Unfortunately three crew had plans for this week. Charles was on vacation to NotL, David was hosting a rehearsal dinner, and Chris was cruising the Thousand Islands. Fortunately, I was able to get good replacements: Emi from Topaz and Dan from Chicone. We did a few drills on our way out to the start. We had a good practise, which was needed for the new crew.
The wind was from the north north west (340) and seemed to be more intense closer to shore. The pin end was favoured. Jack Rabbit and Platypus were the only boats in our fleet. This being Peter's week as PRO, we had a 5 minute delay between 2nd start and 3rd warning. The course was shortened from 3 X to 2 X.
We had a good start but Jack Rabbit was better, i.e. we were behind and windward. We followed them on the first leg; neither gaining nor losing. We had a good mark rounding and hoist. At the leeward mark I opted for a windward takedown while Jack Rabbit was once again too conservative. I commented that JR was being kind to us. Were we going to give it back by screwing up the takedown? Nope. We had a great windward leg and almost caught up to them at the windward mark. There was a little bit of confusion at the offset mark, I wanted to do a quick gybe onto port. We never did catch JR and the screw up on the gybe put us back a bit more. The main problem was that new people were not familiar with the boat and weren't able to do things as fast as needed. (After the race the crew commented about my cool but focused commands; which may say more about other skippers than my racing temperment.) At the finish the wind had shifted enough that the chute could not be flown properly. We doused just after JR. However, JR was confused by the course change and headed up for another circuit. We were able to pass and finish ahead of them, before they realized their mistake. It was not enough with PHRF. We were 1st but got a 2nd.
The race was close and we had to be ready for quick manouvres. Everyone did a good job, especially given that we had a 50% replacement crew. We had a great time!
No comments:
Post a Comment