It was a wild and crazy finish to the Spring Fringe series with this Sunday's race. We had incredibly unstable wind conditions ranging from W to Se and 5 to 15 knots. The posted course was CBPTCEC. It was a fairly organized starting sequence for a change. We arrived at the starting box early, ran the line several times and figured out our starting strategy. We hit the line just a little late about midline with Bad Dog just to windward and slightly behind. There was a pile up of boats closer to the committee boat end of the line and as it turned out they were closer to better pressure and quickly took the lead. Approaching the windward B mark we were still on Starboard while many of the lead boats had tacked onto Port onto what they hoped was the layline. There was a large lift for the Starboard boats which helped us close the gap quite a bit for the mark rounding. This is where things really started to get interesting. We did a bear away set because of the way the kite was rigged and threw in a quick gybe onto Port as soon as we could. This however put us further downwind than the boats that pulled off a proper gybe set. The winds continued to turn more Westerley and we quickly found ourselves sailing very high angles with the kite in strong winds, not cool. That combined with the quickly approaching shallow water by the red can forced us to douse the kite and jib reach the rest of the way to the pump house. We were doing very well with just the white sails and hot on the heals of J and Pentameter. We got to witness 3 incredible broaches approaching the pump house. The first to spin was Blur. They were well ahead of everyone except Bad Dog on what looked like a Starboard tack when a big puff out of the South spun them around like a cork screw and laid them on their side with sails a flapping. They laid there for a bit before shaking it off and showing massive speed directly for P mark. The other wipeout we witnessed up close was a little scarrier. We for closely following the J and Pentameter duo approaching P mark when J lost control rounding up and coming very close to putting a rather large hole in Pentameter. Henry had to take some evasive action by also purposefully rounding up to stay clear of J. We rounded with J and Pentameter and slowly worked our way to being directly to windward of J on the reach to Traders Cove. In was a physically tiring beat from T back to C with very shiftly breeze and difficult conditions. Rounding C on our way back to E is what cost us good positioning in the race. We once again did a Set/Gybe and stayed right with J for the first third on the leg. They made the right decision to douse and harden up to a layline position for E. We elected to gamble and try to hold the kite, going for speed, and hoping for the wind to back enough we would fetch the mark under spinnaker, never happened! We had good speed but got blown further downwind. After dousing and climbing back up to E mark it was obvious the strategy did not work. The last beat back to C was a solid one for us. We sailed hard and made steady gains passing Thunderstruck and closing in on Blur and J. We crossed the line 4th just seconds behind Peter and seconds ahead of Aaron on TS. It was an exhilarating day with many lessons learned on the race course. Congratulations to the crew of Bad Dog on a first place finish for the Spring Fringe 2013 overall. We will be out of town for this Wednesday so if anyone can volunteer to write the blog for this week please let me know. Remember racing is now 6:15 pm starting this Wednesday night.
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