Thursday, June 25, 2009 SYSCO Summer Series, Cruising Class, Race 4

Crew this week consisted of Bill, KD, and his son Hanoor. The wind was a little above the normal 6 to 10 knots of the previous the races. It was from the north west at buoy 2 but north north west at buoy 14.

The race was C-2-14-B-C. A little longer than some races which attests to the wind speed for this race.

Although I brought my netbook and booted it and turned on the GPS and connected it to the netbook, I got distracted and did not start my SeaClear nor my track, so I don't have data like I do on my other races. I miss it.

We started with the pack. The horn went off when we were 2 boat lengths from starting C mark. We were on starboard tack in traffic. We tacked after Cepheron moved in front of us from leeward. The father-son team was new to trimming the head sail. We tacked and lost some while they learned the process. Meanwhile we were still in traffic. Another boat was leeward and was requesting room because he had a boat to leeward who was pushing him. We tacked at the levy to starboard and then went down river until the concrete wall was abeam. Traffic was thinning and we were coming clear. We tacked to port and had to dodge one boat on starboard tack. Then we were clear to go to the wall where we tacked to starboard ourselves and then made the mark. On rounding we went to port tack broad reach with the boom to starboard. We sailed that way for a quarter mile when we jibbed over to the middle of the river. We then jibbed back to port broad reach at the middle of the river. On hindsight, we turned up river too soon and should have gone further over to the Oregon side. The wind fluctuated and started coming more from astern so I asked Bill to put up the pole. We just got the pole up and the wind veered north and started to back wind the head sail. Down came the pole. We had a nice beam reach for a quarter mile. The big boys were all rounding buoy 14 and we had to sail through them to the mark. We went to starboard tack after the leeward mark to make B mark. I kept her high so that we could make the mark on starboard tack, which we did. We rounded the mark and kept her on port broad reach to the finish.

By the end of the race the father son team was working better together. Bill was very good with the main. I asked him to stay in the cabin opening and that worked well. I did not have to step around him when tacking. He seemed comfortable with that.

I am going to have to take the cunningham lines, I rigged, off the sail. They get in the way for when we need to de-power the fully battened main. I have asked twice now of two different people if they could put the pin in the cunningham grommet. Bill noted the grommet is set back and would not allow the sail to be pinned at the base of the boom. I am going to have to look at the situation and see what can be done. The cunningham is suppose to take the depth out of the main, so the cunningham hole should be set aft a bit to pull the sail flatter.