Tales From the Can — SSS Corinthian: The Exquisite Torture Sandwich

Having gone the wrong way in January’s SSS Three Bridge Fiasco, crew Rachel Porter and I were hell bound to redeem our name in Saturday’s SSS Corinthian Race. After the start was postponed, attempted, postponed, and then went into sequence (to the applause of the racers; one radio input was, “You don’t have to apologize for doing the right thing”), the doublehanded fleets got down to business.

The doublehanded course, S–YRA 17p–YRA 16s–YRA Bob Klein (just west-northwest of Southampton Shoal)–YRA 12s–F, in doable, but sketchy winds of 8 to 12 out of 180 to 210ish. We started with a Murderers’ Row in our division: Gordie Nash, Brendan Meyer, the entire Wylie 30 fleet.  PHRF 123+. A full-moon high tide at max, fittin’ to drop more than seven feet during the race.  Ebb City. Deal with it.

Coming off YRA 7, tricky to get to, with the South Bay emptying toward Red Rock, offered us an interesting option. Go to the Cityfront with the crowd, pushing water in hope of reaching the Promised Land, or port toward the North Tower at 7.5+ knots upwind, in a Cal 20. We tacked a couple of times to prove our theory was working, and proceeded to a layline we thought would fetch us up east of Blackaller. Looked good; we had closed quite nicely with Arcadia and the Wylies.

I looked to our escape plan for the next leg, as it was clear the ebb-ola was in full effect, Bonita beckoning. The spin gear would have to come around for a port-tack grind to Point Blunt. Oops! The wind pooped, and a beat turned to a reach, to a run, to a jibe set and jibe, as we oozed west toward the South Tower. Sailing in place for nearly 15 minutes(!), we bled out our third-leg brilliance, as boats came up under 16, tacked, and took our wind as they passed to weather on port. Ugly stuff.

But, we ground down Tom’s mark, tacked the kite, and pointed to Angel Island. The boats that had passed us largely drifted toward Sausalito, except for Jay McCutchen’s SH Santa Cruz 27 Surf Rat, and Gregory Towers’ up-and-coming Ranger 23 Evenstar. We oozed, and I mean oozed, toward Point Knox, where a new decision awaited. As the oozing progressed, and the SFYC RC boat Victory hove into clear view, we noted that there were no boats near her.

No E27s, who’d started half an hour before us. No Moore 24s. No DH Division A or B speedsters. Nada. They had mostly taken to Blunt. There must have been dragons lurking east of there.

So. We hit the West Garrison, jibed to Point Stuart, jibed again, and did our now-routine “rock climb” up Raccoon Strait, never straying more than 10 yards from Angel Island. Some of our companions tried Point Belvedere, and parked. Surf Rat tried the center route, and parked, as we scooted along the rocks, beaches, and points, working the shifty but consistent puffs coming over the island, punching through the hydraulics west of Ayala Cove to the big bow-wake hydraulics at AI’s north corner.

There, the tableau revealed itself. As in a Ken Burns documentary, where a pan over a still photo makes it seem as if characters are 3D, we crabbed north toward Richmond, and the some 60+ boats pointed forlornly at the Klein buoy seemed frozen in time. Some with kites up, some beating, some coming into the half-mile-long gaggle and sticking in place, like animals in a tar pit.

A few good, or lucky, sailors eked out a rounding; Pete Schoen’s Mooretician, Gordie, Julia Paxton’s Motorcycle Irene, a few others. They mostly headed back west up the Strait. The bulk stayed parked. We vectored in like Jim Lovell rendezvousing with a Gemini capsule, sometimes pointing 45 degrees north of our course, but on the express line to success. We didn’t mind getting gassed by bigs and speedies, as we blasted southwest to and through Raccoon. We even shrugged off my error of jibing too close to Little Harding in the turn to the finish and taking home a little green lipstick.

The moral of the story is, it was a very technical race, and sometimes the usual approaches to a course do not pan out.  Sometimes you fall down a rabbit hole. Sometimes, persistence is the key to a good day. Fifth overall DH, and a Division first, is the proof in the pudding.