SYSCO Spring Series, Race 5, May 27,2010

Great start. Everyone in the crew knew the time to the start. Bill made up a page with the starting times and flags. He wants to work on it some more. There were a few flags he left off. I gave Bill my watch that has a count down timer. We were close to the committee boat when they started the start sequence. The race starts were delayed due to the late arrival of the committee boat. But we caught the start of timing accurately and was able to keep track of the starts much better than last race.

The race was just double the first of the series, C-2-C-2-C. We have been running down the middle of the river on these races. We discovered earlier that staying in the middle was the way to get to the windward mark the fastest. It worked until the problem happened. First we rounded up because we were over powered. The track shows a bright green round up between to faster blue sections. Then the real problem happened when we were to tack to the mark. Aventura's head sail's leech hem unravelled at the spreader. The leech line caught the spreader and the sail hung so that it would not come across. We tried to tack again after getting out of irons and regaining speed. It hung again. Finally we had to head down wind to clear the sail from the spreader. By then the rest of the fleet had caught us. Second Half rounded the windward mark first.

We approached the mark on port tack. We had room between boats. We went into a broad reach across the river to the Oregon side. Then put up the pole for a little while. We took the pole down and lost ground on Second Half. We rounded the down wind mark and went into a port close hauled tack. We went to the middle of the river again.

We did better on this tacking through the wind because we did not play around. We dipped down wind to free the sail immediately. That seemed to work, but it made for a much slower going through the wind. The boat was handling great otherwise. The crew worked as a team. We tacked at B mark to the port, again using the downwind dip. On this port tack we made the pylons west of the concrete wall. As we came to our starboard tack the Hunter 34 tacked in front of us establishing her line. We had to yield mark room.

We rounded the last windward mark together and set our pole to port. We ran downwind, up river together until the finish line. We placed second in this race.

We finished second in the series in finishes and second in the series for PHRF handicapping.

I called the sail loft Friday. He said he could get it sown by the next race if I bring the sail in on Tuesday. I am. I hope he can. Otherwise I will sail with my other Neil Pride head sail. It is probably a faster sail, anyway.