C22 Whitby Stone Haven Cup

Last race of the season, counting toward overall standings.

I had a look at the overall standings before going out and Still Time is in 3rd place well back of the two Sharks, however, the Thunderbird Fly Buoy was in fourth only one point behind us.  I had to win this race to keep our third place standing for an awards night flag.

Winds were forecast to be light from the NW and drop in the afternoon.  We decided to make the course a short course out to mark 10, which is only 3.5 miles west of the race course.

I was planning on single handing it, but on the way to the boat I by chance ran into WYC member Rick who has a power boat on dock 4.  He said he would love to crew with me some time: HOW ABOUT NOW?  SURE!

Winds were light, 5-7 knots from the SW, but the water was flat.
Full racing main and #1.

Rick is a new member at Whitby and a gorgeous 42ft trawler, but used to actively race sailboats years ago out of Frenchman's Bay.  I put Rick on the tiller, and it was obvious he knew what he was doing.

We had a great start on port tack at the pin end to avoid the starboard line traffic at the committee boat.  We had to quickly tack to starboard away from Gruntled coming up on us on port, and starboard tack boats coming at us down the line.

Once we got into clear air and pointed towards the mark, we were looking at the main trim, and it did not look right.  I looked at the luff of the main, and about 5ft of the bolt rope luff was out of the track.  Any more wind and the sail would have popped completely out!  With Rick driving the tiller, I dropped the main the 5ft and got it back in the track.  We only lost 0.3 knots of boat speed during the minute or two it took to fix.

Point of sail was a close reach to the mark.  As we got closer to it, the wind shifted slightly to the west, putting us on a deep close reach for speed to the mark. Take a look at the track.

Rick on the Tiller

View in the cabin

We were 3rd last to the mark behind the fleet of 21 boats.  Our two competitors Firebird II and Fly Buoy were slightly ahead of us.

The point of sail coming back was beam to slight broad reach, and we got the boat going between 4 and 5 knots.  We poled the genoa out to leeward and our speed picked up to over 5 knots.

We were neck and neck with a C&C 29 Bananas, and it forced us to get every last point of speed out of the boat to keep ahead of them.  We did everything, including shifting weight all over the boat.
Maybe the grapes I was using as projectiles were slowing them down!
Thanks Bananas for making Still Time go faster!

I was pleased how well we sailed the boat, and loved sailing with Rick.

For our efforts, we won our division in corrected time. 
This was enough for Still Time to secure third place overall!

As a matter of fact we beat everyone in white sail on corrected time!

http://wyc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=399:stonehaven-cup&catid=104&Itemid=467#r1_1

KEWL

Trip Odometer: 11.70 miles
Moving Average: 3.7 knots
Moving Time; 03:08:00

Track: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12535935/Still%20Time/2014/20140907.kmz