APRIL 8 2025 GREAT WIND UNTIL IT DIES

 

APRIL 8, 2025

GREAT WIND UNTIL IT DIES

This week started with ideal sailing conditions: warm and sunny, nice westerly blowing, relatively calm sea. We counted seventeen boats out, although some seemed not to be racing. There were more Moore 24 and SC 27’s than usual, probably due to the upcoming races this weekend.

Barry was out of town, so Doug Mahone is filling in to write this report.  Mark McCord, Fred Molnar and friends took out Pair-a-Dice and ran the race. They called for course W1 (Start, Schuyler, Mile, Blacks, Finish), with the usual 7:55p A Fleet and 6:00p B fleet starts.

 

 

The club marks were newly in the water after their winter of R&R (thank you!). The Start/Finish mark is in a new location about 500 yards west of its former position, and the Blacks mark has been moved farther south. The new locations basically puts Start/Finish on the line from Blacks to Schuyler, about halfway between them, which opens opportunities for better race courses. The coordinates of these two new mark locations are: BLACKS 225 N36.57.1132  W121.59.04.

S/F 25 N36.57.1087  W121.59.8297
The races started on time, with no problems that I am aware of. Because of the good breeze, there was some nice, competitive racing among both fleets. Fleet A was led by Aboriginal, the double Espresso, Avatar and Interlude.  Fleet B was led by Perfect 36 the PAD, Nidaros and Kicks. The second and third legs, to Mile and Blacks, were lovely broad reaches, with no whisker poles, and few adjustments in position. The biggest challenges arose because the wind was dying as the fleet approached Blacks. This started at the front of the fleet, compressing it as boats farther back quickly caught up. After the first boats rounded Blacks, the wind speed dropped below a knot. Some thought this was a transition to an easterly, and drifted toward the beach. Others thought there was still some westerly breeze farther offshore and headed out. The back end of the fleet were stuck in a big hole by Blacks, just bobbing around. Flags onshore briefly showed a southeasterly breeze, but it never arrived.

And that was pretty much the end of the racing.  Some boats turned on their “iron jennies” and headed for home. An ignominious end to a lively evening on the water. A few boats managed to finish: ** list **.  Congratulations to them and their stalwart crews (and the luck of getting to the finish before the wind died completely).

Let’s hope for better luck next week.
—————-

Those of you with a different perspective on the race, let me know if there’s anything else to report.

Doug.

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

Since the wind died and many boats did not finish, after reviewing the RACE QS track of the valiant boats that drifted in the dead wind, I believe it is best to retrospectively finish the race at Blacks where most boats finished.  Apologies to those that finished at S/F that had no finish time for Blacks  (no Race QS track).  The course distance finishing at blacks was 3.33 NM.

Thanks to Doug Mahone  and Mark McCord for your  work!

CORRECTIONS:I do my best to include all boats that participate in the results.  I knew Aboriginal was out on this night but with the unusual shortening of course after the fact, Aboriginal was excluded from the results. The closest boat to Aboriginal was True Love which did present times for both Black and Start/ Finish.  I used the difference in the S/F finish times between Aboriginal and True Love and applied this difference in time for the rounding of Blacks to come up with a Blacks finish time  for  Aboriginal.  I also had made an error in True Love's corrected time in the blog. 

1                            ABORIGINAL                               33            28:01

2                            TRUE LOVE                                72             36:05

 3                            AVATAR                                      132           37:04                                        

4                            DOUBLE ESPRESSO                  99            38:51

5                             INTERLUDE                               141          40:30

FLEET B:

1                           PERFECT 36                                    144       40:24

2                             PAIR  A DICE                                 180       43:24

3                             NIDAROS                                       118       48:43

4                             KICKS                                             180       51:27