ACE Whity 50

As Fleet Captain, I was running the show to get the Whitby 50 race going.

Got a volunteer in Gary Bruder, who helped out with registration.
Got Rita, Jenny, and Sherry Lynn to do the BBQing, which was tell received by the racers.
Thanks for your help!

We had a total of 19 boats out with LOTS from other clubs (FBYC, ABYC, CBYC, BPYC, and HYC).

11 spinnaker and 8 white sail.

Last year we only had 8 boats!

We had as many as another 8 who cancelled because of the wind forecast.

On ACE we had

• Mike (helm)
• Me (helm, trim)
• Michael (pit, runners)
• Jenny (trim, runners)
• Chris (trim)

We were WEDGED into a slip on dock 4:

Here are some shots of ACE heading out:

Jenny

Michael

Me (left) and Chris (right)
Michael in the pit

Mike on the helm

We were the second start, we kept our motor on to just before our 5 minute warning to make sure we were in position near the race committee boat.

Thanks Ross Lister from Gruntled for the photo

Not much wind!

With 1-2 knots of wind from the south, the start line was setup at mark 1.  Had to sail upwind to mark 9 (half a mile) and turn west towards Toronto.  We used our light #1 to be the first boat over the line, with the Turner 45 just above us, but back a bit.  Half way there, the winds shifted from the south to the NW, but still only about 2-3 knots of breeze.  We dropped the #1 and hoisted Still Time's asymmetric spinnaker.  We were third to the windward mark just behind the Turner 45 and the Martin 243 Black Shadow.

It was here we dropped the asym and hoisted the WHOMPER (our new symmetric chute).  We got the boat going 3 knots and pulled ahead of the Turner and headed in shore to find some breeze.

Turner (Trip) 45 above us

Jenny with the rest of the fleet at the start line!

Moon and Venus lined up!

We fought toward the Leslie Spit with 3-5 knots of boat speed with WHOMPER up, having to gybe several times.  We tried to stay about 1-2 miles out from the Cathedral Bluff's wind shadow with the NW wind.  The Turner 45 went inshore and was parked for a while!

Wind started filling in from the east about 3 miles from the T2 turning mark.  We gybed around the T2 mark at 3:40am, and hoisted the light #1 in maybe 10 knots of breeze on the nose! 

We were tacking back to Whitby with 6+ knots of boat speed close hauled.  We found that on a starboard tack, we could to 6.5 knots of boat speed 30 degrees off the wind.  On port tack, we could only do 5.5 knots because of the developing waves, so we had to crack the sheets off for more drive on this tack.

We finished strongly with 7.5 knots of boat speed just behind the C&C 41 called Mirage.  We were 5th to cross the line. Peter on Sumac finished 15 minutes behind us.

In corrected time, we were last in the spinnaker fleet.  We are thinking that the wind that filled in from the east got to us last.  Any gains that we made in the light winds were negated.  All the low handicap well sailed boats did poorly like us.

Sumac finished second.

http://www.wyc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=405:whitby-51&catid=104&Itemid=467

We probably could have went offshore to more wind and done some sail changes also.

Click for larger

Was a nice night on the water, and a great breeze to beat back to in the sunshine.

The Whitby 50 was a success!


Trip Odometer: 61.38 miles
Moving Average: 4.5 knots
Moving Time: 13:34:00

Google Earth Track: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12535935/Still%20Time/2015/20150619.kmz