The Start
With a starting area near The Brothers islands, which was a big improvement from the old starting area south of the Richmond Bridge, we found ourselves picking through the smaller boats awaiting their own signals. That's us on the right with the Blue S2 flying sorting out a crash gybe to avoid someone who wouldn't start for another 15 or 20 minutes.... grrrrr..... ah well. We got away cleanly (no splinters) and in the front of our class.
S'agapo was placed into the lowest handicap non-sport-boat class with Mighty Zamazan and a flock of Express 37 sloops. With almost a two knot flood and only six to eight knots of true wind, it was light going at first and for those of you who know S'agapo - that's not our strong suit. Even with the oversized S2 we were working hard to hang onto the Express 37s. It was interesting to watch the lowest handicap sport boats, who had also started with us, as they reached back and forth in the light wind. They were moving far more quickly than we but only slowly pulling away towards Stockton. One of the crew joked that these guys were going to sail about 120 miles on a 65 mile course - that would prove to be a pretty accurate estimate.
With the wind holding below ten knots, the second and third and fourth classes started nibbling at our lead and we keep a weather eye out for the massive masthead chute of our nemesis, Yucca. She is never off the pace and as we saw Hang and his team set after their start we knew it would be tough.
Working It
Over 140 boats were entered in this edition of the Delta Ditch, and a half dozen folks sailed the course without entries just to entertain us all. One of our favorites was Johnny Goldsberry who made the 65 mile trip aboard is foiling Moth. Here he is passing us in complete silence, without a ripple and going like a rocket. A few yards later he hit some weeds and flipped into the warming waters. Not to worry, after swimming around pulling weeds off the foils he was up and flying again. Johnny would pass us at least five times during the race and was always a joy to watch as he sliced through the water - swerving around the weeds and slower boats.The Middle
The Delta Ditch has an interesting pace for a sailing race. There is the excitement of the start, like all races, but then there is the 60 miles of gybes, twists and turns that make up The Middle. It's here that the race is typically lost or won and this year was no different. Until this race we had never sailed S'agapo next to an Express 37 and we were to discover that the two boats were almost exactly the same speed over the course of the next seven hours. My good friend Bartz Schnider in Expeditious, shown on the left, swapped places with us at least a dozen times. We would get a couple of boat lengths ahead and then Bartz and his team would come right back and pass us. They would lead for a few miles and we'd get a chance to pass them. It was rare that the boats were more than five boat lengths apart for almost the entire race and while we did finish just slightly ahead of Expeditious, we had no chance to save our time on them. There were numerous periods of sailing side-by-side chatting about any number of topics and sharing the sort of camaraderie that the Ditch Run is known for.The End
The final leg up the river to Stockton is almost always a beam reach, and this year was no exception. After passing Tinsley Island the wind picked up to 17 to 20 knots, the most we'd seen all day, and things got a little more exciting. Indeed, at one point we were getting more excitement than we really needed, as shown in the picture on the right. My good friend Jeremy Leonard came by in his photo boat after the race (these are all his pictures) and jokingly offered to sell me all these negatives so "No one would ever know!" We offered to buy him a drink and told him we'd be proud to print his pictures. We all do this, or will do this, at one time or another. It was only the third time S'agapo has ever spun out on me and I must admit it was a little surprise. We weren't ready for the 30 knot gust that popped out from behind some cottonwood trees! Next year, we'll be just a bit more alert in that section of the river.
We got S'agapo back on her feet, on the left, and proceeded to try and chase down Yucca (below). Hank and his team had gotten past us at Benica but we'd kept them within a couple hundred yards for almost the entire race. The two long slender boats made a pretty site sliding along the river, the sort of sight that gets the folks on shore and aboard the other boats smiling and waving.
We'll be racing against Yucca a lot now that S'agapo is berthed in San Francisco Bay. It should be quite the site to see these two similar but quite different boats sailing against each other. The Ditch Run was a great preview of what I hope will be a friendly competition of long duration. Of course, next time we'll have to win it.
We slid down to Stockton without further excitement, and were thrilled to be tied up and ashore for a Rum Punch at the Stockton Sailing Club. These guys do a terrific job every year, hosing over 700 sailors to a great dinner and party after what is often one of the most interesting races of the year. If any of you SSC folks read this - THANKS! You do a great job!
