Jan, thanks for the report. From the back of the fleet it's nice to
hear what's happening at the front. I've worked up a spreadsheet of
the participation rates of all the ODCA fleets, and will send it out
after the official results are in from the City Front race. I'm not
sure whether we are counting three or four races for the season
closer, and that will make a difference in the total race count for
qualifying the fleet. Unlike Vallejo and the Second Half Opener,
which don't count for qualifying our fleet, the Season Closer will
count since it is a white sails race. If you count races through the
South Bay race on August 18th, we have four boats qualifying. For
the entire season so far, it looks like Tackful, Cloud 9, and
Tchoupitoulas have already qualified for the full season even if they
don't race another race. Poniente is right up there, depending on
whether we have three races or four at the season closer. Thank you
Frank and Kathy, Jim, Stephen and Chris, and Javier!
As far as the rest of the fleet goes, Usquebaugh, Bonito, and Auggie
are mathematically out of qualifying. Pat can qualify Elaine without
racing all the races at the Season Closer, and I think the rest
(Carlos, Maguro, and Inshallah) can qualify if they race all the
races of the closer.
These figures are tentative. Please feel free to correct me if you
see something I don't.
For next year, we should realize that a fleet doesn't have to select
all the race days available on the ODCA schedule. You are counted
for qualifying depending on how many you choose, so there is an
option to race just a few of the days. I would strongly suggest, for
example, that we don't pick a race day near the Nationals if we
discover a lot of boats and/or crew will be going to Santa Cruz.
At 08:12 AM 8/26/2007, you wrote:
>I've almost recovered from Nationals, made it to the two great
>CityFront races yesterday despite incredible childcare
>logistics. We had a great time, here is my report.
> First race: Had a great start, held Elaine off at the windward
> mark to start at the pin at full speed only 5 seconds late, but
> everybody else was further down the line and the pin was heavily
> favored. We played the shifts well until close to the mark and
> made it to Blackhaller alongside Inshallah and just ahead of
> Tackful. Shirley went right, Cathy went left and promptly covered
> us. It looked like a long boring reach to Harding so I exchanged
> pleasantries with Cathy while racking my brain for possible passing
> strategies. Finally a big cruising boat showed up on collision
> course on starboard, we both sidled over to the left to stay on the
> windward side and then I decided to duck down and get some
> distance, hoping Tackful would be distracted and not follow us. To
> my amazement it actually worked, we worked our way to leeward and
> then saw a tide line ahead that Tackful and Poniente (?) crossed
> first into the nascent ebb. We stayed on the flood side of the
> line for a few more boatlengths and got through their windshadow,
> made it to Harding with a few boatlengths to spare.
> Now we get a long boring reach to Ft. Mason, right? Well, not
> quite, folks on Tackful were racking their brains too and crept up
> on us. I threw a moderate luff at them to keep them on their toes
> and rattle them, they went to leeward and started passing us there
> until we figured out that poling to leeward was really faster and
> copied them. With Carlos on the inside we were pretty safe at the
> mark, especially since the right thing to do was obviously to stay
> on stbd and head for current relief/building ebb near the
> shore. And it's a short way from Ft. Mason to GGYC, so we were
> able to sit on them pretty effectively and got what I think is our
> first gun of the season.
> Manoevering between races was almost as challenging as racing
> since some Ayedeens (skiffs) were racing all around us, with tons
> of crash boats, photo boats and helicopters covering the action
> (way more support/press than the skiffs themselves). But finally
> the RC fired off a bunch of guns and we came back to discover the
> Olson 30's had disappeared and we were next up, with some strange
> flags announcing the course. Cathy graciously told us it was
> course 22, the confusion was that the RC only had one flag 2 so
> they put in the AP instead of the second one. That and losing my
> VHF some time at the end of Nationals made us a bit less informed
> than usual. But we managed to start OK, this time headed right
> after the traffic cleared, with most of the fleet to our right and
> Tackful way inside. At first we seemed to be doing great, then it
> got shifty and we always seemed to be on the wrong side of them, so
> Inshallah crossed us on the way to Blackhaller. But then they
> overstood the mark in the ebb, and we rounded first.
