Three Bridge Fiasco—2016
Boat: Uhoo! Ultimate 20
Sailing Notes: Mike Josselyn/Greg Pfeiffer
Weather for the Day: Partly Cloudy; Temperatures in the 50’s
Predicted Wind: Sail Flow predicted light winds at the start from the NWN at 2-4 knots. Light to no wind at noon to twelve; and then wind shifting to the west to 20 knots in the afternoon.
Predicted currents: Ebb current of 0.5 to 1 knot at start; but stronger at Yerba Buena Island. Ebb current at Red Rock strongest at 1300, then shifting to flood current. Strong flood current at 1600; especially along City Front.
Race can be divided into four phases:
START: Our original intention was to go to Red Rock right away and go around YBI and then complete at Blackhaller; and finish under spinnaker. This was because wind was predicted to be lite at the Start and it might be hard to fight the ebb going out the Gate once we went around Blackhaller and started back; and we wanted to get to the Red Rock before the wind died.
At the start, the westerly started to fill in early and it turned out that starting on the east side of the line was the best move. We started right at 9:43:20 AM and headed to Blackhaller with the ebb. We won this segment of the race rounding Blackhaller to port to maintain our rights around the crowded mark.
RED ROCK: I kept looking ahead into Raccoon Straits and recalled a bad experience in the PCCs where a few boats ventured there and lost out due to no wind on an ebb tide whereas going on the south side of Angel Island paid off. The majority of the fleet was headed to Raccoon and I kept thinking they would die there so we stayed south of Angel Island. We flew the spinnaker for awhile and then the wind was WNW at 5-6 knots and we ended up sailing as high as possible with the spinnaker up. The wind filled in for the fleet; so our flier was clearly a mistake. So, we tried to make up for it; rather than sailing over to Southamption to avoid the ebb, we stayed along the east
side of Angel Island and short tacked up the shoreline to stay out of the current and stay within pressure that was quickly dying in Southampton. The fleet was well out of Raccoon Straits, so our fate was sealed. After leaving Angel Island, we sailed directly to Red Rock, in the ebb current with dying wind. We saw Salsa round (they sailed directly to Red Rock from the start) and raise their spinnaker; we were still 45 minutes from rounding. The wind died as predicted and we had to slowly work our way up to Red Rock; but as the ebb current also died, we made progress towards the end and then raised the spinnaker at Red Rock around 1230.
YERBA BUENA ISLAND: We left Red Rock with Spinnaker up; but sailing high so not very efficient. The wind died and we drifted again; in slack current. We made slow progress; but then noticed that the westerly was finally building in to the west of the main channel. We tried to stay outside the main convoy of boats to the east of us and that paid off as we got the early wind…not as early as some other boats that just took off! We then took down the spinnaker and sailed the whole way in slack tide on a reach at 7-8 knots. Winds were now building to 10-12 knots. Easy sail and we either kept pace with bigger boats or left others behind.
FINISH: Wind was now westerly at 10-12 knots and the flood was on. We passed the wind shadow at YBI and then headed west until we could pass under the Bay Bridge. Very squirrely wind patterns and we tacked to go under the bridge east of the concrete support. Those that went in further suffered from lack of wind and strong currents; but we had a rough time with the boat heading up constantly in the shifting winds caused by the bridge and the shoreline buildings. Adjusted the jib cars back and then tightened the main sheet and vang. This stabilized the boat and we slowly worked our way up the City front; short tacking to stay out of the flood current. Very slow run and we finished at 4:04 PM; with boats still left behind us.
Overall we clearly did well in the first part of the race; made a bad error in judgement by staying south of Angel; which we slowly made up getting up to Red Rock when the rest of the fleet was stalled. We kept our place with the back of the fleet we caught at Red Rock on the reach to YBI; but were not able to make any further progress on the fleet to the Finish.
Of the 30 boats entered in the Sportboat division, we finished 18th and 186th out of 339 boats that raced that day. The overall winner of the Race was a Wabbit!
