Windfinder was saying 12-16 from east. Wind instrument was showing a constant 14 knots at the dock. We wend out with a double reef and the #2. Once out of the harbour, the wind was much less. There were not any whitecaps which usually means 12 knots of breeze. When we got to the race course, we shook out the reef for a full main. Perfect amount of sail.
Course was set to 7 short, but then changed to 7 medium.
The start line was set and the pin (mark 9) was favoured because it was closer to the windward mark. I calculated the mark 7 was 84 degrees from the start line (should be 90). Plus, I knew that mark 7 has shifted about 400ft north. SO, we setup to do a pin end start on a port tack. We crossed the line right at the gun, but had to tack fairly quickly with starboard tack boats coming at us.
MAN it was foggy! We could not see more than a 100 meters:
We were constantly having to watch for boats coming out of the fog, even on a starboard tack.
On the fourth leg (upwind) we were on a port tack and Aftica (Catalina 320) tacked in front of us to a starboard tack, so we had to duck them. Out of the fog appeared Abracadabra (Morgan 33T), and we were the windward boat, so we had to keep clear of them. Mark graciously fell off to allow us to duck Aftica.
As we appoarch the committee boat, three cannons were sounded which means race abandonment. The only flag up was the shortened course flag. They had shorted the course, but we didn't hear the single cannon shot or the announcement on the radio. Then then put up the race abandonment flag.
The race committee decided to cancel the race because they could not see the mark at the end of the start line. The Thunderbird Columbine got tangled up in Tanker Jones' anchor chain and plowed in the RC boat, ripping their genoa in the process. They were also concerned about the ablility sailor Rick Watters on his Skud 18 without a motor or instruments.
We decided to finish the medium course anyways.
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| Chris poling the genoa out |
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| John and Melissa |
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| Mark 3 in the fog |
See next post for Melissa's ALS ice bucket challenge.
Great night on the water; too bad we didn't get a race in.
Trip Odometer: 10.91 miles
Moving Average: 4.1 knots
Moving Time: 02:37:00
Track: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12535935/Still%20Time/2014/20140820.kmz
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