The Double Angle Race started for us off of Santa Cruz Harbor on a gray relatively still day. With the "gusts" reaching 6 knots, the wind was not what S'agapo enjoys. After setting the light jib and doing a bit of practice upwind, we returned to the starting area where we milled around with 13 other boats leaving Santa Cruz for Moss Landing, along with a dozen and a half FJs and Lasers who were waiting for the West Marine Fun Regatta to start on the same line a few minutes later - it was crowded.
Setting up for the start we found that I had put us to windward of a wall of boats and Mistress Quickly did a fine job closing the door on us at the Signal Boat. As S'agapo's long transom missed the Signal Boat by inches we spun a circle and started almost last. The three minutes this cost us would matter later - darn! But the wind had built to about a steady 6-8 knots by now from the SW and we were off to hunt down the other competitors.
The first mark, SCYC's Natural Bridges, is about 3 miles west upwind along the coast. We are still sailing below our polars when hard on the wind, but with a lot of fussing with the tuning we did get within a few tenths. More importantly, we were able to control "point mode" well for the first time and used it to good effect to catch and pass the Santa Cruz 40 Kokapelli the only other boat that rates with us. Unfortunately, my poor start had put two J-105s and four SC-27s ahead of us and we struggled to get clear air as we all short tacked the shore and kelp bed. Initially, there was more pressure off shore, so we followed the SC-52 Elixer out to sea and back in again at Pt. Santa Cruz (aka Lighthouse Pt.). This proved to be the correct call and allowed us to pick up all but five of our competitors. By the windward mark we had passed everyone but Elixer and the Hobie-33 Stretch.
With the apparant wind angle (AWA) at 50° we set the un-used Code-Zero and were thrilled as S'agapo heeled to 24° and took off at 5.6k of boat speed in 4.8k of wind. Over the course of the next two hours we managed to pass Stretch - a non-trivial task in these conditions and with the superb crew work her double handed PacCup crew were exhibiting. We also picked up a little on Elixer as she had trouble keeping her asymmetrical chute up with the wind this far forward. The Code Zero really showed its value on this reach, it's a great sail.
As we rounded the M-1 mark in the middle of the bay and started the 11 mile run to Moss Landing, the fleet split with Elixer and Stretch going right and everyone else and ourselves going left. We probably should have followed the leader and covered Stretch but the left seemed favored for both wind and direction, being 20° closer to the rum-line. As we all came back together at the MI7 mark just before the finish, it was clear that Stretch had us by a boat length and Elixer had us by 12 minutes.
The Moore-24 Morphius rounded M1 a 1/4 mile before us, having raced up from Monterey, and we had a difficult time running her down. Those Moores are fast in the light stuff and we never saw more than 6k of wind on the run to MI7. She was also awfully well sailed!
At MI7 we were third boat for boat, of the Santa Cruz boats with one Monterey boat sneaking in just ahead of us. As we rounded and headed up to the finish line, Matthias did a terrific job of rounding up the big S2 and getting it down. That's a lot of sail for one man to coral.
We ended up in third boat-for-boat 29 minutes behind Elixer, and ninth on handicap fourteen minutes behind Stretch. Stretch got a well deserved victory on handicap, they sailed beautifully. These were clearly not our conditions, despite the best efforts of the Code Zero to overcome our normally poor light wind performance. My crumby start didn't help either accounting for at least five minutes of the deficit.
The crew made me look good, as usual. Thanks go to Tom Lewin and Matthias Kennerknecht who did all the "real work" while I lounged around somewhere near the back of the boat. It turns out that three or four is more than enough crew for a light wind race, something that we'll keep in mind in the future.
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