The Vashon Challenge Race is a singlehanded/doublehanded race around Vashon Island in a clockwise direction. My plan was to race in the singlehanded division. There were also a doublehanded spinaker division and a doublehanded no flying sails division. It is sponsored by CYC-Tacoma. The distance is 33 NM.
I took the boat to Tacoma on friday. It is a 33NM trip and was somewhat uneventful except for the grey skies and a light sprinkle of rain a couple times. I moored at Dock Street Marina in the Foss Waterway right in front of the Museum of Glass. That area of Tacoma has really been cleaned up and is quite the tourist area. I played tourist and visited some stores.
After a quiet night and an early morning breakfast at the Renassaince Cafe, I was underway at 0838 for the 1005 start off Browns Point on the east side of Commencement Bay. The sun was out and the temperature warm. The winds were in the 5 knot range out of the NW and like most of the other competitors I headed toward the west side of Commencement Bay and short tacked up that shore toward Pt Defiance. As the current was ebbing, this seemed to be the fastest route. Since the current always flows north in Colvos Pass, the trick is to find the right curent lane thru Dalco Pass and into the river flowing north. The wind built to about 10 knots from the north. This made for a nice beat up Colvos Pass to the turning mark set north of Vashon Island.
The spinaker run down the East Side of Vashon Island was fast even though the current was still ebbing. I past a couple of the no flying sails boats that started ahead of me. This year the course used a buoy just SW of Pt Robinson. This buoy was to be left to port and was in case the race needed to be shortened. It was a very tight spinaker reach to leave the buoy to port and at least one boat ahead of me did not go around the buoy and dropped out when he was aware of his mistake(which was several miles downwind of the buoy).
The remaining of the run was light and at first I closed with some boats ahead, but could not catch them. I was the 6th boat to finish at 1602. I am sure that at least a few boats behind may have corrected on me.
Results when the are posted can be found on: http://www.cyct.com/racing.html
Following the finish I immediately motored home, arriving at the marina at 2011. It was a pretty uneventful delivery except the wind blew strong down Colvos Pass making it a bit cool. And I also had to wait until I was closer to home (and the wind moderated)to fold the main.
Total distance for the weekend: 100.4 miles(nautical not statute).
The light winds before the start.
Gardyloo, a Henderson 30 in the doublehanded division looking good on the run.
Running downwind toward Pt Robinson.
More spinakers on the run.
The track for the day. We started and finished just south of Browns Pt on the east side of Commencement Bay.I have been getting better at converting the track into a format that I can put into this blog. The quality will probably never be very good with the scanned charts used on the boats nav computer. But I think it is a good visual. I can count the number of tacks(17) and jibes(5). The cool thing is that you can see the effect of the north flowing current in Colvos Pass, the angle of the tacks is far less than 90 degrees. As long as the computer continues to work and I remember to start the track I will continue to record this info.
Looks as if you had a good race. Interesting the apparent large wind shadow that Vashon places over commencement bay area. Going toward the Tacoma Yacht club after the start was a longer distance but faster route
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