SYSCO Spring Thursday Series, 2014, Race 4

This was a memorable race.  Only one courageous crew showed  up for this one.  Doug did his best.  We did place second after running into trouble at the first windward mark.  More on that later.  The course was B-2-R-2-R-B.  Nice windy night with an average wind of 9 knots dying to 5 knots late in the race.

We had a good start.  We crossed the line 20 seconds after the horn on starboard tack.  The marker was far enough out in the channel for us not to do a quick port tack.  We staid on the port tack for quite a while.  In fact we staid on the tack too long.  When we finally did go to port tack the mark was dead ahead.  La Dolce Vita (LDV) made it to the mark about 5 boat lengths in front of us and rounded the mark.  The had the usual delay of getting to downward sail set and sat at the mark blocking our course.  They set their boom to starboard, so we were on the same tack.  They were making a little speed so I chose to go behind them.  We were abreast of River Weasel who also chose to go behind LDV.   But they had not cleared the buoy enough to give me room to round the mark.  I had to turn down river and pass the mark to starboard.  We turned around to a broad reach and headed up river to round the mark.  At this time two other boats, Bright Angel and  Scape, rounded the mark and had us boxed in.  We had to slow down while they sailed ahead.  Check the rough plot of the windward mark below:

This maneuver cost us over 2 1/2 minutes.  We came out of the mark in last place.

We caught up and passed 4 boats in this next leg and rounded the Ryan Point Mark.  We stayed away from the point on the downwind leg, because earlier we discovered both a current and wind disadvantage there.  By the time we rounded the mark we were in third place.

We did starboard tack down river and rounded mark 2 behind River Weasel.  We dueled River Weasel until after Ryan Point, he decided to get better air and peeled off to the middle of the river.  Meanwhile we stayed plugging along with the little wind beyond Ryan Point until the wind picked up.  We rounded the mark in second place and did starboard tack to the finish.

A note about the poor detail in the tracks. I finally reread the manual on OpenCPN and discovered the setting I thought managed track density was not the one I wanted. I have now set the track density to "high".  The tracks should improve in the following races.