Dan's Blog: Brownsville Race-It's Lonely At The Front

Saturday was the last race of the seven race West Sound Sailing Association(WSSA) series. This race was at Brownsville and listed as the "Brownsville Race", no invitational or benefit or any other catchy phrase. This race starts at Brownsville, goes to a temporary mark at University Point, north to Mark "6 at Pt Bolin and then return to Brownsville. At Brownsville, the fleet is to continue for a second lap to University Pt, Battle Pt and again to Brownsville where lap three begins. Lap three is the same as lap one. This course provides many ways to shorten the course in time for the post race party.

The forecast was for winds from the south to 10 knots in the morning nd dropping to 2-6 from the SW in the afternoon. Rain was also predicted. At least that was how I read it.

At the start, we had gusts to 12 knots. We got a good start on the boat(breakwater) end on time in clear air. "Karma" (Dash 34) started closer to the pin end and was ahead but to leeward of us. On the first leg, we slowly worked upwind of "Karma" and started overtaking them. At the first tack, we were ahead of them. It was one port tack that took us to the mark where we rounded, set the spinnaker and headed toward the Bainbridge Island shore.

We worked north along the shore in favorable current and rounded Battle Pt with the two bird boats, "Falcon"(Cal 9.2) and "Swan"(Thunderbird) just ahead of us. We soon passed them and continued on along the Bainbridge Island shore between Battle Pt and Arrow Pt. The current in Agate Pass was flooding and after some previous night studying of the current charts, I decided to stay toward the right side of the pass. This move seemed to pay off and after the final jibe, we easily made the mark against the current. Some boats behind jibed earlier than us and struggled to make the mark. "Dulcinea" (J105) rounded behind us. They went farther upstream than we did and came into the mark on a much hotter angle.

Now came the first substantial beat. The wind was fairly steady at about six knots. I looked forward to the beat. This is where we have to make time on the slower rating boats. We are one of the faster rating boats and we need to stay way ahead to save our time. This is when it gets lonely at the front. There are no boats to watch for trends and we have to make all our decisions by ourselves. Sometimes I think it was more fun when I sailed slower boats because there was usually boats ahead to indicate what was going on ahead.

We had one long beat nearly to Brownsville, when right on que, we got a large header coming out of Burke Bay. We sailed into the header, tacked and easily cleared the line. Boats behind us that tacked early did not benefit from the header. We were nearly six minutes ahead of "Dulcinea".

We continued on towards University PT. But, the boats behind were getting stronger puffs and were lifted on the now SW wind. They started closing on us. The wind was flukey near the mark and we had to take a couple of extra tacks. We still rounded first, but a larger faster boat had closed up to us as did "Dulcinea". We set the spinnaker and looked for the fast lane. This time the wind appeared light toward the right, so we jibed toward the left. We sailed away from the larger boat and jibed back to stay between "Dulcinea" and the Battle Pt mark. The wind filled behined and brought "Dulcinea" closer. We rounded the mark ahead of them and started the beat to Brownsville. We gained some on "Dulcinea" and when we crossed the finish line, the RC finished the race. We were only about 1.75 minutes ahead of "Dulcinea', not enough to correct on them.

We ended up second in class and second overall with "Dulcinea" first in class and overall. When the series scores were added up, we were tied with "Dulcinea" for the WSSA series, both of us with 13 points. In the tiebreaking process, we were the overall series winner. This is the seventh time I have won this series since it started in 1978. I have raced every series and learned from many of the sailors who I have raced against. Many of them no longer race. Hopefully, some newer sailors like one of the "Young Guns" will step up and win this series in the near future.

For this race, thanks to my crew of Walter, Kathleen, Dave and Tim for working hard and staying focused. Also thanks to other crew of Jim, Tom and Michael who raced on other races in the series.

Results for this race can be found here: Brownsville Race Results And overall WSSA series results can be found here: WSSA Overall Series Results

Post race party and burger fry at the Brownsville Marina picnic area.

The "Young Guns" discussing the events of the day.

This is the West Sound Sailing Association "Sailor Of The Year" trophy. My name is on here(or will be on here after engraving) seven times since 1978.