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This was the day of the sunny, lovely, flat conditions. Perfect for a fun day of racing. There were nine boats out, ranging from a 42’ Jeanneau (Aquavit) to a single handed Finn dinghy. That’s a great turnout for a work day. Stefan was filling in for Barry (traveling out of state) on Pair-a-Dice to set up the race. The start was called on time, with the warning at 1:55p and the actual start at 2:00p. The course was W3: Start, Schuyler, Blacks, Finish. Winds were steady out of the west at about 10 kts.
The start was exciting at the left end. Two boats were on time on starboard tacks near the start mark, when a third boat tried to sail in on port and then tack over to join the parade. Unfortunately, they were too close to the mark and instead got in irons, blocking the start. There was a lot of shouting of “starboard”, and apparently a couple of near collisions as the two starboard tack boats had to push up to avoid the stalled out boat on the line. I was a bit farther to the right, with clear sailing, but my jib blocked the kerfluffle so I may not have a fully accurate description of the situation. But it appeared that the third boat was barging on boats that had clear starboard tack right-of-way, and further exacerbated the problems by stalling out in irons nearly in front of the others just before start time. It didn’t appear that there were any collisions, but the downwind of the two starboard boats thought that they fouled the upwind boat, and so did a penalty turn. The other boats started further down the line without apparent incident, and the race was on.
The upwind leg to Schuyler was a lovely sail in a good breeze, and some fairly earnest competition. Avatar was able to slowly expand its lead, with Pair-a-Dice, Tusitala and Aquavit all being pretty competitive with each other. Farther back, Nidaros, Toad and Muffin were having their own pretty good race. At the upwind mark, Avatar rounded first, followed by Tusitala, Dice and Aquavit in close order. Then came Nidaros, Muffin and Toad.
For the downwind run to Blacks, the excitement was between the closely packed Dice, Aquavit and Tusitala. Aquavit was messing with Dice, interfering with their wind, while Tusitala stayed close but clear, with Nidaro in close pursuit. Nearly everybody had their whisker poles winging out their jibs, and were making good time. At the Blacks mark, however, nobody had changed position. From RaceQs, it appears that Nidaro hit the mark, because they did a 360 turn after rounding, and lost some ground.
The short final tack back to the Finish had a few interesting moments. The two big boats positioned themselves upwind of Dice, which may have slowed her down. Tusitala held on to their lead at the finish, but Aquavit managed to sail over Dice to finish second. Dice had some gear problems with their jib just before the finish, which lost them some ground. Meanwhile, Nidaros was nearly caught by Toad and Muffin, who finished close behind.
The final results, this time displayed as corrected time, were Avatar 40:48, Dice 45:39, Tusitala 47:39, Aquavit 48:55, Nidaros 51:03, Toad 51:04, and Muffin (no time due to missing PHRF rating).
Sadly, we can’t report on the other boats because they didn’t record a RaceQs track. We really encourage everybody to download that app on their smartphones (only need one per boat). It’s really instructive to replay the races on the RaceQs website, compare yourself to other boats, and learn. Here’s a link to the replay from this week: https://raceqs.com/tv-beta/tv.
As those who joined in on these first two races of the post-season know, Tuesday afternoon racing can be really enjoyable. Pass the word to the other boats, and maybe we can get more sailors involved.
Doug.
Douglas Mahone
Thanks Doug for writing up this recap since I was in Hawaii on Vacation.
Barry Keeler
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