[Public-List] Surprise's first race of 2014

[Gordon Laco]

Good morning friends,

After a late start, we finally got SURPRISE in the water last week.
Caroline and I sailed her up the coast and celebrated our wedding
anniversary at anchor in one of our favourite places ­ unseasonably cold
Saturday night, but our woodstove kept us warm.

Last night we raced for the first time.  Clint, Peter, Steve and I clambered
on board (those of you coming to duke it out at the Syronelle will meet us)
and we motored out with the rest of the mob in very light air.   We (well to
be truthful, just I) couldn¹t resist harassing our friends in their
engineless 5.5 Meter class boat as they coaxed her along toward the distant
start.  Throttle wide open, towing as large a wake as we could manage, we
circled them while shouting Œhey John, look! I¹m a motor boat!¹.

There was a delay while the committee struggled to cope with the dramatic
wind shift that occurred just about when the start sequence was due to
begin.  Eventually the flags and horns started ­ the behemoths (and light &
fast boats) of A Fleet started, then we settled into our machinations for B
Fleet¹s start.  

I made a perfect start, only about 45 seconds early.  We were forced to
reach down the line and headed up when the horn came just in time to save us
the ignominy of running past the end of the line.    We crossed right on the
horn, but way down at the unfavoured end with the rest of the heard at the
Œgood¹ end.    We hung on for a bit so as not to make it too obvious that
I¹d made a start other than the one I intended then flipped onto port tack
and crossed the sterns of the rest of the fleet.

A couple of jogs later, we found that when we crossed the fleet we¹d caught
two boats... Hope was arisen and with lighter hearts we set our sights on
the next boat ahead of us ­ the dreaded Aloha 27 MAID MARION, sailed by the
ex-RAF deHaviland Vampire jet fighter pilot now gentle mature gentleman who
is one of our main rivals.

At the first windward mark rounding, we were only one boat length behind
him.  The spinnaker went up faultlessly (oh, I guess I did pack it properly
last year....) we knocked off a perfect gybe, and were neck and neck with
MAID at the leeward mark.  We set ourselves to the long trudge to windward
again... This time we could lay the course to the mark on one tack due to
another big wind shift.  The apparent was up to about 10-12 knots;  SURPRISE
was bounding along at  5.5 knots hard on the wind.  Hard flattening of the
main gave us another tenth of a knot and we began working our way up on
MAID.  We were about 50 meters to windward of her and about a boat length
behind.   Oh the eager anticipation of victory!  Sometimes we gained,
sometimes they held their lead.  I was desperate to stay high enough above
them that we didn¹t get lee-bowed by them... I¹d bear off minutely for
speed, then steal up again to hold my distance.... All the time thinking of
that flush of pleasure I¹d feel when we climbed far enough past that I could
bear away, lock them in our wind shadow and slam the door in their faces!
But I am getting ahead of myself.  Actually we never got there.

At the windward mark we were right beside them.  We could have passed a note
by hand to them but of course both crews were too busy.   We were neck and
neck with our spinnaker pole almost touching their boom end all the way down
and it came to pass that they got us by a second or two.

However, there was no depression.  We¹d had a terrific battle, and who
knows, maybe we¹ll get them next week.  How did we do in the fleet?  I have
no idea yet;  such is PHRF.

What a terrific night, we motored back to the club all grins.

Gord #426 Surprise