Penultimate Shields 9/24/25

As I sit down this rainy Thursday morning to write a recap from last Wednesday night's Shields race, I am swept by nostalgia. Enhanced by the mournful Joni Mitchell playing in my ear, I cant help but feel a little sad that we only have one more Wednesday night race left, and the significance of this is the reality that we are in the December of 2025's summer. This time of year is always a bit of an emotional shift for me, going from the full heat and busy swing and joy of summer into shorter, colder, grayer days which are usually paired with confusion over what I'm doing with my life. And at the beginning of October every year I turn a year older, adding numerical emphasis to the seasonal ennui.

But! Let's talk about last night's Shields race. Wind was light and out of the east, following a day of rain; current was lightly flooding, and 26 boats made an appearance on the line. We sailed with four.

The race committee started with an i flag up, and incredibly the first start was clean. We started middle of the line but closer to the boat, and, once we had a lane, tacked out to the stbd side of the course. About a third of the fleet had done this, and most of us single tacked most of the way to Fort Adams before working our way to the windward mark and offset off of Gurnies on Goat Island. We couldn't seem to sail as high as the boats around us on this beat, perpetually sailing lower than the boats around us. Going right did not pay off, and as we rejoined the rest of the fleet before the mark we rounded mid to back third.

Clean set right next to Hope, and we settled in, pointing straight at the gates. Some boats sailed hotter angles, but a strengthening breeze the second half of the downwind rewarded our straight line VMG and we gained back a few boats, including Hope, which had pulled away the first half of the downwind. Feeling we had learned our lesson about the light wind on course right, we rounded the right gate with a clean douse and went back up course left. We had good breeze the whole way, and the current helped lift us slightly. We finished mid-fleet.

It was a lightwind, technical race, lacking in drama and relying on subtlety and being in the patches of wind, seemingly found mainly on the left side of the course, at the right time.