2014 Spring Dinghy discussion

It was a light air Spring Dinghy in 2014. On Saturday at the sailors meeting the RC let us know they would postpone till a Westerly showed up. That happened around 2pm so the first race was launched around 3pm on both courses. Lasers were on the Alpha course (Cityfront).

The standard's first race was a twice-around which got shortened to a once around. Most of the standard fleet decided to short tack the shore on the first beat. A small number of boats decided to go right, either gambling on late ebb or more pressure. Near the top of the beat, the boats on shore had to cross a big area of light air to get to the weather mark, which meant they misjudged the layline at first and had to keep going back in to get far enough up the shore to get across the flood. The pressure on the outside won as Simon Bell was first to the weather mark. I think Pete Trachy who was also on the outside was 2nd to the mark but may have been 3rd. Either way the three boats on the outside were roughly interspersed with the top 3 boats that went up the shore.

On the second race, the flood was more established so you'd think short tacking the shore would be the thing everyone did. Quite a few people went out and they looked pretty good for a long time, maybe 3/4 of the way up the beat. They had relatively good pressure out there. But, sadly for them, a big left shift came through and on starboard their bows were pointing right at the beach. Short-tacking the shore clearly won on the 2nd race. Some people who went out didn't finish within the time limit.

Any comments from the radial fleet ?

On Sunday, we never launched. There were patches of breeze in various places and various times. At the awards ceremony the Bravo course PRO said the RC made a show of going out and setting up when a promising north-easterly reached the club, but it never held.

So only two races were run. There were 5 sets of ties between both radial and standard fleets.

Pacific Daylight Time began Saturday night, so the tides really made a jump from one day to the next:

Sat

-0936 3.2E
-1401 slack
-1716 2.4F

Sun

-0835 slack
-1145 3.2E
-1603 slack
-1920 2.6F

iWindSurf wind instruments:

http://skysail.com/sailing/d24/2014-spring-dinghy.html

West Coast Sailing Grand Prix