Submitted by Dan Alvarez of the JS9000 JetStream, this report continues coverage begun after the start of the Three Bridge Fiasco on Saturday.

This past Saturday we had the first race of the SSS season. Mark came back as crew to try to defend our doublehanded season championship from last year. This year it will be good challenge with the regular top contenders of Timberwolf, Arcadia and Great White, and the addition of the singlehanded season winner Outsider [an Azzura 310 sailed by Greg Nelsen] coming out to challenge the doublehanders.

Berthing in Alameda and starting at the Golden Gate Yacht Club tends to be a long day, with almost two hours of transit (motoring) each way. In our boat with our engine that is a torturous affair, as you feel and it sounds like you are inside a blender. I hadn't seen Mark for a couple of months, so after a 7:00 a.m. dock call, we tried to catch up on our lives over the sound of the engine. We got to the starting area around 9:30 with an hour to kill before our start, and double and triple guess our strategy for the day.

Where is our competition? Which way are they going? Where are Kame [Express 37 Golden Moon] and Yucca [Hank Easom’s 8-Meter]? With more than 350 boats entered for the race, it wasn't necessarily easy to find the boats of interest. Within about 20 minutes of our start the wind pretty much died. We had stayed plenty clear of the starting area and now got a bit worried that we wouldn't make it to the line and went to start the outboard. It didn't want to play... After a few minutes of trying to get the engine started I went back to concentrating on getting the boat moving towards the starting line, and Mark took the position at the back of the boat to work on the engine. After a few more stressful minutes, Mark got the engine going and we started looking for a spot to position ourselves for the start.

There was a huge pileup at the pin end of the line with boats drifting in all directions. Even though the current would be more favorable outside (on the pin side), with our small rig we needed to find a clear lane and headed towards shore on the west side of the line in preparation for a counter-clockwise run of the course. We found some familiar faces in the vicinity with Yucca, Timberwolf and True North in the same area with the same idea.

We had an uneventful first leg towards Treasure Island, picking up a few boats along the way. Closer to the Bay Bridge it got a bit weird with boats inside and outside of us doing better... The boats giving a wider berth to TI seemed to have a bit more pressure, so we headed that way.

As soon as we cleared the southern end of TI we immediately set the kite for our run down to Red Rock. It went up with a twist. After a few seconds we got it untwisted, but something still looked wrong. Tack and clew were attached incorrectly, so kite down, swap the lines and back up. We were racing again. By this time it was already ebbing on the eastern side of TI. We jibed early on an angle that was pointing us exactly to the northeastern tip of TI, moving well in the light conditions. As soon as we cleared TI we got a nice header that put our course straight to Red Rock. The weather was beautiful and boat was moving well, so it felt right to pop a beer! Not bad sailing in t-shirt (long sleeve t-shirt) weather in the middle of the winter.

As we approached Richmond, the ebb was already flowing from the North Bay. We stayed a little too long on the deep water and lost some ground to the guys closer to shore. About this time we could see Outsider coming. I wasn't sure we would see them all day, since after we started they seemed to be lined up to go on a clockwise run. They must have changed their minds at their start. Now we had a fight in our hands racing both Ousider and the Antrim 27 Always Friday which seemed to be attached to us with a rubber band. The gaps would change but every 20-30 minutes they would be there again. This will go on all the way to the finish.

Although the natural course would suggest a port rounding of Red Rock, due to the conditions and the current a starboard rounding looked favorable. It really felt counter-intuitive and risky, but that is the way we went and it payed off huge. I was hoping Outsider would split and go the other way, but they were right there with us rounding Red Rock to starboard.

From Red Rock to Blackaller we had some very favorable currents, averaging 8-9 knots over ground going upwind. It was a bit light for our boat and we were a bit underpowered. So the focus was not to loose too much ground to our competition. Some of the folks getting close to Tiburon seemed to have done well. It's always tricky on that shore; I've had both great successes there and some memorable failures. So I played it safe. After looking at the race track, we probably needed to go a bit deeper into the deep water channel to get the most benefit from the current. But we mostly focused on playing the significant shifts that came along.

Raccoon Strait was a conveyor belt; we got spat out on the Sausalito side in no time. Here we stayed on the river as long as possible. The wind picked up a bit on our reach across the Bay, and JetStream turned on its afterburners passing a handful of boats on that leg and recording our top speed of the day at 10+ knots.

Now we just had the short leg from Blackaller to the finish at Golden Gate YC. Not a fun leg for us as we lost as many places as we gained on the previous leg. The ebb was in full rage at this time and quite a bit of boats converged in the area at the time of our rounding. The strategy here was to stay as close to shore as possible to avoid the worst of the current. It’s not always easy on our boat with a mixed fleet of symmetrical and asymmetrical spinnakers. We need a hotter angle to keep moving, and it was made more difficult with the narrow runway and more than a few boats being able to square back their poles and aim straight down the runway. Both Outsider and Sapphire [Synergy 1000] got back ahead of us in this leg, and we dropped a couple of places on the Sportboat division on the last mile.

We finished the race and kept the kite up all the way to TI. Made it first to the hoist in Alameda (not a gun at the finish, but a good reward nevertheless).

- Dan Alvarez

According to the preliminary results, JetStream finished fifth in the very large division of doublehanded sportboats. See www.sfbaysss.org. More to come, including reports from some Wyliecats.