The first leg of this triangular course was at 67 degrees with a favored left spinnaker run. The wind conditions 6 to 7 knots were at about 280 degrees with the wind tending to go north. The starting line was the seawall of the GPC and a pin with the pin side more favored. We watched the 6 starts before us to get an idea of what was favored since it was a pretty long starting line. Somehow or another I kept asking the order of the starts in case they were off and when it came to our time I saw the code 8 flag 30 seconds before the start and we got up to the pin on port as quick as we could. Hot Ticket was there on starboard but was little slow getting its spinnaker up. So we were able to jibe and get our spinnaker up at the same time with us being a little to windward. at first Merlin seemed to be going pretty fast but up ahead I saw the boats were in a giant hole. So instead of falling down to her I decided to go up to HT on our starboard. We were almost even when I saw the boats ahead getting headed to the point of putting up their genoas. This allowed us to prepare for when we hit the header we were able to change headsails almost instantaneously. The next part of the course was just trying to keep the boat going fast. Whenever we got a header (starboard tack was favored ) we tacked the boat to get in front of HT since they were the closest competition. We paid extra attention to headsail trim. The wind was changing much faster than I could turn the boat to adjust. We came to the top mark on port to cover HT and found out the course was to shortened directly back to the finish. We tacked at the mark, did a leeward set and jibed the boat. HT did a jibe set. We threaded our way through the fleet and HT had to do an emergency jibe to miss a freighter. This kept him behind us the entire way back to the club. About 200 yards from the finish line, a 
quarter a mile ahead of HT, the wind died. It was like hitting a wall. We changed to a genoa and the wind then backed again. Unfortunately HT came in with the wind and beat us by 1 boat length. We led the entire race. I guess when the wind gods decide to take a dump they can do it in strange places. Result: 2nd out of 5 J120s
Link: http://www.drya.org/race2005/Results/gp
No comments:
Post a Comment