Weeds, on the other hand…
QCYC Series 3, Race 2
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged a race. I’ve just been so busy not sitting in front of the computer 
But last night was probably our best Wednesday night race all year, so I figured I should make the effort to preserve the memory. Here goes:
The forecast was a bit scary: heavy storms and tornado warnings for most of southern Ontario starting sometime in the evening prompted a few worried texts from crew. But the closer we got to race time the more accurate the forecast timing of the storms became. It looked like we’d get our race in before anything hit.
Dylan came out to join Phoebe, Kristina, Frankie and me. We made a few jokes before we went out about how awesome it would be if a tornado picked up the boat and then dropped us off at the finish line… It was definitely breezy when we hit the harbour – probably blowing 20 knots for the start of the race. We went with the #3 and full main. Several boats, including Blythe Spirit, were reefing and sticking with larger headsails.
We had a good start in the middle of the line; Blythe was just ahead of us. I’ve found that with the #3 we can point higher than usual, and that first leg not only were we pointing well, but we had great boat speed. Even with our new rookie crew learning the ropes, we found pretty soon that boats were crossing behind us all the way up. We beat everybody to the upwind mark.
The pole set went smoothly and we cruised downwind, maintaining a decent lead over Blythe. With One More Time away cruising, they were the only other series regular out with us. We looked back to see them shaking out the reef in their main during the downwind run, so it wasn’t surprising that they started eating into our lead on the second upwind.
During that second lap, the wind eased slightly and probably favoured their larger amount of sail. But we were still holding them off at the upwind mark. That second downwind didn’t look that promising for us as the fast grey boat stalked us closely. Our only real defence was to sail really high and not let them cover us. By about halfway down the leg, Queen Car had come into play and seemed to provide a bit of time and space for us as we passed them and left them between us and Blythe.
As we approached that mark, I knew James would be wanting to try to make a close, fast rounding and pinch up above us. I falsely assumed that between having a couple of boatlengths to play with and Queen Car getting in his way that we’d be safe. Apprently not.
We didn’t have the best rounding ever, and while I was busy trying to sheet the main in, seemingly out of nowhere, Blythe Spirit’s bow was right next to me. And they had speed. After a colourful exchange of words (all in good fun), they ran right over top of us.
The rest of the way they just kept pulling away. The wind had dropped by that third lap to around 15 knots and was certainly in the range that we’d have benefited from a larger headsail, but the boat just didn’t feel fast, even in the gusts. We had nothing for them. What had started out as our race to lose, had turned into just that.
I wish I could blame the crew, but they were great all night. Dylan’s a quick study. So leaves blaming me (not desirable), or some outside factor. I’m going to blame sea weed.
It wasn’t until after the finish (the race was ended after 3 laps) that I realized that there was a vibration in the tiller and the steering was sluggish… so I can’t say for sure when we picked them up, but definitely the rudder was wrapped in weeds by the end. So we raced a great race and just got unlucky. That, and a really good, fast boat beat us
Anyway, it was a fun, fast night and the light show we got to watch post-race was pretty awesome.
