#beercanrace

Tonight was the second Wednesday race of the season, but because of Covid-19, it was the first official race for Wednesday racers. The breeze was steady out of the SSW, averaging 7-9.5 kts, with gusts to 11 kts, and with an incoming tide. The race committee set up a 3.61 nm course (club marks: M-Z-G) that boats in both the spin and non-spin divisions followed.

The Start:

There were 10 boats (2 spin, 8 non-spin) on the line for the start. Although we all paced back and forth along the line for a majority of the 5-minute starting sequence, by the 1 minute mark, most boats were waiting near the pin end of the line for their cue to run down the line and start on starboard tack. We tacked  (gybed?) in front of this group of boats, reached the line a little early, and as a result, were one of the first boats to cross at the gun, albeit closer to the boat end of the line instead of at the favored end. There was one boat on port tack that crossed the line just behind us at the boat-end, while everyone else fought to cross on starboard tack near the pin-end.

The Race:

After the gun, we continued on starboard tack into the mooring field. We thought about tacking sooner rather than later, but there were boats on starboard tack who we would have fouled if we tacked , so we were forced to wait. Fortunately, due to the wind direction and the rumb line to mark M, delaying our tack did not hurt us. 

We approached mark M, ready for a starboard rounding and ready to hoist our spin as soon as we rounded the mark (starboard hoist). With fewer crew members than normal, setting the spin went much smoother than anticipated and we fortunately did not have any twists to contend with.  Since the J/109 uses an asymmetric spin, it took us 2 gybes to get to our next mark--these gybes also went smoothly with our skeleton crew. 

We gybed around mark Z (our 3rd downwind gybe), and were able to head directly to our last mark, mark G. As we approached the mark, we headed a bit deeper so that we could douse the spin: our jib came out on port and we pulled the spin down from the leeward side of the jib. We didn’t plan our takedown soon enough, so we overshot the mark by about 2-3 boat lengths, but hardened up as soon as we were clear to do so. 

With the incoming tide pushing us towards our finish line, it made sense for us to stay in the middle of the harbor for as long as possible. We used the opportunity to clean up the deck a bit from leftover lines from our downwind leg, and to make sure that none of the spinnaker lines (halyard, sheet, & tack) were fouling the foot of our jib. Once done, we tacked over and made our way back into the harbor towards the finish line. As we neared the layline to the finish, the wind lifted us, forcing us to wait a little longer before tacking over. When we finally tacked over, I anticipated that the wind would shift again, this time lifting us towards the line so that we could cross without another tack. I was wrong in my assumption and we needed to tack one last time. 

The Finish:

As with our Friday night race, the finish was uneventful. We crossed near the pin/favored end of the line, and were the only boat near the line at the time. The J/70, our competition for the evening, was trailing us by 4:34 (elapsed time), and the rest of the fleet (non-spin) was even further behind us. 

Notes:

In all, it took us 47:16, corrected to 42:40 (TOD, time on distance) or 56:12 (TOT, time on time) to sail the 3.61 nm-long course. We traveled roughly 5 nm on the racecourse, at an average speed of 5.8 kts.