Monday, May 16, 2022
2nd PacCup practice race in the books
As noted in our last post, this past weekend we competed in the OYRA Duxship race. 32nm out the Gate, up to Duxbury Reef light, then to the SF approach buoy, and back. The day started with a nice 8-10 kt breeze inside the bay, which got all the boats out under the Golden Gate Bridge. There we encountered a thick fog bank with very limited visibility. After hugging the south shore to get out the Gate, most boats then headed to the north shore outside the Gate to avoid the worst of the flood current. Unfortunately, as we approached Pt. Bonita and the fog cleared, the wind started dropping to the mid single digits and the boats started parking in the light winds and strong current. We decided to avoid that mess and headed further out the entrance channel, where we were eventually able to bear away and set our A3 reaching spinnaker. This setup work well for a while until the wind dropped to the low single digits and we abandoned the kite. We then bobbed around waiting for the sea breeze to fill in - which it finally did in the +/- 15 kt range, with some steep wind waves to contend with. We did our best to stay on the favored tack all the way to Duxbury where we rounded and then power reached towards the SF buoy, through in a gybe and started heading back to the Gate. At that point the wind was too far forward to fly the kite, but we were making 10+ kts straight back staying just north of the entrance channel. By the time we reached the last entrance channel markers the wind had backed enough to set the A4. We gybed near Pt. Bonita to avoid what looked to be a big wind hole ahead and ran over toward Baker beach where we gybed again. Our final gybe was just outside the Golden Gate bridge giving us a good angle to the finish (at least that was the plan). Inside the Gate winds were in the high 20's with gusts to 30. We could see several boats with spinnakers struggling to stay on their feet. Just ahead of us a trimaran lost control of their spinnaker and was parked in our path. We didn't feel we could safely carry the kite up wind of them and sailing below them would make it difficult to lay the finish line. We decided the best course of action was to douse the kite and power reach the short distance to the finish - which we did. 6 hours 32 minutes round trip, using most of our sail inventory.
You can see the race video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weVbm7GGJC4&ab_channel=TracyRogers
We're slowing starting to load on our PacCup gear. This race we had the solar panel installed. We plan to have the dodge installed for our last practice race out to the Farallon Islands early next month. We are deep into the provisioning process as the BIG race is less then two months away!