Pensacola Yacht Club’s Superbowl Regatta was breezy and chilli with winds in the low 20′s and temps in the low 50s. The weather kept the fleet small with ten boats spread between spin and non spin fleets.
I raced with Paul and Rachael Gillette on their Beneteau 36.7 ‘Atlantic Union’. For them, it was another chance to sail with good friends and begin the shake down for the race to Mexico in May.
With the wind right out of the east we started at the mouth of Bayou Chico with a 1.5 mile beat towards the middle of the three-mile bridge. We had a fair start, stayed to the right of the fleet and rounded second behind ‘Kali’ a BH 36 that owes us tons of time, but, just ahead of ‘Finesse’ the Evelyn 32 that was killing us on time.
The next leg was a 2.5 mile jib reach across the bay to Santa Rosa Island to bouy #145. Positions started to settle down to where the ratings should be with ‘Annimal’ the Wilderness 40 blowing by us and ‘Forreunner’ the J/105 catching right up to us and ‘Kali’ stretching out in front. We clearly had out hands full with this race on corrected time at this point, but it got better.
The next leg was a 1.5 mile dead downwind leg running right along the island; always a pretty patch of water on Pensacola Bay. We set the smallest chute and stayed in control nicely. ’Kali’ & ‘Annimal’ were short-handed and didn’t set spinnakers, ‘Forerunner’ had their spinnaker all tangled up. This was all good for us, but ‘Finesse’ set when we did and sailed down the leg with us boat for boat. They were going to be hard to beat.
The leg took us past buoy #20 all the way to #18. ’Kali’ and ’Annimal’ were in the lead and mistakenly rounded the first mark and started upwind with prematurely. We began to second guess ourselves, dropped the spinnaker and just before we followed them off in the wrong direction we realized we were only half way down the leg. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to repack and set the spinnaker so we poled out the jib and finished the leg watching ‘Finesse’ sail by with their spinnaker still set and big smiles on their faces. ‘Kalie’ and ‘Annimal’ figured out the course and decided to follow the fleet to the correct mark. This was an old lesson re-learned. When there’s an argument about where we are going, the GPS is alway right, especially if Rachael was the one who input the data.
Next leg was a beat back up to 145 with everyone still flying blades. ‘Finese’ tacked first to get inshore of us along the island and when we crossed 5 minutes later they were still ahead. They are a slower boat, so we now realized that inshore was favored. Once we got inside of them we opened up quickly. ‘Animmal’ passed us on sheer boat speed but we were still second boat around.
The next last led was an uneventful 2.5 mile jib reach back to the finish. with ‘Forunner’ comming on strong like they always do on jib reaches and ‘Finesse’ holding on better than we cared for.
We ended up first in Class A but third in fleet behind ‘Finnesse’ and ‘Forunner’.
Lessons learned on board ’Atlantic Union’:
1) Put the boat speed impeller in before the start, not half way up the first beat.
2) The boat needs a padeye on the rail for jib reaching with the blade.
3) Trust Rachael & her GPS!
4) Play the right side when beating along Santa Rosa Island on an East breeze.
