CYC Midwinters - SH (with a stoaway photographer) - leeward mark disaster

Life on the slow lane - we were very slowly approaching the leeward mark. I chose a course that was low on the wind but high on the mark and I was basically catching up all the other Expresses, lost in Even Less Wind Land in a flood making it very difficult for them to get back to the mark. I too was in a flood so I aimed higher than the mark and was ranging neutral on it, adjusting mostly with sail trim as to no slow down the boat with unnecessary tiller movements to keep ranging neutral on it. Elise was actually the most inner boat at the mark.

I love this picture because it shows that we basically caught with the entire fleet of Expresses on that move.

This is then the mess that we found ourselves in - like a horror movie unfolding in slow motion.

First the boat on our port side was basically getting closer moved up by the leeward boats - I asked for room at the mark as we had overlapped at the three boat lengths and I basically had rights but they replied (with some logic) that they couldn't give it to me since they were between a rock and a hard place themselves.

They had by then sailed past me - in addition to the overlap, I was the starboard tacker...they bumped into the boat in front of them and slow down in the no wind moving wall of sails and just sailed toward Elise, inexorably.

After they hit us, the continued on their merry way. We didn't file a protest - no desire to be stuck in a protest room that evening and the damage was only superficial fender bender - they were many other hits at that mark. Elise had no option to go around beind the inside boat and with a flood it would have been race suicide too.

The next threat came on our port side - a boat which you can see on the picture below just barged in. There was absolutely no overlap at the three boat zone mark so Elise had total rights over that boat ie she was supposed to go around us and not cut between Elise and the mark - calling 'we're the inside boat, get out of the way - which I could not do having already been hit by the boat on my right side and continuing to travel as one block now because the alternative is being touched by that other troublemaker - which also inevitably happened. Elise was caught in a sandwich between the two boats and hit by both boats on either side. Brilliant.

Nathan Bossett took this last picture of Elise recovering from the rounding of the mark - we were even driven off the mark by the boat to our left we otherwise would have rounded right at the mark.

We moved from a great position at the rounding to a crappy one because we also had no easy way out to accelerate. As a single hander in such close quarters I couldn't easily jibe the kite as it meant leaving the helm which would have caused other 'bumping' so I rushed to drop it as it was emerging from the lee of the wall of sails and starting to blow Elise off onto the leeward boat.

Then I had to painstakingly sort it out (a heavy wet spinnaker from the rain) and hoist it on the other side, so shifting all the lines around, moving the pole, etc...

In the meantime, with no wind and moderate flood all the other Expresses took off.

We bravely pushed on and we did make up some ground, staying on the high side right at the current line as observed on the instruments (with GPS and boat speedo) to try to maximize wind power via a spinnaker reach and minimize current downside. The wind picked up a bit more toward the end after dying for a good 30 min but not allowing us to make the cut off time.