Surprise's Log Day Sailer 11750

April Series Race 4

We finished second which was amazing considering how badly we did.
First most critical mistake:
Shortly before the start, we were sailing on port tack away from the committee boat. Joe called for a tack. I had a bad feeling about it and wanted to jibe, but didn't trust myself. I hesitated, and then tacked. There was Jim Wells, under our lee and I knew he'd pinch us off for barging. I wanted to put the helm hard up, bear away and duck his stern. As you have guessed, we didn't duck successfully and tagged his starboard quarter. It's the worst feeling in the world. But, since I didn't think we caused any damage, we did our penalty turn and headed for the line, well behind everyone else. The wind backed and as soon as we could, we tacked to port. It would have been best to be on port tack at the pin end at the start, but that was not practical at the time. I had pretty much given up the race in my mind (second mistake) but we worked on sailing the boat. We found ourselves slowly catching up to Jim Wells, and on the first downwind leg we managed to pass him. Jim did a good job hanging with us and shadowing. As we came down the course I saw that the keelboats were rounding their mark and we would be blanketed by them as we continued down the course. So we jibed to port, bore up, lowered the board a little and went behind the last keelboat rounding their weather mark. As we passed her stern, I bore away and Surprise came up onto plane for a while. We gained some time on Jim as a result of that, but as we rounded the mark, We dropped a spinnaker sheet over the bow of the boat and had to re-rig it on the last upwind leg. Jim caught up to us and we were just ahead of him at the last weather mark rounding. Jim kept shadowing us and we were not able to break out of it. I wanted to jibe, but couldn't, being to windward of him. Then something happened and Jim jybed and went hard up. We also jybed and came out of the shadow and continued down the course.
We corrected to second, which was a big surprise, no pun intended.

All that aside, I think we we were sailing the wrong tack often on this race, I have the GPS plot and will post it. I should have more time for that stuff now that my classes are winding down.

Posted by Bob at April 29, 2004 11:21 PM