Dec. 22, 2021-New Racing Season

wingssail images-judy jensen

Sailing to windward

Richard turned to me with a smile on his face, “It wasn’t much fun sitting there for an hour with no wind but it sure was nice when the wind filled in and we won!”

“Yep.” 

We’d just come in first on the first day of the Banderas Bay Blast, the kick-off race of the season but it wasn’t easy.

Oh yeah, we got a good start but all the smaller or slower boats had already gone before our start was called. So we started behind. 

But we were fast and we immediately started passing them. That was fun. 

 Then the wind died. 

I mean zero wind. Everyone stopped including the one boat still ahead of us, a Gulfstar 50, and several fast boats who were close behind. Whoever got the wind first would win. We tried our lightest spinnaker. So did the Gulfstar. So did a couple of boats behind. Our the ancient ½ oz kite sort of filled. Same with the boats behind, their kites filled slightly, looking like deflated balloons, but nobody moved. 

Boats started to withdraw. There was a parade of boat motoring past, headed for home. 

“It often is flat calm like this for a while then the wind springs up all of a sudden.” I tried to cheer up the crew, and maybe I was reminding the wind gods that we were still out here. 

But it worked! The wind came in; we all got it at the same time and we were off. It was a northerly and that meant it was a beat to the finish; our strong point. We pulled out from the boats behind and closed in on the Gulfstar. They tried to cover us. Finally, we broke out of their wind shadow and passed them from leeward, pointing on them and sailing faster. Soon they were directly behind us. 

wingssail images-judy jensen

Happy Crew

First place was very sweet. 

That was day one of a three day regatta, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. 

After Saturday’s race the following two days looked to be repeats. We would start behind all the boats (except a few which were deemed to be faster than us, but weren’t; they started behind.) and then try to pick them off one by one. On Sunday we did just that. We sailed well and were first by a mile, literally. We’ve sailed that course before and this wasn’t a record but it was close. We finished in one hour and 41 minutes. The best we’ve done was 1 hour and 31 minutes. Comparing the tracks for that day in 2019 and this race we could see what cost us the extra 10 minutes. It was a little less wind and much less of a right hand shift. The Gulfstar was second. 

On Monday the Gulfstar stayed ahead all the way to the finish but we won our class and won overall and that sewed up the regatta: First in class and first overall. 

After that we’ve been racing Beer Can Races and doing well, so the season is off to a good start. 

I give a lot of credit to the crew and a lot to Judy who has taken over the navigation role and she is doing great. Judy needed to move off of running backstays and while she didn’t want the navigator job it was the right move for her and she stepped up. It's more work for her because she still has to do her old role of being crew boss. She's a busy lady but she's handling it well. 

From now on however, the racing gets tougher. 

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz Huancaxtle