Jim DePue Memorial Race-WSSA No. 1

It has been several days since the Jim DePue Memorial race at Port Madison. I had sort of run out of steam when it came to writing race reports, but my blog tracker keeps showing someone hitting my blog as if they are looking for a race report. Since it appears that at least one person must be reading my blog, I will attempt a short race report.

The Jim DePue Memorial is the first race of the seven race West Sound Sailing Association (WSSA) series. It is a 16.5NM race run in the waters of Puget Sound, starting at Point Monroe and sponsored by Port Madison yacht club. All week before the race, the predicted wind were reported to be light. The prediction was pretty close as we saw winds up to 8-9 knots for a while after the start. But the converse was that it was a very nice, sunny day!

We got a great start about a third of the way down the line. As predicted, the current was suppose to be a small flood, so we headed out. Soon we saw that most of the boats above us were heading toward shore. Sure enough, the current was better near the shore, so we tacked near the shore into Murden Cove. We took a short tack back out toward the middle of Puget Sound only to still find contrary current. Back to the beach! In our flounderings, we lost position to several boats that we owed time to. We stayed close to the beach the rest of the way to the mark off Eagle Harbor and gained back some time.

After rounding the mark and setting the spinnaker, we stayed a bit low of the West Point mark, but as the wind lifted, we sailed higher toward West Point. By the time we jibed at West Point, we had passed three boats. We sailed a lower coarse to the final mark at Point Jefferson and gained on some of the boats ahead. especially as we neared the mark. One boat just ahead stayed high of the mark and sailed really slow as they sailed down to the mark. We sailed a good angle to the mark, had a great takedown, rounding and ended up on a good angle to the finish where after one tack, we finished at about 1408. The wind had died a lot and the boats behind struggled to finish.

Our final placing was seventh in class and seventh overall. I take responsibility for giving away places by heading offshore. But I later heard that many boats also expected the flood and could not get any benefit from it. Oh well, it was still a good day for a race and we stayed focused and recovered some lost places.

Results can be found here: Jim Depue Memorial Results 2013

Our course for the day.