Van Isle – Day 2: Boat speed mysteries

The Comox to Campbell River leg began with lots of sun and not a lot of wind. Our start out of Comox was right on time, apparently – except we never heard any of the start sequence, likely because we sat at the pin end (a bell buoy) with it clanging in tune with our boom banging around in the slap.  We managed to get through the start line with the A2 up, though, and after a quick takedown back to the J1, we made our way to two official marks of the course (to keep us off of Cape Lazo). We actually managed to be in pretty good position, staying in the same zip code as the quick Division 0 boats. We marched alongside the shore line, nearly in single file, in a pleasant 5-8 knots that filled in shortly after the start.

The wind here in the summer is fickle though, and we eventually watched the ripples disappear on the water surface.  We had favorable current, though, and focused on pointing the boat in a direction that allowed the sails to kind of work, as we generated our own apparent wind.

All was fine, though, for a while, as we were feeling pretty good about our boat speed and position relative to our fleet.  We had one of the J/109’s close by, but we were able to sail under and around them, so were doing reasonably well.

And then, something happened.  We’re not sure quite what – but something went amiss.  We watched as Mojo (a J/109) put up a Code 0 and sailed lower towards the shore, doing a bit of a great circle around us.  And a while later, we watched as Serendipity (another J/109) nearly caused a sonic boom as they passed below us, approximately 400 yards away. And then we were doing the expected short tacking along the shore as the unfavorable flood (since we were past Middlenatch Island, where the tides converge)…and we were falling further and further behind boats that we shouldn’t have been light speeds faster than us.  Our boat speed was clearly off, but we couldn’t quite tell that what the issue was.  Probably that we had something on the keel or rudder, but it wasn’t super obvious – nothing we could see and no feedback on the helm.  We wondered about the prop, as we know we had an issue trying to get it to feather at the start, and instead of being able to align it with the shaft, it had spun…so we kept it in reverse (likely a most un-hydrodynamic position).

It’s quite possible we may have had a visiting gremlin, too.

We clawed our way towards the short course finish, took the screen shot of our UTC time and positions, and then tried to reset – we had an hour to try to fix our issues and work our way back into the race to the finish.  But, we only had an hour since the day’s time limit was at 1900.  So, we tried.  We had great tacks, we watched the current really closely.  And we watched three more boats sail around us, but on the far side, including two more in our division.  Sigh.

We made the finish, though, and were the last boat in under the time limit. So there’s that!

So a mystery (and a finish) for this leg.  We’re still mulling it all over.

1 comment