Thanks for adding my video to the home page! For anyone interested, here is some more background on the race.
2020 SSS Half Moon Bay Race - 9/26/20
This years race was rescheduled from a few weeks back due to the crazy smoke in the bay area. The forecast was looking like winds building to the 20s with some left over large swells from the blow the day before.
The day started out with a beautiful morning off the Golden Gate YC with enough of about an 8-10 knot breeze to get across the line with my 10:10 start and ride the ebb out. I could have used the extra speed from my biggest jib but didn’t want to have to switch it out once in the ocean. I thought maybe I started in the wrong class as I was the only one over at my class signal, but there were only 9 boats that started out of the 27 signed up. Most likely due to the big wind and seas forecast and it was the same roster that was originally signed up for the race. I stayed in the center of the Golden Gate entrance to take advantage of the ebb as the winds really lightened up and I was only doing about 2.5knots. Daniel on his Nauticat 44 and I traded the lead as we were slow motion dueling, floating along in the light wind and ebb. We were so close we had a nice conversation. I saw all the racier boats had tacked over and were working their way along Baker Beach to Mile Rock. Around noon or so the breeze started to fill in and we started to move.
I could see all the other boats close in shore and decided to head more off shore and keep with the breeze. Tortuga and I were blasting along about 7.5/8knots for about an hour and I tucked in the first reef. As the wind started to lighten up a bit I could see the offshore choice was the best. We were doing about 5 knots or so at that point. I traded places with Galaxsea again and then shook out the reef. The seas started getting bigger and more erratic the closer we got the Pillar Point Harbor and we were down 4.5/5knots as we started running more downwind. I was still about 3 miles off shore. The J30 Geodesic had tacked back out and passed me about 4 miles out. I could see Galaxsea had made a few miles on me and didn’t see any other boats. At that time I wasn’t sure where the rest of the fleet was. About a mile from the finish I did see a spinnaker off my starboard quarter a few miles back. As we approached the finish the breeze was kicking into high gear and in the mid 20s. I knew it was going to be a good time getting all the sails down in the big wind and seas. The entrance to PPH isn’t great for a sailboat. It’s directly into the wind and the swell is beam on after coming to the last buoy to make the turn into the entrance.
I finished at 1606 which made it almost exactly 6 hours. Not too bad considering the first few hours we were ghosting along!
Once I did the crazy drill of getting the sails down it was really rippin’ windy. I got into the harbor and attempted to pick up a mooring and then Dave from HMBYC hailed me on VHF to see if I wanted to raft/tie up on their floating dock. It was only Geodesic tied up at that point and I came it to check it out but it was so windy I didn’t want to do a crash landing. After a few more mooring ball attempts in the strong gusty winds, I decided to just anchor. After all of that, I was too tired to pump up the dinghy to head to HMBYC and it was still gusting pretty good, so just decided to call it a night. Had a quick and uneventful motor back to P39 from HMB on Sun AM and later in the day heard that Tortuga came in second overall and second in her class!
Well if that wasn’t exciting enough, the next day the Nauticat 44 realized they had reported their time incorrectly and it turns out Tortuga corrected out to first in class AND first overall by 1 min and 28 seconds!
What’s that story about the Tortoise and the Hare?....
https://youtu.be/u6byyOw7gt4
Cheers,
Randy
W32 Tortuga
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