Farallones Race Report

We got to the start super early and ducked into SF Marina to kill some time.  We discussed which jib to start the race with.  It was fairly windy in the bay (22ish) but the buoy reports from outside were lighter (15ish).  We decided to start with the 100 since it was already up and when we did hit lighter air we would change then.  Once we were back out on the bay we noticed a couple of boats had reefed their main.  We then realized that we had not tied our reef line back on after we had removed and reinstalled the main.  We decided to go ahead and do that "just in case" then raised the main back up.  We did not end up reefing.  It was pretty breezy inside the bay but gradually calmed as we got farther out the gate.  When we were seeing consistent 15s we changed headsails as we'd planned and put up the 150.  It was a beautiful trip out to the Farallones.  As we were approaching the North end for a counter-clockwise rounding we saw Ay Caliente coming towards us with their spinnaker up.  We like to keep an eye on them as we rate the same so we can easily tell how we are doing against them.  We were a little dispirited to see that they were way ahead of us.  We had a good spinnaker set and felt good to see we were gaining on boats ahead of us and we passed a few on the way in.  Though they were boats that rate higher than we did so we SHOULD have been passing them.  They mostly still beat us even though we did pass them since we didn't get far enough ahead to make up for the time we had to give them...

OK, more details.  So as we started to approach the gate the winds were building.  We'd put up our lighter weight spinnaker and we began to discuss switching to the heavier one.  We noticed that Green Buffalo had switched and decided if the smart people on that boat had done it, we should to.  About this time we also noticed that Ay Caliente was behind us.  They didn't seem to be sailing as deep as we were and were having to travel farther and jibe back and forth towards the gate where we were making a beeline for it.  We had an uneventful sail change and really all in all an uneventful spinnaker run.  We discussed whether to douse the spinnaker at the finish or jibe away.  Our foredeck said we had to jibe to get the spinnaker down due to the side of the spinnaker that the snuffer lines were on.  Since we had to jibe, we decided we'd do three jibes and get some practice.  We crossed the finish line and jibed with no issues.  We were headed towards Alcatraz and I looked back and saw Ay Caliente's spinnaker shred--it was quite impressive really--and felt a SMALL bit of Schadenfreude while thinking they should have switched to their heavier spinnaker.  Then we had our disaster jibe and I got my payback for that thought passing through my mind!

So all I have to do on the jibe is lower the topping lift to dip the pole.  I had my eyes forward, focusing on the timing when I heard some raised voices behind me discussing jibing the main.  We were in the midst of dipping the pole and tripping when the main went over and so did the boat.  The pole was still on port and now the main was as well and we were well over on port with the pole in the water along with most everything else.  Much yelling ensued and one by one we released different things trying to get the boat back on her feet.  This was fairly harrowing as everything was under a lot of load so when you released a line... zip.... it went flying and there were lines whipping around manically.  Luckily nobody was hit by the end of a line.

Somewhere in there the main trimmer told us he had lost the main sheet.  I did not fully comprehend this until later but he had run out of line on that side of the double ended sheet and there was no knot on the end so when he let the main out the sheet had come off the boom.  The only saving grace was a guy was wrapped around the end of the boom.  The only way out of this mess was to dump the spinnaker. We dumped it with only a small bit of it ending up in the water and got it down below then set about trying to regain control of the main.  We got another line around the middle of the boom, which was still well out as we had no steerage to turn the boat up into the wind.  We decided we needed to turn on the motor and keep it in neutral until we were sure all the lines were clear.  Two people announced all the lines were clear, my husband put the engine in forward, and the one line that was not ACTUALLY clear immediately wrapped around the shaft.  Soooooo.  Somewhere in there we were able to turn enough to the wind to get the main sheet back on the boom and figure out what to do next.

We all took a few deep calming breaths and got ready to sail home--two or three hours to Coyote Point.  We had sailed into the slip before and we have plenty of friends there to help us into the slip.  I knew I needed a beer and I went down below and grabbed a few and passed them out.  I did not realized that there was a discussion still going on about what we should do and I was scolded for busting out the beers.  I felt a little bad but kept drinking it anyway. :)  We discussed all the marinas between where we were (North of the Bay Bridge) and Coyote Point and decided we were best off to sail into our own slip at our own marina which we are very familiar with and comfortable sailing into in the dark with no motor.  We were a little concerned there might not be much wind and it might be a long trip home but actually there was plenty and we had a great sail back.  Faster than we would have done motoring.  Actually faster than we were going for much of the race!  We called the club and got a few people to meet us at the slip.  One of our crew is a diver and he got the line unwrapped yesterday and it seems there was no harm done.  Just another sailing adventure.

I just checked the results and we were second in our division!  Well really we were third but the boat in second was a single race participant so his score doesn't count for the series.  We knew Green Buffalo beat us and that we were ahead of Ay Caliente but we did not know how well we and Ay Caliente were doing.  Our tactics paid off!  We are in a great division and it is an honor to do well against the fantastic sailors we compete with. 

If anyone on Ay Caliente ever reads this--I am VERY sorry about your spinnaker and I have already been well paid back for that fleeting thought that you should've switched to a heavier kite.