C22 Whitby Race Night

Melissa, John, and I were out for the last race of series 3.  Still Time had missed 3 of the 4 in the series and was in 5th place of 8 boats.  The goal was to place well in tonight's race to move up to 3rd place for a flag for the series.

Winds were forecast to be 11 knots with gusts to 16 knots.  We went out with full racing main and light #1.  Course was 4 medium.

Before the race, John passed me his Tilley hat and I tossed it into the cabin, but the wind blew it overboard.  Luckily they float.  Man overboard (MOB) drill with sails and winds gusting all over the place.  If that hat was a human, they would have been dead before we retrieved them!  It was a good exercise just the same.

GPS track for MOB

We had a good start on a starboard tack, and were gaining on some of the bigger boats that were further up the line start line.  We had IRIS a little to windward and behind us.  Instead of getting into a dustup with the bigger boats in front, I decided to tack to port in from of IRIS and duck underneath her.  We forgot to dump the main and pressure on it made it so John could not steer the boat under them.  Chris on IRIS had to duck below us.  We clearly fouled IRIS, so we immediate did our penalty turns.

We were overwhelmed upwind; lots of heel; the main was basically doing nothing.  We would have done better and faster with a reef in the main.  On the reaching and downwind legs we did really well.  On the last upwind leg, we decided to tack right away after the leeward mark, and move the jib cars back a bunch to put a twist in the jib to depower it.  On this leg we beat the Catalina 25, Viking 28, and Thunderbird to the finish. 

We were 3rd across the line behind the two sharks.  Don't think we caught them on corrected time. More wind than expected, and the Sharks "go like hell when the wind blows". 

http://www.cncphotoalbum.com/reviews/revshark.htm

We had a great race.  This was the most wind/waves that Melissa had seen yet!

What a sunset!

Melissa posted this photo on Facebook:

Sailing glove or reverse beer coozy?

You decide.


UPDATE: we crossed the line 3rd and finished 3rd in corrected time not too far behind the Sharks.  Unfortunately, we finished 4th in the series behind the two Sharks and the Catalina 25.

Trip Odometer: 10.50 miles
Moving Average: 4.1 knots
Moving Time: 02:32:00

Google Earth Track: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12535935/Still%20Time/2013/20130821.kmz