I got down to the club fairly early to vacuumed the bilge out, and scrub the rudder and hull with a long handled brush. It was amazing all the slim! Also took anything out of the boat to lighten it (DOCK SALE).
Winds were from the south 5-8 knots, course was 6 short, but was shortened to a triangle; full main and light #1.
John and I watched the first start: Silver Shaddow, JustinTime, and Road trip started on a port tack on the non favoured end, and got a HUGE advantage. We did the same, but didn't get to the line right at the gun, so we had to duck starboard tack Gruntled before actually crossing the line.
Going out on a port tack had an advantage with more wind, but the winds were flukey. There were dead spots all over the place, and we found ourselves tacking to get the wind lines. We were definately in the lead.
Coming towards first windward mark on a starboard tack, we had a boat from the other division cross our bow and lee bow us. In their wind shaddow, our sails were flapping, so we tacked away.
At the mark we were watching all other boats miss the mark and have to throw is several tacks to get around it. What was happening is there was wind about 25t in the air coming from one direction, and the wind lower coming from another direction. Hard to set a sail, very flukey and gusty.
Seeing these boats missing mark caused us overshoot our layline to the mark, and we lost a LOT of ground. By the time we got to the mark, Cheeky Monkey, Knotty Girl, and Iris had passed us. Even though we had more speed, we travelled WAY too far. I calculated that we sailed an extra 0.4 miles that we didn't have to. It is better to sail to the mark, and deal with any wind shifts as they happen, throwing in extra tracks if required.
The next two legs we gained some of the ground back, and crossed the line 5th of 6 boats, not too far behind Iris and Eclipse. The winds were dying.
We came 4th in corrected time FOUR SECONDS behind the Catalina 25 Iris sailed by Chris.
Good enough for a 3rd place flag for series 4!
Trip Odometer: 9.78 miles
Moving Avg: 3.7 knots
Moving Time: 02:40:00
Google Earth Track: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12535935/Still%20Time/2012/20120905.kmz
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