The Great Vallejo Race 2011

We started the day with pre start drills in the channel to figure out a good start strategy. Since the flood/wind ratio inside the channel was high, we decided to come from above and ahead of the line with the flood push impulse, quickly jibe and dip to the weather mark with minimum distance to sail against the flood. After a few drills, we got this well timed and ended up on the weather end of the line within a few seconds of the start time and no contest at the weather pin. From that point on, our strategy, driven by Mike Bruzzone as our tactician was to stay high to weather in the channel , given wind conditions in order to exit from the channel with the least distance. We quickly took the lead overall, and had other boats at similar lines initially, but much more to leeward. As the wind died in the channel, the tide started to push  boats back inside the channel. Nick Roosevelt, our trimmer , suggested to drop the anchor which our bowman Christophe Cochet quickly did, leaving it down for a few minutes till we got the wind from the bay starting to come into the channel. Dropping the anchor was a great call to help increase the separation from the rest of the fleet. Once out of the Napa River, we quickly went right to a long pier for flood relief. Lots of strenuous short tacks within a few feet of the rocks till we had to go South to respect the course buoys marks. We kept South till a mile or so of the shore as we kept finding water starting to ebb , headings with the ebb was giving us some 40 deg lifts at same wind angle. In hindsight we went a mile or so too far into the South and should have turned North earlier for even more better. At this point, we had already created a large gap and were then just drifting with the ebb as the wind had died. Around 3.30pm or so, a NW wind filled up which was a great direction as we had open because we were fairly well positioned to pick it up first. However once we turned North and were a few miles away from the end, Dianne (Steve) started coming back quickly onto us. We now just had to become more aggressive  into pointing mode to regain what we had just lost to Steve from apparently a Northerly path as well as  by going into better ebb around the Sister's islands where we could pinch and separate further from Dianne. Steve did put a great last minute challenge and it sure made the day more fun. It also turns out that Will Paxton had just installed a jib tensioner the day before the race. We made great use of it and it truly worked well to change gears as winds fluctuated from light to medium. Truly a great fine tuning piece with immediate impact on speed and pointing depending on conditions.

Overall, it was a beautiful sunny warm day, with very well run tactics  by Mike Bruzzone who knows that race so well, and great thanks to Christophe Cochet (bow), Nick Roosevelt (trim) and Todd Olsen, a new express owner, for making the race a memorable & fun one.

Best

Echeyde Cubillo