SBYRA South Bay Championship Race

Yesterday was the first of the 2-day SBYRA South Bay Championship race hosted by Sequoia Yacht Club. I was honored to be asked by Skipper Stan to crew for him on the Smokin J. The crew members were Alex H (tactician), Jerry (main), Alex E (jib), Monica (foredeck/spinnaker), and me (jib/mid-deck/spinnaker).

We arrived at the docks at 9am, and Stan started going over the rigging. When Stan went off to the captains' meeting at 10am, Alex H took over and talked about raising and dousing the spinnaker. He assigned jobs for before, during, and after and went over general information about how he would be directing us and what he expected of us during the race.

By 10:30am, we were underway, motoring out to the S marker, where the committee boat was waiting to mark the start of the race. We still didn't know the race course or start time. The flag flying on the committee boat indicated that we needed to get within earshot. Just before noon, we were told we'd be running course C (X -> 12 -> Y -> S) but there would be a 15-minute delay (hoping more wind would come up).

About 20-25 boats were out there, all staying close to the committee boat to get instructions, and all doing time trials in preparation for the start. It was a little frantic to say the least. After 15 minutes, the committee boat announced another 15-minute delay, so we kept practicing tacking and timed starts. Finally, we got the end-of-delay horn, then the 4-minute warning, the 2-minute warning, the 1-minute warning, and started the race around 12:30pm.

The wind was NW at about 3-5 knots, which meant that the race was all about strategy and sail trim. Good thing we had our master tactician on board! Alex H was great about monitoring everything that was going on in the boat and giving us all instructions as we needed them. Stan was a master helmsman and kept us on course, much of the time sailing to the jib within the prescribed course.

The best part for me was that I got to participate in raising and dousing the spinnaker, which I'd never really done before.

We were using a symmetrical spinnaker with a spinnaker pole and needed to gybe the spinnaker as we tacked. (I'd raised the asymmetrical spinnaker on Fran's boat last week, but that was a piece of cake compared to this. It doesn't require a spinnaker pole, and we didn't gybe.)

My first job was to guide the chute out of the bag when we raised it. That went pretty well, except that someone had "banded it", and we had some trouble breaking those bands and getting it to fill at first. The purpose of banding the spinnaker is to keep the sail from filling before is is fully raised. If it fills in a 12-knot breeze before it's fully raised, it will become difficult to complete the hoist. The bands are supposed to break without delay when the sail fills in heavier air. Since the wind was so light that day, though, the bands didn't break easily, even when it was fully hoisted.

My next job was to grab the active sheet and help Monica get it into the end of the pole while we were gybing. That went pretty well. Last, I needed to pull in the chute when we doused without letting it touch the water, get caught in anything, or tear. That was a little tricky, because I gathered it into my lap instead of shoving it right down the hatch. I hadn't realized how big it was, so that didn't go as quickly as planned. Also, the spinnaker got caught in one of the fairleads, so Alex E couldn't trim the jib, as he was supposed to, and I couldn't get the spinnaker down below. I was able to release it pretty quickly, though, with no damage to anything, and we were able to get back on track.

As we rounded X, the first marker, we eased into second place behind Bad PuddyCat and were neck-and-neck with Black Sheep, and we pretty much stayed that way throughout the race. Captain Ron on Black Sheep got ahead of us at a couple of points in the race, but we ended up going low on the last leg and beating them by under a minute. As it turned out, Wired crossed the finish line four minutes after we did but came out ahead of us on corrected time. So we took third place in the race.

The ride home was very relaxed in stark contrast to how intense the race was. We were all eating and drinking (water!) on the way back, and Stan decided to see if he could raise the spinnaker by himself. Of course, Jerry and Alex E jumped up to help him, and Monica sat back and revelled in the knowledge that it was taking three men to do the job she usually does by herself. She was very pleased.

Back at the docks, we hung out on the J for a while, drinking chardonney, eating Halloween candy, and debriefing the race. All in all, I think we did a damn good job. Coming in second behind Bad PuddyCat, which is a big, fast boat that's had the same crew racing together all summer, is nothing to sneeze at. For my first real race, this was a great experience.