Chalk Talk – June 18, 2019

[MattAdministrator]

Wind: 3-5 kts from 155°M; dropping to 2-3 by the finish
Course: W2
15 boats at start
Fog by finish
Before the start, John, our tactician, called for sailing up the middle-right of the course, so we tried to start at the boat end of the line. We got a 2nd row start there, but behind and to leeward of Wiki-Wiki. Gun Smoke (1103), was to windward of us right at the signal boat, but they tacked over to port and thus opened up room for us to tack over to port and head the direction John had previously selected. We focused on getting the boat going in the light wind. It was shifty, but the breeze seemed to hold up for us going right. Most of the fleet stayed to the left; there were only 3 or 4 boats heading toward the right side.

At some point, the other boats with us on the right tacked over to starboard. We continued until we were the right-most boat and tacked over to starboard as well. Port tack boats 1174 and 1103 both crossed us (they each had a better start than we did), but we seemed to have moved ahead of the rest of the fleet by the point we were midway up the beat. At the weather rounding, we remained in the same order, with 706 close behind us, and we concluded the right side had been slightly favored on the beat. On the run, we wanted to head down the same favored side of the course, so we were the first to jibe over to port. 1174 and 1103 followed suit and jibed over onto our heading. 706, also jibed onto port and closed on us with better speed downwind. We continued to sail with 706 down the run and the two of us sailed a little faster than 1174 and 1103 to catch up to them as we approached the leeward mark.

We had an interesting situation with 706 as we both approached the mark on starboard with 706 right on our transom. We wanted to get to leeward of their track so we could jibe for the mark, get buoy room, and stay ahead. 706 was in a good position to stay heading to leeward of our track and prevent that from happening, but they let us sneak across their bow and then jibe, which gave us a clear shot to the leeward mark. If 706 had made a more aggressive move there to prevent us from getting across their bow, they could have controlled the jibe point and had buoy room to round first.

We went right again up the second beat, and even a little farther towards the right corner than on the first beat, and focused mostly eking out more boat speed in the light air.

We rounded the weather mark with 3 or 4 boat lengths back. We wanted to jibe over, but no one behind jibed, so we instead keep on starboard for quite a while. Then 706 jibed, and we followed suite to cover. We realized immediately that we held on too long, as 706 was on our wind. After several minutes 706 pulled even them passed us. We still liked the west side of the course so stuck with it.
The wind was dropping and becoming more patchy, and we picked a spot that looked good to jibe back to starboard. We ended up separating from 706 some distance and we just kept trying to maintain speed and tack the boat down the course. At the finish, we probably had a little better wind than 706 and crossed a boat length ahead of them to take the gun.

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