Races 3 and 4

I left on my bike waving up to my sons who had just woken up and were watching me from the condo balcony as I rode away to another day of racing. They would skip the spectator boat today and go with Rusty and my mom to see the nearby town of Jose Ignacio (and later go boogie boarding, of course).

It was windy and cloudy today and the breeze was already building. We met for our team meeting in our usual morning spot between our cargo container and the fence next to the harbor. Leandro told us the wind was predicted to be NE/E and reach around 22 knots by afternoon before calming down eventually. He praised the team on working together before the races yesterday and told us to try to sail even smarter and more aggressively, especially at the start. Leandro knew Christin and I felt slow yesterday, so he looked at our boat but advised us not to change our heavy air settings from yesterday based on today's forecast and gave us advice on how to sail looser in lighter breeze even if the rig is tight. I checked the notice board and saw we were dead last after our OCS (over starting line too early) in race 2 which left me feeling disappointed but certain we would move up during the regatta especially if we sail enough races to throw out one.

So off we went from the crowded launch ramp and through the maze of moored boats in the harbor. I haven't mentioned how friendly the people are everywhere here, but those who happen to be on board their moored boats often cheer and wave as the parade of Snipes sails by them.

As we left the harbor and around a small navy ship, the wind was just 5-10 knots and from the north. The course was eventually set by the committee boat (it usually sets all of the marks), but then the shifting began and postponements had to be made as the wind increased and shifted to the north east. We had a couple of recalls and the Z flag was put up to add a 20% penalty to anyone not restarting correctly after being over within one minute of the start. I worked on setting up earlier (1 min 30 -2 min) and holding my hole near the middle or left half but had to bail out a couple of times when I noticed Augie and/or Peter or a leeward boat was too close with time to pick a new spot. Our eventual start was good and we headed left but had trouble pointing with the bad air from boats gradually driving over us and no clean lane available. Our reaches felt slow on the double triangle course, but we picked up boats the next two windward legs--one leg by playing shifts up the middle. The wind was 15-20 by the time we sailed the last beat and we were looking good--we were pointing well up the left side, hiking hard, and our sails had a nice, flat shape in comparison to many other boats whose sails were flogging. After finishing, Leandro gave us a big thumbs up, and I happily shouted that I was proud of where we ended up in that race.

As we took a break near the shore, the wind continued to build and hit us in gusts that were nearly knock downs. We cautiously flew down to the starting area and waited heaved-to (with jib pulled tight on the windward side to keep sails from flapping and to slow you down) like most everyone else as the committee boat started sequences and then postponed them while trying to reset and eventually replace a drifting pin end. We actually began to hope that the committee was also rethinking starting any race to send us in because we were sure the wind was gusting up to 30 and was probably 25 knots sustained (committee reported to Jerry, the SCIRA rep, that the wind was no more than 24 knots sustained). It was exciting and a challenge, though, to have to start and sail in so much breeze. Adventure sailing and competition at its best! We were one of the few boats able to cross the line near the pin end and not get blown below it, and off we went to the left with most of the fleet. We neared the windward mark mid-fleet (probably our best position yet at the first mark) and thought we could tack below a Brazilian boat onto layline about 3 boat lengths away, but we had a problem with the jib sheets and lost enough speed that we could no longer make the mark and had to jibe around to get back in line to round. Ugh! We jibed around boats that were capsized and then struggled to get out the whisker pole (more technique practice is needed for this much breeze), so we bailed and did our best to stop the boat from death rolling (capsizing to windward) as we avoided a few other capsized boats on the way to the leeward mark. We did well on the next beat and held our own, but then we capsized at the jibe mark (next to Juliana and Vivian from Brazil who capsized seconds before us) when my tiller extension got stuck in the cockpit--a big spectator boat got a great view of the two boats capsized and many others after us, but at least ours didn't make the evening slide show! :) No more incidents after that and we finished 35th, tired but still in control with no broken equipment. At least 9 boats weren't able to sail or finish the race! The winner was a Uruguayan woman named Andrea who is racing with her brother, an Olympic Laser sailor; I congratulated Andrea later and she is definitely as nice as she is skilled.

The way in was the toughest as huge gusts capsized boats even with sails fully let out. From our condo, Rusty could see the puffs blast down across the water and blow over several boats, a few of whom demonstrated perfect "California rolls" (where you hold onto the dagger board and get pulled under water to the other side when the boat capsizes again on top of you).

Tonight my mom put the boys to bed so we could return for cena/dinner at the club with the other sailors. We had waiters in white tuxes and silver trays serving us drinks and hors d'oeuvres and later paella from a gigantic paella pan outside. We were all entertained by the slide show showing great close-up photos of the last two days' racing and even better was Karaoke... Koji from Japan stole the show with his great microphone moves and high pitch notes singing an old American rock song. It was very, very funny!

Tomorrow is supposed to start out windy and be very windy all day. It took 5 hours to get 2 races in today and there was quite a bit of carnage, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that it's less windy than forecasted or they send us in.