Sailing Blog
More Collisions, Bumps and Bruises on Day 2 of Melges 32 Worlds »
September 23, 2010
After 9 days of sailing and another long day of with a 6pm arrival into the harbor after racing, my mind is spent, and my body is feeling like a balloon slowly losing air. To make matters worse, after 6 races the mental and physical fatigue becomes even harder when you are only shooting to make the top ten, instead of winning the title like we had originally hoped.
Our day started off ok with a 7 place, which in this fleet is more than a keeper. We were very encouraged by the second race when we had a bad start and rounded the first top mark in 25. After a first solid run, we were able to pass a bunch of boats and managed to sail a great last lap to take another 7th place. The vibe on the boat was starting to feel like a typical Samba day and we had a great feeling headed into the last race of day 2.
On the final start, we got of the line with some pace, tacked to the right side and were punched with the majority of the boats who had flopped early. We arrived at the top mark in 4th place, set and exited cleanly from the mark, leaving behind a massive fray at the top mark. I personally thought from here we would be able to look forward and focus on winning the race. Once again, I would be mistaken.
At the first bottom mark, we had a messy take down which would linger longer than any of us could have imagined. As we continued on port out of the left hand gate, our speed was struggling and we could not get our usual speed numbers. The boats on our whether hip started to look better and better and we were scratching our heads (with a bit of expletives mixed in) as to why we were going so slow. When we got to the starboard layline, we tacked and when we got settled onto starboard, we instantly found a solution to our speed problem; our tack line had been sucked out during the takedown and we had been dragging 60 ft of line behind our boat for over 6-7 minutes. Once we got the tack line re-rigged, the boats that we had extended nicely on during the run had closed the gap and we were now in the back of the front pack and battling for a decent finish.
The final top mark, the first 3 boats rounded cleanly and ahead of the pack, and from there it is amazing how close the racing is in this fleet. Boats are overlapped 4-5 boats wide at the top mark with port tackers calling short laylines hoping the ebb tide will push them above the mark, often creating traffic jams worse than a NASCAR pile up. The front boats get to experience a rich-get-richer scenario while the boats in the middle of the fleet are stuck battling it out, colliding, and eventually slowing each other down. Our cleanest exit from the top mark was to do a bear away set and do a one gybe and in to the bottom mark. As we approached the bottom, we again were overlapped with 4-5 boats, but did manage to get on the inside which was good, until the wheels fully came off.
Once the call was made to drop the spinnaker, the boat slowly started to slow down as the boats around us got further and further away until we eventually came to a full stop just underneath the mark. All it took was one quick look to the leeward side to see the spinnaker was getting sucked into the water very quickly and there were healthy shrimp in SF Bay, we could have made a lovely dinner with how far our kite was underneath the water. With the kite fully gathered after 1-2 minutes of being stopped, we lost 10 or so boats and the mood on the boat went from being optimistic prior to the start of the race, to drastically quiet, and we slogged our way from 4th to finish 19th. Knowing we would have to eat this on our scorecard, the frustration began to settle in on how many points we have left on the water the last few days and the already long sail from the Berkeley Circle got exponentially longer…Alcatraz even began to look friendly.
While we had plenty of our own issues on Day 2, there were several collisions including a big one at the end of the day with Bronco and Red. When Red set on the final downwind, they immediatly wiped out and rounded-up in front of Bronco who was storming down on a full plane behind them. It looked like Bronco did their best to avoid the collision, but could not and hit the bottom of Red’s hull near the transom and put a nice sized hole from their bowsprit. It was rumored there were some injuries on both boats, but I do not know the details.
B Lin, Full Throttle, Star and Warpath all had good days and with 4 more races remaining, this regatta is still wide open for the boats in the front group. Check out full results at melges32.com.
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