race report
| home | contact us | movies | galleries | recent stories | archived stories | store |
 The light air start of Saturday's Island Tour. We can see boats from at least three divisions in this picture. ©2010 norcalsailing.com |
|
YRA Season Closer September 26, 2010 Hot, hot, hot! The air temperature that is - the racing not so much. For the simple reason that what generates the wind on San Francisco Bay also keeps it cool. Lose one, lose the other. With the mercury lolling about in the eighties in San Francisco all weekend and topping out at 90 degrees on Saturday, you can be sure the wind machine took Saturday off.
The YRA Season Closer, the final weekend of the Party Circuit, is hosted by Corinthian YC, which started and finished both days of racing off the clubhouse deck. As anyone who's done a Friday night race at the Corinthian knows, the challenge is getting out of Belvedere Cove and into the wind, usually a westerly blowing through the Gate. The Race Committee helped by setting the pin end of the line way out in Raccoon Strait, hopefully closer to the theoretical wind. Except the wind was only theoretical, while the strong flood current was very real. Adding to the challenge was the difficulty, even with binoculars, of reading drooping division flags from so far away. Radio silence from the RC left some of the later divisions wondering what was going on. The wind at the start line on Saturday was a light easterly, so most boats started with spinnakers up. Being over early was not an issue. The starts went on for an hour and and a quarter, and by the time the final divisions started, the breeze had shut down and the flood was at its strongest. A few boats got caught on a standing wave in Raccoon Strait and could not shake free, resulting in some early drop-outs. Those who avoided the wave by tucking in to the shore of Angel Island found a counter-current and so were able to break free.
The first mark on Saturday's Island Tour course is Yellow Bluff, then on to Alcatraz. The Slot made an attempt at piping up a westerly, so this was the only stretch on Saturday that had any wind, and from a normal direction at that. From there, the fleet headed to Red Rock, then back to Raccoon Strait for the finish off the race deck. Not everyone made it around the 21-nm course by the deadline of 1900 hours.
Among the heartbreakers was Richard Von Ehrenkrook's Cal 20 Can O'Whoopass, which was leading their division in both the HDA series and the Party Circuit. The Can finished 20 minutes after the deadline. "We hit every hole, every dead spot, all adverse tides, all marks were up current and upwind," lamented crew Paul Sutchek. "We knew, at 1pm after floating near and around the start line, that it would be a good time to call it a day and go to Sam's! But we continued on and got beat by the lack of wind, longer waterlines, bad tides, lack of beer and who knows what else! We also got pretty burnt, even though we double applied sunscreen - what a great day!" The Cal 20 really did have a great day on Sunday, winning their division, and the series. Sunday morning dawned to a nice finger of fog in the Slot, promising less sun stroke and more breeze. Although the fog pulled back, the promise was delivered - in the Slot anyway. Sunday's Crazy Eight Race was a pursuit around Alcatraz and Angel Islands in either direction - but you had to take your first island to starboard and your second island to port, drawing a figure out around them. The Little Harding buoy is thrown in at the beginning and end to make the courses equal, and Little Harding, marking one side of the shipping channel, was a windy place indeed.
However, racers still had to contend with a huge hole on the east side of Angel Island. Those who rode out the hole on the flood were golden, while those who had to struggled against the flood were toast.
A better breeze blew through Raccoon Strait, and boats were able to tack along it properly to get back out to the final turning mark, Little Harding.
Results from the weekend and the 2010 Party Circuit are now posted at www.yra.org.
The overall finish order of the Pursuit Race was not available when we posted this story on Monday night, but those results are in now, and we can tell you that Mary Coleman's Farr 40 Astra, which hasn't been racing much lately, was the first to finish at 14:04:09.
The last boat to finish within the time limit was the Swan 38 Azyxxi, at 17:56:40. Only three boats dropped out after starting.
|
||||||||
