Three-Bridge Fiasco - January 2009

After Red Rock. Weight to leeward in light wind to help the boat go faster

Starting the South leg to the Bay Bridge. Higher winds then. A little too much for the #1 and two people on the rail. Main sail wasn't as effective.

After rounding Red Rock

Past Red Rock

Elise hosted Roger and i in the three-bridge fiasco on Saturday. this is a really cool race. Take a look at some of its characteristics:

• 350 boats signed up
• in a nutshell, you need to pay a visit to three bay bridges: golden gate, richmond bridge and bay bridge, in whatever order you want (often boils down to clockwise or counterclockwise)
• you can round the marks on port or starboard
• you can cross the start/finish line from either direction
• you sail double-handed
• you start in the morning (there isn't a starting sequence per se, similar to a pursuit race, start times are organized by rating. Each rating is given a start time and needs to respect it) and you finish toward the end of the day which means that typically you have 'light morning wind', 'dead wind time', 'afternoon wind', 'dying evening wind', 'dead wind time'
• you cross many 'parking lots', eg holes in the shadow of something, eg one side of Angel Island. These holes are moving holes as the wind shifts.
• Strong current (typical in the Bay)

Pretty exciting sailing!

The first decision we had to make was whether we would go clockwise or counter clockwise. Our fleet was split. We looked at three pieces of information to make that decision

1. current: flooding initially, then early afternoon would turn to an early ebb
2. wind: coming out of the south east in the morning, supposed to turn north near Richmond bridge, Westerly elsewhere. Probably would die before actually shifting
3. where we would be w.r.t. the 'holes' at given times of day given this set of wind/current combination

Since winds were the most unpredictable variable, we opted for current - thinking that if the wind was to die or be very light, at least, we would move in the direction of our next destination with the current. Going to the first mark would be against the current, however we were better able to see what the wind was doing over the next 20 minutes. So we picked that...

Decision was therefore: CLOCKWISE. First to the mark that symbolizes the Golden Gate Bridge (west of the start line), cross the start line from East to West, then over to the richmond Bridge, then Bay Bridge, then back up to finish.

Start: 

As you can see from the picture, the start was a big mess. I couldn't even see the start line initially as boats kept crossing in front of the mark. Kept saying 'Roger, if you could kindly let me know where the start line is, it would be much appreciated' and Roger would say 'well, it should be somewhere nearby but I don't quite see it'. 

We finally made it.

Immediately hoisted the spinnaker and went for blackhaller (the mark off of Fort Point and symbolizing the Golden Gate Bridge). We got there with wind together with a dozen other boats, so we had to clear the mark pretty far to leave room for the other boats to turn around it. Fortunately most boats left the mark to starboard to head over to Racoon Straits. No major issue there. Loads of bad air, tried to turn once to stay away from bad air, went upwind of a couple of boats but it was really hard to be in clean air, especially approaching the mark.

To Angel Island

After we rounded the mark, we kept the spinnaker up for a very tight reach across to Racoon Straits. A few minutes into it, the wind died. Unfortunately, it hit us before it hit some of the boats that were closer to Racoon Straits, so disadvantaged there...The current was slowly taking us toward our destination and we tried to take advantage of every tiny little ripple of air by constantly trimming both main and chute (we took it down and swapped for the jib when it was too light as the genoa was more effective, then put it back up as soon as a light breeze appeared again). That was parking lot #1

We then got nearly stuck near Angel Island, so much that we hesitated between going through Racoon Straits or rounding the island the other to Point Blunt. The problem with that was that if the wind turned west, we would be in the angel Island hole unless we made a big detour. In the end, the wind turned north slowly and we got pushed to the Straits. It stopped and because of some current/tide ripples over the water, we were basically 'crabbing' our way up the Straits on current only for a while. No steerage, no wind and the waves would push our bow out. Great timing for lunch which we enjoyed thoroughly.

