Dan's Blog: Toliva Shoal Race 2013

It is February and once again the crazy sailors are released from the asylums and they make there way south to Olympia for the Toliva Shoal Race. This is the third race in the four race South Sound Series. It is a 37.4 NM distance race from Olympia to the Toliva Shoal buoy and return through Balch Pass and other narrow passages. Even though it is still winter, this race has a reputation for light winds and shortened courses. I enjoy this race even with sometimes cold, wet, windless conditions. I must be one of the crazy sailors!

My race started on Friday morning when I got underway for Olympia. It was cold before the sun rose and the decks were slick with frost. The currents through the Narrows were going to become favorable around 0930 and remain favorable the rest of the way to Olympia. I got underway at 0500 from Brownsville. I had a good, favorable ebb current through Rich Passage. As always happens, the north flowing current in Colvos Pass slowed my progress to the Narrows. After the Narrows, the current changed and helped boost my speed through Balch Pass and past Johnson Point at the entrance to Dana Pass. I arrived at Percival Landing in downtown Olympia at 1250. I was not the first boat in on Friday. Some boats had arrived earlier and boats arrived throughout the day until the harbor was packed. The day was sunny, so I found some WIFI, walked around the downtown and kibitzed with other sailors. In the evening, Olympia Yacht Club sponsored their usual great dinner and raffle.

Saturday morning was clear and still. After a early morning breakfast at Olympia Yacht Club, we rigged the boat and got underway for the start at Olympia Shoal. We could see some fog at the north end of Budd Inlet, but the winds were too calm to blow it away. The forecast was for winds less then five knots and it looked like the forecast could be accurate. On the positive side, it was sunny and warm the entire day after the fog burned off.

After a half hour postponement, we started and headed north in Budd Inlet beating into very light winds. I got a terrible start and we found ourselves near the back of our class. As we chased he leading boats, we would get closer to them only to stall and then they would leave us behind.

As we approached Dofflemeyer Point, the wind did fill in to a barely sail filling 3-5 knots. At this point, the current was flooding against us. We tacked close in toward the shore and through the anchored boats in Boston Harbor. After Boston Harbor, we continued to tack close to shore often tacking in as little as 10 feet of water. We gained on boats in our class that were ahead only to hit the "wall" that slowed them and have them sail away from us again. We did sail through many boats that started ahead of us and some that had started behind us and passed us early in the race. In fact nobody passed us during the beat up Dana Pass. The short tacking took it's toll on some boats that would tire of tacking so many times. They would take a longer tack farther out into Dana Pass and find themselves swept away with the current.

As we entered Henderson Inlet, we found some good puffs of wind and really gained on a pack of boats that included most of the boats in our class. But is was too little, too late as the Race Committee made the wise decision to shorten the course at Johnson Point after only 7.5 miles. We finished at 1518 very close to some of the leading boats and placed 7th out of 9 boats. If we use this race as our series throughout, we should still be tied for first with "Melange"(J35) after their 3rd place finish. Early series favorites "Absolutly"(G&S 39) and "Tantivy"(J109) placed 6th and 5th respectively and are a few points behind us. Results can be found here: Toliva Shoal Race Results There is still the last race of the series at Gig Harbor in March.

After finishing, we motored through the Narrows to Gig Harbor where the crew rode the staged vehicle back to Olympia for their vehicles. I motored the rest of the way back to Brownsville arriving at the marina at 2112.

It was actually a fun race even with the light winds. I enjoy the challenge of trying to solve the mysteries of the race course. So, that is why I like this comment from a great (and somewhat notorious) sailor:

"My goal in sailing isn't to be brilliant or flashy in individual races, just to be consistent over the long run."
Dennis Conner

Thanks to the crew of Jim, Tom, Kathleen and Ranier for keeping focus and helping make this race a success. Perseverance always wins!

Here is our track for the day. Looks strange with all the changes in direction. I did not count how many tacks we made up Dana Pass, but there were a lot of tacks as we tried to stay close to shore and out of the adverse current.

Here is an enlarged track of our short tacking up Dana Passage. Not all of the points on the track are actually tacks, but you can get the idea about how close to the shore we stayed and how many tacks we made. I count about 35 tacks. This is where we saw some boats that seemed to grow tired of tacking, head out into Dana Pass and get swept behind.