January 27, 2014

In Part 1 of our story on Saturday's light-air, strong-ebb Three Bridge Fiasco, we told you that only two boats were scored. One was disqualified for finishing after dark with no running lights, so only one was scored. That boat was the 1D35 Dark and Stormy, sailed by Jonathan Hunt and Rodney Hagebols, which finished with 20 minutes of the 19:00 cut-off time. This is their tale.

Rodney: The Three Bridge has been on Jonathan's bucket list for some time now. The 24th January was Jon’s birthday, so why not try and win this thing for him. We both went to the skippers meeting on Wednesday night and found the talk by Kame Richards and the race committee well worth the trip. What I got from Kame’s chat was to tick the boxes you can while you can regardless of the forecast and keep your options open. That being said we still looked closely at the sailorsenergy data.

Jonathan: Regarding planning a direction before the race, I think Rod and I went through the usual agonizing that every team goes through when trying to analyze a problem that is probably beyond the reach of mere mortals: just too many variables and unknowns. When it came down to it we had some breeze to Blackaller and no breeze to Treasure Island or Red Rock, so we did Blackaller and liked the idea of going down the Cityfront close to shore looking for early flood. We ran out of breeze in front of the St. Francis Yacht Club and anchored with an Archambault 35 and a J/105. After 20 minutes of waiting we realized there was light breeze stretching to the north, and I think we realized if we were to have any chance of finishing the race we had to go somewhere, so we went north, toward Red Rock. Probably the fact that we started toward Red Rock further up current than the folks who rounded Blackaller saved our race.

Rodney: We noted boats that had attempted to cross near the Golden Gate Bridge got sucked out to sea. We wanted to cross fast while we could, so we hoisted the Code Zero and sailed low and fast. We got to within half a mile of Raccoon Strait when the breeze shut down and I threw the anchor over again. It wasn’t long before Jon made me pick it up again and we attempted to sail. At this point, something weird happened – the boat started to make way ever so slightly and we began to move away from the boats around us, boats that were less than 20 feet away. We continued this slow escape, and it wasn’t long before they were specks on the horizon.

Three very different but well-sailed boats converged in Raccoon Strait. Left to right: Dark and Stormy, Will Paxton and Zachery Anderson's Express 27 Motorcycle Irene, and Ian Klitza and Brendan Busch on Rocket 88. ©2014 Stephen Buckingham

Jonathan: There was a light north breeze in Raccoon, with lots of holes. We were with only two other boats, Rocket 88 and Motorcycle Irene. We crossed to the north side of Raccoon, which turned out to be a good move, as we were able to escape. I am not sure if Irene ever did, on the south side.

Rodney: From Red Rock to TI we sailed pretty much rhumb line except for a small jibe early to get some east in away from the dead zone on the east side of Angel Island. We sailed with the A3 nearly all the way to TI where we peeled to a jib and then a Code Zero to get through the lee of TI.

Jonathan: We maybe had a bit of flood on the east side of TI helping us go south, but of course it became an issue once we got around the south end of Yerba Buena and turned into it. At that stage we had about 2 1/2 hours to finish the race, against a fairly strong flood with minimum breeze. Quite honestly it looked impossible. In the beginning we were making only a couple of knots over the ground against the tide, and it looked impossible to make the distance to the GGYC finish line in the time remaining at that speed. During the last leg we never cleated the jib and we did many tacks over to the cone.

Rodney: So off we went, constantly trimming and looking for any wind that might help us. There was massive shear in the wind. At the top of the mast we had westerly and at sea level we had northerly. So we just trimmed and steered to the middle tell tales on the sails as the best of both worlds so to speak.

Jonathan: It was an immensely satisfying win. It is the unofficial season's championship in my mind. Everybody is there racing, and it is a huge challenge and a very, very fun afternoon. We won our class a few years ago in Big Boat but this one feels better. There were people on the jetty cheering us on as we finished, and that was a great heartwarming feeling after working hard all day. It was the best gun I ever got.

Rodney: Approaching the breakwater near GGYC some Melges 24 sailors who had retired cheered us on, as did many of the crowd at GGYC. With flashlights blazing and Jon cheering we crossed the line. Shortly after, we learned we were the first to finish – that’s when Jon really started to lose it… Jon could be heard all the way down Oakland Estuary as we approached our berth. It was a great day of sailing. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JON!

The awards meeting has been moved to Wednesday, March 26, at Oakland YC. For more info, see www.sfbaysss.org. Continue on for two more reports from the race course.