Thursday's Cruising Class Race on May 21, 2009

Nice wind this evening. It was up a couple of knots. Somewhere above 10.

We got out there a little late. Raised the main with no troubles (used the main halyard the first time, this time). Then the boom kicker decided to part from the mast. The base of the kicker was pop riveted to the mast. Six 1/4 inch pop rivets held the kicker. It just gently popped off. Todd, Rick, and Chuck quickly rigged the boom vang directly on to the mast step and the original vang fitting on the boom. They tied a short extension to the vang line because it was no longer long enough to go to the clam cleat on the cabin top.

Right after taking care of that little incident, we roll out the jib and one of the lazy jax lines fouls the jib sheet. Not a great start to the evening. We sailed past the committee boat after rolling in the head sail. The course is C B 14 B C. The wind is out of the west north west at, as I said earlier, about 10 knots and rising.

We made a run to 14 for a practice rounding and then tacked back to past the starting line. We made the middle of the coffer dam. We also reefed the head sail. Discovered that the cleat for the head sail will not hold the line and jury rigged a knot to another cleat. Something else I need to fix. Since B is further north, our strategy was to immediately tack to the middle of the river and head to the mark.

Rick procured a $3 program for his ipod to time race starts. It's a count down timer. He programmed it earlier to start timing at the first warning. This timing is always troublesome to new racers. I remember having problems keeping it straight when I crewed the first couple of years. Rick had the same problem this evening. We had a discussion on start timing and even ran a practice run on the starting mark.

Started on time.	Start sequence is (min):
6:30 first warning	20
6:31 four minute warning for the first race	19
6:34 one minute warning for the first race.	16
6:35 start of first race.	15
6:36 four minute warning for the second race.	14
6:39 one minute warning for the second race	11
6:40 start of second race	10
6:41 four minute warning for the third race.	9
6:44 one minute warning for the third race.	6
6:45 start of third race.	5
6:46 four minute warning for the fourth race. ( Usually us )	4
6:49 one minute warning for the fourth race.	1
6:50 start of the fourth race.	0

He added another 5 minute interval or started his clock late. So he interpolated the start time. We were about 10 second early. But I ran the start line until I heard the buzzer. At least I thought I ran the line. Once the race started we tacked to the middle of the river. The rest of the fleet was late to the mark and we were clear of them. We were third boat to the mark, which is saying something when we are one of the "s" fleet. We went into a starboard broad reach and were in the big boys. The eventually caught up and passed us, but not with some close sailing. One boat passed me and kept getting in my way. Once past he my bow was behind his beam, he felt he could ignore me as he thought I was now overtaking him. The rules do state that a boat is approaching from behind 22.5 degrees a beam, but I still think that it is only when the boat is going faster than the leading boat which was passing all along. Anyway once I was clear of his stern I moved over to blanket him and kept on sailing. We stayed on the port tack after rounding the mark until the middle of the river and then took the starboard tack to the mark. We were surprised by Barcode again who made it to the windward mark ahead of us. We rounded the mark and jibed to a port broad reach and finished behind Dew Drop Inn and Barcode.

After the race we checked in with the committee boat to see if we had crossed the starting line early. They said we had. But a bottle of rum might undo it. We were crestfallen. I even told coworkers the next day that we had been disqualified, but upon checking the standings we were again third and with no mention of our supposed transgression. Somebody just wanted some rum.

Things we would do differently:
1. Come to starboard tack off the leeward mark and try to make the windward mark on this wind. The wind was clocking northward and was very strong. Seeing Barcode make the mark on his starboard tack. I did not need the extra speed from the middle of the river as it made us overpowered in this strong wind. We could have luffed to make the mark and not waste the tacking to the middle of the river.
2. We are still learning the timing of the start. We were a little early, but it worked out.
3. We should have rigged the mainsail's cunningham in this wind. Remind me when I say "Should we reef", we should at least rig the cunningham. That takes only a foot off the main, but moves the center of effort forward so we can keep course better in the puffs.

I thank the team as they work hard during the race. Now to go to the boat and fix the kicker. Always something on this old boat.