Fifteen Moores showed up for this year’s Round the Rocks. That’s a lot for an event that is only on our double handed series, which has attracted 9 or 10 of us historically. Was it Sam’s new aggressive campaigning on our new Instagram feed? Was it the allure of Hot Rod Lincoln (now Advantage41) - the Moore hull with the most bad ass livery of all time hitting the water for the first time in 20 years (!) ?
Advantage41 (former Hot Rod Lincoln) last month, getting resurrected from a decades-long sabbatical
The westerly was supposed to fill to 7kts at Pt Blunt by noon (and build from there), so the 11am start was postponed as we kind of expected… whew. I feel a little bad for the multihulls that they sent off on time before postponing the next starts. We picked a #2, knowing that it was forecast to build to 12kts and we might just be able to carry one sail nicely the whole day. It was a little painful at the start, with all the windward boats carrying #1’s creeping over the top of us. But build it did, and we were soon very pleased with our choice.
We had studied the course the day before, and talked through the strategy - nobody puts more focused attention into this stuff than Joel. He presented me with a hand-written sheet with all the route segment headings. We made some mistakes in execution along the way, second-guessing our plan. Our original plan was pretty spot on.
The start was a drag race to Blossom Rock, and it was really great to see a bunch of Moores well-sailed and well-matched. Some scooted higher, some footed lower, trying to make some moves on the adjacent boats. A clearing tack here would SUCK! We managed to keep our nose clean. Boats that started closest to the committee boat: Flying Circus, Flying Tiger, Advantage41 were all in deeper water, and just seemed to either get sucked up and into the channel. Unclear whether that was intentional or just protecting air, but we watched them move to well to windward, and then slow down in pretty dramatic fashion - they were in the river, we were just on the shelf. I’ll acknowledge that there was some luck in where we ended up starting- it was not exactly our intention to be that low on the line, but we did know we wanted to stay in the shallows
We charged forward, with only Mooretician to leeward of us. The wind clocked as we got into the slot, the wind picked up, and the two of us charged those first few miles, in a COG beeline to the mark. Approaching the mark, they went from below us to above us, and by maybe a foot did not have an overlap at the three boat length circle around blossom. Beautifully close racing.
Advantage41 and Flying Tiger after rounding Blossom Rock, headed towards city front
We had passed a couple of Expresses and were in the mix of their fleet. We tacked immediately after the buoy, as we had planned, and Mooretician just went straight for the city front. We crossed out of what looked like a massive ebb line, which gave us pause. And then we were confronted with a giant dead whale. Not wanting to find out how close we can duck a dead whale, we flopped back over towards the city. We thought we had lost out big on this scenic detour, but somehow Mooretician just got pingponged in there with the Expresses and was nowhere to be seen. We ended up going way too far into the city, with me having done some math incorrectly and were pretty massively overstood. Whoops. On the leg to Yellow Bluff from the city we were footing, and footing, and footing, through a bunch more expresses - at least it was fast. We’re just not sure where they were going. COG, must pay attention to it!
Blossom Rock, tide line, dead whale
It turns out Bill & Melinda on Flying Circus took a short hitch around the dead whale, and sailed BELOW Alcatraz. Not intuitive, but they pulled it off in spectacular fashion, and were right back on our heels (though we didn’t know it), coming into Yellow Bluff, now known as Hank Easom.
We rounded Easom on the heels of an Express 37, and Joel was stoked about hitching a ride on their wake. It turns out they were sailing way too hot, and having trouble flying their kite, that we had to bail to leeward off them. By the time we looked over to our right, there were the Erkelens, who had just calmly turned right after the mark. WHAT?! We definitely needed to at least re-connect with them, so we jibed over and met them. They passed just behind us, and doing their thing, seemed to have passed us once we jibed back.
Our plan was to stay on the south side of Raccoon. On this most recent Three Bridge Fiasco I remembered getting absolutely destroyed by boats that stayed along the south shore while I crossed into Belvedere cove, so I insisted we do it. I was projecting certainty, and Joel is definitely risk averse. Could we win an outright 1:1 drag race against those two? I’m not confident in it at all, and I had more confidence in this being the right way. It turned out to be a little different than I thought, being a little earlier in the ebb cycle, but it paid off. We exited about 1/4 of the way from north corner of Raccoon, just outside the worst of the ebb that accelerates there.
There was some residual flood in the deep water channel on the way to the Brothers, and it was a beautiful sail over there and a comfortable rounding. The new ebb had worked its way out to the channel by the time we got there, we rounded, and had a beautiful beat up the shore and reach over the top of Red Rock and back to RYC. Flying Circus went high and hoisted a kite for the last stretch, making us work for it.
Finishing right behind Flying Circus were Will Benedict and John Sweeney on Advantage41, with Mooretician 30 seconds behind. We have some new serious talent in the fleet, watch out!
Firefly after taking a hitch to the right, Mooretician to leeward
