Van Isle – Day 9: Line honours!
This was the big one. The longest leg at 138nm from Winter Harbour to Ucluelet, all on the outside of Vancouver Island, known for dishing out some challenging conditions. This year was no exception. While we all hope for a sleigh ride down the coast on this one, mother nature had other ideas. The morning greeted the fleet with rain and a stiff southerly breeze. The models said we’d be beating upwind for 100 or so miles before conditions would change, which was fine, even if it wasn’t as pleasant.
The first 24 hours were straightforward. We started with the J1, put a reef in after about an hour, switched down to the J3 about 2 hours into the race as we were trading tacks with Zulu and staying ahead of the J/109’s. We ended sailing with a reef and the J3 in 20-25 for awhile, which was surprisingly quick, pointing higher and faster than the competition.
As evening approached, the breeze slowly dropped down more in the 10-15 knot range, so we shook out the reef and switched back to J1, still sailing right with Zulu. With the rain and low visibility we couldn’t see any other boats, so our strategy was to stay within sight of Zulu so that we would have a benchmark throughout the night to gauge our speed. That worked out really well. We sailed one tack for about 15nm about 200 yards from Zulu with no change in bearing or distance. Pretty amazing given the conditions.
It was still raining when night came, and we switched gears to keeping the crew comfortable and able to perform well. The diesel heater was cranked down below, and we all took shelter behind the dodger from the pouring rain. Kudos to those that spent the night taking the full onslaught of the rain and cold. We laugh about our dodger, and we know our competitors talk about it too, but nobody was laughing this night as we huddled underneath, staring intently at our instruments to keep the boat moving as well as possible.
Note the excellent sleeping accommodations, on the floor, under a sail, in full foulie gear.
The inevitable transition came early Monday morning. As the sun came up we could see all of the Div 0 and Div 1 boats moving slowly, not far in front of us. Then, we had a bit of misfortune that turned to fortune onboard Shearwater, too. We had been keeping pace with Zulu all night and suddenly within an hour, we lost about a ¼ mile before feeling a small bit of kelp shaking the rudder. A quick backdown cleared the rudder, and we were back up to speed, but no longer in close contact with Zulu, so in the light stuff, we started sailing different plans and separated significantly. That ended up being a good thing as our route east and then south turned out to be a touch quicker than their route south and then east. Around 5pm, we reconnected with a tidy ¼ mile lead and only 20nm left to race. Zulu made it fun, gybing 6 times within 30 minutes for no apparent reason other to try and get us to mess up. We happily matched their gybes and noted that our lead wasn’t changing at all. Yes!
The last hour ended up being the best sailing of the race so far. Bright sunshine, 15-20 knots, big A2 spinnaker flying and boat speeds over 8 knots as we bore down on the finish line. It was a long, challenging, at times very uncomfortable leg, so we were very happy to cross the line first in our division.
The results came through with us 3rd on corrected time. Happily Fortuna, a C&C 115, took the division win, and we snuggled in between two of the J/109’s. Only two legs remain. We remain comfortably in 3rd, looking for opportunities to gain on the two J/109’s in front of us. Game on!
Great writing, thanks. Keep sailing hard it will pay off!
Great job Team Shearwater! I’m beginning to not like that “corrected time” system. I’m old school and when you cross the line first, you win. Simple as that. Oh, nobody said it has to be fair!! Anyway, congrats so far, keep up the tempo and you’ll do well.
Love,
Dad/Dave