DH Farallones Race 2010

by Will Paxton

 

The weather report for this year's DH handed Farallons had one of the most dangerous components you will see sailing out the Gate with 18' waves at 15secs. You know its gonna be nasty when the time between the waves is shorter than the waves! Of course my crew, Bryan Moore and I hit the start line with all the safety gear in the world on, only it was glassy calm and blowing from the south east with the last of the morning offshore breezes. With it being a little after maximum ebb, we wanted to start at the outside 'X' buoy and 'drift' towards the middle of the Bay and better tide. There was unfortunately not enough wind to sail against the tide and we were a little early and had to sail for the shore to not be swept over early. We started clean, but on the inside of the line in less tide. Boats like El Raton, Elise, and Great White quickly converted their starts into a 15 boat length lead, but fortunately the first puff of the filling westerly came in from Crissy Field giving us a nice lift and speed boost to just pull ahead of the outside boats by Anita Rock. Wetsu on our left, of course, was even more lifted and soon was leading the race. Nope, we haven't done anything right yet! The boats on the outside chose to tack and sail against the shift in order to get to the breeze. Wetsu chose to tack before the North Tower and dig into stronger pressure on shore, we stayed straight in lesser breeze, but got boosted by the building ebb and were leading by the bridge. Now were getting in the groove.

 

Between the bridge and Anita we played the shifts to the right in an interesting race with Wetsu who was only 15 or so lengths back. As the chop built heading out into the Potato Patch we saw a little more breeze filling in on the right and breaking waves across the bar that we really did NOT want to sail into. We took one more hitch up and got to the breeze quickly while Wetsu stayed straight. Soon we were powered up nicely and cracking sails in a building and lifting breeze. Now the waves were getting really nasty. It took my full concentration to keep the boat moving despite wind in the low teens often turning 90 degrees over the breaking crest of waves so not to fall to a jarring halt in the trough on the back side. Still we probably crashed to a halt a dozen times before making into a bit smoother water out past the channel buoys. Wetsu was holding bearing below us and was clearly going to lay the islands so I started slowly exchanging our height for speed and pulled ahead gradually. As we got to the islands, I was relived that we didn't change down to the 3 back in the windy sloppy channel area. The breeze backed off to 10kts or so and we were fetching the island easily with the genoa sheeted to the outboard rail. A Wyliecat 30 was slowly overtaking us as their greater water line and close reaching cat rig were just more efficient. It was at this point my faithful and heroic crew decided they were not gonna pass us and went into full hike mode for the next hour to just hold them off.

 

We set on the backside of the islands for the brief run to the gybe. The wave sets were immense and the wind quite light. We were alternating from being knocked down and then capsizing to weather as the swells passed. All this sloppiness caused our kite to wrap badly on the set. By the time we had it sorted and the jib down, the Wyliecat had pulled into a hundred yard lead... I bet those guys were drinking beer and laughing the whole way at our 'show'!

 

We jibed onto port and passed the islands close- interestingly they weren't very stinky and we thought this relief is because it has been raining so much that it washed all the bird poop off. Whew! Then the wind did something really crazy, it lifted us again. Now we had an easy fetch in the large swells straight for the South Tower. We noted with big grins on our faces that the big boats, who were fairly far in front given the moderate reaching on the way out, were not able to lay the bay at all as their kites wouldn't stay full that high up in the big swells. Here we come we thought! We soon ripped past the wallowing Wyliecat while doing 17.3 (GPS speed) down a massive wave with the kite backwinded around the headstay as it was only blowing 10! Soon though the wind decreased a little more and lifted- this totally rescued the lead big boats from having to drop kites on the south bar and reach back up to Mile Rock. We finished an hour after Max flood at a bout 5:15pm and started the stopwatch on boats behind us as we drank our two beers and headed for home. It was looking pretty good... 

 

We ended up to be the first Express 27 and 3rd overall behind Dave Hodges Farr 38 and a speedy little multihull. Looking back we might have been able to trim a few mins but not enough to catch either of the two. Although those two boats started in no breeze in front of us, they did start in better ebb, finished in better flood and had moderate fetching conditions that favored their water line and power reaching abilities. Had it been blowing a few knots more (say the mid teens) both those bigger boats would have had to throttle back in the tight reach and dangerous waves while our sweet little ride would have been planing and surfing all the way home. Overall I would say that it was a very fair race on rating and conditions and well sailed by all.

 

Cheers,

Will Paxton

Motorcycle Irene