Another light weather race. But without Susan who had an unexpected work related commitment.
CREW
Nansi, Kathleen- Fore deck
Pam - Mainsheet & Timing
Jay & Steve - Jib sheets
Ron - Tiller
WIND
Light, 4 to 6 knots, out of the east.
SAIL SELECTION
Light #1
COURSE
A kind of elongated triangle with a long weather leg with the windward mark near the Docks night club and the gybing mark off Red Path. Buoys to port 2x around.
RACE
After a significant delay in starting the race, presumably due to the uncertain wind conditions the sequence started about 6:35. But it was a very committee boat end favored line and a starboard tack skewed buck. we felt it would be better to be at the committee boat even starting in the second row than further down the line. We tacked for the line ahead of and below Blue Streak and had the immense pleasure of squeezing her out at the committee boat. Veloce was ahead of us but early but managed to stall sufficiently to maintain her spot tight to the committee boat. We tried to duck in behind her anticipating a quick tack onto port but were going faster so had to duck out bow below her transom and could not tack. But we had sufficient way to sail through her dirt to leeward and drop down enough to get clear air. Amelia, Kokoro, Abracadabra, and Alpha Omega were all to leeward. Each one of them in turn tacked onto port toward the middle of the bay. We hung on to starboard tack sailing parallel to the city shore in good air and tacked over about 10 boat lengths before the layline. We got a nice lift and by the time we got to the starboard layline tacked right behind Abra but ahead of everyone else.
BS rounded the weather mark first followed fairly closely by Abra followed fairly closely by us. The others were in a kind of bunch about 5 boat lengths behind. We went to the gybe mark wing and wing on port tack mostly by the lee but stayed relatively close the BS and Abra. We had a clear rounding right behind Abra and then watched the bunch behind jam up at the mark rounding beam to beam and watched them drop back further.
About 3/4 down the leg we realized it was a shorten course to once around. We crossed the line a comfortable third not far from Abra with BS not that much ahead of them.
RESULTS
Veloce got the jug but don't know the race results yet. No results were posted that night and so far nothing on the website. Rumor has it that Graham was sick. But we certainly did no worse than 2nd and possibly 1st.
Amazingly, even with our poor results (4th & 4th) in the first two races of this series we are in 3rd place behind BS (2 pts) and Alpha (5 pts), just one point ahead of Amelia (6th & 3rd).
AN ASIDE
One of the Circe crew has commented to me that these race reports are more factual and less colorful than reports years earlier. I think that may in fact be true. And the only reason I can think of to explain it is that the Circe Crew is just getting better at what they do so there are fewer "colorful" episodes to report on. And that's not a bad thing.
Again, well done you efficient less dramatic Circe Crew!!
Skipper Ron