Van Isle – Day 5: A quick sail to Port Hardy
We were up early since our start was at 0730 this morning. Apparently, we’re experiencing some of the lowest tides of the month, and Telegraph Cove loses its quaintness when all the boats go aground while tied to the docks. So, we had an early start to get all the boats out on time. We opted for breakfast burritos at a little coffee shop in the town, and they were fantastic. Our shore crew, Marge and Ron, were beating us to loading and unloading, which was amazingly helpful since we also needed to help Surfrider get out of the cove again. We ended up using a fancy swivel maneuver where we backed out of the narrow entrance while pivoting Surfrider’s bow around (they held their stern to the dock) and towing them out in reverse. Anyway, our normal morning routine ended up being a bit more hurried this morning.
When we woke up, there wasn’t much breeze, but by our start, there was about 7 knots behind us. We opted for a more conservative start to avoid the expected jockeying around the RC boat, and we were in reasonably good position when the fleet started, with a clean spinnaker hoist and safely to leeward of the cluster near the RC boat. The entire fleet took off down the 28-mile leg, and our course took us through some passages where rock and island avoidance were pretty important. We also had the benefit of up to 4 knots of favorable current, which was fun to watch on the instruments – there’s nothing quite like ghosting along in light air and going 5+ knots – pretty much lightspeed in those conditions. We ended up pretty close to Zulu, in our class, and to no one’s surprise, we were joined by the 3 J/109’s, which seem to only travel as a little clique. For a time in the middle of the race, just the 5 of us, all in the same division were clustered together in a little pack close to shore, and it was game on.
Today’s excitement was our gybing duel against Zulu (multiple crosses that required avoidance or gybing on top of each other) and some fancy current reading that paid off for a bit. Today’s cussing was caused by a reachy, light air spinnaker leg to the finish where boats above us and closest to the shore did well (i.e., Zulu), while we explored all the wonky wind on our track to the finish. We ended up crossing the line 2nd again, and 3rd on corrected time, but behind two different boats, maintaining our 3rd overall.
They’ve started posting the Overall results with the scores from each leg combined:
Some of us also saw whales today (likely grays). Others of us were told to keep trimming or driving, so missed out on the wildlife opportunity. All of us were stoked to have finished by noon and even more stoked that we have a layday on the schedule here in Port Hardy. We’ve already done a 90 minute hike back and forth to Ron & Marge’s camp to say hello, and now we’re going to go find a pub! It’s blowing 30 knots at the moment (we finished in about 8 knots of breeze), so we’re definitely thinking ahead to the next legs.
And tomorrow, we’re sleeping in.
You guys are having WAY too much fun. Keep up the great sailing and the reports too. And quit getting beat by TP 52’s.