Downhill both ways
2003-05-19

My face is a little scorced today. Six hours looking up at the sails will do that to you. We had the around Prudence Island the wrong way race yesterday and got a little bit of everything. We didn't do all that well, but had fun, so I guess thats something.

Yesterdays race was a pursuit race. In most racing everybody starts at the same time. All the boats have different handicaps based on how fast they should be able to sail in seconds per mile. Then you finish where you finish, they work out the handicaps and you see who wins. The fleet was smaller than in past years, maybe 35 to 40 boats. Lots of them were old friends and we exchanged greetings before our respective starts.

In a persuit race, alll the handicap time is figured up front and everybody starts at a different time. We started 40 minutes behind the first boat in a very much dying breeze. We rated the boat for this race with the old cruising #2 headsail. It's small and heavy and definately not a good choice for light air.

On top of that, the only regular we had was Martin, my 70's + pitman and his daughter Maria who works the pointy end. Pretty lean pickings. To add to that, bot M.E and here friend Claudette were both seriously hung over from the commodores ball the night before. Oh well, we'll make do.

We hit the line well and were being flushed down the bay in a full outgoing moon flood tide. There were times when our sailing speed was more than doubled by the current, but we were still getting no where fast.

There were several huge windless holes and we passed and were passed by several of the same boats numerous times. At one point, we had a guy tack right in front or us when I had absolutly no steerage because of lack of wind. We came pretty close maybe two feet of a low speed crash. We got straightened out and moved on.

Donw by the end of the island we could see the seabreeze filling in. The boats closer in and further down would get it first, a huge advantage for them, frustrating (again) for us.

When the breeze filled in, it came in pretty good,12 to 15 true I'd guess. We picked up speed rapidly and began passing boats. The we turned the corner and it was back to down wind all the way back up the island.

We picked the outside lane and there was a pack of maybe 10 boats that took the inside towards the island track. At times the wind died in both places so we alternated smiling and grimacing depending on the gains or losses. We all ended up at the top mark at about the same time.

Sailboat racing can get kind of tense and there are lots of big egos involved. We got messed up in a huge shouting match between three boats slightly ahead and inside of us and their testoserone played to our advantage.

We had one guy who wouldn't let us go over him so I figured fine, inside at the mark is better anyway and we'll roll him to leeward, when he saw that was our plan he quickly climbed back up and we rolled him ourside. The guy he was playing games with did exactly the same thing with the same results. We beat both to the mark.

We stayed wide and missed all the yelling and screams of protest at the bell. The high line also gave us a fast anngle to the finish. While they played games we just went fast and quickly blew away the pack. At times were were hitting 9 knots close reaching and we were all finally having fun. We picked off two more smaller boats and finsihed mostly by ourselves in 11th place, maybe 5 minutes out of first over 17 miles.

We rolled up the headsail, popped a few beers and sailed home under just the main. Not our best performance, but I was satisfied. Next weekend... Block Island. Stay tuned.. and happy Monday

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