Does the race committee get paid by the hour?

At 8:01:51pm as we finished yesterday’s Wednesday evening race we asked Carl, on the race committee boat, whether he is being paid by the hour. 30 minutes earlier as we watched many of the race boats heading back to the marina we decided that we were getting the most enjoyment from these events: why are they in such a rush to finish? As you can tell we got value for money and finished last. But it was a great evening.

This week winds were projected to be ~4kts but thankfully we had a good sea breeze of 10-15kts at the start of the race. We had a crew of four – Joe, John, Yolande and myself and we quickly got into the groove.  We have now sorted out how to do a start. Well, if there were no other boats. Timing is all sorted out. However, I have to remember that there are other boats, not just to avoid but to contend with at the start line. Again we were pushed up at the start which slowed us. 

Our course was a simple two laps around a windward-leeward course starting near the airport and heading to a mark near the Courageous sailing pier. We get simple pleasures out of the race. We held a long starboard tack and had several boats have to dip behind us. As we prepared to round the windward mark Joe was out on deck in charge of the spinnaker. We did a nice turn around the mark, jibed and raised the spinnaker as we furled the genoa. It worked! I looked around seeing other boats that had rounded the mark way before us still having problems with their spinnaker. We got something right. As we headed down to the leeward mark we were catching up on another boat – Uncle Joe. We took down the spinnaker meters from the mark, unfurled the genoa, rounded the mark and over took Uncle Joe! Now the reason is that they were having spinnaker and headsail issues. But still it felt like a slight victory.

On the second leg we were sailing for a while neck and neck with Uncle Joe but then they gradually pulled away. Pure boat speed wins at this point. Our second windward leg was really effective. The timing of the crew was on, and I had been tracking our course and you could see the second leg was much better. We rounded the windward mark, spinnaker up, genoa in – poof and Prairie Gold pulled away.

We finished well and then we couldn’t get the spinnaker down as it was caught in some unknown manner near the top of the mast. I threatened Joe that he would need to head up the mast when back in the marina – where is Rudy when we need him. But we decided to jibe the spinnaker and see if this helped. Problem solved.

We motored back to the marina and I showed Joe how to attach the fenders so that they won’t fall in the water. Splash – I dropped the fender. Time to practice a man-over-board drill. At least we left the fun stuff until the race was over.

We still don’t know if Carl gets paid by the hour!

NEWS UPDATE
I just identified how to make gains in these races - compete and finish.
The Spring series is over and the results are in - we came in 6th out of 10.