Shields 7/30/25

Highlights from last night included sailing around pre-sequence with the Game of Thrones theme song playing on repeat, and blasting it as we sailed past the race committee to, devastatingly, zero effect. I think we got a half smile from one of them.

And, epic as the music felt, it neither worked to crack a full smile from the race committee nor to lead us to any sort of thrilling victory. After last week's third place we were jonesing for a performance repeat, but it was not to be.

The sea breeze was already lightening by the time we got to the course, and early on we noticed the shift mid-course from the warmer righty that dominated the right side of the course and the cooler sea breeze coming down the middle, which had more south in it. We figured the right side would be light, though, so our rough game plan was to stay center course, tacking back to the right every time we felt that cool header on the left.

We had decent starts on both general recalls, way over at the pin end when it was pin favored, and then moving towards the boat after they moved the pin back. Our third start (the one that went) was, of course, the worst, where we were early at the boat and, with what felt like half the fleet, full stalled with everything luffing for a good thirty seconds before the gun.

We stayed decently right on the first beat, and lost immense ground to 156, who we had started next to and who stayed more center-course. We also tacked short onto lay for the windward mark, and our two necessitated mini tacks amid the chaos cost us further. We immediately gybed out after the offset, and the downwind and leeward rounding (left gate) were smooth and unremarkable.

Seeing that the boats who had stayed center on the first beat had made out well, we determinedly stuck to the center of the course on the second beat. Half way up it the race committee announced they were shortening the course for imminent weather, and we sneered unhappily at the looming clouds that had popped up over Jamestown, cutting out two legs of the course in which we surly would have made excellent gains, and powering all of the boats who had gone right with an enviable west wind. We watched, from afar and unbelieving, as 33 fairly streaked up the right side of the course to the finish. As we approached the finish we were still in the second half of the fleet, and lost another place or two when the boat under us tacked onto stbd, forcing us to tack. When we screamed at a bearing down Meander that we were being forced to tack and needed water, they blithely ignored us until past the last second, leaving us pissed off and pointed into the wind to avoid a collision two obnoxious boat lengths from the finish.

Needless to say, the clouds dissipated and it never rained.

My gains for the evening were a detailed discussion on the dinghy ride back about feeling the fading sea breeze give way to the westerly gradient in Potter's Cove, the "Tollbooth Gradient," as we were calling it.