2024 FBYC Offshore Spring Open
The FBYC Offshore Spring Open consisted of 2 days of racing with the first on Saturday being buoy racing and a distance race on Sunday.
Saturday – Buoy Racing
We arrived to a light drizzle on Saturday. Goin’ couldn’t get the hoist to work, so a couple from their boat joined what was going to be a short-handed crew on Battle Rhythm. Winds were in the 15-17 knot range out of the east as it continued to drizzle.
In the first race we were about a minute late to the start as we thought the other fleets were starting first. We started with 1 reef and were at the first weather mark about the same time as Corryvreckan.
Downwind we didn’t fly the spinnaker and as we sailed down the course we saw the wind dropping and shook the reef out. We finished the race without the spinnaker and finished 6th of 7.
For the second race we had a terrific start right at the boat, right on time, with a nice lane to leeward and we managed to shut the door on two other boats trying to start at the boat-end of the line.
In the 10-13 knots of wind we worked on tuning the boat upwind and got a little more in the groove. We rigged the spinnaker and had to shuffle people around – Todd went from the helm to the bow and Dennis drove downwind while Jon stayed in the pit. We did pretty well and held our position with Afterthought ahead and Sting behind us. We did another lap of the same and although Sting got pretty close to us and we ended up correcting behind Nanuq by only 26 seconds. In the end we finished 6 and 4 putting us in 5 overall after the first day.
Sunday – Distance Race
Sunday was the distance race – which was basically east out of the Piankatank and then North up the bay and then the triangle back to where we started.
The start was from FBYC-A which meant that the boat was on the port end of the line and the starboard end was the government mark. We had a pretty good start on starboard while many of the other boats were on port. We carried starboard to the north to have a better angle on the next mark, while the boats that were already on port were pretty tight upwind to make the first mark.
We rounded the first mark with many of the faster boats very close to us. From there we stayed upwind while many other boats cracked off to a close reach on a coarse for the next mark. Only the current was streaming down the bay and the boats that cracked off quickly found themselves getting swept and having to sail upwind again. The wind was still pretty light and our angle and positioning to the North allowed us to carry much more speed and catch the new wind to the North and rounded the next mark in second with our entire fleet behind us. Mad Hatter in the B fleet played the current even better and beat us to the mark and the C fleet boat Wendas was just behind us.
The next leg took us roughly upwind and up current to the North. There wasn’t much relief from the current but we went to the west side of the course along with Mad Hatter. Afterthought had caught up to us, but split to the east and lost a couple minutes by the time we got to the north.
On what was the final rounding to the finish, we rounded and set the chute. In process of getting the sail set, we lost track of where we were to be heading and spent a few minutes going downwind further than we should have. Had we kept on a tight reach, we would have been able to sail longer on a straighter course to the finish. But because we went low, we had to douse the chute a little earlier and go back to an upwind mode to fetch the finish. At times the wind was barely nothing and the current continued to rip down the bay making it hard for us to get anything in the sails. Eventually the wind filled, but Afterthought would correct to almost 25 minutes ahead of us and Nanuq corrected to 5 minutes ahead of us. We managed to stay enough ahead of Corryvreckan to correct over them by 30-some seconds for 3rd place.
