Elise's crew was Nathan, Roger, Belle and Nat.
The start was a little confusing as it was hard to hear the guns and horn and the race committee wasn't counting down at all. There was a postponement because one of the Islander 36 got stuck in the mud (it was VERY low tide and the YC is very very shallow, a lot of boats were aground when we left our spot, still rafted up on docked) getting out of the Yacht Club and couldn't make it in time for its start.
Same as on Saturday, the sailing instructions clearly specified that 'Checkin on the radio or in person was NOT allowed'
Start was downwind, under spinnaker - and up (or down) the Vallejo channel. Elise did well and kept its place in the fleet. Nathan was at the helm (Nat drove most of Saturday). We started a little late in the pack but still w/ other Expresses this time :-) It was particularly hard to time this start because of a slight ebb + the downwind part (harder to slow down the boat). We were a little over-conservative and we could have hoisted the spinnaker slightly earlier.
As we were rounding the last mark of the channel, some weird things happened. There seemed to be an exact cancellation of the wind coming from San Pablo Bay and the wind coming out of the Vallejo channel...so boats were dropping dead in the water right in front of us, left and right. We quickly dropped the spinnaker and maneuvered our way out of that mess pretty skillfully but in no wind. A few boats were caught only on the edge of this mess and managed to escape at that time. A couple of Expresses (and other boats) suffered a couple of small bumps as inertia wasn't the same for all boats...Nothing serious at all, and just a penalty here and there. It was definitely a very crowded mark.
Up the channel, we decided to stay in the channel initially because there was still some ebbing current and move out as soon as the tide would turn which we did. We had great boat speed (above 6 knots) the whole time, played well with weight around the boat and wind was pretty steady at 10 to 13 knots. We'd tack if the wind speed would be consistently down.
We overtook a couple of Expresses at that time -
The wind then became very very fluky - boats on the left seemed to have no wind - there was also a big no wind bar crossing the entire bay. It was really hard to guess where the wind was going to fill from. We played this pretty tactically, following the little wind there was by very actively looking at variations on the water, while remaining out of the adverse current.
By then, we had passed two Expresses and caught up with a third one (who had disappeared after the 'mark mess'
Opa! with whom we talked after the Finish approached this more strategically (a better move) and hedged their bets, pretty much choosing the middle. Lower risk (and lower reward) strategy - we were a little too far to the left, also going for min distance to the Finish.
Desperado took a big bet (high risk and high reward) strategy to the left, which didn't really work out in the end.
We had put in *some* strategic thought in our approach, as the wind was very light, wanting to have a tighter angle so we could move faster through the water to the Finish.
The boats on the left were dead in a big wind hole. The boats on the right had to go further right to catch the wind. We were never dead but the wind filled out a little later where we were, and this totally killed our distance advantage. We still caught up w/ one more Express before the Finish line, and we finished right after Ergo (again) and exactly mid fleet (again), ahead of Desperado.
We did a disaster drop of a Belle who was going back to RYC and headed under #1 in really light air up Raccoon Straights, back to the St Francis - well dined and wined. (it's Elise after all...). Roger drove us back to the Club.
I got a little wet as we crossed the Bay, past Angel Island...both the air and the water temperature really dropped, making us long for the Delta Ditch Run, another one of these balmy sunny downwind races...
Great boat speed the whole time, boat for boat, we were creeping up places. Elise pointed great and we managed to keep her really balanced, even though at times we were really hitting the top of the range for the #1 and we had only 4 people on board, including two elves. We will see what we could have done better strategy-wise, but our short term tactics worked great as we were never completely dead in the water, and were dealt bad cards twice during the race - making the best of a bad situation seemed to be our motto on that day!
Overall, we had a lot of fun and once more admired how well the Express 27 will sail in all sorts of conditions, downwind, upwind, etc...
I may be really falling in love w/ that boat...
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