Race: Oceanside to Mission Bay and Back

This was our first coastal race since the windless 2014 border Run. On the way down we checked out the high frequency radar overlay and saw the chance to jump on a decent current eddy swirling through La Jolla and wrapping around to Mission Bay.

There were nine boats in the fleet, several of them slower cruisers and three other of our normal Oceanside "A class" competitors. We hoped to do well as Kraken has typicially proven fast in a straight line, our maneuvers letting us down as we learn.

In this case we set off on a reach and it seemed the other fast boats were doing better than us so we followed plan A and dropped deep into the bay under spinnaker. Early on we bit some kelp but a little work with the flosser saw a decent lump come off and boat speeds seemed to come back up to reasonable. As we came back out from our deep course and rejoined the fleet it became apparent that we hadn't gained much, in fact we were significantly behind the fast boats, in fact.... we were being passed by the slower boats... dang.

Gopro on boat pole an under boat. Big strand of kelp. We tried to floss some more, nothing came off (as you can see in the video below the kelp was halfway up the keel). We tried to pull the kelp down by attaching a weight (part of the anchor) to a line and pulling it down but water resistance on the line kept it up at the top of the kelp. The slow boats were still passing us. Eventually we dropped the spinnaker and backed down.

Damn.

Once clean we managed to pass the slow boats but in a dropping breeze and now back on the same track as the other fast boats we didn't make much ground on them. No idea if the course we took worked!

On the route back everyone took a pretty conservative line out of Mission Bay to avoid the nearshore kelp beds. This also took us high into that same eddy and gave a better current profile, though in practice the current had changed, the eddy gone and it was on the nose the whole way back.

Prima quickly stretched away and Shaman quickly overtook us. Disappointing. We shifted the jib lead outboard and started to maintain position against Prima and Shaman. Once we got Spinnakers up Shamen stretched away, Pole Dancer went high and Prima maintained their lead. We overtook everyone else and rolled in fourth.

LESSONS!

1) Move jib lead outboard faster! I made a little line and shackle designed for this that should make it easier.
2) Check for kelp with gopro if in ANY doubt.