Wed Night Race Interim Series May 14th
2003.
Next race is SOCKS starting May 17th -18th
Eight Olson’s started with winds ranging from
10-18knts from the N and later NE. Aliens started at the boat, Lunch the next
down the line. Wild Turkey and Enigma started at the pin end which was not favored
due to the Right shift. Surfer Girl and Orcrist were a few seconds late, after
scrambling back to the starting area from pre-race tuning. Wyewacket started
about 5 minutes late off the line
Lunch Box and Aliens lead up the first windward leg opening
up a gap to the next group. The course was 3 Windward legs and 2 downwind legs.
Lunch Box, hiking hard, outsped Aliens to the first mark, but failed to
gybe on the big right shift. Aliens gybed soon and gained big. Lunch Box set a
heavy air spinnaker in the fresh conditions, the other boats set full size
spinnakers allowing them to close on the Lunch Box in the latter half of the
first run. Aliens led around the leeward mark.
Aliens and Lunch Box switched to No1 head sails on the second
windward leg, as the breeze had subsided. The rest of the fleet stayed with No3
headsails. There was a small speed advantage to the No1.
Aliens made a big mistake of going too far in to the beach
at Meadow Point, encountering a tide rip with bone-jarring chop and less wind;
Lunch gained on the far left outside. But the right shift again allowed Aliens
to lead at the 2d windward mark.
On the second windward leg, Orcrist tried a sail change to
what it thought was a larger sail, then realized it actually wasn’t a larger
sail halfway through the motions, wasting precious minutes and making Orcrist
loose contact with Surfer Girl, Bad Dog and Wild Turkey
On
the final beat, Aliens made a series of nearly fatal mistakes as we failed to
cover and got bounced off the the left by traffic as Lunch and Enigma and
Turkey did the smart thing and went in right. Aliens got pinned to the left
layline and had to finish reaching in very bad air sandwiched closely between
and behind two slow PHRFers. There was a little
excitement as Lunch finished about 13 seconds later on stbd,
fouled by the PHRFer on our right; neither PHRF boat
had enough way on to tack away quickly, plus the leftmost boat could not tack
and clear the committee boat, so we were all pinned in Lunch's way after we
finished.
In the end Aliens took first place closely followed by Lunch
box. There was close racing for 3rd 4th and 5th with Enigma taking 3rd. Wyewacket went doggedly around the course with no major
mistakes, and managed to reel in half a leg by the finish
A great night of real wind, with some Olsons
sailing with less than full crew (Aliens had a light 6,
Link to Current
Series Results on CYC page.