Journal, Sunday 11/23

“Race day dawns bright with a moderate northwesterly breeze. We leave our moorings at the marina early to get in a little sailing practice before the start. We set the biggest kite, do a few jibes and a take down. Everything goes smoothly except for a spinnaker sheet that disappears over the side. Then we head back upwind toward the breakwater, do a few tacks. We have discovered that there’s nothing in the rules that prevents us from using our power winches, except for the first half hour of the race. This discovery pleases the crew and almost makes up for the loss of Ashley.

“Our start is at 12:40. We start conservatively and take a minute or two to get the kite up. There is quite a crowd of boats milling around, about 70 in our start, but nothing like the 150+ in the next class. We are leery of the wind shadow of Grand Canaria, which we have been led to believe can extend up to 30 miles to leeward of the island. (In this case that is to the southeast. We start at Las Palmas at the northeast corner of Grand Canaria and then sail down the east coast and at the southern end turn west southwest toward St Lucia some 2780 miles away by great circle route. Hugging the coast is the shortest route, but could be a trap if the wind fails.) So follow the coast early in a brisk Northwesterly, but as the bulk of the island gets more to windward, we jibe farther out to sea. Too late! We get caught in a huge hole. What’s more, the people inshore of us, who we thought were caught worse are getting and ESE sea breeze. So we have boats pulling away from us on both sides. Two of the inshore boats are our dread rival Roxy and Marziana, a little but seriously quick looking little Finish yacht, our near neighbor in the marina.
“Fortunately, we find the sea breeze ourselves before too long. Some of the inshore boats have gotten a jump, but we’ve done better than those farther out.”

Skipper at the helm