Confusing times

The regular RC for Wednesday was unavailable so Stephen had to assemble a back up group to run the race.

I was somewhat concerned that the winds would be too light to race. Both Monday and Tuesday night races were November Alphaed due to no wind. However the wind filled in nicely from the west; light and variable. Stephen set the start line at Dufferin and the windward mark was 0.9 nm. on a bearing of 295. Stephen also had gates, one green and one yellow. (Isn't a green buoy a finish mark in the SIs? No.)

I was glad to see that our old rival, Jack Rabbit, was was racing for the first time this season.

We had an OK start. The main problem was bad air from the rest of the fleet. I noticed that Jack Rabbit had a much better start near the RC Boat and was in clear air. During the prestart it appeared that the winds got very 'fluky' near shore. My plan was to stay in the middle and I think this strategy worked.

After the first leg the wind shifted and starboard tack was very favoured. Stephen changed the course to 320 (the windward mark was moved and the offset mark was removed). At the leeward gate, we had a good windward douce of the chute.

We were a bit slow on the second windward mark rounding. The offset mark was gone so we didn't have the usual time to launch the chute. The wind seemed to continue to shift north. Port gybe was very favoured. We were not able to do a fast gybe because of a slowness in getting the genoa down. Everything got sorted eventually. Candlelight was having even more chute hoisting difficulty.

I was somewhat confused by the finish (i e the Green mark) but Janet sorted it out for me. I was not the only one confused about the finish as Jack Rabbit did an unnecessary third circuit. The net result of everybody being somewhat confused was that we ended up with a first!