2024 FBYC Closing Day Race
Jon sailed in FBYC’s closing day race aboard J99 Battle Rhythm with Kevin, Bill, Holly, Todd, and Jennifer. As is the tradition for closing day, this is a pursuit race with the times calculated based on the distance and the slower boats start first while the faster boats start later. Being one of the faster boats we started about 47 minutes after the first boats to start and we start at the same time as Orien.
The wind was 11-14 at the start and we sailed around until our time came up. The course was a bit of an out and back into the bay just shy of 20nm.
We started with Orien and sailed to a very short mark just north of the starting line with Orien just to leeward and behind of us. At the mark we tacked for another close hauled course to the entrance of the Piankatank. The next leg was a reach to the south. We could see that the current was ebbing south and so we took a high line to the north so-as to not sail any extra distance and let the current carry us down.
When we got to the far mark to the south there was a pack of boats just ahead of us. Since we were coming from above and most of them were struggling to fetch the mark, we rounded inside and went right by them.
On this leg we were heading north and would have to tack to fetch the northern mark 2.8nm away. By this time we were seeing winds as high as 26 and some decent waves rolling down the bay. We still had a full main and jib and just did our best to work the boat through the waves despite being a little overpowered. Once at the top mark only Wendas was ahead of us when we turn to reach back into the Piankatank. We probably could have carried a spinnaker at this angle, but with winds into the 20s we didn’t try it and nobody behind us did either.
We quickly got around Wendas and reached under full main and Jib as Sting, Afterthought and the J42 all lined up about 150 yards behind us. We kept a close eye on them as they crept up on us and we focused on saying ahead hitting as high as 12 knots through the water at one point. Once we were in the lee of Stingray Point the wind came down and the angle went a little behind us and we decided to put up the spinnaker. With winds in the teens it was a challenge to control and we almost spun out once. We got the boat under the spinnaker, but would need to gybe once to fetch the finish. Other boats were setting spinnakers behind us and some were only 5 lengths behind us.
The gybe didn’t go particularly well and we wrapped the spinnaker around the forestay. Luckly we were close enough to the line that we just went dead downwind spinnaker wrapped and all for the final minute to finish 1st – just ahead of our competition.
We were mostly unaware at the time other than some radio traffic that we didn’t entirely make sense of, but the Trip 27 GOIN’ had a shroud fitting fail and lost the mast out in the bay in the heavier winds. Orien left the race to help, but the club power boat was there to assist by the time they arrived. Everyone was ok and they got the boat back ashore with a crinkle in the mast just above the deck line and a ripped main.
It was an exciting race and a fun way to wrap up the ‘regular’ season at FBYC.
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