Back on the ocean racing to Half Moon Bay

This past weekend John and I sailed in the Single Handed Sailing Society's Half Moon Bay race from San Francisco to Half Moon Bay - about 24 nm.  The race was a mix of single and double handers.  We actually had 4 J120's in the race.  After a nice start - that was delayed about 30 minutes to allow what looked like about 100 swimmers come through the starting area - it was a matter of staying out of the flood coming in the Gate.  We stayed in close along the shore heading to the Gate and after getting around the south tower headed in towards Baker beach.  We tack several times staying in close to the shore, seeing a nice eddy of ebb current helping us towards Mile Rock.  We passed just inside of Mile Rock and at that point all 4 J120's were close to each other (3 of us had stayed close to shore and one was further out in the main channel).  Unfortunately, from there the wind continued to drop to the mid single digits from the SW.  That means upwind sailing down the coast.  Our new genoa is still being built so we only had our small jib (#3), while the other J120's all had their genoas up.  It was like bringing a knife to a gun fight.  The other three boats just had too much horse power and began to walk away from us.  Our only hope was for the wind to shift NW (as it was forecast to do) so we could put up a spinnaker.  That didn't happen until about 8 miles from the finish.  We tried the Code zero but that sent us too much toward shore.  Finally got the A3 up and took that to Colorado Reef buoy (a mark on the course about 5 miles from the finish) and then switched to the A4 and flew that to the finish.  A slow 6:20 to complete the course.  We contemplated turning around to head home but the fog looked even thicker which would have meant a cold, wet ride home.  We decided to spend the night at Pillar Point Harbor.  We were out of there at 0800 the following morning and motorsailed for the first 1.5 hours until the wind filled in from the west and then had a nice close reach sail the rest of the way to SF in 10-15 knots of breeze.  Of course, once we got under the Golden Gate bridge it was blowing in the mid-20's and we passed by all the boats competing in the Rolex Big Boat Series.  Overall, 5.5 hours to get back to Brisbane Marina from HMB.

Video from the race can be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c66WuUhhu_k