In short, it was slow and hot. I also had crew cancellations. We raced with the Admiral and 2 others. In retrospect, sailing with 4 was advantageous due to the light winds.
We were 1st in non-spinnaker, about 1 hour 9 minutes corrected over second place. We had really good upwind performance rounding the Gulfport sea buoy 17th. Not bad since 13 of the boats started 10 minutes before us and 2 that started with us rated faster. One boat rated 3 seconds faster rounded about 3 seconds ahead of us. We had a very close crossing with that boat earlier well down the course but north of Ship Island. I think we just didn't sail the current around the island as well as they did. For any who tracked us during the race and watched a lot of boats sail past us after the sea buoy, we were sailing non-spinnaker. The spin boats all popped chutes at the buoy and took off. We hung with a lot of them well down the course. After the buoy, it was a nice reach for 40 miles to the Mobile sea buoy. The evening was warm but beautiful with a 2/3 moon rising a bit after 11pm. It was hard to remember we were racing and not just out for a pleasant night sail. After the Mobile sea buoy, we had to sail wing on wing for 40+ miles to the finish. I hadn't brought the whisker pole so we poled out the genoa with the spin pole. Since the spin pole is quite a bit shorter than the spin pole and the winds were so light, the genoa wouldn't hold any decent shape. We furled the genoa a bit to improve the shape. Unusual technique but it helped. The winds continued to lighten for the rest of the race. We saw speed through water as low as 1.5 knots for much of the last 40 miles. Fortunately there was a favorable current. Reviewing the tracking data, the lowest was 1.97 with several observations under 2.1 knots for the last 20 miles. It was really HOT! We pretty much had our class tucked away prior after the 17 mile upwind portion but strange things can happen during the night. We could easily see the closest non-pin boat to us because they had really bright running lights. It also helped that they had AIS and left it on. We were able to see if they gained any speed so we'd know they either had gotten fresh breeze or had decided to drop out and motor. :) One last observation. Once we passed the Mobile sea buoy 60 miles down course with 40 to go, we used a cell phone hot spot and a tablet to check the race fleet. That was cool. We could see the fleet and that we were well ahead in our class. I like technology. Now back to cruising. Next weekend, Fourth of July fireworks at Pensacola Beach!! Dennis C. Touche' 35-1 #83 Mandeville, LA
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