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Highlights:
Afternoon racing when the humidity is only 80% and the temperature is only 35 degrees.
Downers:
Skipper's stupid attempts at superior tactics.
Result:
2nd on CN and 2nd on IRC.
Lessons Learnt:
Show me where to go. Do not listen to me. I just drive the boat. Others call tactics and actually sail.
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Spring Series Race . Friday 23 June
Wind 3-8 knots, North Easterly, becoming 8-13 knots
Having completely forgotten to write about Race 4 of the series, it's a matter of record that we came 2nd on IRC yet again. But we beat the Rapper although Touch and Go got us. Our excuse - Bob didn't turn up, never the best at actually looking at the calendar, so, as we get a lot of itinerants hanging around at briefings in the hope of signing on, we invited one of them - Mike Miller. Turned out he knows his stuff, and after the race the rest of the crew voted him back on the boat.
So here we are. On the dock, with an afternoon race ahead of us. Briefing's at 13:00 for a 14:30 start, in cooler (or less horrible) conditions. Mike accepts the 'king's shilling' by way of team-gear and we set off to cruise around well before our start, it being somewhat cooler out of the Marina.
Our start is average, but we cross the line at speed watching Aqualimbo cross early and have to retreat. We're upwind of the Rapper, but can't seem to get boatspeed on him upwind, which is just a tad disconcerting. We claw our way round the top mark, just ahead and reach across to East Bouy, gybe around that and set the spinnaker for pumphouse. Now we sail our usual reaching angles with Rapscallion in stright line pursuit, and close just before the mark. Mike Wing, on Rapscallion right on our stern, plays the usual 'head up to take the wind' trick, and I cover, realising that he's highly likely to duck, overlap and call water on us, which predictably he does. We surge to the mark with about one foot seperating the two hulls. But downing spinnaker we helm up to the wind cutting well inside the Rapper, who, despite all that "overlap, give us water" yelling has now blown his manoevre completely by sailing 50 yards downwind of the mark. And we then reach above him to West Pole.
Around this we're back on a beat to East Bouy, chased hard by Rapscallion, and opt to try short tacks to the reef. This will either work or not, but we find (to my great relief) that we've eaten a chunk out of them by doing so. Now we just have to stretch our lead a bit further....
This philosophy works fine on the downwind and reaching legs until once again we're on the beat, against a fairly stiff tide, when I (for some reason only known to myself and other complete morons) decide that the best tactic is to sail 10 degrees off the wind to try boatspeed versus tide. The Rapper catches about three minutes of our hard-won time as a result.
I have to say the crew are pretty good about it. Probably because my last upwind decision was a good one. But this latest tactic stinks. It's cost us the race, really, though everyone's too polite to say so. We head downwind in a dying breeze, desperately hoping that the wind will fail completely after our finish, leaving the Rapper stranded. It's our only remaining hope as course-shortening has occured, so there's no time to shake them off again.
The breeze remains.
So that's it. Another second place. At least we sail consistently. |
