2010 Double-Handed Lightship

Yesterday was the 1020 IYC Double-Handed Lightship race, marking the beginning of the annual San Francisco short-handed offshore racing trifecta (it's followed by the BAMA double-handed Farallones and the SSS single-handed Farallones).

The 25 mile race starts off of the Golden Gate Yacht Club, crosses under the Golden Gate Bridge, goes out to the San Francisco Approach Buoy (aka "The Lightship", about 10 miles outside of the Golden Gate Bridge) and back. This year, it took us a little over 6 hours and 15 minutes to finish the race (about 4 hours to get out, and only 2 to get back).

This year, Ryan West joined me for the ride. It was his first big-boat short-handed race, and also the furthest out the Golden Gate bridge that he's ever been. He's racing to Hawaii in the Pacific Cup this summer, so this was a nice little practice run (if only about 1.1% the distance).

Our start was just a little after 9am, which had me worried about a couple of things: 1) would there be enough wind; and b) what to do about the 2.9kt flood tide?

Sail selection was tricky. The wind was kinda light in the bay, but at 8am, the weather buoy said it was already blowing 19kts at the Lightship (plus, the offshore forecast was for 20-25kts). Should we use the Heavy #1 or be conservative and use the #3? Because the wind was light at the start, and the wind direction looked kind reachy, so we decided to go with the bigger headsail, figuring that we could handle the extra sail area on a reach if we had to (this turned out to be a good move). But because it was already blowing hard offshore, we decided to go conservative on the spinnaker and packed the small one in the sock).

The currents turned out to be a non-issue. Hilari refers to the Tide Book as "The Book of Lies", and she's right about that. Even though a 2.9kt max flood was predicted for just before the start, an hour later we were seeing slack water (and maybe even some ebb) under the Golden Gate bridge. Easy sailing right out the headlands, no short-tacking!

As we approached the headlands the wind started to get light and clock behind us. All around us, spinnakers were going up. Unfortunately, our conservative spinnaker selection was the wrong choice for these conditions! It took us a while to repack the sock with the big kite, and we let a lot of boats get away from us. Fortunately, this also meant we ended up on the south side of the channel, where the wind was a little better. Once we got the kite up, we quickly caught up to the boats that passed us.

Somewhere between the headlands and the first set of channel markers, we fell into the trap that I hit every year. Light wind and a swell pushing you back to shore. Just as you start sailing forward, a big swell comes and pushes you backwards, turning the appearant wind around 180°, litterally taking the wind out of our sails. The whole fleet condensed as everyone tried to figure out how to get through the mess. Spinnakers came back down and jibs went up. I dunno how long we were in this trap, but it felt like 2-3 hours. Many (most?) boats got out of it quicker than we did. Some boats gave up and went home (perhaps, like Ryan, their crew had dates that evening). Anyone who stuck it out to the end of the channel markers was rewarded with wind for the rest of the day.

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After rounding Lightship we set the spinnaker and were rewarded with a awesome sail home. Initially, conditions were mild and we were cruising along at 8kts. The wind had a lot of North in it, so we were sailing the hottest angle we could and were just fetching the middle of the Golden Gate bridge.

In my pre-race planning, I didn't check the Tide Book to see what currents would be like on our return. I figured I'd just check the book as we approached the mark. This was stupid lazyness. Especially when sailing short-handed, you never have time for things like checking the Tide Book. So we didn't notice that there was a extreme ebb current of 3.9kts until we were just starting to get in it, and we were positioned in the middle of the channel... the exact wrong place to be when there's a strong adverse current.

At the same time, the swells started getting bigger and wind wind started picking up. We were surfing Twist an having a great time. We were psyched when we broke 11kts of boatspeed. 10 minutes later, 11kts was boring and we welcomed 12.1kts. Eventually, we hit 14.2kts, and rarely dipped below 9kts.

However, all this surfing distracted me from the current problem. I looked to the North and saw some boats going there for relief. I wanted to go there, but the wind angle wouldn't let us. Had I not been having so much surfing, I would have relized that the South shore was where I should go for the best relief, and was also at an angle that was easy for us to get to. That oversight might have cost us fist place.

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The finish was pretty exciting. The St. Francis YC was holding their Spring Dinghy regatta this weekend, and set their course right on the approach to our finish. It was really hard to see the 29ers, 5O5's, Laser's and other small boats behind Twist's spinnaker. We were on starboard, but many of them were leeward (plus, I didn't want to ruin _their_ race). Every so often, I'd drive deep and let the spinnaker collapse so I could see who we had to avoid hitting. After our finish we had nowhere to go but through the start line. A bunch of Finn's were in sequence, but we tried to stay out of everyone's way. Hope we didn't screw up your start, RUS!

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So... lessons learned on the yesterday's IYC Double-Handed lightship race:

  • I still don't know how to drive Twist upwind, against a swell, in light air 
  • When returning to SF and fighting a 3.8kt ebb, go on the south side of the channel and get some current relief 

OK, nothing new here. Fighting the upwind swells has been a longtime problem (fortunately, everyone else was having the same problem; unfortunately, some people got out of it quicker than we did), and I knew about the currents, just didn't apply that knowledge.

In the final results, we finished in 2nd place, 12 minutes behind Recidivist. Given the almost 4kt current over 6-or-so miles, sailing the extra distance for current relief may have made the difference between 1st and 2nd.

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