QCYC Series 2, Race 2
It’s been a couple of weeks since the last blog update. You may have guessed that I was unemployed for a short stretch, relaxing, playing music, finally starting the garden… and not sitting in front of a computer all day every day. Well I’m back at a desk this week, so let me catch you up:
The first QCYC series of 2011 ended with us holding onto 3rd place in our division, then new splits were announced for the second series. We’re back with some familiar competition like One More Time and Blythe Spirit. The first race, with light crew, featured the dreaded north wind filtering through the city in all it’s shifty, gusty glory… we were constantly busy trimming, tacking and re-trimming. We raced pretty well, but picked the wrong side of the course on one of the laps and never caught up to the two leaders again after that; we got a third.
This week was another light crew night. It was Phoebe and I plus Kristina, who made her first appearance of the year. It was a typical July night with lots of calm spots to get caught in and patches of breeze that would blow in unpredictable directions.
After a brief postponement we were set to race around a short triangular course. At the start it seemed that we all had the same idea to go for the pin end. Blythe started yelling early that they wouldn’t let us in. I was doubtful that they could follow through with their threat as we had decent speed coming in, but we ducked under them anyway. One More Time made the right call and stayed high of Blythe, getting clean air and a free jug of beer in the process.
With 4-5 boats all fighting for the same shifty bit of air, it was slow start. Eventually we got going on a port tack that looked promising… until One More Time spoiled our party with the right of way on starboard. Rather than making a hard duck, we tacked in front of them. I wish we had ducked. We couldn’t really get going on the new tack and were heading away from the mark. They tacked over behind us, so we did the same, but by then Blythe Spirit had taken off on both of us.
Chasing the breeze, a couple of tacks later got us to the first mark well behind Blythe and not close to OMT. Several of the boats from the start behind us had already caught or (in the case of Dove) passed us. Undaunted, we took a high line for speed. For awhile it seemed to be working out great for us. Sure, we weren’t taking the shortest line toward the next mark, but we were going a lot faster than the rest of them in our pocket of wind. We passed Dove and seemed to be pulled about even with OMT.
Then, nearing the second mark, we lost our advantage. Where once we had breeze, now we had calm. Everybody passed us on the inside (including Serica II).
The mark had about 12 boats rounding it all at once as we held back and then found our spot high and inside. With a lot of stalled boats struggling under us, we made good progress down the third leg. We passed by Serica and Dove. (note: we don’t actually race Dove anymore with the new splits, but it still feels good to pass them 
) I think it was during this leg that Phoebe took the initiative for the first time ever and was trimming the jib without (much) prompting from the skipper (though there may have been a few corrections suggested). Very nice.
The fourth leg would be the final one for the race and nothing really spectacular happened… We did stay ahead of Dove though, crossing in from of them closely once on port. So we got a bit of a moral victory and took third again this week. It wasn’t until we were back at the dock that we heard that OMT had snuck past Blythe for the win, but obviously it had been a good night for skipper Al.
After the race, the wind came up a bit and we had a great sail around the harbour with still a couple hours of daylight to play with. It’s not unusual for us to be the last boat on the water… it seems like most people are in a rush to get back for some reason. Anyway, we sailed until the wind started to die again. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Kristina sailed us back in to the slip, saving on gas and impressing a few onlookers on our way down the lagoon.
