Winter Vashon Race 3 Dec 2011, Or How To Sail Half Way Around Vashon Island In The Opposite Direction

The South Sound Sailing series kicks off each year with the Winter Vashon Island Race on the first Saturday in December. This race is about 30 NM long, starts at Tacoma Yacht Club at Pt Defiance, sails around Vashon Island and finishes at Tacoma Yacht Club. As long as I can remember, the race has always been raced in a clockwise direction. This makes good sense as the current in the first part of the race heading north in Colvos Pass ALWAYS flows north. So this year, it was decided to race the race in the opposite direction so that the last half of the race would be sailed south against the prevailing north flowing current. Did not sound too fun to me. To complicate matters more, the northwest has been experiencing record  breaking high barometric  pressure. This has resulted in stagnant or very light winds.

The delivery to Tacoma Yacht Club was good with calm winds and clear skies. The yacht club puts on a great social time/dinner on Friday night and a filling breakfast Saturday morning.

The winds were light on Saturday morning and it was foggy enough to not be able to see Pt Robinson. The committee set a long line that was perpendicular to the course and parallel to the shore. But close enough to the shore that it made maneuvering interesting. Our class of six J35's and two J109's got underway at 0920 after a five minute postponement for some technical issue on the committee boat. The first leg was a close reach with the light No.1 jib. We had an excellent start and lead for several miles until the wind lightened and boats toward the south sailed high. Three past us: "Tantivy"(J109), "Melange" (J35) and "The Boss(J35). "Tantivy"  and "Melange" cracked off some and headed toward Pt Robinson as we did. "The Boss" stayed high, played Monopoly and went bankrupt in Poverty Bay.

As the winds came aft, we set a spinnaker as did the two boats that were ahead of us. After a couple of jibes, the wind came forward at Pt Robinson and we set the jib and sneaked by in 10 feet of water. We reset the spinnaker and chased puffs of wind as we headed north. We jibed a lot and sailed steep angles to keep the boat moving.

Near the north end of Vashon Island, we could see it getting lighter. We could also see the committee boat on station to shorten the race. I decided to stay close to Vashon Island and sail very high of the finish line. Remember, I told you the current always flows north in Colvos Pass? Well the flow continues for a couple of miles north of the pass and across the finish line. We ghosted along with the spinnaker on a tight reach chasing the puffs. Our instruments indicated that we were drifting as much as 50 degrees toward the right. When we finally crossed the finish line, we passed about a half boat length downstream of the mark. Not too bad of planning.

So what about the other boats? It looked like "Tantivy" finished well ahead of us. "Melange" went wide of the north end of Vashon Island, we passed them and the last I saw of them, they had a jib up and were trying to sail up river to the finish. They finished third but were almost passed by another J35 that took our route. We finished second.

We then motored home to Brownsville and I trucked the crew back to their cars at Tacoma.

Even though the winds were light and the race was shortened, it was a very fun race. The crew worked well today and stayed focused. We were missing a couple crew members because of injuries and illness. Thanks to Walter, Kathleen and Tom for helping make the day a success. At least we did not have to sail upriver against a couple of knots of adverse current in Colvos Pass!

Results when posted can be found here: http://tacomayachtclub.org/site/racecommittee/wintervashon2011results.htm

 The light winds and fog at the start.

 A log boom went by that split the fleet.

 At the north end of Vashon Island looking back at the boats behind with Mt Ranier looming over them.

Our course for the day. We only made a couple of tacks early in the day. The rest of the course changes were jibes.