Duwamish Head Race-South Sound Series #2

Jan 10th was the Duwamish Head Race. This was the South Sound Series Race #2(or should it be #1 since the first race was thrown out?). This race starts in Des Moines(Washington not Iowa) and heads north to around Alki Point into Elliott Bay to Duwamish Head light and then west around Blakely Rocks near Bainbridge Island, returning to Des Moines(Washington not Iowa). The total length is 30.8 miles. I usually deliver the boat to Des Moines on friday for this race. But I had commitments on Friday so I delivered the boat on Thursday. I left at 0700 and the winds were calm, but by the time I got to Blake Island, the winds started picking up and eventually was blowing a steady 30knots from the SW with higher gusts. It was a sloppy wet ride even though I hugged the Vashon Island shore. I was the first boat to Des Moines and was able to tuck way into the harbor(at the bottom of the picture). I rode the bicycle to the Fauntleroy Ferry, PO/Brem ferry and home. It was a nice bicycle ride(about 26miles) along the King County roads that I had never been on before. Lots of hills!
The race started at 1010 for our class. The winds were about 7 knots from the SW at the start and slowly built to around 22knots from the south at Alki point. We were above the recommended range for the light spinaker, but since we were doing 9 knots dead downwind, the apparent wind speed was not too high. We pulled off a good jibe at Alki Point and took the spinaker down not long after the jibe. We never rounded up even though a lot of boats around us did.

We had a wet reach across Puget Sound where we put up the small #3 jib and started the beat back to Des Moines. It wasn't long before the wind lightened up enough to put the Heavy #1 genoa back up. We lost a few places on the beat and ended up 5th out of 11 boats in our class. We finished around 1513. It was a good day for a race and only rained a little bit in the evening. We had a good crew of six people.

I left DeMoines at 1600 and was home by 1900.