Also a special thanks to my crew: Nick Burke, Chuck Hawley, Tom Lewin and Paul Zupan for doing a great job on S'agapo's first Delta Ditch Run. You guys were terrific!!
Heading Home
There aren't any pictures of the rest of this trip; this is because most of it was in the dark and a lot of it was in truly foul weather. After dinner and a rub punch from Mt. Gay, Tom Lewin and I hopped back aboard S'agapo at about 2030 hours and headed down the river, which is almost always upwind. The tide had changed, we had a nice one knot favorable ebb, and the wind was a gentle 10 knots as our little 16hp motor pushed us along at six knots. Tom was all smiles about getting home in time for his god-daughter's party on Sunday and I was looking forward to a couple of hours sleep after an early delivery to Richmond for the start.
As we powered past Tinsley Island the wind picked up to about 14 knots, but hey.... no problem. I drove for a while and Tom took the 2200 to 2400 watch. As I turned the helm over to him we chatted about the 20 knot gusts and I checked the forecast, which was for winds fading during the night.... ya, right. By 2400 S'agapo was bouncing along over five to seven food wind chop in what had now become an ugly night of 30 knot winds. "I saw a gust of 44 knots about 10 minutes ago." was Tom's report. "OK" I thought, "We're still in the channel where it's relatively narrow, while the ebb chop is steep we're able to go about three knots against it and the wind. It's supposed to die."
As the next two hours passed the little Yanmar 16hp two cylinder engine howled along at about 90% of full throttle, and could only just keep us going about two knots through the water. The knot of favorable current kept us making three knots towards San Francisco, but it was also taking us towards the more open Suisun Bay with a long enough fetch to make the trip "interesting". A couple of times gusts hit us that simply blew the bow down. Not a problem in the open ocean, but a big worry in a narrow channel. Being someone who wears glasses, I couldn't read the wind instruments through the spray so my guess of 45 to 50 knot winds is just that, a guess.
Finally, as 0200 approached, Tom stuck his head out the hatch and said: "Breezy!" In the black of the Delta, surrounded by all manner of flashing red and green navigation lights for boats and airplanes, we were standing still. The stars glistened above us quite calmly. The howling engine couldn't move us upwind, as we'd managed to get to a somewhat wider bit of the channel where the longer fetch built the waves up to well over 10 feet. We decided S'agapo just couldn't get us home that night. Indeed, it couldn't get us to Antioch, which lay only a few miles ahead. With some frustration we turned around and headed back up the river, flying downwind at 10 to 12 knots without any sails up and with the engine at about half throttle. The hard won distance that we'd made to windward over the course of four hours, we covered in just over an hour.
Tom banging on the deck to wake me was my next memory. "The iPad says we're at Tinsley Island but I can see it." he announced as I stuck my head up into what was now "only" a 25 to 30 knot blow on the river. "That's it in those weeds." I told him and was greeted by a rather dubious look. "You drive!" he said, and we both laughed. For someone who hasn't taken a sailboat through the narrow and tule choked channel into the Tinsley inner harbor, it's always a surprise. To do it after spending most of the night being bashed around and in a brisk wind, it's a real surprise.
Once in, we tied up to a friend's boat and hit the bunks. In the morning we were graciously hosted by StFYC and the gang that were putting on the Fresh Crew Weekend, ran into all sorts of folks that Tom and I knew, and I managed to get Tom a lift back to SF with Kevin Reeds - thank you Kevin! Tom didn't make the party, but at least he got home before all his clean cloths ran out.
I spent Sunday watching the wind blow; which stayed well above 30 knots on Suisun Bay. Then mid-morning on Monday the weather finally changed. S'agapo slipped her lines at Tinsley at 1000 hours and buddy boat sailed down the river with Chris Boome aboard Rhapsody. Arriving in Pittsburgh around 1400 as the ebb tide stirred the Suisun Bay into a witches brew, we stopped for a great Mexican lunch at Mecca and took a nice siesta. The flood tide calmed the Bay and we took off with reefed sails for the long beat home.
Pulling into San Francisco at 0130 I reflected that this had been quite the weekend. While the weather was truly awful on Saturday night, the warm hospitality at Tinsley had more than made up for it. Tom and I also learned just what S'agapo and her tiny motor can actually do, knowledge I won't forget any time soon.
Beau
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