Corinthian this year was definitely more memorable than most. I can’t remember a race that went from small craft advisory gusting 30 with carnage to match the conditions, turned into parking lot and then back again. It was a ‘local distance race’ counter for the new class scoring format, so it drew out those vying for every high score then can get their hands on and those that just enjoy the simplicity of doublehanding. Vaughn Siefers and daughter Michaela came to show that brains matters as much as brawn in doublehanding.
The start was tricky with the breeze just filling, leaving pockets of no wind at the exit of Raccoon Straits, sprinkled with ‘floating wind indicators’ from the fleets ahead of us. Within minutes it filled, and we were off to a nice reach over to Little Harding. I was surprised to see us hanging with Expresses on that reach - it’s that 150% #1 magic.
Joel and Chris Watts on Firefly were ahead of us, having made a cleaner exit from Belvedere cove. We both set at Harding, and while they were changing down to the #3, we caught up. Approaching Blossom, Bart spotted big breeze over to the right closer to the city front. We heated it way up to get over there and it paid big, ripping down to blossom, passing Firefly.
We followed everyone in front of us to the city front. All boats behind us turned towards the cone of Alcatraz to stay out of the flood. Ugh. I knew Joel would go that direction, but we were committed. The flood was WAY stronger than was forecast, presumably due to the lack of rain that the tidal models anticipate. And it was building along the city front first. Duh! The cone paid off big time, and Joel re-connected later a good few minutes ahead. Behind us at Blossom was chaos apparently. Shrimped kites, BIG collisions, retirements. The breeze going up the city was getting gnarly! Kelly’s experience on #62:
Epic spinnaker run to Blossom Rock in the middle of the fleet. Max speed 11.4 knots on that run. Smooth rounding and douse, and then WAPAH! A solid breeze straight on the nose. Moments of mayhem ensued—wrapped the jib around the headstay, broke the tiller extension and got soaked. Had a hard time making headway towards Blackaller in the gnarly chop.
We short-tack all while getting ping ponged by big boats and put on foulies. We pinned a J105 in against the shore because we had no room to tack either. They were gracious and never called for sea room. Minutes later I see a boat on the rocks in that same spot - apparently an Olson 29 - so glad it wasn’t that J105, but still feeling gutwrenched. Firefly puts a solid 5 minutes on us at Blackaller, just constantly gaining upwind. As we watch them round, FLYING TIGER CASUALLY ROLLS IN OUT OF NOWHERE. Vaughn’s daughter Michaela is sitting on the rail, pretty sure I can hear Vaughn chuckling.
“Y’all are workin’ too hard”
We spend the next few minutes debating what happened. They must be going for a fun sail. They must have just skipped Blossom. How did they just crush us? We busted our asses! They took the cone and then continued out into the middle of the bay, avoiding the building flood on the city front - and tacked once. We were just so wrong.
Firefly took it easy and didn’t set for a while after Blackaller, opting to avoid traffic and have a nice, controlled set. We note that there is only ONE kiteboarder out at at Chrissy. Is it really that ugly out? I’m confused. As we’re pushing into these 30kt gusts I thought no way would Vaughn set. How is Michaela going to manage that kite? Well they did!
We had a ripper - not nuclear, just a very fun run down towards Angel. We slowly caught up to Vaughn as the breeze went forward and got lighter. As we passed Pt Blunt, everything. just. Shut. off.
And we drifted. No current. No breeze.
We parked next to Flying Tiger, put up the #1 and tried to figure out where the breeze was going to come from. Some boats went super wide towards Berkeley. Joel went left close to Angel and looked like he was slowly rocking Firefly in the right direction. We slatted, and auto-tacked 15 times or so - ‘the Madness’ - with me walking the genoa around the shrouds, and thought Vaughn was genius, still having his #3 up.
After about 30 minutes of drifter, we had a lovely visit from a whale. He dove right under the boat. As we turned, he drew our attention to the incoming breeze line some 100 yards away.
We took off. Vaughn with us. The #1 started to pay off, and we had speed on everyone. We were matched with the J105 behind us. Moore magic. All the boats that went close to Angel were stuck, and eventually made it down to Southampton under spinnaker.
Rounding Southampton was gorgeous, and lonely. Maybe too lonely, as we stayed towards the middle heading into Raccoon, the boats that stayed to the left made gains on us again. We could see the drama developing behind us: Flying Tiger was followed closely by Firefly, with Mooretician now in close chase.
As we exited Raccoon by Pt Stuart, the breeze was back on. The #1 was overpowered, the main was complaining, but it was manageable, and we rounded and reached back to Corinthian. The drama was palpable behind us. Flying Tiger held her lane but Mooretician linked some waves and we watched in awe as they *roasted* past Firefly right at the tip of Belvedere, for a third place finish.
Farallones up next folks!
Karl
Complete results here
| 07 - Doublehanded Moore 24 | Time on Time 650/(550+PHRF) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Start: 02/29/20 at 11:15:00 | Wind: --- from --- | Fleet: | 8 | |||||||||||||||||
| Course: 1 Distance: 18.00 | Tide: --- --- | Started: | 8 | Finished: 6 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sail # | Boat Name | Points | Skipper | Rating | Finish Time | Elapsed Time | Corrected Time | Club | Make | Comments | ||||||||||
| 121 | SNAFU | 1 | Karl Robrock / Bart Hackworth | 150 | 15:35:14 | 04:20:14 | 04:01:39 | ryc | Moore 24 | |||||||||||
| 155 | FLYING TIGER | 2 | Vaughn Seifers / Michaela Seifers | 150 | 15:39:51 | 04:24:51 | 04:05:56 | ryc | Moore 24 | |||||||||||
| 89 | MOORETICIAN | 3 | Peter Schoen / Roe Patterson | 150 | 15:40:57 | 04:25:57 | 04:06:57 | tibyc | Moore 24 | |||||||||||
| 64 | FIREFLY | 4 | Joel Turmel / Chris Watts | 150 | 15:41:15 | 04:26:15 | 04:07:14 | ryc | Moore 24 | |||||||||||
| 71 | TOPPER II | 5 | Conrad Holbrook / David Mcmurtry | 150 | 15:50:18 | 04:35:18 | 04:15:38 | ryc | Moore 24 | |||||||||||
| 62 | PUFFIN | 6 | Kelly Gregory / Patrick Haesloop | 150 | 16:14:58 | 04:59:58 | 04:38:32 | Moore 24 | ||||||||||||
| 51 | WET SPOT | 9 | Dave Hansell / Denis Mulligan | 150 | DNF | stfyc | Moore 24 | |||||||||||||
| 76 | JR | 9 | Richard Korman / Chris Davison | 150 | DNF | cyc | Moore 24 | |||||||||||||
And just for a quick flashback: in 2011 we did the 3-3-3 race combined with an overnighter in Belvedere cove. Siefers and Lahr daughters catching a ride, in pajamas, on the transom Where does the time go?!
