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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! <br><br>
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. <br><br>
These figures are tentative. Please feel free to correct me if you
see something I don't. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
<br><br>
At 08:12 AM 8/26/2007, you wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Fair sailing to all of you,<br>
<br>
Jan Grygier <br>
Carlos<br>
<a href="mailto:hydrophilos@earthlink.net">hydrophilos@earthlink.net</a>
<br>
<br><br>
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