For the third and final race of the Center Sound Series, the forecast was for light air. For many, this may have been disappointing. However, on Blur we were excited, because light air is what we do best. Blur is lightning fast in light conditions. We had an experienced crew, brand new sails, and plenty of snacks. Going into this race we were 7th overall in the PHRF ranks and 2nd in our class. This really was our opportunity to snatch the gold ring for the series.
Saturday morning started with the race committee shortening the course from its original length, Blakely to Pt. Wells, down to Blakely to a temporary mark a little north of Meadow Point. They were trying to insure that the fleet didn’t end up drifting all day and could get back to the clubhouse in time for the awards. They also opted to start the little boats (us) first, running the starts in reverse order.
False Start
I was eager and excited to get out on the water and try out our new asymmetrical spinnaker. “How eager was I?” you ask? So eager that I tried to start the race 5 minutes early. There we were, all sails up, tacking back in forth on the line. We were yelling at folks to get out of the start box, just like the real racers do. We dialed Blur up and hit the starting line right on time! I suddenly realized that nobody else was starting with us. With a feeling of dread, I made a quick query on the VHF. Sure enough, we were five minutes ahead our start. In fact, we were five minutes ahead of everybody’s start. I felt like such an idiot. What do you do when that happens? In my case: laugh maniacally (along with the rest of the fleet). Then get your butt and your boat back on the starting line for the real start. Oh brother.
Here’s the good news: five minutes later we turned around and executed another picture perfect start. We were to weather of the whole fleet and we hit the line right as the horn blew. It doesn’t get much better than that. Clear air and room to leeward. So maybe our earlier little “practice run” was worth it. Our speed was good. We rolled over a couple of our competitors as we worked our way up the first leg to Blakely Rock. However, I noticed that our competition, LXIII was consistently out pointing us to windward. It was a little disconcerting, because we were pointing pretty consistently lower than I was accustomed to. Something wasn’t quite right with our rigging. As forecast, the wind was in the 4-7 knot range – very light. Unfortunately, we were losing about 3 degrees of height to the competition as we worked our way to windward.
The First Leg
As we reached West Point, we were still in touch with LXIII. They had legged out on us and were about 100 yards ahead. Now came the hard choice. We were both leading the entire fleet. Nobody was in front of us at all. No TP52’s, nothing. Just five miles of flat water with no real indication what the right direction to go was. The tide was ebbing. We had about a half knot of current going against us. The question was: do we follow LXIII across to Bainbridge Island and tack up the shore, or do we stay toward the middle of the sound?
Look, in hindsight I know the answer: just follow LXIII dummy. Stay close to your competition. They are great sailors. The current can kill you out in the middle. But, but…I thought LXIII might sail into a hole near the shore of Bainbridge. Anything can happen, right? So we ended up kind of splitting the difference, sailing further toward the middle, but trying to keep an eye on LXIII along the shore. For the record, committing to one or the other strategy is a MUCH better idea. By the time we reached Blakely Rock it was obvious that we had lost some more ground to LXIII, but we were still reasonably close. Our speed was good, and our upwind leg had been respectable. We rounded the rock second in our class.
50 Shades
Now was the opportunity I had been waiting for: time to put up the brand-spanking-new chute. We launched the kite and it truly was a thing of beauty! I was thrilled with the design – our friends at Ballard Sails did a great job with it. At this point, many of the faster boats were overtaking us from behind. At one point, we were sailing along quietly, and I heard a loud screech coming from behind the mainsail. It sounded like “50 Shades of Grey…Whale.” I nearly jumped out of my skin. It turns out it was just a TP52 bearing down on us. Their squealing winches make a heck of a racket (or the music of love, if you are a whale).
We had some challenges with the downwind run. The problem was that we really weren’t really going that fast. The wind was dropping a little, and we were trying keep our speed up. 4 knots is pretty slow for us. I headed up and we almost hit 6 knots, but now we were pointed a downtown Seattle (far away from our destination). So using this strategy we were going fast in the wrong direction. Honestly, I stuck with that strategy a little too long. Now we were separated from the fleet AND sailing the wrong way. That’s a bad combination. So we threw in a gybe and took down the new chute and put up our old red symmetrical spinnaker. No big deal you say? Well, I spoke with passing boats afterwards and they were speculating on what we were doing:
- Running aground? (in 600 ft of water)
- Dropping anchor? (see above)
- Losing our minds
Those of you who picked option 3 are correct. We sat there and watched our competition sail right by us. Ouch! So much for that gold ring I was talking about.
I have to confess, after looking at the recorded instrument data from the race, we were doing better with the new asym spinnaker than with the old spinnaker we replaced it with. I think we may have psyched ourselves out on that downwind leg. It was hard to judge our performance with all the big boats flying past us. It’s deceptively easy to feel stuck in the mud when that happens. The questions start to fly:
“Why are they so fast?”
“What are we doing wrong?”
“We have to change something!”
It can be brutal. Sometimes, especially in light air, the best thing to do is wait a minute. It’s so hard to find that calm when you feel like you are losing the race.
Anyway, once we got the big red chute up, we proceeded downwind. The sailing was pretty sedate. The breeze was light (4-6 knots), but reasonably consistent. In that kind of wind, 4 knots of boat speed is actually pretty good. As we made our way down to the leeward mark, there really weren’t any passing lanes or opportunities to do anything dramatic. Everybody was just trying to keep moving. By this point we had lost sight of most of our competition. We were a little bummed about our little spinnaker fiasco and just wanted to finish the race. We focused on just keeping the sails trimmed and sailing fast. As we rounded the leeward mark we saw LXIII a few hundred yards in front of us! That was a big morale boost. We had a short leg up to the finish line at the committee boat and got across the line in roughly 4+ hours of elapsed time.
Finish
We realized as we finished, that maybe we weren’t the only ones who ran into challenges on the way downwind. Apparently we were still pretty fast. We ended up in third place for that race and took third place for the series in our class. We ended up in 4th place overall in the PHRF division for all three races in the series. Pardon me while I go back and re-read that last sentence or two. Ooooh, that feels good…maybe one more time.
So we didn’t grab the gold ring this time. Despite all the griping about the trials and circumstances in this series, we sailed really well overall. I’m lucky to have a great crew in Brian, Julia, Anna and Jeremy. I’ve always admired the folks in the racing community here. This fleet has incredibly talented sailors. The first place boat, LXIII is almost impossible to beat. Aurora, in second, is a tough one too. Cherokee, in fourth, always gives me heartburn. I have all of their transoms memorized – I know exactly what they look like from behind. Honestly, the folks on all the boats in our class have decades of experience among their crews. That’s not even mentioning the talent in the other classes. So I feel pretty good when I manage to steal a good placement in a race.
Blur Racing 
Leave a comment