimming and sail handling before in light wind weight at the bow is a killer. Nathan did most of the driving. We did switch from time to time though.
- We noticed a couple of holes in the spinnaker which we will tape up before the next outing
- Nat needs to concentrate a lot more in light air. It is critical to take full advantage of any shift in direction and wind velocity, constantly on the lookout for current changes and best wind areas.
- Always bring wine, regardless of the weather forecast
- Put on the race sails, regardless (we left the cruising sails on, thinking that it would be nasty and wanted to preserve the nice sails, given that we would be double-handed, hence slower at everything). Elise just loves it.
- The new hatch is awesome.
- We are glad that the boat is now all sealed up given the current weather conditions!