SCSC: redemption

Twenty-two boats met on the start line for last Wednesday's race. Within my own fleet were seven Lasers, but with my usual nemesis Monty absent there were only two that offered serious competition that I had to beat; Bruce and Kean. The wind was gusting into the high teens, so the conditions would favour them both, as both are significantly taller and a little heavier than me.

The race officer laid a well considered course with two good legs beating to windward and a slightly port biased start line. I played for a conservative start, middle of the line amongst the pack, and immediately lost out to Kean who, as I'd half guessed he would, pulled off another port flyer. Although not as clean as the previous week's as this time he had an accompanying Solo cramping his style, they both made the best of the clean air and rounded the windward mark well ahead of the rest of us.

I, on the other hand, followed about a dozen places back, although still somewhere in front of Bruce, trying hard not to get swamped by the rest of the Hotdogs fleet.

photo: william gardiner

The first beat was followed by a quick reach across to a gybe mark on the other side of the lake, then a deep run down to the leeward mark. Kean's luck ran out. He sailed quite a direct line for the leeward buoy, which let the pack of closely following Solos and Aeros ride roughshod over him, sucking the wind out of his sail, whilst I, following behind, took advantage of the space and sailed high in cleaner air.

Kean appeared to stall, whilst I was pushed higher than I actually wanted to go by a Solo to leeward. I later discovered that, to compound the misery of everybody fouling his air, he'd also picked up a hefty lump of weed around his rudder that he was slow to notice.

Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one to take advantage of position on the downwind leg and Kean's unfortunate tangle with his clump of weed. As I was pushed up to windward by the Solo, Bruce snuck through the middle of the pack, somehow finding a clean path through the crowd of boats and rapidly catching me up.

I made a good mark rounding, claiming water on the inside of a stack of boats, wide in, tight out, hardening up neatly onto port on the second beat, forcing the Solo that had dogged me to leeward and was now tight on my stern to tack off quickly, leaving Bruce to follow us around still a couple of boat lengths astern.

A few more boat lengths, clean air, and I tacked off myself, looking for stronger, clearer air towards the middle of the lake. It was a mistake. Gradually, over the course of the beat, Bruce slowly inched ahead of me, and Kean persistently closed the gap from behind.

By the time we made the windward mark, I'd consolidated my lead over Kean, albeit not enough to be safe, but Bruce was now clear ahead.

photo: william gardiner

And that set the scene for the next couple of laps. Kean gradually dropped further back as I doggedly held on to Bruce, waiting for him to make a mistake that never came.

Until the very last leg. The committee boat had signalled the end of the race with the shortened course flag, we rounded the leeward mark and Bruce, still comfortably three or four boat lengths ahead, held onto a starboard tack out towards the edge of the lake. Seeing no advantage in simply following him, although not holding out much hope for a miracle at this stage, I tacked quickly onto port.

The wind shifted, giving the port tack a significant lift, but Bruce was blocked from tacking off the header by a Cadet to windward, I guess forcing him to sail on further than he'd have wanted until either they tacked, or he could tack and clear their bow.

Either way, across the short beat that we had left to the finish line, I slowly edged ahead, whilst he struggled to make up for the ground he'd lost to the adverse wind shift.

I was hiked out hard on a port beat, so both Bruce and the committee boat were in those last moments out of sight behind me as I closed in on the pin end of the finish line. The gun signalled somebody's finish and then, six seconds later, signalled a second boat crossing the line. At which point I finally glanced back, our race over, and saw to my delight and relief that the second boat had been Bruce.

So not a bad result after such an indifferent start: first in my fleet, and fifth out of the entire Hotdogs fleet of twenty-two boats. I almost felt bad for Bruce, as he'd sailed a fantastic race, only for me to clip his win from him in those very final few seconds.

He had some compensation however. The Hotdogs series, which includes all the boats on the water, inflicts a penalty to your handicap number for successive races for winning. I was carrying a 30 point penalty for a win much earlier in the season, whereas Bruce only had 20 points against his boat, which therefore gave him first place out of the entire fleet once, the timings had been corrected by our respective handicaps.

Interestingly, following a forty minute race, after corrected time there was only six seconds of difference between the first five positions. But more than a minute and a half between my fifth place and the boat following in sixth.