JUNE 15, 2021
SOLSTICE TUESDAY
This was the night of the long daylight and the light easterlies. We had a strong westerly outside, and the pretty good SE wind as the boats headed out. We counted 19 boats.
Barry was out of town, so Chris Hofmann and the Tusitala crew set the start line and called the course. The wind had started going more east as they set the red ball, and it also looked as though it might be dying a bit, so Chris called for a Start/Black/Finish Course and alerted the fleet that if the wind was still good after the first one we might try something new to squeeze in a second race since it was the latest sunset of the season.
We got the first start off at 18:00. The line was pretty square to slightly favored at the pin end for both starts so the fleet was able to spread down the line and build a good head of steam to power off the line. It was a fairly crowded and exciting start. It appears from RaceQs that Sagittarius and maybe Kasatka were over early. Sagittarius returned and restarted.
Sagittarius sailed well after the missteps at the start, again proving that often you can recover from a late start. The breeze held up ok, at around 5-8 kts from the east. The boats that headed toward the beach got somewhat better wind, but then had to tack back into the fleet on port tack to the layline for Blacks. That’s fine if you’re ahead, but if not you can end up ducking a bunch of boats and getting bad air. This made for some tight racing on the short course with boats frequently crossing tacks to get around the Black Pt. Buoy. The second leg was a bit slower reach/run heading into the light chop back to the finish. Some boats experimented with a whisker pole for a near beam reach, which seemed to work reasonably well. Nobody was going DDW in that breeze.
The elapsed times at the finish (reading from RaceQs) were: Kasatka 13:55, Good Timin’ 15:27, New Wave 18:00, Aquavit 18:35, Tusitala 22:08, Perfect 36 24:40, Pacific Spirit 24:37, Makani 25:17, Toad 25:20, Avatar 25:52, Sagittarius 25:55, Natorius 28:28, Kicks 29:32, Meia Duzia 30:28, Sophia 31:06. The course was 0.8 nm.
The second start was at 18:38 and can be viewed in RaceQs by going to the lower left tab for course set-up (with the cross flags icon). Click on that, then click on the 18:00 start time to see the next 18:38 start time. Then click on 18:38 to get the replay of the second race and all its data.
We kept to the same course for race #2, and it was mostly the same conditions with enough breeze to keep the boats moving around the course. This gave everybody a second shot at getting a good start (good practice). There were more tight crossing situations, ducking, and close mark roundings at Black's, and at the finish.
It might have been the tightest bunching of boats we had so far this season with the 2 races lasting about 25-30 minutes each. The Cat27 Meia Duzia sporting a new clean bottom, and small spinnaker assist kept pace finishing close to the larger boats. Toad was also moving along pretty well picking the shifts and puffs in the lighter but steady winds. Kasatka iced the entire fleet both times.
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| THE SECOND START |
Here are the results for the second race: Kasatka 12:25, Aquavit 13:54, Guenter on his Finn, Sagittarius 16:03, Pacific Spirit 16:25, Toad 16:38, Avatar 16:51, Tusitala 17:01, Good Timin’ 17:30, Makani 17:50, Perfect 36 18:44, Kicks 20:11, Natorius 20:25, Meia Duzia 25:21. Again, the course was .8 nm
We had 14 boats recording on Raceqs, and maybe a few more boats in the races. Tusitala had some RaceQs hick-ups on recording even though they had two recorders going. Some boats seem to just stop dead in the water because their batteries died or they turned off the app. Despite the occasional glitch, we encourage everyone to get and run the free RaceQs app on their smart phones to record their tracks and learn about their boat and about the competition. If you want to see some funny tracks, look for the boats that have a crew member carrying their smart phones around the deck during the race. They seem to leap ahead when the guy goes up to the bow, they sail backwards when the guy is walking back to the cockpit, they spin around when the guy is looking for whales, etc. (It’s best to set it in a secure place, aligned with the keel, and leave it there, ideally plugged in so the batteries don’t die early.)
We probably could have gotten a 3rd race in, or even gone for the longer course out to SC3 and back, with the breeze building slightly around 1900 as the boats headed in. Overall, it was a pretty good evening, with pleasant sailing and some close racing. As Marc Barshay on Aeolian points out, “The boats that finish at the back of the fleet are actually the winners, because they get more sailing time on a pleasant summer evening.”
We attempted to gather at the Crow’s Nest for a group dinner as we usually do, but it was a failure that evening. It was the “official end” of Covid restrictions in California that day, and it seemed the entire world was out for dinner and drinks. The manager had never heard of the Tuesday night sailors, and even if they had, there weren’t enough staff to serve us and everybody else there that evening. The usual balcony area where we meet was closed off and they wouldn’t open it for us. The best they could offer was “Look for a table or two and we’ll serve you like everybody else”. We only found one four person table, so most of us just went home. Maybe next week won’t be so crazy.
Doug.
Douglas Mahone
305 Harbor Drive
Santa Cruz CA 95062
(916) 541-6607
Thanks to Chris for calling the race and to Doug for posting the blog.
We will see you next Tuesday.
Barry Keeler
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