Beer Can #16 - July 23

Once again, I was crewing on Smokin' J for the beer can race this week, but I had a bird's eye view of the start of the Merit race from about 100 yards up the channel. What a pretty start! Seven boats all in a row, all starting at roughly the same time. Very quickly, M7 and M1 forged ahead. Half a minute later, M1 screamed past us, and it looked like my good buddies, Skipper Norbert and Dave G were going to prevail. They were neck and neck with Skipper Nico on M7!

The Merits sailed up the channel, and we continued to tack and gybe, preparing for our start. It was a beautiful warm, sunny day with strong winds in the basin (about 18 kts) and most of the channel and lighter winds out on the bay (about 15 kts). As unusual as that is, it's been happening quite a bit this year. The ebb was just starting, so the currents were with us on the way out. The race was to day marker 12 and back.

We got a good start with Kerry at the helm and Skipper Stan doing timing and tactics. Steve was on the main, Jerry and I were on the jib, and Chris and Sean were rail meat on the upwind leg and were assigned foredeck and mast, respectively, for the downwind. We played cat and mouse with Iowa on the way up the channel and almost caught them a few times. Kerry navigated us brilliantly through some pretty big waves between the end of the channel and the mark and made a very good rounding. By the time we reached the mark, we had passed 3 or 4 boats and were doing great.

The downwind sail was less perfect. Chris wasn't ready to raise the spinnaker when we rounded the mark, and then when he did raise it, it was twisted. When he got the twist out, he realized that one of the sheets was rigged wrong. Ugh... We doused. Sean went below and got the chute ready to raise through the forward hatch. Meanwhile, Chris rerigged the sheets and halyard. They started to raise it again, but the rigging was wrong again. We doused again. This time, I was on deck, ready to release the boom vang if we started to broach, so I ended up playing turtle and holding the spinnaker by the mast while Sean rerigged the sheets.

We were back in the channel by this time and Stan was at the helm. We'd been passed by several boats while we headed down to try to fly the kite, and now the wind was too far forward to fly it. Stan said to wait until we reached the power towers, and the wind would shift to more of a beam reach. When we got there, we raised the chute, and it flew. But we were so close to the end of the race that Stan said not to bother lowering the jib. So we sailed along with both the spinnaker and the jib raised.

After all was said and done, we came in about in the middle of the pack... not bad for such a messed up spinnaker run!

The Merit race was pretty close and a fun race for those I talked to out on the deck of SYC after the race. Here are the results:

Place	Boat	Skipper
1	M7	Nico
2	M1	Norbert
3	M5	Peter
4	M2	Mike
5	M3	Hans

I hope to see you all out there next week! Please check my Picasa web album for pictures of the Santana (Skipper Kimi) and Cal (Skipper Cliff).