Dan's Blog: Winter Vashon Island Race-South Sound Series #1

Saturday December 4th was the Winter Vashon Island Race. This is a race from Tacoma Yacht Club at Pt Defiance around Vashon Island. The total distance is 30.7 nautical miles. This race is the first race of the four race South Sound Series. This race could also be considered the beginning of the 2011 racing season even though it is in 2010. All of the 2010 race series are over and all the year end championships have been sailed.

I started this event by leaving Brownsville at 0700 on Friday morning. One good thing about being retired is that I can get underway early and get a prime spot at the reciprocal moorage at Tacoma Yacht Club. I arrived at about 1045 and spent the rest of the day socializing and mooring boats as all the later arriving boats showed up. Tacoma Yacht Club sponsored a great pasta dinner in the evening.

Saturday morning was cool. The neat thing was that we had wind! That doesn't always happen at this race. The crew arrived, we rigged the boat and got underway.

At the start, the wind was gusting to 20 knots out of the north, so we chose the #3 jib with a full main. I was overly conservative at the start and was late for the gun. I wasn't the only one late, many boats in my class were just ahead. We started the beat up Colvos Pass. The wind was gusty to as high as 24knots. The beat was straight forward, but a few shifts and following favorable current flows allowed us to pass a few of the boats in our class.

Near the north end of Vashon Island, the waves got large to around four feet and very steep. The boat pounded heavily and lots of water came aboard. After rounding the mark, we started the run down the east side of Vashon Island. The wind was forward, so most boats did not set spinnakers. We still saw speeds to 9.5 knots. I waited until the wind lightened some before setting the spinnaker. Two boats in my class set their spinnakers early and passed us.

Rounding Pt Robinson, the wind came ahead and a straight course to the finish was a beam reach. The wind was still blowing 20 knots and at one point we saw 10.3knots. Since it was gusty and boat control was getting difficult, we took the spinnaker down halfway to the finish. Defiantly faster to be under control. A lot of other boats also took down their spinnakers.

We finished at about 1404, a very early finish time for this race! Our placing was not that great, we placed 7th out of 11 entries. One boat lost their mast did not finish. The wind blew strong all day and the sun was out. A lot of the country does not sail during the winter, we are fortunate that we can!

After cleaning up the boat and folding sails, I motored home, arriving at my moorage at Brownsville at 1908.

Total distance covered for Friday and Saturday: 87.3 NM

Results and photos can be found at: http://www.ssseries.org/