San Francisco Bay sailors are spoiled, gorgeous scenery, great wind, challenging weather and oh yeah we can sail year round! It is a common happening in the winter time that sailing conditions are the warmest. We had several days this winter out on the 505 where I was wearing a rash guard and board shorts. Where as in the Summer on the 505 in the Bay I would wear a full wet suit, board shorts and two-three upper layers.
Enough rubbing it in on the rest of the sailing world, let's get back to the Richmond Mid-Winters. This time around I decided to compete in my 505 in preparation to the North Americans that are coming up in September. The first couple events we did not have enough boats to get our own start so we were forced to duke it out in the "Open Fleet," which consisted of Lightnings, I-14's International Canoes, and a handful of random dinghy's. The clubs rating system did not align with real life boats, i.e. we owed I 14's and Weta's time??? None the less this was great a great opportunity for my new crew Luther to learn the boat and get the rigging dialed. For all four events we were plagued with light winds under ten knots, followed up by a long paddle back to the club. But hey we were racing in the middle of winter and we were not wearing dry suits. For the last couple events we had a fleet of 11 505's which made for some great racing to finish off the series. We finished in second place overall and enjoyed every minute of it!
St. Francis Spring Dinghy!
I have competed in this regatta with my 505 a half dozen or so times. In all of those appearances I have never been able to complete all of the races in the event, whether it is boat break down, crew problems, or scary sailing conditions. I call it the "Curse of St. Francis Yacht Club." So my goal for the weekend was to finish all of the races. Easy enough...
Start of Race One
Day one: 12-20 knots of shifty breeze, 4 knot flood, and flat water. We played the day conservative wanting to preserve the boat and ourselves. This was the first time I raced the boat on the City front with Luther, and our heavy weather techniques together are still in the their infancy. So we mixed it up with the fleet a little bit, for the most part we went conservative and banged the corners instead of thirty plus tacks up the city front.
So much for being conservative. After the second race we "hove to" with intent of catching our breath and cleaning up the rigging. While carrying out these duties an F-18 Catamaran who was drifting on starboard and to leeward of us was not paying attention until I hailed them. There response was to power up and tack away, they miss judged their acceleration and t-boned us, causing substantial damage to the deck of my boat... While trying to pry ourselves off of them, the skipper still had not eased the main, the result was their bow repeatably smashing into our boom and transom. Good Times! This should have been a "Day Ender," I gave the boat thorough inspection and we decided that the boat was structurally able to carry on racing. We finished all three races on Saturday and were sitting in ninth out of thirteen, this was no easy feat. This was the good news!
Day two: 5-15 knots of extremely shifty breeze, 4+ knot flood, and flat water. A little bit of epoxy and some duck tape and we were ready to go racing. I had the worse start of the weekend, misjudged the extreme current and we crossed the line thirty plus seconds late. Arg! So we decided to go for a flyer... Huge shot in the dark, and even bigger mistake. after the first lap we decided to play follow the leader with everyone else short tacking up the city front. The damage was already done and we finished the race in last place. Double Arg!
Bad News! I forgot to mention that Luther, in a post race celebration on Saturday decided to eat an egg salad sandwich... The result was a night of him getting down to a good fighting weight... After very frustrating first race, even more frustrating shifty wind, and a persistent bad sandwich we decided to call it a day. We finished the regatta in 12th place, the boat survived with out any breakdowns, both of us are still alive and we had a ton of fun racing on the city front in good breeze on Saturday. In the end it was a good start to the season, and I look forward to shaking the "Curse of St. Francis Yacht Club" next year!
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