APRIL 24, 2018:UNEXPECTED WIND

APRIL 24, 2018

UNEXPECTED WIND

Looking at the forecast it sure looked like this night was going to be a floater with no wind.  I was surprised when I got to the harbor and saw the flag on the Crow’s Nest showing a strong wind from the northwest.  As we left the harbor, we had over 15 knots of wind creating a great night for a sail.  Since the marks have all been set, we chose course whiskey 3: start to wharf, Blacks, finish.  It was great to see about 15 boats out for the fun, including two SC27’s.

Since I had not arranged for a sheriff boat, we assumed the position.  As we sighted the line, we were surprised that many boats held back from the line for the start, so “All clear” was the call as we hardened up on port tack.  Being the sheriff boat can have it’s advantages since you are starting right on the line, we were able to clear all boats that were on starboard tack.  When we finally tacked out on starboard, we cleared almost every boat.  Someone on my boat said “you know next time we meet we’ll be on port tack with them on starboard”. 

  Sure enough, when we tacked over we had to duck many boats to get to the layline to Wharf mark.

By the time Pair A Dice rounded wharf most of the fleet had rounded ahead of us.  We all slogged our way downwind toward blacks buoy.     One by one, all of the boats rounded Blacks and made their way to finish at start mark.

At the finish, it was Pacific Spirit, followed by Tusitala, Pair a Dice and Avatar.

                                                         Pacific Spirit          42.25 elapsed time

                                                         Tusitala                  44.46 elapsed time’

                                                          Pair a Dice           45.12 elapsed time

                                                           Avatar                 46.00 elapsed time

The length of this course was 3.23 nautical miles

Race QS,

We are now using Race QS as the tool to determine how boats finish.   This is a free app you can download to your smart phone and it is a great tool to gauge how you are doing throughout the course. We now have about 6 boats using the app, it would be great to get everyone on board with this.

Other regattas:

The Spring Score series is starting this Sunday.  This will be a short series since we will have only two days of racing.  The month of May will be occupied by the made in Santa Cruz regattas.

TACTICS:

One of the most often stated tactical strategies is to stay between the mark and your competition.  On Pair a Dice we did not follow this strategy on this night.  After we tacked over on starboard and cleared all of the boats, we should have tacked over on port sooner to increase our chances of clearing boats while we knew we would be facing them on port tack.  We may have been able to cross in front of many of the boats rather than ducking them.

I will see you next Tuesday.

Barry Keeler

Sailing Pair A Dice