C22 Major's Cup

Major's Cup is a fun race.

Boats start in the order of their handicap, so theoretically, all boats should finish at the same time.
With Still Time having the highest handicap (270) in the fleet, she started first, while the fastest boat in the fleet Grafitti (60) started 24 minutes later.   This with an 8.4 mile course.

I couldn't find any crew, so I went out single handed.

There wasn't much wind in the skipper's meeting (less than 2 knots).
We shortened the course from race mark 9 to Ajax buoy (upwind) and back.
The wind was supposed to fill in to 8 or 9 knots around noon.

The race committee delayed the start for half an hour until the wind got consistently over 4 knots.

Still Time was the first to start at 11:35, I was running the line at the horn.  Well I was over early, had to loop back and restart!  Everyone in the fleet and on the committee boat had a laugh!

The handheld GPS was not working; it would not find a satellite to lock into, so I didn't have it for a bearing to the mark.  Got a bearing of 220 from the race committee at the start.  Wasn't a problem for the first bit, but the bearing meant nothing as I got further off the rhumb line. Plus it was very hazy out there, and you could not see the mark until about 1/2 mile from it.

Upwind I could keep my boat speed between 4 and 5 knots in approximately 6 knots of wind.  There were small leftover wave, and lots of fishing/cruising power boat creating wakes.  What I had to do to keep boat speed up is to sail slightly off the wind and crack the sheets off a bit.

With the light winds, I overshot the last tack to the Ajax Buoy to make sure I would make it.  I overshot it too much and lost lots of ground the the fleet behind me.  By the time I got to the buoy, I had only 2 or 18 boats behind me.

Rounding the mark, I tried wing on wing trying to pole out the genoa.
The autopilot kept on cutting out.  Thing there is a power problem on the feed to the tiller pilot.
I would set the autopilot, go forward to set the pole, and the boat would do a 360 all over the place.
Took about half a hour to get the pole set!

F#$@!

Just look at the course after the Ajax mark!

Finished 6th out of 8 in the white sail fleet.

I was able to download the track from the Velocitek Prostart.

Trip Odometer: 8.4 miles
Moving Average:  3.4 knots
Moving Time: 02:36:22

Track: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12535935/Still%20Time/2015/20150816.kmz