Originally posted on May 5th 2008
Well the day started off in true BC fashion, cold damp, and miserable. I arrived at the boat at 7:00am to begin lightening it for the race. I was able to get a lot of the heavy cruising gear off the boat and fill my 22 cubic foot dock box. We were heading out by 0830 and reached the starting position by 1000. The wind was quite stiff at first but quickly dissipated. The RC was busy trying to hunt down wind in the area so we chased them around before generally drifting about. When the wind did come it was a welcome relief. Numerous divisions started before it was our turn to go. We were not as ideally positioned as I would have liked but crossed the line on the tails of the division 7 boats. I believe we were over 24 seconds after the start and in pursuit. We began to gain on SARANDIS and some of the Div 6 boats, but eventually they all began to pull away. We had too much sail up with our 140% and need to go down to our 110%. For most of the dace we maintained a heel of 35-40%. In addition we made several tactical mistakes heading off shore rather than hugging the shore line where we were slowed by waves. In the end we were well behind everyone including SARANDIS who was our closest competitor. When we rounded the mark we had a clean hoist and blasted down wind with only one gybe needed for us to lay the line. About 20 boat lengths from the mark the spinnaker became badly fowled on the forestay forcing us to douse it at which point we carried on under white sails across the line.Following the race we made a mid-ocean transfer of Cameron to SARANDIS so that he could return to Vancouver that night. There were a few nerve racking moments but he got across okay. The SEA WEASEL then headed off to the WVYC where we had beers and burgers with the crews from ZOE, DUSTY MAUCH, LARK, and others. We rounded the night off by heading over to Snug Cove before returning to Vancouver the following morning.All and all it was a fun race. A big thank you to the RC and Niko for heading up Div 7!!
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