Friday, July 18, 2014

SYSCO Dual Bridge Duel, June 21, 2014

The race is 12 miles long.  Start is on a line from Buoy 14 to the northeast corner of Rose City Yacht Club to either Buoy 3 back to Buoy 19 or vice versa, Buoy 19 to Buoy 3 and back to Buoy 14.  There was a 4 hour time limit.  Start was 2:00 PM.  First warning was 1:55.

Crew for this trip was Bill and my son Tony.  The wind was light and variable.  We had gusts of 8 to calm conditions.

We elected to head west.  Last year we headed east and caught a fishing boat and did not want to repeat that experience.  This year there were very few fishing boats our as this race is being held at a different time of year.

We did alright down to buoy 3.  Rounded the mark and set the whisker pole.  We elected to head straight up the middle as the wind was best there.  At least we tried .  There was another SJ28 racing today.  They elected to race in the spinnaker fleet.  It was fun gauging our speed against theirs.  We tried to stay in the wind and made it almost back to the starting line when the wind gave out.  We had to anchor twice for a few minutes each. The wind did come back but we had not gone past marker 16 when 6:00 PM came.  They race organizers set a 4 hour limit on the race.  We turned around then and headed back to the barbecue.

The barbecue was OK.  We did get food and one beer each before they ran out.

I really enjoyed having Tony aboard.

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