Pirates on the West Nile?

Fionnlagh's third go at Wednesday night racing. Scorching hot today so no wet suit required. I was late getting there and consequently about a minute late for the start. Kevin Brown helped me get Fionnlagh off the dolly and we both beach started at about the same time. He was sailing full rig and passed me before we reached the first mark. After that, the first race was mostly a write off. I got mixed up with the San Juan fleet and those big guys steal a lot of wind. There wasn't much wind to go around tonight so I skipped the last two marks and headed for the start line for the second race.

I got a decent, but not great start on the second race.

The third race was probably one of my best races yet in terms of relative boat speed. I made two strategic errors that put me back in my usual position. At the start, the port end of the line was highly favoured as the wind had shifted since the line was set and it was closer to mark 1. We were all working to that end of the line. To make things more interesting, the wind was picking up as we were counting down to start so our estimates of when we would arrive at the pin end of the start line were a little skewed. There were two lasers sailing along the line on starboard tack, hoping to head up and cross as the horn went off. I tacked in just below them on starboard tack. The last time I looked at my watch there were 8 seconds to go. I was figuring that the two boats above me would head up over the line and I would head up immediately after, just inside the pin. Unfortunately, the boat above me reached the pin just before the horn. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to force him over the line early, so I didn't call it. Instead, I forced him past the pin, preventing him from jibing immediately. Then I jibed and headed up over the line ahead of him. As I confirmed at the clubhouse later, I did have the right to push him over early and should have called "UP" to indicate that I wanted to head up. This would have been a significant advantage for me as he would be over early and have to restart. I'm not really sure if there would have been time or room for me to cross before the pin anyway, but if I'd known the rules, I could have pushed him over sooner. There were a few boats that were messed up in this start. Someone was recalled, someone else was prevented from heading up. The result was that Kevin, Chuck, and I were behind the others and I was ahead of Kevin and Chuck. I maintained my lead rounding mark 1. I was doing a bit better with the roll tacks. On the downwind leg, I was really worried they would catch me as they both had the full rig. I squished forward in the boat and saw that Bill was healing his boat to windward. I did the same to reduce the waterline and get the sail higher up. It seemed to work. As we approached mark 4, I was still ahead but faced with a new challenge. The San Juans were reaching towards the same mark for their race. I'm still working on how to jibe and sheet in quickly on a mark rounding so adding figuring out right of way with the biggest boats on the reservoir made me very jumpy. I managed to navigate through and sheet in quite quickly using two hands (just wave the tiller extension up and down while sheeting with alternating hands). The trouble was a big San Juan was in front of me, just upwind stealing my air. When I looked back, it seemed the other two were catching up to me.