The following is a recap of the Great Pumpkin pursuit race from Wile E Coyote. The weekend started off badly for us. On Friday around noon I got a call from Larry, one of our regular crew, saying his boss was just diagnosed with the H1N1 flu. Even though Larry hadn't had contact with his boss since the previous Friday, and wasn't showing any symptoms, we didn't want to take any chances since another crewmember's wife is currently pregnant. So, Larry generously offered to sit out the regatta. I quickly called everybody on our crewlist and luckily Jamie could fill in at the last minute making the crew Tyler on foredeck, Jamie in the pit, Sherry trimming, and Mike trimming and calling tactics.
Saturday was a beautiful sunny day with 3 races in winds building from about 7 knots to upwards of 17 knots. Our boat speed, tactics, and crew work were great all day, but somebody pooched 2 of 3 starts and threw away a 3rd place result in the 2nd race by fouling Peaches about 200 yards from the finish. Congratulations to Witchy Woman for winning Saturday's regatta.
Sunday was better for us. The start was postponed 40 minutes for the wind to fill in, and by the time we started there was a decent 7 to 10 knot breeze. Even though there was a lot of south in the wind, making it a beat to Alcatraz, Mike decided we would go clockwise as it looked like there was little to no wind in Raccoon Strait. We also decided to work the right side of the course heading to Alcatraz anticipating a right hand shift as we got towards the slot. We got a good start just to windward of Peaches near the pin, but got crossed by Witchy who started on port at the pin. We sailed on starboard for a bit before tacking to port as it seemed to be a bit light over towards Angel Island. As we got into the slot, I believe we were the rightmost boat with Tule Fog, Witchy, and Swamp Donkey to leeward of us. We were worried that our approach was too close to Alcatraz and that we would get sucked into the hole behind the rock, but it wasn't too bad. As we tacked around the south side of Alcatraz, Peaches and Xena appeared and slid in between us and Witchy. We had pretty clear air for the reach over to Angel, and maybe a 100 yard lead over the 3 boats behind us. About 2/3rds of the way across we set the kite in good breeze, but as we approached Raccoon Strait the wind got lighter and slowly rotated aft and then quickly shifted about 90 degrees out of the south. Witchy played that shift well and suddenly appeared to windward of us sitting there smugly in our wind. Fortunately, the wind shifted back aft allowing us to split from them and head to the north side of the strait. Witchy stayed closer to the middle with Peaches, Xena, and now Desperado. As we sailed over towards the finish, the wind got painfully light with our boat speed dropping below 1 knot on numerous occasions. About half way across, the southerly boats moved ahead of us with more pressure, and we considered heating up to consolidate, but this would have probably put us behind them so we decided to stay north. Luckily, this worked out for us as the wind shifted south. We ghosted across the finish line 1st among the e27s and 10th out of about 200 starters. I believe Tule Fog also worked the north side of the course and finished 2nd, WW was 3rd, and Swamp Donkey did a great job finishing in 4th. It was great having 19 e27s on the line and hopefully this turnout will carry on to the mid-winters. See you on the water. |
