MAY 24, 2016: STEADY WINDS

May 24, 2016

STEADY BREEZE

The prediction was for a lot of wind that would subside as the evening proceeded.  My first glimpse of the flag on the Crows Nest confirmed there was a lot of wind from the Northwest.  The flag was flying as stiff as a board. We motored out of the harbor and watched as there were various boats out on the bay with various amounts of sail up.  Some were sailing with heavily reefed mains and small jibs.  We raised our main with a reef in it.  It was finally time to use the 135 jib for the first time this spring.  May winds were finally here.

We called everyone over to the start area and called for course Whiskey 1: Start, Wharf, Mile, Blacks and finish.

  We gave a 5 minute horn and set up for our start.  Since the conditions were easier inside, we wanted to be able to tack as soon as we could to head back toward the beach.  We set up on Starboard tack start the very last boat in the parade of starboard tacking boats.  We did not go out far before Sagitarius was crossing below us so we tacked to cover them.  We may have slowed them a little, but they still passed us and got far enough ahead of us to tack and clear us.  We didn’t even have to dip them. 

At wharf, Sagitarius had a comfortable lead followed by Pair A Dice, Pacific Spirit and Kicks.  We all romped on toward mile as we shook out our reef on Pair A Dice.  Pacific Spirit was doing a good job using their extra waterline trying to run us down.  At Mile we still had a very small lead on Pacific Spirit.  There were no points of sail that required a whisker pole, so we had no advantage there as we all reached toward Black buoy.  Pacific Spirit was slowly grinding us down and finally caught us at Blacks with an inside overlap which required us to let them round first.

As we rounded black buoy, we did not feel we could climb on top of Pacific Spirit so we tried to pass them to leeward.   They were very close so we did a wide swinging tack to clear their stern and the race was on for the finish mark.  Sagitarius had finished way before all of us, Pacific Spirt was second and we were a close third followed by Kicks, Makani and Aeolian.

What a gorgeous night for a sail!

Tactics:

On downwind runs when you are trailing another boat, your object is to steal their wind.  You are looking for the tail of your windex to be pointing at the other boats sails.  This effect of disturbing air on the other boats sails is much more pronounced in lighter wind than heavier wind. As boats converge on a downwind leg, the overtaking boat must yield to the boat they are passing.  Once an overlap is established the leeward boat can luff the windward boat up as far as they want, a tactic frequently used in team racing.  The goal is to have an inside overlap at the 3 boat zone for the rounding of the mark. Pacific Spirit did this perfectly on this night.

Rules:

Check out this web site for a review of all racing rules:

 http://game.finckh.net/situat/tit_gbr/0_titel_e.htm

Thank you Fred Molnar for passing this on to us.

Next Tuesday (May 31) will be:BARBECUE NIGHT AT SCYC, BRING YOUR FAVORITE FOOD FOR A GREAT TIME.

Fair winds, see you next Tuesday.

Barry Keeler

Sailing Pair A Dice