Center Sound Series #2

The weather forecast was pretty confusing for this morning. Different models showed wildly different outcomes. Everything from convergence dead zone, a northerly, a southerly, all the way to a 20 knot easterly. It turns out that they were all right: we got a little bit of everything.

My crew for the day were two new guys, John and Ben, with very little experience sailing. Fortunately, what they lacked in experience they made up for in enthusiasm. As we headed out to the start line the breeze was pretty tame: roughly 4-6 knots out of the north. Perfect for us, and also a good breeze for introducing new folks to sailing. 

As we made our way out to the committee boat we got a bit of a scare when the outboard motor tried to spontaneously jump off of the motor mount! It ended up pitched over sideways, just a hair from falling off and sinking to the bottom of the bay.  I rescued it and managed to re-secure it again. I have no idea why that happened, but I’m going to be a lot more careful about periodically inspecting the motor mounts in the future before we go out. I think it probably just vibrated loose. Terrifying.

When we got out to the committee boat they had an alternate course displayed. Our course for this race was:

At the start, the north wind meant we would execute a rather atypical downwind start. I wasn’t about to do anything tricky like pop the chute on the start line with a couple of new folks who had never flown a chute before. So, we started the race downwind under just main and jib. We got the chute up (slowly) and cruised down to near West Point before the wind switched direction 180 degrees and came from the south. We doused the chute and worked our way upwind past the lighthouse in some light breeze that might best be described as “somewhat less than a fart”. Next stop: Blakely Rock.

We sailed the fartvind for about 20 minutes before we noticed the rest of the fleet overtaking us rather rapidly from behind. The breeze had switched back to northerly and it looked pretty strong. We started to set up the spinnaker for another downwind run, but the wind overtook us, and we discovered it was much stronger than we anticipated. We almost broached in an accidental jibe (the wind was actually 

coming from the east). The jibe almost took John’s head off as the boom came swinging across uncontrolled, so I gave up on putting up the chute – it was too risky with all the weird shifting breeze. So as the fleet caught up with us, I kept the boat stable and just sailed downwind with the jib. The Rocks were quite near, and we were reaching in that weird east wind, so we actually kept up with everyone pretty well. 

By the time we rounded the mark, we were pretty much back of the fleet. Getting over to the Duawamish Head mark, normally an easy reach, turned into an uphill slog in what was about a 20 knot easterly. We were pretty badly overpowered with the big #1 jib, but I was able to keep the boat mostly on it’s feet all the way across (with the occasional spin out). We lost a lot of ground on that tack, but we finally made it over to the mark. It took us a couple of tries to make it around (the wind was really honking,  and we were overpowered and underweight), but we finally made it. This put us on another reach back to West Point, and ultimately the finish line.

This really wasn’t so much of a reach as a scream reach. We hit 7.5 knots for nearly an hour as we raced back to West Point. I think that’s the fastest I’ve sailed Blur upwind. By the time we rounded West Point, most of the fleet had actually finished the race. I heard somebody get on the VHF and say, “The race is over.” I thought to myself, “Damn, we didn’t make the cutoff. We must have sailed too slow.” I couldn’t see the committee boat, it was too far away. I figured we should at least sail up to where it had been and see if we could finish. At this point the breeze had moderated to around 14-16 knots. As we made our way back to Shilshole, I was pleased to discover that the committee boat was still there waiting for us (apparently what we heard over the VHF was some other race shutting down). We crossed the finish line and took 5th place in our class. I’m really happy with that result. For a day where we made a lot of little mistakes, and struggled with some awkward conditions for our little boat (the heavier breeze is not our sweet spot), we ended up doing quite well and we didn’t break anything. The new guys were happy, hale, and healthy. So I invited them back for the next race. I think they are going to fit in just fine. And once they get a little experience, we are going to crush it!