Crew: Brian, Seth, Bob & RW
Winds: S at 3 to 9 kts, (gusts 10 & one to 12 on the DW)
Current: EBB - North Hill 1730
Start time: 1800, 00:30 into ebb
Start/Finish: Vicinity of X, Groton Long Point
Course: s/f-N-s/f, Distance: 3.3 nm
Shrouds: at Base
Two hours prior to race time Seth & I were questioning whether we’d have a race due to fog, yet 1700 came and passed with no broadcast of cancellation and the visibility appeared to increase.
Arriving late to the starting area, and following some difficulty removing the outboard, we had less than two minutes to the gun- little time to properly assess the situation other than check the course at the committee boat. Had I taken the time to ‘head-to-wind’, I would have discovered a heavily favored port end. We did get a good mid-line start on starboard well ahead of Breakin-Wind & Blissful. This was to no avail though, as both Cosmic and Sans Souci starting near the pin were off on port well ahead of us.
A short starboard half the way up the course towards North Dumpling for more pressure allowed us to close with six boat lengths on Sans Souci when they crossed us short of the layline then tacked back to port. On the layline we trailed them by a half dozen boat lengths or so, as larger boats began approaching from arear. A few boatlengths short of the buoy, 2nd Chance rolled us and only by carefully luffing up were we able to round the mark.
We had a good set, though were forced to jibe away by the over taking traffic rather than chase San Souci. We had a good run, trailing Sans Souci by 29 seconds across the line and missed correcting over Cosmic for second by just 5 seconds.
Link to chart