Home	Vallejo Race 5/6-7/23

Five Islanders signed up for this years GVR including Windwalker, Kapai, Luna Sea Bella Luna and Renaissance. Renaissance did not compete however and may have been discouraged by the forecast for rain which never showed up. We had hoped to have everyone start with the spinnaker group and sort out non spinnaker finish times etc. after the fact. In the end, Windwalker, Luna Sea and Kapai were in the spinnaker division, Bella Luna in Non Spinn and Renaissance in the cruising division. I hope we can get this organized better next time.

This was the best Vallejo race up I have ever done with steady winds of around 15 and a flood all the way to the finish. Windwalker and Luna Sea flew spinnakers and finished 1:42 minutes apart with Windwalker taking the honors. Kapai in the same start went non spinnaker and finished nearly one hour behind. Those spinny's sure help. Bella Luna started 10 minutes later in the Romeo division and had the course to herself. However, when we used her corrected time to slot her in with the fleet, she beat us by an almost identical 1:40!

The best thing about the race is the raft up at Vallejo YC and Dan Knox and Myphi's hospitality on Luna Sea including free champagne for all Islanders that signed up. Visitors to Luna Sea included the crews of Kapai, Bella Luna, Windwalker and surprise visitors Mike Patterson and Liz Munnelly and Kerry and Jennifer Scott arriving by land yacht.

The Sunday start was in reverse order with light and shifty winds in the estuary. Luna Sea took an early lead over Windwalker and was in the lead at the first mark. They were quite a distance off from me but I believe Windwalker passed Luna Sea over in the shallow water seeking current relief off Pt. Pinole. It looked like a great duel until I lost sight of them. The finish line was a bit obscure off Richmond YC and a number of boats went inside the wrong buoy including Luna Sea so they scored a DNF. Kapai and Bella Luna were in different starts but had some fun playing tag on the way to Richmond. When the dust settled and the elapsed times compared, we beat Bella Luna by 28 seconds! What great racing. Sure great to have Bob De Prato on the race course! Lot's of fun.

Here is the link to the results and the Season's Standing on our web page: http://islander36.org/results23.htm

See pics below.

Next race June 10th in the Sunny South of Bay Bridge Series.

Cheers Rick Egan Commodore - Kapai

The Great Vallejo Race 2023 - Dan Knox - Luna Sea

OK we have had Luna Sea for almost 20 years, and I believe we have missed one Great Vallejo Race. A few years ago, my nephew got married in Western New York. I asked the bride six months before the wedding if she could change the date. The mother of the groom called me a few hours later and told me I was nuts. I even sailed up to the Vallejo on the date the race was scheduled during the pandemic. I was a fleet of one. I asked the Commodore if I could spend the night and of course they said yes, (they always say yes) but I wasn't supposed to tell anyone. Needless to say, this is my favorite regatta of the year. If you own a sailboat and don't do this regatta, I will never understand why you have a boat.

Here's pretty much how things went down this year.

On Friday I spent the day getting Luna Sea ready for the race. I got her rigged and tried to take off a few things. Luna Sea is a chubby boat to begin with and all the extra stuff we have onboard doesn't help. Our neighbor, Penny, let's us stow a few things on her big powerboat, so we were going to take advantage of that. We moved enough stuff to raise the water line about an inch and a half. I once tried to calculate how much weight you need to raise the waterline one inch on an I36 and came up with 1000 pounds. I have no idea what the correct answer is, but this is probably close. Our start time on Saturday was about 11:30 so I wanted to leave the dock by 9:30. It would take us more than an hour to get to the start and I wanted to get there early to check things out. The plan was the crew would get to the boat by 8:30 to double check things. Myphi and I would get there by 7:30 just to make sure.

The crew was all on time and helped move a few more things to Penny's boat. We decided to take two kites, a half ounce and a one and a half ounce. The wind was very light and from the south as we left Marina Village. We motored all the way to the start line and was happy to see boats actually starting. The line was very biased with the pin end much closer to the windward mark but with a bit more of a shift to the west boats starting at the committee boat end they might be able to make it without tacking!

Our start was combined with another and included some speedy boats. Gordie and Joan would be tuff to beat and of course Windwalker beats us all the time. Another boat Warwoop also is well sailed and would be tuff to beat. So, there were about 10 boats in our start, and we had to sail well to finish in the middle of the pack. Anyway, with ten minutes before of our start most of the go fast guys we at the pin end taking advantage of the shorter course but the wind was moving to the west. We decided to start in the middle of the line where we would be all by ourselves. It was a long starting line, so our plan was to get to the committee boat about 30 seconds from the start run the line and start in the middle at full speed in clear wind. When the boats starting at the pin end hopefully got to the lay line and tacked, we would have starboard advantage so they would either have to overstay the lay line or duck us. We got a good start and things went as planned. Gordie and Windwalker overstayed the lay line by about four boat lengths, so as not to have to duck us, and we went a couple of length passed past the lay line and tacked inside of them in good position. But we made a bad tack and they both rolled over the top of us, and we had to pinch to round the mark even though we went two boat lengths past the lay line. Nuts. But we rounded in third so were happy with that.

