May 9, 2015

Pat Broderick, skipper of the Wyliecat 30 Nancy, reports:

Shorthanders shared the final monohull start with the smallest boat division, so Leah Pepe and I had a whole race full of sail to follow as we started the 2015 Great Vallejo YRA Opening Race on May 2. Only the multihulls started after us, but that part of the story has to wait. The plan was to start at the committee boat, but the current Saturday morning wasn't in the plan apparently. We found ourselves down-line and behind when the gun went off. After an eternity we managed to reach and pass the pin at the opposite end of the start line. Not the best way to begin a 23-mile race, but at least we had clear air.

The flood was much stronger than we'd planned on, so it was a slow beat to the corner before we turned for the upwind mark. And then we overstood it and passed it on a close reach as we headed for the middle and the even greater flood.

The real "first fun" began about halfway after our tack and the mark, however. The multis were on us and they were on starboard while we were on port. It's one thing to judge the speed of a Cal 20 and another math problem for someone arithmetic-challenged to judge the speed of a 40-ft cat with one hull out of the water. They thundered past, ahead, behind, and nearly over the top. Did those two guys on the small cat really want to spend 23 miles hanging out on their wires? The blessing was the multis didn't leave much wake to slow us down.

The middle proved very beneficial as we went from a close reach to a beam reach, our speed aided by the growing flood. We stayed further west than most boats, trying to keep John Lymberg's Flying Tiger Wild 1 in sight since we thought among our five-boat division he was the one to beat. Perhaps we should have begun starting to count our tactical errors, beginning with #1, a bad start, and then #2, forgetting how the handicap works when racing against a boat we owed 99 seconds per mile to, using Time on Distance as a rough calculation. Hmm. That's 99 seconds per mile x 21.5 miles / 60 seconds = 35.5 minutes.

John Lymberg singlehanded the Flying Tiger Wild 1 in Saturday's race to Vallejo. ©2015 norcalsailing.com

We continued reaching, passing Red Rock to starboard and under the center of the Richmond Bridge. Most boats were closer to Richmond, but John was still ahead of us farther out, so we continued. Along with trying to keep up with John, we became worried about Carliane Johnson's Freedom 38, which seemed to be keeping up with us too closely. Error #3 might have been becoming distracted trying to remember what a Freedom 38 rated.

Leah Pepe steering downwind on the sunny Saturday race to Vallejo. ©2015 Pat Broderick

As we entered San Pablo Bay, the wind backed and we switched to the running mode, which on a Wyliecat means letting the sail out and worrying even more about those chutes that were blossoming behind us. By short-cutting across San Pablo, clearing the Pt. Pinole pole by a hundred yards, we managed to move into the broad reach mode, which upped our speed. We lost track of John ahead and it looked like Carliane was falling farther back behind. We had completely forgotten Paul Harris's Marieholm Folkboat The Mighty Windsong — the one that rated 228. We could see small spinnakers back by Pt. San Pablo, figuring they were the Cal 20 and Santana 22s that had started with us. But they were way back — way, way back.

The International Folkboat Windsong, singlehanded by Paul Harris, was one of only two boats that finished with a spinnaker up. ©2015 Slackwater SF

Then the wind began to increase — and those small chutes way back became less way back. We crossed to the north side before the Conoco refinery and approached the green Mare Island #1 buoy. As we jibed over and entered the Mare Island Strait it was clear that Carliane had done some catching up, but it appeared the small chutes were still pretty far back. Mistake #4? Or a repeat of Mistake #2? How far back?

The reach up the Mare Island Strait was exciting, as the wind came and went and moved forward then aft, and we overtook several boats from divisions ahead of us. We finished at 15:33 for an elapsed time of 3:08, which we thought was respectable. After getting the sail down and motoring into the Vallejo Yacht Club marina, we tied up alongside John's Flying Tiger, which made us feel pretty good since he was next to us and not five or six boats farther in. Maybe we pulled it off after all?

It wasn't until dinnertime when the results were posted that reality set in, along with the memories of when both Leah and I sailed Santana 22s with our PHRF 237 handicaps. Sail to your handicap and you'll win. Paul's The Mighty Windsong had finished only 23 minutes behind us. In most sailboat races, 23 minutes can be an eternity, but in this one it resulted in Paul beating us by five and a half minutes! The good news: we had saved our time on Carliane's Kynntana and trumped Wild 1's 54-second-per-mile handicap for a second place. We slept soundly, knowing Sunday's upwind race home would be more "Wylie friendly."

— Pat Broderick, Wyliecat 30 Nancy

Continue on for Pat's story of Sunday's race. See our norcalsailing.com photo gallery here, and see Slackwater SF's gallery of Saturday finishes here.