On our way to Red Rock

The wind finally picked up again, this time from the West and we could hoist the chute again. Unfortunately, in the process of hoisting it, it got hung up on some sharp component which tore a big hole at the bottom of it. I didn't want to take the chute down as the time it would take to take it down, bring the other one up, set it up, etc...would most likely be longer than just trying to fix the problem with sail tape, while the kite was flying, using the wind pressure as a table. That's exactly what I did. I went to the foredeck as my weight was slightly less than Roger's, with a knife and some sail tape. The repair held no problem. After we took the chute down, just before rounding Red Rock, the second mark, symbolizing the Richmond Bridge, we were ready with our 2nd spinnaker.

By then, we had completely lost track of the rest of the fleet but from time to time would spot people we would know on other boats and wave at them. We were concentrating on boat speed which meant spotting the parking lots and trying to go around them. Roger made a great call around Red Rock as one boat had run aground so we did a big circle around the island. 

To Bay Bridge (Treasure Island)

The wind was initially pretty light and we had to very actively trim the main and the genoa. Then it got better and better, in fact, went up higher than what the #1 could really take with only two people on the rail. However, taking the genoa down (no sail for a while), putting the #3 up, ready to take it down when we would get near the bridge and probably for the rest of the sail, in the partial shadow of the city would have taken too long. In the words of Roger 'what you're saying basically is that we should go for what makes us go fast, is that right?'

I couldn't agree more...

So we left the #1 up and agreed that our main was under-utilized at times of gusts. Roger made a great call, noticing another parking lot forming ahead of us. We went a little further East to avoid it, which actually made us go faster as we were closer to a reach than to a full beat. We managed to stay on a very tight reach all the way to the bridge. We stayed pretty clear of the island to avoid the next parking lot. We couldn't * quite * avoid it as the wind kind of died all the way to the entrance to the Alameda estuary but we got into it later and out earlier than some other boats. 

Ride to the city front

Great ride to the city front. We were covering a couple of expresses (27s that is) which we spotted. Not quite sure who they were. We also opted (another compelling case Roger made) to stay out in the Bay where there was 1) more wind (not so good w/ the #1 up) but more importantly 2) much better current which by then was ebbing so taking us to the start line. The 3rd benefit was that we had much cleaner air since all the other boats were staying close to the city front. I think that we gained on a few boats that way, including an Express 37 (!) which we beat to the finish, even though they were right with us at Treasure Island.

We did a few tacks, carefully trying to avoid starboard tackers (really hard to see what's coming below with the #1). Roger installed a 'cross-sheeting arrangement' with the winches as is (I am going to install a proper one) which meant that he could stay on the high side where his weight was desperately needed. I played the traveler, the backstay and the mainsheet to balance the boat but we were overall doing pretty well. Great boat speed and not too over powered despite some weather helm.

Finish Line

We finally finished, crossing the line in exactly the same direction as we crossed in in the morning...Seconds before we crossed the line, I spotted El Raton's spinnaker, going CCW and heading downwind toward the line. They beat us to it (downwind but sheltered from hard current as close to the shore and we were upwind, not benefiting very much from the current at that point) by seconds...

Not sure who finished before or after us so I will look at the results when they are available.

Photo credits to Lyons Imaging (www.lyonsimaging.com) - through purchase.

Portrait is courtesy of Roger. I took some pictures but still trying to finish off the roll in the waterproof camera we had taken as a spare one for the Pac Cup...as soon as it is done, I'll post them up!!! Sorry about that!

Overally, it was a fabulous day:

• how to make decisions in a constantly changing environment and take into account the whole operation to figure out what would be faster
• be on the lookout for the parking lots and try to avoid them
• constantly trim the main (necessary in this kind of wind and it does take skills) even though we more naturally trim the head sail

Definitely great practice for all of this as well as driving straight, little rudder movement in light wind, and learning to balance the boat while under power since we had a pretty big headsail (at times a little too big) so we wouldn't lose time with partial round ups or slowing the boat down through pinching. I had a FABULOUS day. And I think that Elise liked it too.

On the Sunday, Nathan and I went back to try to put the sensor back onto the autopilot (a Pac Cup casualty). Not sure the part is entirely operational so Nathan will fire an email to the manufacturer.