The day started weird...first we ran aground on the way out of the St Francis (the shoal markers do not seem to indicate the actual boundaries of the shoal...) and a Protector had to drag us out. Elise's bow was pretty much on the beach, I could have jumped out on the sand and keep my feet dry. Impressive :-)
The wind then died and we had to turn on the engine. Current was really bad and it took us a while to sail to the start line which we crossed pretty much one before last (Motorcycle Irene was hooked on the Committee Boat anchor line and must have crossed the line way after us...) and at the same time as the next start.
This means that we had nearly 5 minutes to gain back on the rest of the fleet. We were last at the turnaround (windward) mark but by the time we reached the Richmond Bridge, we had caught up w/ one Express and we were side by side with a couple more, and gaining on a 4th one. Turns out that we beat quite a few Expresses to the finish (including Top Gun who did not seem to have registered as he was not scored). primarily by boat speed.
There was a big lull at some point right after the Richmond Bridge - we were in a no wind strong favorable current area and we drifted toward Vallejo at pretty much the same speed as a bunch of boats that were in a light wind no current area. Crazy.
The wind finally picked up and pushed up at about 10-15 knots down to the entry of the Vallejo channel. Mark did a fabulous job at trimming the spinnaker and we passed another boat during that leg, catching up to 3 to 4 minutes to the other boats.
We dropped the spinnaker and hoisted our #1 in the Channel since it wasn't really a tight beat. This seems to have been a good jib choice as save a couple of gusts, we were zooming along.
So despite a pretty gruesome start, we had good boat speed, played wind and currents (at least what was visible and attainable based on our position) well - good sail trim, strong maneuvers, did not lose any time changing sails, tacking or jibing. Elise behaved extremely well in these weather conditions and finished exactly mid-fleet - within 15 min of the top boat but less than 5 minutes behind the next one up.
The next few races, we are focusing a lot on boat speed and crew maneuvers - and a little less on tactics yet. Our logic is that over a 2-year plan, no matter how good your tactics, if you have good tactics and bad boat speed, faced with good tacticians with good boat speed, we'll lose boat for boat to the finish - and in round the buoy races, the big strategy (north Vs South, etc...) is less critical to a win.
First things first - and given that we were short-handed (only 3 of us on the boat), I'd say that we sailed a good race.
Once we got to Vallejo, we had a 'push boat' which was awesome, and which took us to our rafting place. Nathan and I spent the night on Elise, who turned out to be very comfortable again. Definitely camping-style, but more comfortable than most tents I know!
No comments:
Post a Comment