This stop of the CA Dreamin' Series was hosted by St. Francis Yacht Club on March 3-4, 2012 and sailed in J/22 sailboats. Eight skippers were invited to the event, including:
My team consisted of Alex Jacobs and Patrick Morrisey, two very good sailors with whom I have sailed in previous match race events. Alex was in charge of jib and spinnaker trim and Patrick worked the bow.
Our trip started on Friday afternoon as we flew from San Diego to San Francisco. A quick stop at the rental car counter and we were on our way into the city. Housing for competitors was not provided by the Organizing Authority for this event. Due to the high cost of hotels in San Francisco, I had arranged a deal with Nicole Breault and Bruce Stone, two of the competitors for the CA Dreamin' Series. I had provided accommodations for Nicole's and Bruce's crews for the San Diego stop of the CA Dreamin' Series and, in return, they arranged accommodations for me and my crew in San Francisco. Thus, our lodging for this weekend was generously provided by Russ Silvestri, who opened up the guest quarters of his home to myself and crew. Located just a block away from St. Francis Yacht Club, our accommodations were ideal for a weekend of sailing.
The format for the event was a double round robin, with the top (4) teams moving on to one-on-one knockout stages. The sailing venue was on San Francisco Bay, just beyond the entrance to the small anchorage/harbor at StFYC. Most sailors are familiar with the windy conditions for which San Francisco is well known. It turns out that during the winter months, however, the normally strong sea breezes can give way to much lighter wind conditions. As luck would have it, our weekend for the CA Dreamin' Series at San Francisco was centered on one of those light wind periods.
The other facet of sailing on San Francisco bay, to which every sailor is quickly introduced, is extremely strong tidal currents in the bay. The tidal currents are actually quite complicated as the water flows around obstacles and geographic features producing rapid currents in some areas and significant eddy currents in other areas. For most of our matches, the tide was ebbing with max ebb flow of 3.8 knots (at Golden Gate Bridge) at 12:15 PM on Saturday and 4.2 knots at 1:00 PM on Sunday. The combination of light winds and strong tidal currents made for very challenging conditions all weekend long.
Our matches were close on Saturday, but we had the misfortune of losing more than we won. Our record at the end of Saturday was 3 wins and 4 losses, with wins over Tyler Sinks, Bill Durant and Bruce Stone. We were determined to do better on Sunday. Unfortunately, the light winds experienced on Saturday became even lighter on Sunday. It was clear that we were not going to get in the entire format of two round robins followed by the knockout
rounds. The organizing authority decided to continue with the planned format and see how far we could get. The extremely light winds, however, almost kept us from completing any flights at all on Sunday. We drifted in 0 to 3 knots of wind for hours waiting for the breeze to fill in.
Finally we got some wind in the 4-5 knot range and the foxtrot flag was raised. This brought us to the most memorable match for the entire weekend. We were up against Steve Lowery, the eventual winner of this weekend's event. Steve came out from Chicago, where he happens to own a J/22 sailboat. Steve and his crew have sailed his personal J/22 together as a team for the past 15 years! Needless to say, their whole team was well versed in J/22 boat handling and Steve had lots of experience match racing from time spent at the Chicago Match Race Center.
Our match started out with us getting a little better start than Steve and we were first around the windward mark. Soon after rounding, we gybed and mistakenly sailed into an area of lighter wind. Steve, on the other hand, stayed on port gybe after rounding and made up most of the distance that he was behind. One third of the way down the leeward leg, we gybed onto port and Steve gybed onto starboard. As we came together, it was clear that we could not safely cross in front of Steve, who had right of way. So just before coming together, we gybed onto starboard tack and continued down the leeward leg, just in front of Steve.
As we got close to the port tack layline to the leeward mark, Steve had a Rule 17 overlap which prevented him from taking us beyond the layline. As soon as Steve gybed to port, we followed suite and quickly established an overlap to leeward of him. This gave us "mark room" at the leeward mark. Steve, however, thought that he had broken the overlap before the zone and he proceeded to head straight for the leeward mark. This is where it got exciting, as Steve was not giving me room to pass the leeward mark on the proper side. I knew that I would be exonerated for hitting the mark, since Steve was breaking a rule by not giving me mark room to which I was entitled, so I made sure to not hit Steve's boat but still make it up and around the leeward mark. This meant that the leeward mark was plastered against my starboard rail as we rounded the mark. I immediately raised the Y-flag in protest and the umpires decided in our favor. In fact, they felt that the infraction was so egregious that they awarded Steve a double penalty, which meant that he needed to make one turn immediately.
Steve was able to do his turn quickly and he headed upwind on port tack. That turned out to be fortunate for Steve, as he made out on the right side. Steve rounded the final windward mark just ahead of us, but he still had an outstanding penalty that he would have to scrub before the finish in order to win.
I learned that Steve is well versed in the tricks of match racing by what he did next. Two thirds of the way down the leeward leg, Steve started to slow down on purpose. He was fish tailing his rudder back and forth to kill speed. His goal was to get us in an overlapped position to windward of him. With full luffing rights, Steve would be able to luff us sharply to where he could either get a Rule 11 windward/leeward penalty against us, which would offset his outstanding penalty, or he could tack and fall off to a downwind course and thereby burn off his penalty.
Recognizing what he was trying to do, we tried to slow down as well. We too were centerlining the main sail and fish tailing the rudder. The advantage that Steve had was that he was directly in our wind shadow, which provided additional help at going slow. Soon our bow was within feet of Steve's stern, and still we gybed back and forth and tried to prevent an overlap. Finally, our bow was within inches of hitting Steve's transomhung rudder, and I felt that we couldn't safely gybe back to the other side.
So now Steve had his overlap and he proceeded to luff us up. Being the windward boat, however, we were able to build speed more quickly and we shot out in front, essentially rolling over the top of Steve's boat. I yelled back that the overlap was broken. This meant that for any future overlap, Steve would be limited to a proper course and could not luff us up. So I began to turn down and Steve quickly got a new overlap. I flew the Yflag in protest just as our spinnaker touched his rig. This time the umpires ruled against me and said that I never broke the overlap, giving Steve full luffing rights. The penalty against me offset the outstanding penalty that Steve had been carrying. We were all even, except that Steve was the leeward boat and closer to the finish line that was quickly approaching. Steve gybed away onto port and he was able to cross the line before us and win the race.
There are always lessons to be learned every time we go out on the water, but I kind of relish the lesson that I learned while racing Steve. Upon reflection, we could have (and should have) done more to go slow and not establish an overlap. We could have opted for the extreme measure of dropping the spinnaker to the deck in an effort to kill speed. The wind was light, making this option even more doable. Then, if needed, we could rehoist the spinnaker right off the deck if we had to build speed again. This has given me a good drill to practice the next time we are out on the water for a practice day. Until then, I just have to keep reliving this race in my head.
All in all, we finished the CA Dreamin' San Francisco stop in 6th place. It's not perfect, but we had a great time and learned some valuable lessons sailing on San Francisco Bay.
Here are the final results:
Thanks again for the support from San Diego Yacht Club!
Best regards,
Dan Aeling