Surprise's Log Day Sailer 11750

September Series race 3

I had thought we would not race today. We had thunder and lightning at 3:00pm. Leaving for the race at 4:30pm we still had rain, but by 5 pm the rain had stopped, and the sky was clearing in the direction the storms had come. We rigged, and put Surprise in the water. The winds were light when we left the dock, but they gradually strengthened out of the east. We beat out to the race course, where the Race Committee informed us that we would finish away from the Seabrook Beach Club, a first in my five years of participating in this event. The sequence started and we positioned ourselves when it was our line. AP was signalled... The race committee postponed once with less than a minute to the start. They pulled up the anchor and shifted the start to the north. Again, we went into our starting sequence, and again the Race Committee postponed, this time with seconds to our start. The two previously started fleets were returning, and the race committee intended to shorten the course and finish them. We waited until they finished, and then race committee again weighed anchor, and proceeded to the windward mark. I thought that perhaps the race committee would, after shifting the mark, set a shortened leg. Apparently I wasn;t the ontly one who tohught this might happen, because the entire fleet hauled their wind and proceeded to windward. The Race Committee returned, and took up position at the original position. They restarted the sequence and this time we started. Surprise was at the left side of the line on starboard, with good speed, but we were headed. The boats above us tacked, as did we, except for the Vanguard-15 who was to leeward of us. Our objective was to keep our boat speed up, and to keep to the center of the course, unless there was a lot of wind in a particular spot. But it was pretty steady, with not too many puffs, but there were occasional shifts. To keep to the center, we visually kept the angle between our track and the mark as small as practical, if it got near or above 45º, we would tack. We would also watch the compass for help with the headers and lifts. We rounded the windward mark close behind the Vanguard 15 and the Coronado 15. We got the spinnaker set pretty quickly after rounding the mark and passed the Vanguard-15 on the downwind run. We closed on the Coronado, now in first, and crossed the finish line within a second of him. So, we corrected out to first, for the first time in several weeks. Here's the plot:

Update: Phill Root, of fleet 89, Eugene, Oregon, the DS Pacific Coast Champion, and three (or is it four?) time DS North American Champion gave me the advice about keeping the angle to the mark at less than 45º, over the phone a few days ago. (actually, I think he said "keep the angle small") Thanks for the advice, Phill!