APRIL 15, 2025 THE WIND DIES ONCE AGAIN

 APRIL15, 2025

THE WIND DIES ONCE AGAIN

On Avatar, we learned an important pre-start lesson. With ten minutes to the B fleet start, we were busy making some last minute sail trim adjustments. At five minutes to our start, I looked up and realized that the A fleet had just started, and we were directly upwind from the start line. There were a lot of fast A fleet boats on (starboard track no less) racing directly at us. Not wanting to interfere, we executed a panic jibe and managed to get back to the pre-start side of the line before being run over, but just barely. Moral: do your pre-start preparations off to the side and well away from the start area.
:As Mark observed, during the upwind leg to Schuyler, different boats tried different strategies to find the best wind. On this Tuesday, the boats who stayed offshore seemed to find a bit more.

For the downwind leg back to S/F, the wind slowed down to 4 kts, but the direction remained fairly steady. About half of the fleet set up whisker poles and sailed close to the rhumb line directly toward the finish.  It was slow going, with most boats moving at around 2 kts. The usual strategy of sailing off the wind to heat up their boat speed didn’t seem to make much of a difference under the light air conditions. A few boats decided to head for a different finish at the club, and turned on their engines.

It was a lively scene at the club, between the bar and the tacos.

Doug.

Douglas Mahone
doug@dmahone.com
(916) 541-6607

Thanks to Doug for the great recap of tonight's race.

PHRF CORRECTED TIME COURSE DISTANCE WAS 1.17NM

PLACE           BOAT                          PHRF             ELAPSED     CORRECTED

FLEET A

1          ABORIGINAL                        33                  43:45              43:06

2          INTERLUDE                         141                 49:16              46:31

3          TRUE LOVE                         72                    48:10              46:45

4          ROSIE                                    162                 57:52              54:42

5          WIND II                                  213                 59:46              55:36

FLEET B

1          AVATAR                                 132                 53:02              50:26

2          SAILING PAIR A DICE        180                 57:46              54:14

3            PACIFIC SPIRIT                   165                1:03:45            60:32 

4          MAKANI                                 147                1:04:52           62:00