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To due an unpromising forecast of continuing light & flukey winds, our first race in our new-to-us 1981 Santana 23 was abandoned by the Race Committee. However, the racing fleet of nine boats (a PHRF mix from 22-footers up to 38 footers) asked the Race Committee to give us an informal course & start sequence so we could we could have an informal (ie unscored) race. They agreed, and so we set off on about a 4 mile excursion.
I goofed up at the start and nearly went on the wrong side of the committee boat, we were on port and I thought crossing the line cleanly but it turned out the starting line was on the other side of the Race Committee boat and I had to duck a starboard tacker and snap-tack to miss the RC boat. We ended up a few seconds late but got going well, rolled over a 28-footer on our lee boaw (he was pinching trying to shut us out) and set off at a good pace... about 3.1 knots close hauled in 3.5 knots of wind! I was impressed with the boat's speed.
That was the most exciting part of the race. We built up about a 1/2 mile lead and as we approached the windward mark, the wind got very patchy & light. We tried to time our tacks so as to go thru the patches of wind rather than the glassy spots. We stayed in the lead but as we headed downwind to the finish line, the two smaller boats (Ensigns) to whom we owed MUCHO time were clearly gaining on us. Our boat was actually going slower on a broad reach in 2.5 to 3.5 knots of wind, although we hauled the board & rudder most of the way up and we hand-trimmed the genoa.
The crew was 3 good friends and long experienced sailors, all of whom I had sailed with before. We had in mind that we'd be racing in a spinnaker class with some other pretty fast boats but since less than half the fleet had spinnakers, the Race Committee decided beforehand to make it a non-spinnaker race. Even so, the tacks were a challenge, the boat looked like a spaghetti factory, and my hand-picked hot-shots did a great job.
At the final mark, we beat the first of the two Ensigns by about 7 minutes which was probably not enough to correct over them; there were three bigger boats who owed us time that were even further back. So we couldn't have done worse than 3rd, and it could have been a 1st!
That's the beauty of informal races, everybody can tell themselves they really won.
Fresh Breezes- Doug King
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