Sailing Blog
Storms Roll on Day 1 of Bacardi Cup »
March 10, 2011
Prior to leaving the dock Melges 20 sailors were glued to their smartphones looking at the weather radar which showed a massive line of severe weather making its way towards Miami. PRO Bruce Gollison made the bold call to send the fleet out for at least 1 race before the storms arrived, and it turned out to be a good move…just barely.
As we got into sequence, the discussion on our boat was about how right skewed the upwind mark was, and how port favored the starting line was. It was pretty clear that port tack was the long tack, and that we would be spending about 75% of the time headed in that direction. Knowing that the pin end was favored and that it would be a popular place, we decided to go more conservative and start in the middle of the line with the #1 goal of having the ability to tack immediately. Once the gun went, there was a big mess at the pin end with only 2-3 boats getting off on time, and we found ourselves tacking with speed from the middle of the line and quickly establishing ourselves in the front group.
There was a 10 boat drag race to the top of the course on port tack and Mary Anne did a great job of driving to allow us to get space off the boats to leeward, and force a few of the boats to windward of us to tack. Once to the starboard layline, we tacked over and got around the top mark in 3rd, just ahead of a big pack of boats storming in from the port layline.
One area of huge importance is having the ability to set quickly at the top mark and extend away from the crowd. We did a good job of setting cleanly, but had a hard time of finding a good mode the first few hundred yards from the mark, and ended up getting rolled by our tuning partners on Red Sky. It is always painful to get rolled, but when your friends do it to you, it really takes a special effort to stay calm. The good news was there was a gap between Red Sky and the next boat so we could get ourselves to the high lane, but with our inability to find a good mode, a few boats were able to soak low and keep us pinned to the right corner…not a very good sequence for the M and Ms.
Once free to gybe, we continued on for a few more lengths, and were greeted with new pressure and a nice 10 degree header that we rode out for another minute or two. We were firmly on our own in the right corner and once to the layline, we stayed hooked up in the new pressure and had a nice angle to the mark. What started off as a very ugly run, had turned into a second place rounding at the bottom gate…deep breaths, everything is ok.
The next lap around, the black storm clouds crept a bit closer and the big lefties that paid off the first upwind, gave way to a little more right pressure and rewarded the team on Red Sky who rounded the left gate facing downwind and sent it to the right corner. The move paid off as they rounded in first, and we followed in a close 4th place. On the last downwind the storm clouds were the place to be, and we did job of gybing out early and made some nice gains to cross the line in 3rd by a hair with an Italian team sneaking into 2nd after rounding 5th at the top mark.
On the sail in, it was game on as once we got into the harbor, the storm was in full effect and we did our best to dodge the big cruising sailboats in the mooring field with big shots of wind and sheets of rain. As we approached the dock, we tried to slow the boat down, but a big wind shift took us from being head to wind, to tight reaching and with the option of either putting it up on shore, or hitting the dock, we decided to brace for impact and pile into the bumpers on the dock. Our new all-star bow man, Peter Keck did a good job of softening the blow, but fell off during the action. No damage to the boat. Sails down. Back to the hotel to get dried out for day 2.
4 races are schedules for racing on Friday, and the forecast is for 12-20 which should provide for some solid racing. Stay tuned, results.
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