9July07
N 33 degr 25.9 min
W 118 degr 35 min
Yacht Psyche.

We are off. A very nice sail to the west end of Catalina.

We laid a big egg at the start. Blanketed by a 70 foot old school
yawl, no wind 30 secs to the start gun. For those of you unfamiliar
with race starts, the race committee throws an anchor down for two
buoys, and then shoots a gun. 10 minutes later, the start is on. You
must be on the mainland side of the line that lies between the two
buoys (the starting line),until just before the second gun. Then you
may sail through. Of course there is a crazy amount of jostling and
maneuvering just before the start, everybody wants to be just barely
behind the line and moving fast when the start gun fires. There is
usually a favored end of the line that is closer to where you want to
go. Lots of boats go for that. The favored end this time was the
starboard end, and we tried to go there for the start, but a big giant
yawl, Alsomar, launched in 1934, was just sitting there stopped, with
all her sails up. Her big sails blanketed our little ones to the
point that we too, stopped.

Aarrgghh, say we. Time to tack, mateys. So over we went, sailed
parallel to the line till we saw a clearing and headed for the line
again. This time it went fine, but we were way behind a lot of boats.

My dad calls this "laying an egg." It is bad to lay an egg at the
start for two reasons. Number one, you are almost dead last. Number
two, sailing past 27 boats is almost impossible, inasmuch as they
block the wind and make things difficult.

Recognizing the latter issue, we opted to come about and head up the
coast toward Marineland. Marineland used to be a cool version of Sea
World in San Diego. It had walruses and white-sided dolphins, but it
is dead, now.

So we sailed toward Marineland's ghost for about 30 min and then
tacked back to starboard tack (wind coming over the right side) and
headed for Catalina.

Now, if you recall, I've been whining about our expected light winds
for several days now, but damned if we didn't have a lovely sail out
to Catalina. The prevailing westerly wind came up, perhaps a bit more
on the Marineland side of the course, and we came into Catalina well
ahead of one of the two other Cal 40s, and just a few boatlengths
ahead of the other. The former Cal 40 is California Girl. The latter
is our old nemesis from 2005, Far Far.

We stayed ahead of Far Far in a lovely tacking duel up the north side
of Catalina from Arrow Point to the west end. We made good tacks and
so did Far Far. We beat her to the West end, a symbolic victory.

Within a half hour of passing the West end of Catalina, Far Far had
the temerity to sail to one side of us, not more than 1/2 mile away
and passed us!

Well, not to be outdone, we've now headed to the left of Far Far, and
seem to be passing her!

There are some weird winds out here.

But, guess what, we have come double the distance in the same amount
of time as in 2005. We are ghosting along with 3-10 knots of wind,
but the sea is smooth and we are averaging 3-5 knots boat speed.

So life is good, we are going where we want to go, Far Far in our
sights. This keeps us on our toes. Racing again.

Charlie says. It's all about momentum. If you lose it, you lose 6 or
seven boat lengths, and your screwed.

Recall the early blog on the Catalina Island race. That is where we ended up.