Long Beach to Dana Point Race

On Saturday, September 4th we raced the Long Beach to Dana Point Race hosted by Shoreline Yacht Club, Dana Point Yacht Club and Dana West Yacht Club. Thanks to the crew of Josh Lippett, David Harper, Lesley MacDonald, Victoria Hodge and my darling co-captain Risa K. Scott.

As of this writing we don’t have the final results but I don’t believe that we will place well in our class. We were racing in a class with 5 other boats, and Mille has the lowest rating in the group which theoretically we should have been the fastest boat in our class.

We had a decent start with winds better than had been predicted. All of the weather predictions had the winds to be around 6 knots at the start and building to 12-15 mid-day. Boy did they blow that forecast. We had 10+ knots of wind at the start and they continued to build from there. We were about 30-45 second late to the start line but not in a bad position.

The first leg had us beating up wind to Angel’s Gate at the mouth of Los Angeles Harbor. As noted above, the winds were about 10 knots or so at the start and they quickly started building. We were over-powered with the #1 genoa up and made the decision to change to the #2 when it was clear that the winds were not going to drop. We tried to change to the #2 on a tack but got stuck between the breakwater and a barge being pushed by a tug and couldn’t get enough time on a single tack to make the change. To make matters worse, during all of the turmoil, we got the #2 jib started up the headstay but the body of the sail slid under the lifeline and filled with water. It ripped part of the luff tape loose so it was (and is) out of commission until it makes another trip to the North loft in Costa Mesa. David Harper did a great job of helming the boat in these less than perfect conditions until we could get out of Angel’s Gate and started more on a beam reach.

The second leg was a beam reach out to a pair of oil platforms about 20 miles offshore from Laguna Beach. Although a beam reach is a fast and comfortable point of sail (compared to the close hauled beating we took on the first leg) it is mostly a drag race to the next mark.

The third and final leg was more downwind so we decided to let the spinnaker out of the bag. With David and Risa on the foredeck we got a great set and were off and running. We quickly passed two boats that had passed us near the end of the previous leg and were making time on several boats ahead of us. We had a great run under the chute but due to the direction of the wind it was taking us deeper to the south than we needed to go. We didn’t handle the gybe as well as the set and managed to wrap the spinnaker around the headstay. Josh and David did a great job getting it free without any damage to boat, sail or crew. We then carried the chute all the way to the finish with only three minor challenges. First we got headed about a quarter mile from the finish and after recovering from that we had back to back gusts that rounded the boat up even though I was doing everything with the helm I could and the trimmers had both the main and chute eased as much as possible. Holding on through a gust like that is about all you can do when the boat is determined to round up. After getting through all of that we headed for the finish where a committee boat was supposed to be stationed. All there was was a power boat with no flags on it under power and two inflatable runabouts milling around. After about 7 hours of racing it would have been nice to have the race committee to acknowledge our finish!

After finishing we went to drop the chute but opted not to raise the jib to blanket it as it was still blowing about 18-20 knots. Bad mistake. Without the jib to blanket the spinnaker, it again got wrapped around the headstay but this time managed to wrap the topping lift in also. Again hard work by Josh and David got it unwound from the headstay and into the boat and we headed for our slip and some dinner.

We are now motorsailing the boat back to Long Beach after a well deserved good night’s sleep.

I will update the blog when we get the results of the race.

Next race is the second in the summer half of the Long Beach Harbor Invitational Series.