Three Bridge Fiasco 2011

Crew: Nat, Nathan

The Three Bridge Fiasco is called Fiasco because it is usually a collection of parking lots...throughout the bay as the wind tends to either shut down or be light to begin with. This year was no exception in the morning, even though we had really nice decent wind in the afternoon. Super weird conditions.

The deal is that nearly 400 boats start in the most chaotic manner as you can cross the line in any direction you want and the only condition is to hit all three marks before finishing. Quoting the Sailing Instructions.

"The three course marks are YRA 16 ("Blackaller", yellow cylinder "C" 0.2 nm east of Fort Point), Red Rock, and  Yerba Buena Island. Boats shall round all three marks, in any sequence and in either direction. "

A lot of the race depends on the course you go. In 2009, we finished the race around 3:30PM, there wasn't any more wind but we picked a good course. We finished well before the first half, even overall - this year, it looks like the way to go was Red Rock first, then TI. Not sure how to best decide this...The course the winning group chose.

We figured that if the wind was going to come from the South/Southwest, as forecast (and we waited until right before the start to decide, and looked toward Sausalito and Tiburon to check the conditions there, and in heavy ebb, we might want to use the wind that we had and run for the southern marks - the wind would help us fight the tide and we'd stay sheltered from the current. We were hoping that on the other side of Treasure Island, we would still get wind based on the wind direction...A lot of 'hoping' I guess.

A lot of boats got stuck right by the city front, and we ended up next to a huge moving wind wall. We kind of broke away from that wall and headed for TI - crossing over and getting current relief behind TI. By the time, we were ready for a tack to get around the island, we were laying the mark if we were to go around the other side, with Peaches and Magic Bus. So we decided to go that way. Unfortunately the wind died as we rounded the corner...

The ebb was still strong. We stayed close to shore (noticing that this was what Magic Bus was going and with great success) - at some point, with 0.0 knots of wind and a totally static wind indicator, we threw the anchor as stationary was faster than moving backwards with the current...The wind picked up soon after that fortunately and as we rounded the island, we saw the group of boats that came down from the city front. 

We went around and headed for Red Rock. We got into a few dead spots again, very light air - and the wind picked up as we were nearing Richmond. All of the sudden 15 to 20 knots, reaching under spinnaker. A ton of fun. We may have pushed a little hard and stayed too close to the breakwater near Richmond - we also ended up in light air for a little too long, as magic Bus took us in front of us under spinnaker. We switched down to the #3 while we were downwind (my only 'performance' with sail work on that day...sadly) - as looking at the boat going upwind, there definitely was enough wind for that sail.

It took us forever to round Red Rock as we got caught behind a big boat that did not seem to want to round the mark...they took down their spinnaker while the jib was still furled up, then didn't head up as we forced them up (being the leeward boat, forced us to gybe, became a starboat tacker so forced us away from where we were going...we finally manage to take their stern and proceed...) - meanwhile two Express 27 managed to catch up with us.

We switched drivers by then - and frankly, we probably should have done that a little while before. Light air sailing takes a huge toll on your ability to pay attention. It is mentally super tiring and I was very tired. It is also tiring on the trimmer of course - but the driver has two jobs: main and driving and figuring out where the light spots are, etc... and with less attention it is easier to focus on one job: trimming the jib. So, I think that we switched too late and maybe not for long enough.

Back in Racoon Straight, we ended up a little too far to the left but the flood hadn't really started in any meaningful way and when we started to hit the current we were pretty nicely to the right side of the current line, yet not so much to the right that we lost distance and ended up tacking much more often. So we gained on a few boats there, with this little maneuvre, including a 39-ft boat, with much longer waterline. 

By then, the flood had settled in and we hugged the North shore to stay out of the current, we cross the Bridge, right at the Bridge and headed over Blackaller. Unfortunately, it was dark by then and that stupid mark is not lit. We found ourselves with a bunch of boats, looking for the mark with spot lights...Pretty funny. We kind of roughly knew where it was but other boats didn't seem to clearly round in any one place. 

We turned on the GPS below but by then, Nathan managed to spot the mark and we clear it just fine. It wasnt' spinnaker weather back to the Finish line, so we kept our #3 up as in 10-13 knots of wind, it probably would have cost us more to take it down and switch up to the #1 (Elise has hanks for short-handed offshore sailing and no luff, so swapping headsail upwind means going bare pole for a while) - we heard that Magic Bus finished on the radio, hit the line about 20 minutes before the deadline - and headed back to the Club on a reach (usually it's a hard beat up the channel!)

We ended up in line to pull the boat out of the water but some Moore decided to take their rig down while at the hoist...it was taking forever and we opted for a nice onion soup inside instead of waiting around in the rain for these guys to finish up their little project.

Long day - I was pretty wiped out by the end of it. Not physically, but mentally. I need to get back into it! - there may be a lot of other light air days during this season!!