Race Summary
It was a beautiful day for sailing. The sun was out, and the wind was 12-15 knots all day. I had a full crew of five with me. But as near as it was to a perfect day, it wasn’t a day for winning. We had 15 boats broken into two groups. Group “A” was C 320’s and larger. Group “B” was C310’s and smaller. Besides us, there were 3 C30’s two C22’s and one C25. We were rated 205, the C30’s were 216 to 222. I’m not sure about the C25, but one of the C22’s was rated at 309. The name of the boat was Slow Flight and I was assured by some other racers that it wasn’t slow. Two of the C30’s race regularly and do quite well. The have “racing” sails. The bad news was that of the three races, I wasn’t able to beat either one of them. Not only did I get beat on handicap, I got beat boat for boat also. I have to admit my starts weren’t good at all. I was trying to approach the line close hauled from a ways back, but with a one knot current running against us, I ended up late to the line in the first two races. So I ended up following the C30’s around the course. In the last race, one of my crew talked me into taking a barging position for the last race. We hung around just outside the committee boat and when the horn sounded, we just dipped under the committee boat and hardened up. All the other boats were well down the line so we ended up well to windward of them. We led all the boats for two thirds of the race. The two C30’s were hot on our tail, two or three boat lengths back, and our adrenalin was pumping pretty hard. We even managed to pull away from them a liitle bit on the upwind. But rounding the mark for the second to last (upwind) leg, my wife, with carpel tunnel syndrome, and my sister, who has zero experience, got an override on the jib sheet winch and couldn’t recover for what seemed like forever. The two C30’s passed us, and that’s the way we finished. But the worst news, back at the clubhouse, was that the C22 got third place in our class! With an average race distance of something over three miles, all he had to do was finish within about 5 minutes of us. It’s pretty tough getting beat by a boat I barely ever saw on the course! My opinion of our rating is that it’s very difficult to live up to. I think it’s possible to beat the C30’s particularly if I replaced our original Catalina sails. The C30 with the 216 rating for sure. But the other one, at 222, could be a little tougher. The owner of a C320 ( who took second in class A) that was sailing next to us at one point commented later that we seemed to be keeping up with him pretty well. I recorded a top speed of 7.1 knots on the knotmeter, and we were doing 6 to 6.4 knots upwind for fairly long stretches. It was a good day and I thought we sailed well, and I know everyone had a good time. That’s what really counts.
