Wed Night Race 3
Summer Series July
It was a gorgeous evening with clear blue skies and a steady
12-knot Northerly (about 340 magnetic). There was ebb for the first hour, then
flood, neither a huge factor this time. However, there was better pressure
outside all night. Seeing this, Wild Turkey, Aliens, and Bad Dog all fought for
the pin, while Lunchbox opted for a start with less traffic, up the long line,
with Wyewacket, Surfer Girl, and Orcrist interspersed.
Wild Turkey won the pin and was launched. Aliens started a bit slow and late
below Bad Dog and soon had to tack. (Aliens was over early two races ago,
restarting at least 3 minutes late, and again last week started late due to a
720, so we were paranoid, especially in the ebb.) Ironically, Lunchbox's clear
start turned into an over early this time, so they were trailing the fleet after
the start.
Aliens played the middle, Turkey clamped cover on us, while Bad Dog hit the port
layline and rounded first, closely followed by Turkey and Aliens.
On the first run, Aliens split to the left to see if it could find anything
there, but the two leaders came in from the right still ahead, no gainer for
anyone except that Turkey passed Bad Dog by not overstanding. Turkey, Dog,
Aliens, Wyewacket all pretty close at the 1st leeward mark.
Turkey and Dog led the way toward the breakwater, the canonical thing; Aliens
hung for a while adjusting our halyard, then tacked out. The rest of the boats
were pretty close behind, no huge gaps. Lunchbox, far behind, had tacked around
the mark and split hard left. Turkey gained big on the shore, Dog tacked out
sooner and held on to 2d half way back. Aliens wanted to keep going left to the
pressure, but a large PHRF boat tacked and was footing over us, so we tacked
away on a good line to the Meadow Point beach.
Approaching the 2d ww mark, Lunchbox (all bloody and covered with
feathers) screamed in from Japan in on port just ahead of everyone. Turkey tried
a leebow on the sbtd layline but a bad tack made it not stick. At the 2d ww mark
it was Box, Turkey, Aliens, Dog, Girl, Wywacket, and Orcrist (I think). The
final run saw a duel between Turkey and Box and some interesting traffic
situations as we all converged with some J30s and other PHRF boats, but no
changes of position that I saw.
On the final beat, Box and Turkey went in, Dog tacked out around the mark and
Aliens loose covered. Dog footed hard trying to get nose out but it did not work
for them, and eventually Wyewacket crossed close ahead of them, after the Box,
Turkey, and Aliens.
After the race, there was a O30 class meeting at CYC, well attended with lots of
good energy, planning for the 2004 Nationals.