After rounding the mark, we sailed a close reach toward the Richmond Bridge. Gordie fell way off to sail a beam reach, with his kite up, but Windwaker sailed a direct course taking advantage what current there was. We pretty much followed Windwalker. We decided to switch to a secondary headsail sheet running to toe rail to get a better sheeting angle. This proved to work well, and we cross sheeted the line to the primary winch on the windward side. Our lead over the boats behind us increased but we came no closer to Windwalker and Gordie just zoomed away. After passing Red Rock and The Richmond Bridge we put up the half ounce kite in almost perfect conditions. This kite we try to use in less than ten knots of apparent wind. Using it in more than that and you take a chance of it blowing up. Which is always fun but a bit costly. ?? The flood was not as strong as predicted and once we got the kite up, we did gain a bit on Windwalker for as long as the wind stayed light. But as the wind got more moderate we started to worry. As the wind got up to the mid-teens and we were going a steady eight knots, though the water, and sometimes more, and the apparent wind stayed close to ten. Windwalker remained a couple of minutes in front of us, which is a big lead, and as the wind continued to build all our opinions looked bad. We would fall back even more if we changed to the heavier kite so we just stayed with our half ounce and tried to sail deeper and squared up the pole and sail DDW to keep the apartment wind as low a possible. We saw of couple of gusts where the true wind speed hit 20 but only for short times and it wasn't too bad. Because we were sailing DDW we had to do three jibes and for the most part they went well.

As we got close to the Napa River, we ran into a bit of a problem getting the headsail out, but it wasn't bad and Windwalker had bit of a problem also. (That rarely happens!) We gained a bit. The final leg up the river was fun as the wind moved forward and was a bit patchy, but it was pretty much a parade. Gordie was so far ahead we didn't even see when he finished. Windwalker was still about two minutes ahead and that was that. We were third in our start and second among the Islanders. The crew was happy with that so I was too! We got down the sails put the fenders out and waited our turn to head into the Vallejo Yacht Club. There were less boats than usual, but we got in and tied up and started the party. We had 13 bottles of champagne on ice and made two gallons of John Melton margaritas. Plus, Myphi put out a nice spread and no one went hungry and soon we had a popular boat. We were lucky enough to tie up next to Windwalker and the crew of Windwalker I'm happy to report helped make for a very good party, especially Donna! Pretty soon Ruby and Kim Dish show up and then the crew of Kapai and Bella Luna. Rob of course was a big hit with all the girls! What is it with that guy!!!

As the band started, we went up to see Barbara and Noble and were saddened to learn they had sold their boat. Nuts. Just nuts. It sold in one day. One day! Donna and Myphi and scores of people danced the night away while I tried my best just to not look too foolish. After the dancing we headed back to Luna Sea and spent the night with six on board. We moved the sails onto the foredeck and found everyone a berth. On Sunday wake up it was a bit overcast and at least two boats stuck in the mud. Jim Quanci's (former Commadore of the SSS) Green Buffalo at the south end of the YC basin, and the smartest guy there, Nobel Laureate John Clauser's and BODACIOUS+ sterned tied at the new dock in front of the YC at the north end. The fact that Professor Clauser can go aground gives us all hope. The RC had delayed the start an hour later than usual to get almost everyone out on time. The wind was very light and patchy, and we would be starting with the same ten boats. There was a bit of colorful language at our start as we were stuck between Joanie and Windwalker and Joanie kept taking us up. Three times I told them we had no were to go and the fourth time they luffed us they hit our sail. They yelled protest and I replied I told you three times we had nowhere to go. You can't just run us into another boat you need to give everyone time to respond. They yelled protest again and I told them to put up their protest flag within one minute because at the protest I didn't want to win on a technicality. They then fell off and everything returned to normal. There was no protest by anyone. It's good to know the rules.

We got a nice start mostly thanks to our half ounce kite which works wonders in 5 knots of wind. And I really hope someone got a picture of us in front of Windwalker. If no one got a picture, I don't think anyone will believe it. I know I wouldn't. By the time we got out of the Napa River we passed Bella Luna and waved to them. I think they got a very memorable picture of us, but you will need to ask them about that. Even though Bob got confused about what class to sign up for we all appreciate him showing up. If we can get five or six boats to sign up, and show up, we can get our own start and get our one design status reinstated. This helps increase the value of all boats, not just the ones racing. Thank you, Bob!

We stayed ahead of Windwalker for about half the race but then they once again zoomed by. At least we were ahead for a while. The race back to RYC was up wind the whole way and even though the flood tide was not as big as predicted, there were a lot of tacks and then some more tacks. It's not easy to short tack an Islander 36 with an overlapping 135. Many thanks of our crew. We had some very good tacks and only a couple of poor ones. Well done crew.

On the way back we saw Steve Zevanov sailing on the Newport 30 Zeehound and Cindy and Jim Fair on Jim's Merit 25 Chesapeake. These are two well sailed boats with experienced crew. Always fun to see some happy faces on well sailed boats.

As we approached the finish Gordie, Joan and Windwalker were way ahead of us and we could not see anyone else in our start behind us so we would be second in the Islander fleet and forth in our start. But then we saw Steve put up a kite and Zeehound started to catch us. Nuts. So, we put up a kite to stay ahead. It is racing you know. Right ahead of us was an Express 37 without a kite so that was another reason to go for it. Well, we didn't catch the Express 37 and sure enough Steve zoomed by us at the finish. No horn for the Express 37, a horn for Steve and no horn for us. The next day we learned we didn't sail though the correct finish line. It was about 25 yards to port. So, in the end Luna Sea gets yet another last place in the Islander fleet. Some things never change. I guess that's a good thing.

Here is a link to Luna Sea's video of each race:
Saturday race 1 ot 10.
Sunday race 1 of 10.

Kapai	Happy Bob	Happy Crew	Happy Dan	Liz and Mike
Picture taking	Luna Sea Leads