27 Apr 2009 |
|
| Thought I'd share our experience during the Twin Island Race on Saturday.... I entered the race last minute and Scott and another Santana 22 owner answered the call for crew.... Scott was willing to learn how to do the foredeck on the Santana 22 - foredeck on Kelly for this race, was putting up/down the whisker pole going downwind and jibing the pole. We left the docks early to give Scott some time to be acquainted to what he needed to learn. He is definitely a quick study! We had "two" very nice starts!! I do need to learn how to read the SI's!! There were only two starts for this race, a spinnaker and non-spinnaker start. This is my first racing season, so I have given myself a learning curve.............a nice steep one! As we were motoring out to the course, we looked at the tides/currents and the race course and decided which way to travel. The Twin Island Race is very fun - you can round Angel Island and Alcatraz any direction. Angel is land to Starboard first or Alcatraz to Port first. After we crossed the start line, which was close to Little Harding, we headed up to a temporary mark at Yellow Bluff. We decided with the flood, it would be better if we headed to Alcatraz first in hopes that the ebb would pull us out of Racoon Straight. It was kind of a reach to Alcatraz with not much wind so we were being set a bit towards the big rock, we headed up to give ourselves some slipping room. After we rounded the rock, Scott put the pole up - there was no one behind us at this point! We went deeper towards the South Hampton Shoal to stay out of the dreaded lee of Angel Island. We noticed that everyone had a little wind so we headed up a bit toward Angel Island. We were doing fine with the pole up and Scott had the best seat on the boat at the bow, keeping Kelly's nose down as we were surfing the mild chop. We went from a nice broad reach to a beam reach with the pole still up. As we got closer to Angel Island, Scott took the pole down and we were on a close reach with a little wind to keep us moving, both Scott and Jim were on the low side on the rails. Our boat to boat competition was another Santana 22 called Rubber Biscuit. As we entered Racoon, Rubber Biscuit took the Tiburon side of Racoon and we decided to take the Ayala Cove side...trying to keep out of the middle with a little bit of flood left. The other Santana was clearly ahead of us as we entered the straight. Things were about to change!! Winds were very very light down Racoon, so again being dead last, we had nothing to loose as we tried different tactics. We sailed the puffs making sure we tacked away from any smooth water down Racoon, again staying on the Ayala Cove side. We pickup the ebb about 2/3rds of the way down the straight and it pulled us right out of Racoon, safely away from the red buoy! We were back in the wind now - flattening the sails and everyone on the high side and on the rails!! Back down to Yellow Bluff!! We couldn't see the mark, so that was Scott's job as well as balancing on the rail.... Hmmm....where was Rubber Biscuit?? She got stalled out in the cove at the north end of Racoon, she got out, found wind and then lost it again....and we lost track of her... We rounded Yellow Bluff and on to the finish line in front of the Sausalito Yacht club. We had NO idea how we finished the race...just that we finished and had fun and learned a few things about the current & tides. I went to the club that evening to see if there were any results posted - we corrected out to second place!!! Definitely a surprise to us!! Thank you to Scott for coming aboard with us!!
|
Related
Member Login
