The last South Sound Series race was a bit different than the others. Lots more sun for one thing. We woke up to the sounds of the Tantivity crew rafted next to us falling all over our icy, slippery deck. Hmmm, that was not in the forecast...Wonder what else the weather gods have in store for us?
The delivery down was good fun. Got out and underway before the rain squalls hit. It was my first singlehanded trip on Kotuku and I really enjoyed it. Normally I prefer to have a friend along, but I was hardly lonely as the porpoise and eagles were out, the water was full of bait fish and the 20 mile slog in the rain passed pleasantly with me gawking, noting wind shifts, and puttering pleasantly.
Janna met me at the dock in Gig Harbor. She hustled down just in time to catch a line as I rafted up next to Duke, a Catalina 36. We had a really nice dinner at the Tides Tavern where we watched the Huskies beat Georgia in the first round of the NCAA Basketball tournament and then retired back to Kotuku where we had the "race" heating system installed. (A couple of terra cotta flower pots over the stove burners.) No idea it would freeze overnight, but slept nice and cozy with beers in our bellies.
Al, Stu, Scott, and Charlie showed up after breakfast. Brad, Burke, and the others we thought might show......didn't. Turns out it was just as well because it was very, very light day.
The start was pure chaos management. Something we aren't bad at, as it turns out. With a knot and a half current running down course and about 3 knots of apparent wind, we didn't want to be late, but didn't want to be early either. We threaded through the crowd at the milling around the start on starboard, got to the pin end and flopped over on port to try and negotiate a thin line across the fleet to clear air. We crossed, only ducking one or two boats and found ourselves windward and bow out on most of our fleet, with just a couple of boats ahead of us.
That soon changed, as we missed a big shift that the guys behind us caught, and soon the better half of our fleet was ahead of us. Not to be outdone, we then caught a monster shift going the other way, and put the two J-Boats (a J-92 and a J-105) in the rear-view mirror. Lest you think this all happened quickly, let me clarify that this happened after about three hours of slow tacking in a fading Northerly. The same un-forecast one that started at 3 knots.
We noticed before long (a couple hours later) that the boats behind us had spinnakers up. Wait a second, the boats ahead of us have spinnakers up. We had been monkeying around with the #1, the drifter, and "screw it, I am pointing the boat at the mark" tactics. Then Zip, up went the kite, down came the drifter, and off we went. For about a half mile. Which was exceedingly painful, at 0.21Knots. I love the South Sound.
Finally, desperately we found a finger of the northerly wind and were able to drop the kite and gradually pull away from the boats behind us. 2 knots became 4 knots, and we were sailing. Interestingly, the boat that managed to hang with us was a Beneteau 10M(also a Farr design I think). After they slipped by us on a bad tack too close to shore where I pinched for too long before tacking out, I realized we had better get our heads back in the game. Newer, lighter, and very close to us on handicap, I quickly realized sloppiness might be painful. To make matters worse they had their sprit extended 6' in front of their bow, making crossing them a real gut check on the close tacks we were swapping with them.
I shouldn't have worried. Stu and Al called a masterful last series of tacks with a couple of pretty lee bows and we parked them behind us for good. Shame on them for bothering us while we were wallowing in light air misery. Just to seal the deal, Al called for the A-sail at the last reach to the finish (they shortened the course at Blake Island) and we beat them by a couple of minutes with our vaunted A3 hauling the mail. As I luffed up to shoot the pin as we crossed I nearly threw Al off the bow.
Just one of those days I guess. Sorry Al.
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