APRIL 23, 2013
It was a sunny beautiful day on the Monterey Bay and once
again Sailing Pair A Dice leads the two other boats around the course NOT! That was years ago, this is NOW.
On this night we came to the cold dank harbor. The wind was blowing out of the northwest,
but it was so chilly, even I was wondering “is this what I really want to do
tonight?”. Put on more clothing and get
the boat ready! As we left the harbor,
there were already three boats out and two more following us out. The participants this night were: Sailing Pair
a Dice (PAD), Aeolian (A), Diver Down (DD), No Name 27 (NN), Free Spirit (FS),
and Andiamo (AND). We used the new
course card that all of the boats had to set the course and with the wind, we
decided on course two (Start, Wharf,Mile,GOV and finish).
With a port tack start heavily favored, all of the boats
came in on port for the start except PAD, which all of the boats had to
duck. On PAD, we felt we had made the
right choice because we thought we were getting in to better wind heading
outside. We were getting stopped by the
bigger seas, so we tacked over and were running parallel to the fleet inside,
maybe a quarter of a mile further out than the rest of the boats. While
DD was roughly following our lead, the rest of the fleet was inside and
had to tack out when they got to the wharf.
It was very apparent to PAD at that point that the gap between us was
closing, as the inside fleet was getting lifted and we were getting
headed. PAD eventually tacked over to
take advantage of the lift, at which point it was very apparent that FS was
definitely in the lead. Wharf was a very
difficult mark to pass, with all of the boats needing to tack multiple times to
round except A. I have to hand it to
Mark on A, though he had to pinch to make the mark, he rounded without having
to tack which gave A a substantial
lead. The rest of the fleet rounded
just about in unison, then it was off to Mile, with a very tight group of
boats, all trying to steal the wind of their competitors. A was able to round Mile ahead of everyone
else and, once again, the whole group rounded together just after A. It was interesting with the different points
of sail, how the boats ranked in speed.
To weather AND and the rest of us were dead even. DD was waterlining all of us with good speed
on all points. Off the wind, on port tack,
PAD was able to get a lead on AND and was just off of FS’s starboard
quarter. As we rounded GOV, PAD had
inside overlap on FS and were able to get ahead after rounding GOV. DD had rounded just ahead of us and just
behind A, as we all marched toward the finish line. Once again the winner was Aeolian, followed
by Diver Down, then Pair A Dice, Free Spirit, Andiamo and No Name 27. This night was the tightest grouping of boats
I have seen on a Tuesday night, with No Name 27 coming in less than 5 minutes
after Andiamo. For this night we did not
give No Name 27 a PHRF offset which could have placed her very near the front
of the fleet! What a great night, seeing
everyone so tightly grouped together!
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It has been thrilling for me to see the fleet come together
so well. For all of the boats to be sailing
so close to each other shows that all of us are bringing our game up. All sailing is, is doing a thousand things
just right! Gone are the days when we
could sneak up on another boat because they weren’t trimming their sails. Being associated with the yacht club as many
of us are, many of us know very good sailors and they are also getting
involved, which ramps the game up even more.
Who would have ever thought that Catalina’s could be raced so
competitively!
I am looking forward to seeing you all out there next
Tuesday.
Barry Keeler
Sailing Pair A Dice
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