> Next up was an inflatable "NorthWest of Hyde Street Pier", the
> new mark that Pat got added to the inventory last year. Of course
> there were inflatable marks all over the place being rounded at
> high speed by skiffs and photo boats, but we managed to follow the
> Olson 25s (hi guys, nice regatta two weeks ago, eh?) who were
> apparently using the same course, and also followed their strategy
> of heading outside at the top of the run to get good air, then
> inside to escape the ebb after leaving the start/finish line to
> stbd. Elaine tried going inside early and ran out of wind,
> everybody else stayed outside and we made some ground
> downwind. The greatest excitement was avoiding an outbound ferry
> who seemed to want to play chicken with us on the way to the mark,
> we jybed early and made it plain where we were going, they then
> changed course to stbd to track us and we had to go high of the
> mark to keep separation. Probably just wanted to let people take
> photos of us or those darn ayedeens, we waved merrily while cursing
> their bloody wake, then jybed back to get to the mark. At least
> they didn't give us five horns.
> Now we had a long beat back up to Blackhaller, an Olson 30
> (must have decided to have just one long race instead of the
> scheduled two) worked their way through our weather and we
> followed, they were far enough to wx that there wasnt' much wind
> shadow. A one-tack beat on the ebb, except that our tack was a bit
> too late, we ended up overstanding the mark a fair bit, so
> Inshallah got a lot closer at the top mark. But the run was
> basically a shorter repeat of the first one (without the ferry),
> this time we went to Ft. Mason again, went right into the ebb and
> kept a loose cover on Inshallah to get our second gun of the
> season. Whoopee! And many thanks to the new main and ancient jib
> (the same one I loaned Pariah so they could beat us handily at
> Nationals), our boatspeed was pretty good in the moderate to stiff
> breeze. I know Tackful got third in that race, not sure about the
> others as we had to split and go find my kids, we had a nice ride
> back home (though nothing like the one after Admiral's Cup),
> despite my misgivings the wind held all the way to the club.
>>So this brings me to the musings part - here we have 11 boats signed
>up for YRA, 19 locals did Nationals so we know we have a lot of
>potential racers, and yet only 3 came last week to the South Bay,
>and 6 to CityFront yesterday. I know Bill Murphy was planning to
>race yesterday but changed plans after he broke his tiller 20
>seconds before the first race last week (that was the blue boat that
>Chris mentioned in his heartrending report of the dismasting). As
>ODCA chair he really want us to get more boats to qualify, so he
>ended up crewing on Cloud 9 (?) so they could race, after Usquebaugh
>was mathematically eliminated from qualifying (which one does by
>sailing, or at least starting, 50% of the races, for the
>newbies). And Tchoupi is out of commission for the rest of the
>season. But where was everybody else, why are so few of us coming
>out to play in the regular races?
>>I almost wonder if we should sign up for the "Party Circuit" next
>year and only do special events like Pumpkin and Fall One-design
>beyond that, but that is really only three weekends (Vallejo,
>Encinal Opener and Summer Sailstice), and the Encinal Opener comes
>close to Nationals and hasn't been very popular anyway, despite the
>great party Saturday night. So I am a bit flummoxed, musings from
>others either on our listserve or in person at the party Saturday
>night at THE SEASON CLOSER, SEPTEMBER 8-9 or THE NEXT SCOMBRIDAE
>SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23. I hope a lot of us can make those two events,
>after that it's only Great Pumpkin at the end of October before
>we're into Xmas parties and winter light. Perhaps Pat Broderick or
>Craig McDow could tell us more about the season closer hosted by
>Corinthian YC, and of course our fearless leader will be prepping
>you for Scombridae Sunday.
>>Fair sailing to all of you,
>>Jan Grygier
>Carlos
><mailto:hydrophilos at earthlink.net>hydrophilos at earthlink.net>>>_______________________________________________
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