Half Moon Bay race

September brought another ocean race, this time from San Francisco to Half Moon Bay (about 25nm).  Again we were racing double handed but my planned crew had a family emergency so Cindy hopped on board for her first ocean sailing!  Our start was Saturday the 24th at 1020.  The Bay Area was in the middle of a heat wave so we had some pretty unusual conditions - light winds from the east!  As soon as we crossed the starting line off the Golden Gate YC we put up the A3 spinnaker and sailed out the Gate downwind (in all my years of sailing I've only done this twice - it's usually a bash up wind).  We ended up a little too close to center channel and missed the huge ebb by the south tower that moved boats that had been even with us to about a half mile ahead in no time.  They also got the the filling northwesterly out by Pt. Bonita before us as well.  Once it filled the A3 worked nicely to close reach offshore where other boats had trouble sailing that high with there running spinnakers.  Our plan was to get about 5nm offshore to avoid the forecasted wind hole off Devils Slide and Pacifica.  As the wind filled and we turned down the coast we moved from about 80 AWA to 120 AWA and were charging along at 8-10 kts.  We had a nice drag race with the Express 37s before leaving them in the dust and caught all the boats that started ahead of us except one.  Many of these boats stayed too close to shore and were caught in the wind hole.  We were just on the outside fringe of the hole (turns out about 5.5.nm offshore was the call) and we were able to hang a right - towards Hawaii - and get back out in the breeze.  Two multihulls were able to scoot by us (no surprise).  As we approached HMB we were able to sail a bit deeper (130 AWA), square up the swells and do some surfing.  We saw speeds in the 12's.  We did three jibes to line up the finish line and were the second monohull to finish at 13:57:50 - first in division and 3rd overall.

wind fills and we reach offshore

bombing down the coast

whale over there!

We were the first boat requesting dock space at the Pillar Point Marina and we grabbed the side tie on H dock.  As the fleet trickled in later in the day we had about 7 boats rafted up near us at the end of the dock.  I brought the boat back solo on Sunday leaving HMB at 0645.  Light winds and a big ebb coming out the Bay necessitated motor sailing the whole 8 hours back to Redwood City (about 45nm).  Over all a great weekend.  Cindy ocean sailing [check], downwind ocean sailing [check], swell surfing [check], first trip to HMB [check].