When I got down to the marina Saturday morning around 8 o’clock for the start of the Three Tree Point race the marina was completely fogged in. It was pretty thick – you couldn’t see the breakwater from the dock. There wasn’t but a breath of wind either. Everyone had seen the forecasts and knew that it was going to be a light air day. The race committee made it clear that they were going to postpone the race until the fog lifted. So with that in mind, we went ahead and put the boat in the water and got it all rigged up at the dock. The postponement flag was put up at the clubhouse. Then we did what sailors do when there is no breeze: we all hung out, gossiped, drank coffee, and waited. It wasn’t until 1 o’clock in the afternoon that we finally left the dock. There was still a fair amount of fog out on the sound, but enough had burned off to at least get some sort of racing started. There was a nine hour time limit so the race committee knew they weren’t going to manage to send us all the way down to Three Tree Point and back before dark. So instead, they set a somewhat shorter course for us to run: down to West Point, then up to a mark near Pt. Wells (Edmonds), and back to finish at Shilshole. Still a fairly decent distance, but somewhat shorter than the original race course.
Out on the sound the wind was coming out of the north at about 8 knots. It was supposed to be a fairly warm day, but it was still pretty chilly once we got out on the water. I would estimate that with the windchill it was in the mid 40’s and the dwindling fog didn’t help one bit. The start was in reverse order with the big boats going first and we were to be in the very last start (PHRF Division 8). it was nearly 2 o’clock by the time we got started. The start was down wind. We set the chute and off we flew.
We crossed the start line in 3rd just behind LXVII and Aurora. Both of them were to windward of us. We were too close to LXVII to sneak past them to leeward, so we took a hitch to windward and crossed their stern. We accelerated nicely as we did so and caught up to them. We ended up in the same position with Aurora, so we pulled the same maneuver again. And again, we sped up and sailed right over top of Aurora. Now we were leading the fleet down to the mark. The breeze was light, alternating between patches of 4 to 7 knots. Our course to the first mark at West Point was direct. We were keeping it simple, just aiming right at the mark, no jibing, no tricks. Just straight line speed. Aurora, LXVII and Blur were all in a line and we led for most of the way to the mark. However, the breeze got lighter as we got closer to the mark and LXVII managed to get lucky and sneak in ahead of us to round the mark first. We gybed and rounded second with Aurora following close behind. Strategically we could have hugged the shore a bit closer (like LXVII) and gotten a little bit more current push. But it was hard because we had done that little skipping maneuver and put ourselves on the right hand side of the fleet. So it goes.
After we rounded West Point, we put up our brand new carbon fiber #1 and we took a short hitch toward shore and then tacked back out. We went a little ways out toward the middle of the sound and then tacked again back toward Shilshole. The wind in the middle didn’t look too promising. In hindsight, we sailed the exact reciprocal course of our downwind run. So now we were going upwind toward the committee boat and the start line. We spent some time fooling with the jib trim. The new jib is much larger than our old jib, so car placement is much further back. Once we had it dialed in, we found that we were sailing powered up and pointing higher than most other boats in the fleet. We were outpointing boats left and right. J/80’s, J/105’s, it seemed like nobody could touch us. That said, it was still tricky sailing because the wind was fickle, somewhere around 3-4 knots.
As we sailed up toward the start line, we overtook a lot of boats. We lost sight of LXVII and Aurora (along with the rest of our class). By the time we reached the committee boat, we were ahead of a lot of folks. We had to take a small hitch to avoid crossing the finish line, and then we tacked toward Bainbridge Island.
We had a LONG way to go to make it to our windward mark up in Edmonds. So we stayed on that starboard tack for quite a while. Still pointing super high, still making good speed. The anemometer was reading 4 knots of wind speed and the boat speed was reading 4.5 at times! I’m going to have to get those instruments calibrated. But suffice it to say that we were moving quite fast in light air. As we moved northward we passed the J/80 fleet, and soon we were two classes ahead up in the J/105 fleet. I was completely blown away. Our progress was amazing!
As we worked our way northward I think we got strategically lucky. We basically stayed in the middle of the sound and avoided the temptation to hug the eastern shore. We were fighting a flood tide, so it was a bit painful, but we were making steady progress and the wind never completely died on us. I think many of the boats that went in toward the shore got stuck in a wind hole and were hosed. We managed to keep moving steadily and we made a minimal number of tacks, so we kept our speed up. We finally got headed pretty hard and tacked over toward Edmonds.
As we came back toward Edmonds it was clear we had made out on the fleet. We were ahead of many of the J/105’s and many much faster/larger boats. It was getting late in the day at this point. Maybe around 4:30 or so. Many boats started to retire from the race. We hung in there and I think we rounded the windward mark around 5:30. Now we had a very long downwind run to the finish line. My concern at this point was that the wind would die off as the sun set (which it often does in the evening). Everyone on the boat was getting cold and tired. The wind alternated between about 8-9 knots and 4 knots. As it got darker the wind got more fickle. It was getting harder and harder to see the wind on the water (what little wind there was). We came dangerously close to getting becalmed as we got back down to Meadow point (just before the finish line). A lot of larger boats were sailing past us. It was really frustrating. We hung in there and managed to catch a passing zephyr and ghost our way across the finish line. As we approached the finish it was pitch dark, and we had no idea who else had finished before us. Cold, tired, and really needing to pee, we docked the boat back at the marina – totally unsure of how we had placed.
We packed the boat up and put her away for the night, and then I went into the clubhouse to say “Hi” to the other folks who had finished. I learned shortly thereafter that we had come in first place in our division, and second overall! To say that I was stunned with the result is an understatement. We had finished that evening completely convinced that we were somewhere back in the middle of the pack. We had lost all sight of the competition and figured that they were all ahead of us. It turns out, they had all gone home.
We owe a big thanks to Ben at Ballard Sails for building a wicked good headsail. We could do no wrong with that headsail upwind. The crew work was nearly flawless. If we keep this up Blur is going to get a reputation as a light air giant killer…which will take a little getting used to.
Blur Racing 
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