Great White’s 2012 3BF recap:

It started with a beautiful morning ride to the start. The clouds where clearing up and the sun was peeking through. It was warm with a light breeze. I had decided to go counter clockwise due to the currents. I knew that a steady westerly would favor clockwise, but when was the last time that we had steady breeze for the 3BF!!! Let alone the kind of wind we actually got: a strong westerly clocking slightly north westerly.

I started with the number one up headed for Blackhaller and already I wondered if the three wouldn’t have been a bad choice. After rounding Blackhaller I saw a lot of boats going for Red Rock and wondered if that was better due to the westerly. I thought “let’s stick to the plan,” besides going away from a great big group of boats meant that I would have less chances of interacting with other boats, and since I was single handed that thought appealed to me; less chances of badness…

On the way to TI, the autopilot went on and the kite went up. The autopilot must have thought I was nuts and probably wanted to go to RR since it refused to cooperate. The darn thing wouldn’t keep a course for two seconds and I ended up rounding up several times. One of those times the boat got me pretty close to the rocks. I gotta say that it didn’t feel like a great start for the day.

Going for TI I really tried to minimize the jibes and sailed really low and probably too close to the shore and away from where the flood was strongest.

Rounding TI was fairly fast end painless. I doused the kite soon after the bay bridge and sailed a little deeper with the number one then I would have liked. That was still better then jibing the kite with Murphy driving—the name I just gave the autopilot since while it is power on anything that can go wrong WILL go wrong…

Once past TI, we started beating upwind in moderate breeze and there was an already good amount of ebb going south to north towards RR. I thought “yeah” the plan is working. I thought things where great especially when the breeze died and it looked like the boats going clockwise hadn’t made it around RR yet. This would have meant that Murphy—who was down below pouting—and I were riding the elevator up to RR and anyone coming down form RR would have had to buck and increasingly strong current ebbing from the south bay.

Life was great, that is until the breeze came up from the NW and when I mean breeze, I mean a lot of breeze; too much breeze for the number one which I still had up. Then, when I saw boats having rounded RR and moving really well with their kites up towards TI while I was now beating to windward overpowered, things got dark on the boat… I was cussing up a storm—no pun intended—I was saying things like “G** F**ck*** dam weather, why don’t you take it down a few notches, maybe ten less knots of breeze…”

The number one was making my life miserable, but I didn’t want to change down to the three as I was keeping up with a couple of Express ahead of me, and changing down would have meant going slow for a while, a long while. So I kept going, and after a while it started being a little more difficult to keep up with the other Express’ ahead. I pressed on anyways since I was so close to rounding RR. The hardest thing during this time was seeing all these boat moving fast downwind towards TI.

Rounding RR was uneventful, and I was happy not too be beating anymore. However, I couldn’t reach down on what would have been an otherwise fast, comfortable reach to Raccoon Straights since there was a great big tug and barge drifting between RR and the Straights. Finally I made it around the barge and started moving fast towards the Straights. Once inside, the breeze died momentarily. As the breeze came up, it came up in great big puffs, which made it challenging, and it blew harder and harder as I neared the exit. Still with the number one—yes, I learn kinda slow. I should have switched down to the three on the way to the Straights; that would have been the smart thing…

The exit of the straights and the reach across the bay was even more torturous then beating up to RR. I couldn’t reach down far enough to take the pressure of the sails and actually surf downing. For the first time ever I think I was going just as fast broached with both sails flogging--$$$$--then I was with the sails trimmed in a little. There was one gust in particular that knocked the boat on its side almost instantaneously and as near 90 degrees as I’ve ever been. I’m not quite sure how I stayed on the boat on that one… I couldn’t sail toward the mark, I had to sometime feather up into the gust, and sometime turn hard downing and surf for a few seconds, anything in between and the boats was showing everyone its bottom and going sideways. Not very fun and a little worrisome I gotta tell you!

The good news is that as I got closer I could sail a little lower since the ebb was pushing us away from the mark. I was able to finish running down far enough to have to boat pointing in the direction of travel, and that was just fine for me.

As I neared the finish I made my call to let the RC know I was on final approach and already I had heard a lot of boats who had made their call in before me. I thought I was probably pretty far back. But not 5 seconds after I made my call I heard Wetsu make his call. Wow, where is he? Is he coming from Blackhaller or from TI? Where the heck is he? I was on pins and needles frantically trying to figure out where he was, when I saw him coming from the opposite direction. I knew it was going to be a close finish, but didn’t know how close it would be. 42 seconds, and exciting to the finish…

JP