Shields 8/6/25

Surprise Starts, or A Night with the Owners, or To Finish with a Song, or Follow the Shifts to Rose Island or Eddy Back to Base. All plausible titles for this morning's early essay about last night's sailing ventures.

All three owners of 245 were out in the Shields last night, and we sailed just the four of us. Generally we sail five, and Chris Arner drives; last night, with Cam Appleton back from the races the roles got switched up a bit. Along with sailing south of the bridge, the personnel changes broke the routine that had started to develop these last few weeks with the regularity of the SW breeze course north of the bridge, and the Connelly brothers on trim. My role as bow was the same, but I found I was more quiet again pre-start, a harkening to my early days with the team as I subconsciously adjusted to the new dynamic.

The wind was NE and shifty, the course short and compact, squished between the Jamestown mooring field and Rose Island. The end of the flood was still sweeping north center channel, but the edges had already started to shift.

We had one general recall and then back into sequence, my perception of everything feeling very chaotic and close, my brain processing everything a slow step behind (lucky I wasn't driving!) At thirty seconds to the second start the shackle on our port jib car blew open, and myself and Bryan Berdy took our heads out of the bigger game to hurriedly put it back on. Back on the rail for the line, and then once over I hopped back down to tape the shackle for added security. Head down, intent on taping, I heard something said over the radio and then one of the guys say "we'll come down for you," and felt the boat turn, and my brain wrote it off as another general. Finished my tape job, hopped back on the rail and looked around... and was very confused to find us racing, seemingly behind most of the fleet. I was genuinely bewildered for a second-- it was embarrassingly disorienting. We had a personal recall, and I had no idea.

As I shook off the fugue we stayed right/center and made good at the top mark coming in on stbd with speed, blowing above boats who were pinching and piling up. A good bearaway set and then we settled down and looked at the course. The lead boats had all gone right a fair ways towards Jamestown, and then we saw them gybe and scuttle off towards the gates, seemingly having found the Jamestown eddy. Our way was too blocked by boats to get that far right, but we did eventually feel the boat pick up as we gybed and shifted out of the flooding current. We were initially going to go for the favored right gate, but on approach it became an epicenter for wild gesticulations and aggrieved shouting, and we adjusted and rounded the less popular left gate instead. Staying right as we went back up the course was, I think, a decent choice, as the whole initial port tack out right we were being lifted in the strongest current. The right side was generally less dense as well, with comfortable lanes.

Another windward rounding followed by another downwind leg, the chessboard of the course set up much the same as on the previous downwind except we had moved up on our position. Another left gate rounding and then a center course beat up to the finish, crossing somewhere around 11th. From the first upwind rounding we had managed to pass about a third of the fleet.

I drove the boat back to the mooring, finding it very different from driving my usual 90' schooner-- tillers; travelers; delicacy! The guys cheerfully ridiculed me, but I got them back when we stopped by a guitar-laden friend's boat on the dinghy ride back to Ida and, when told I had to sing an initiation song, readily rose to the challenge and belted out Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer, replete with cymbal crashes, to hearty applause.