South Sound Series Race #4- Islands Race

This weekend concluded the South Sound Series Races with the completion of the Islands Race. This race starts outside the entrance of Gig Harbor, runs north through Colvos Passage to a buoy set north of Blake Island and returns to Gig Harbor. The race is 29.5 nautical miles long, but can be shortened if necessary.

I started my delivery from Brownsville to Gig Harbor on friday morning. I was underway by 0815. It was cold and rainy with winds from the south at about 15 knots. Since it was a delivery, I hunkered behind the dodger and motored, arriving at the Jerisich Park public dock at 1205. "Dulcinea", who is also from my marina was the only boat there, but the owner had already left for home. I went up town to the used book store and found three old books. One was by a local author from the 30's. It was not the book I was looking for, but it looks interesting anyway.

Towards afternoon, the wind and rain picked up and blew more from the west. The wind built until it was reported that Gig Harbor had a maximum gust of 46 MPH(not knots). Boats were still coming in and it was fun trying to get them moored. After that squall moved through, the skies cleared and it got cold. Got a great dinner to go from the local Mexican Restaurant and settled in for the night. It was 28 degrees F when I got up Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was cold and foggy. The crew showed up, we got the boat rigged and were underway by 0915 with a 1010 start. The fog burned off and the sun came out and the coats came off. The winds were pretty non existent and the race committee delayed the start for about 90 minutes.

We started under spinaker with light winds from the SE. The current always flows north in Colvos Pass, so along with trying to go fast, we also looked for "rivers" of current to help us along. "Declaration of Independence" (DOI) and us jumped out to an early lead. We crossed paths with DOI for a while until they got ahead. Staying in the middle of the pass, we seemed to hold our own and many of our competition who went toward shore were left behind. About 3/4's of the way up Colvos, the wind died and acted like it was going to reverse direction to the north. The boats ahead from other classes stopped and we caught up to them. Boats behind caught up to us. We worked to the east side of the pass with some of the boats in our class. DOI and "Grace E"(another J35) went to the west shore. The wind finally filled in from the east and we had a nice spinaker reach toward Blake Island. Two boats in our class, "Intuition"(C&C37XL) and "Zorra" (C&C115) got ahead of us and when the wind filled in on the West shore, Grace E also got ahead. We rounded the NE corner of Blake Island and continued NW for an extra 1/2 mile before jibing towards the west to the rounding mark where the race was being shortened. Most boats stayed closer to Blake Island where the winds were lighter and we passed all the boats in our class except "Grace E" for 2nd place in our class. "Intuition" was third, "Zorra" was 4th, "Something Special" (another J35) was 5th and DOI was 6th. Since this was the last race of the series, the results for the series are as follows:

Zorra- 1st
Something Special-2nd
Great White- 3rd

DOI was 4th for the series. Normally they are the class winner and have been the top boat in the entire NW for several years. This was a great accomplishment for the three top boats.

Since Blake Island is only 10 nautical miles from home, we unloaded three of our crew to "Something Special" and motored home. It was an excellant day. I actually got a little sunburned on my face.

All of locations of these South Sound Series races are 24-50 nautical miles from Brownsville and can become an interesting delivery. I look at it at a chance to spend time on the boat. This delivery and race amounted to about 50 nautical miles for the weekend, a pretty decent outing for the first weekend of spring.

Hopefully pictures on a subsequent post. Sean Trew was also taking video of use at the finish. I never have time to take pictures while I am racing.