Every rose has it's thorns
2004-05-12

It was a beautiful night for a race. The little bit of clouds cleared out, the thunderboomers never appeared, it was warm and we had enough breeze to keep things interesting, but not scary. Nice...

Of course there is always a downside, right? Well there was, crew problems. Kerry quit because he said his hands hurt. I think he quit because M.E. hasn't been sailing. Either way, he's being replaced next week, but it left us one short for this week.

Then Johhny the Chin got stuck at work and bailed, two down... Dave was suppose to come, then figured we had too much crew and didn't show up. Blah... Three short in a crew that runs short to beging with. It was going to be an interesting night.

I was a C-5 Sally Rock start and I never seem to get a good start there. I'm not sure why, you have the most room to to maneuver, but for some reason I seem to do better elsewhere. Too many options maybe? Well last night was no exception.

I was a bit early and ended up too far down the line. Somebody shut off the countdown timer too so I was trying to look at my watch, not hit either of the boats we were sandwiched between and get past the committee boat and it's anchor. We were at least a full boat lenght behind the line when the gun went off and eating dirt from an X boat and had a little 28 footer below us who couldn't point worth crap. Nice job Ron.

It was a westerly breeze blowing about 12 and we headed towards the beach. A huge right hand shift came in and when we tacked, we were now off the wind, almost beam reaching (wind from the side.) Overstand much? Blah...

We had good boat speed though and picked off some boats and hit the weather mark fourth, even with the X and just behind Evil 42. Sometimes sailboat racing becomes follow the leader and the tendency to just follow the pack can be pretty strong, especially when the breeze looks better on the left where everybody is. The three boats ahead followed A fleet. I remembered the wind shift.

The X gave us a bit too much room rounding the mark and we got inside him and jibbed. Neil wanted us to work left, but I told him, just humor me for a bit. He did and it paid off in spades. (random question, why not clubs or diamonds or donuts for that matter? What's special about spades?) The big right hander was the seabreeze filling in after the front and we we the only ones in it for a while. SWEET!!!

The lead boat, a stripped out J-29 saw what was happening and tried to climb up to our lane. The rest just stayed where they thought they had better breeze. By the time they realized what was happening, it was bye, bye. We were in a two boat race.

The reach back was a real pain in the butt. We couldn't break through, he couldn't pull away. We eventually got over him, but the game playing slowed us down enough that the back of the pack was gaining. we hit the mark for the last leg 1 - 2 almost dead even with a run towards the finish. Our mark rounding was poor. The main got caught on the backstay and the pole set was awful. I had all kinds of weight on the pointy end and that's slow too. I could hear Evil 42 chugging up from behind and the only saving grace was all the yelling going on there. We weren't the only ones with problems I guess.

We finally got straighened out and began to move out. We gained on the 29 and pulled even. He tried to luff us above the committee boat but I was having none of it. We crossed the finish line just ahead of him and took the gun, but he beat us on corrected time. We found out later that a J-30 that won't qualify for the series finished second, two seconds ahead of us. Where could we have gained two seconds? A million places...

We rolled up the jib, folded the main and skipped our usual post race sail. We needed to get out to the mooring and the last launch was scheduled for 8:00. The crew and I put the boat away, popped some beers and watched the sun set as the launch arrived. All in all a nice night.

At the bar after we started doing some math. All we have to do is beat the X next week and we'll finish second for the series. To win it all we'd have to finish first and the J-29 would have to be at least fourth. Not likely, but you never know.

It was a beautiful morning today and I took some time before coming in to stop and smell the flowers, literally... I hope you did too.

Later

me

Previous - Next