CREW
We were short handed this week with Pam still injured, Nansi newly injured with a Circe slip the previous week, and Jay still in training and Chris B gone back to the west coast.
Foredeck - Kathleen all by herself up wind.
Mainsheet & start timing - Susan
Jib Sheets - Steve & Sam when he wasn’t helping Kathleen with the pole.
Helm and less than brilliant starting tactics - Skipper Ron
WIND & JIB SELECTION
It was one of those in between nights, 6 to 8 knots out of the east. Could have stretched to the light #1 but decided to use our Black Magic mainly to see how it would perform in light weather and to avoid having to deal with two unfolded sails cluttering up the boat.
THE RACE
Only three other Division 1 boats were out; Abracadabra, Amelia, and Veloce.
K & S
It was déjà vu all over again. Like last week a buoys to starboard triangle 4x around with a heavily skewed Committee Boat end favoured line. It was even more skewed than last week so SR tried his first of three bonehead moves of the night, a port tack start. But he misjudged it by several seconds early and Veloce and Abra were also in the way on starboard so we ended up ducking every one and headed out on port tack half way down the line. But in the end it wasn’t that bad a start as Veloce had to seriously head reach around the committee boat forcing Abra up as well. They virtually stopped dead. We carried on but were forced to tack over onto Starboard sooner than we’d have liked to avoid boats at the leeward mark. Amelia crossed us and we got to the windward mark not far behind Abra and Amelia. The second leg was a wing and wing run and the short third leg was a starboard tack beam reach.
The rest of the race was trying to catch Amelia. The up wind legs were patchy and shifty. The down wind legs were very light with at times difficulty filling the big jib on the whisker pole. We finally caught her just after the last leeward mark when she had to round outside Warrington and we rounded tight to the mark. She ducked us when she tacked over. We carried on a bit then tacked over too. When she tacked back onto starboard near the lay line SR performed his second bonehead move of the evening. Instead of simply taking her transom and tacking soon after and take advantage of starboard tack at the mark SR decided he was going to get cute and tack to try to lee bow her. He miss timed it just a bit and ended up too far to leeward so we got trapped below her and had to wait until Amelia tacked for the mark before we could. We rounded just behind her and then SR performed his third bonehead move. In the brief period he had to decide, instead of going to the starboard side of Amelia to ensure buoy room at the next mark he went port to her windward side and tried to sail over her. She resisted that and we ended up rounding the last mark behind her and finished that way.
But well sailed Circe Crew with a just slightly too heavy a jib and at least one pair of hands too few.
Pam was waiting on shore to hand us our bow lines.
Boots, boots, and more rain boots
RESULTS
On corrected time it was Amelia 1st, Circe 2nd, Veloce 3rd, and Abra 4th.
Did Veloce get the jug? I suspect Circe didn’t.
On the series with three races of the four counting and just one more left in the series Circe still leads the pack with 4 points over Veloce and Amelia with 7, and Alpha Omega, with 9, and Abra with 10.
Next week I will endeavour not to sail in such a mental fog again. Promise. But at least the language coming from the this week was less noteworthy.
Skipper Ron