HWS 2007 Race 3 Report - With
Alacrity -
For the 3rd Sunday in a row we drifted around with the AP
flying debating whether we would get a race in, this time the wind gods gave us
enough to get a race in with just a 2 hour postponement. Watching the previous
3 starts was fascinating, although the line bias and tide suggested starting to
the left, several times the boats from the right end of the line seemed to defy
logic and pick up longer lifting gusts and end up ahead. Last week we started
from the committee boat and it was awful so this time we ignored the same
temptation and found a big gap a quarter of the way along the line and set off
in clear air with Festina and Persephone struggling
in a pack of boats to leeward. Half way up the beat Dragonfly was leading
having nailed the start (and being nearer the committee boat than us) and we
flirted with a windless zone too close to the shore crossing tacks with Festina. At the windward mark Dragonfly still had a solid
lead and we scraped around with a risky port tack approach to round in second
place just ahead of the chasing pack lead by Festina.
Avoiding traffic once around was difficult and in the chaos Festina
sailed over the top of us and Dragonfly into the lead.
After a long spinnaker leg trying to make the most out of wind barely
touching 7 knots we picked up some pressure on the way into the mark which
meant we could sail lower and avoid having to gybe
and just got an overlap to round inside Festina. The next beat had become very bias to
starboard and we developed a serious boatspeed
problem as Festina re-took the lead and started to
stretch away and Persephone came from 4-5 boat lengths back to sail through to
leeward. With little to lose we
tacked off for a line of pressure to the right which paid off and pulled us
back into contention - after crossing tacks a few times we ended up on the layline with Festina tacking
right on top of us. This became a drag race as Festina
built speed but we just slipped through their lee enough to hold our own as we
sailed the last quarter of a mile into the mark just 6 feet apart. A few feet
further back and they would have sailed over the top but we just held them to
round the second mark in a row overlapped on the inside.
On this final downwind leg Festina sailed low
and Persephone were suddenly starting to look threatening by sailing high. We
only had the slenderest lead and with no way to cover both decided to
concentrate on boatspeed and getting the angles
right. To our astonishment we either picked up a patch of wind or managed to
get the boat in the groove, still really not sure which, but had pulled out a
healthy lead by the leeward mark which we held to the finish.
In the end a very tense and enjoyable race in which the time difference
at the finish really didn’t justify how tight it was. I lost count but
the Sigma 38 lead probably changed 7 or 8 times during the race. On handicap
Sigma 38s struggled today partly because of the less than ideal conditions but
we probably spent a good part of the race slowing each other down. Interesting
to see just 2 seconds was the difference between Marta and Vitesse
at the finish – would be fascinating to hear that story!