Sunday, September 16, 2007

BYC Long Distance Race - The Good, The Bad, and the Real Ugly

This was a romp counterclockwise around Lake St. Clair. The wind was out of the northwest at about 15 knots. We managed to get to the line a little ahead of the other boats. But after the 3/4 spinnaker went up the trimmers got an overide and collapsed the spinnaker. This caused night Moves to roll us and we had to ride her stern. It was a very fast leg with boat speeds between 7 and 10 knots. We managed to only broach only once. After getting slowed down under a Na40, Hot Ticket got in just ahead of us at Thames River buoy. At this point I thought we had good chance to pass Night Moves. They put up their #3 and it was blowing only 14 knots and sure to go slower. Hot Ticket only had 4 people so they most likely would be unable to do well going to weather. Both predictions came true. On this leg the wind was shifting 25 degrees so it was necessary to continually tack. Somehow the only boat to catch up was Merlin. We must of come together with Merlin at 7 times and manged not to lose ground. The last time we tacked towards them and got hit with a header in the middle of the tack. We could not tack back because the wind speed was down to 5 knots by this time. So we rounded buoy g27 in the shipping channel behind Merlin but still ahead of Jayhawker. What happen next was simply amazing. Even though Jayhawker was only two lanes above us they got a lift and we got a header. If we would of tacked I thought we would cross behind them. They simply took the lift almost all the way point huron buoy where we just managed to sail into a hole. We rounded the buoy in 3rd and put up the .6 spinnaker since the .75 had a rip in it. Luiz and I repaired the rip and when completed we put up the .75. We almost caught up to Merlin and Jayhawker but they managed again to leave us behind. The rest of the race we got headed and went back to the ap1 to finish in the river. We finished at about 8:30 so it was relatively fast.

We had about 30 tacks on 2nd leg so the crew never got bored. I felt we had good upwind boat speed and most of the time we were in the hunt to win so it was good bad and ugly.

Result: 3rd out 6 J120s

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