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Team Scorpio
Yacht Racing Program
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2009 Aldo Alessio Perpetual Trophy Regatta - Race Notes
The Team Scorpio crew looked forward to the Aldo as a means of competing once again with Soozal and others. As Doug was delivering Pegasus 50 back from Hawaii, John was stuck with boat preparations which consumed most of Thursday. Preparing for ocean races takes more and more time now that the USCG has increased its focus of meeting offshore Minimum Equipment Requirements. In this case it meant renting flares as ours were out of date, and obtaining crew lights, a spotlight, etc. In any case, Scorpio motored into the StFYC guest docks late Thursday afternoon.
Race 1 - Course E: SFp, 18p, 16p, Finish RD Eight of us left the dock at 1000 on Friday morning for the ocean race around the lightship. The course was the Lightbucket, Blossom Rock, and Blackhaller (all to port) with a downwind finish off the Race Deck. Marcy and Bo flew in from Oahu on the “red eye” and were joined by John, Toby, Matt, Henry, Larry, and George. We started at 1105 off the face of TI, in good breeze. While some headed directly to the City Front, we and most others sailed on port straight to the North Tower of the GG Bridge. The wind was significantly left which gave us an advantage over those who chose to beat to the City Front. We sailed the entire upwind leg with our M3, seeing breeze from nine to 17 over the beat. After passing Point Bonita, Bustin Loose tacked to the north. We stayed on starboard throwing in about three tacks. Going north paid for Bustin Loose who rounded ahead of us, but well behind the two TP52s and Soozal. We rounded with Astra and immediately set our Akyte.
The Akyte was definitely the right sail as we passed Bustin Loose at Point Bonita and stayed in front of Astra. Between the Bonita buoy and the bridge, we peeled to the .85 poly kite in anticipation of strong breeze inside the Bay. We gained steadily on Soozal who had amassed a big lead at the Lightship. We rounded Blossom and sailed a good leg to Blackhaller followed by a short spinnaker sprint to the finish. We finished 1:23 behind Astra, 2:30 ahead of Bustin, and nearly seven minutes behind Soozal. The TP52s finished an hour ahead of us.
We corrected second behind Mayhem and 1:12 ahead of Soozal. It had been a very successful race for us. Friday evening we stripped the boat of our offshore safety equipment, changed mains, and got the boat ready of Saturday’s buoy races.
Race 1 IRC Differential Results
Notes
Saturday Races - Saturday morning Bren and Joy joined us along with Brent Harrill who once again did a great job filling in for Doug who was now about 250 nm west of Santa Cruz. The course for both races was set between Aquatic Park and Presidio Shoal. We enjoyed strong breeze all day, using the 3+ on upwind legs and the .85 poly kite on downwind legs. We sailed two very short, windward-leeward courses of seven legs each.
Race 2 – Course I: 1s, 1os, 3gate, 1s, 1os, 3gate, 1s, 1os, 3gate, Finish upwind We headed to the race course and did some practice sets before our 1105 start. The starting line was very short and we were OCS with no room at the pin end. Fortunately for us, so was the rest of the fleet: General Recall. We had a decent second start and sailed a very good race correcting on Soozal by 46 seconds. Wow - we're now two points ahead of Soozal for the regatta.
Race 2 IRC Differential Results
Notes
Race 3 – Course H: 1p, 1op, 3gate, 1p, 1op, 3gate, 1p, 1op, 3gate, Finish upwind Race 3 was another short, seven leg course. We had a problem at the start where Bren and I miscommunicated and we nearly had a collision with Swiftsure. I hadn't seen Bren wave the port tack fifty-four footer across. Swiftsure helmsman Steve Taft and I have since had some good laughs about this incident. After the iffy start, we sailed another decent race but end up 32 seconds behind Soozal. We were just behind Astra on the second downwind leg when their backstay broke taking them out of the regatta.
As the breeze picked up throughout the first race, before the second race of the day we adjusted our rig settings, swapping one 1/4" mast plate for a 1/2" plate. This tightened up our rig and allowed us to sail with a straighter headstay.
Race 3 IRC Differential Results
Notes
It was an exhausting day with lots of mark roundings and very short courses. I certainly made us empathize with the big boats in our class. Their bow teams certainly earned their paychecks. We were very pleased with our performance and jumped into first place for the regatta, one point ahead of Soozal. As Toby points out, one of the keys to success in race 2 and 3 was making the leeward gate decisions early. The wind angle, until late in race 3, was such that we came to the N gate mark either with a late gybe just before the rounding or a gybe right at the rounding. In either case we were prepared every time and all six leeward rounding evolutions went well.
Race 4 - Course Q: 16p, 18p, 8p, 3p, Xp, 7p, 1Fp, RD Finish We headed to the race course on Sunday contemplating our first place position and wondering how we could maintain it against Soozal. Bay Tour course Q sent us all over the bay and allowed us to use a lot of sails and several sophisticated maneuvers. Before starting, we swapped our mast plates back to a light air position.
We had a lousy start at the pin end of the line and shortly after did a clearing tack to avoid Soozal's bad air. We short tacked along the City Front with our L3, rounded behind Soozal and set our light air symmetrical kite. we sailed a very good leg to the Blossom Rock buoy, had a good rounding, and began our reach to mark 8. We, along with Recidivist ended up sailing in close proximity to a tug and barge, and we were fortunately not to be hurt much by the interference. We carried our .6 kite all the way to mark 8 where we set the M3 and had a great rounding. We sailed a very good leg to the inflatable mark 3 set near the north tower of the GG Bridge. We had good boatspeed and great height on this leg, and liked our position at mark 3.
We set our Akyte at mark 3 and sailed toward mark X in front of the Golden Gate Yacht Club. I've sailed this leg a dozen times and finally realized that my normal strategy of jib reaching up to set when we knew we could lay X, was a faulty one. This time we set early, realizing that we'd probably not lay the mark and would probably have to jib reach up at the end. However, we got lifted as we got close and were able to lay X sailing entirely on the rhumbline. We pulled off a slow but effective peel to the .6 kite at X and heading toward mark 7 behind Alcatraz. We felt we were likely beating Soozal in this point in the race despite our poor start and slow peel.
However, we had a third problem as we gybed behind Alcatraz. It seems the trimmers confused the Akyte sheet with the normal one and we luffed the kite for 10-15 seconds as we sorted out our problem. We were probably still ok at this point. However, we completely blew the douse at 7 and ended up sailing over the spinnaker. We spent about two minutes trying to wrestle the kite from under the boat. We fortunately missed hitting the mark by about 10 feet, but this error proved costly in the regatta. We sailed a good beat to 1A, and set the runner for the finish off the Race Deck. The last two legs were very quiet as the entire crew realized we'd blown our chance to win the Aldo for the first time.
As it turns out, Tupelo Honey won the race followed by Soozal and Bustin Loose. Had we not had the problems we experienced, we probably would have beat Soozal, but not Tupelo Honey in race 4.
Race 4 IRC Differential Results
Notes
All in all it was a great regatta and we demonstrated that we could win even against a very modern fleet of boats. Our four problems: bad start, slow peel, bad gybe, and shrimping the spinnaker cost us the event. While the asymmetrical spinnaker is an important weapon for Scorpio, we simply need more practice with it. We don't expect to repeat any of these in our remaining two regattas.
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