Although the temperature today was ten degrees below yesterday, the morning’s drizzle had stopped and the sky had cleared long enough that we enjoyed a crisp sunny evening on the bay with a strong fresh breeze that staid pretty steady with long solid gusts.
A perfect night for the #2 headsail, quick boat speed and plenty of decisions to make. And throughout the entire race, it was neck and neck with Battlewagon and Raison d’Etre. Top Gun and Sabotage had their own battle ahead, and Sandpiper was just behind our cluster, but close enough to keep us all honest.
At the start line, all three boats had well timed starts, but we were down to leeward a bit. We changed positions with each boat as we crossed on the course.
At the windward mark, we were ahead of Battlewagon and just behind Raison d’Etre.
Downwind, although our jibes weren’t as clean as we hoped, we managed to get just ahead of both of them. Clean douse and we were a few boat lengths ahead of Battlewagon, with RdE just astern (but a bit to windward) of them. Decisions, decisions. Do we wait until one of them tacks and then tack to cover, or do we tack away to escape the bad air of Christephanie ahead? We tacked. They split the course.
Next crossing, Battlewagon had slipped ahead of us and tacked onto our line. We were ready and tacked away immediately. Next tack and we’re fetching the finish. RdE now crosses our bow and tacks to windward of us, slowing us down. Coming to the finish line, Battlewagon approaches on starboard while RdE and we finish on port. We’re behind both, but just a few seconds. They owe us time, but we weren’t quite close enough. Once again, a race that came down to a few seconds — and this time among three of us.
Now that’s competitive racing! Next time, let’s be the ones that get the others by a few seconds, eh!