The forecast was not that exciting… 100% rain! And for once, the weathermen were right!
I loaded all the rain gear and long underwear that I could find, extra hats, gloves, socks, mits (!) whatever could keep me warm… I did not want to waste any fun! Left the house at 7am after a long but restless night of sleep.

Salsa Verde was patiently waiting on me at the dock. I loaded all my gear, put on the first set of clothing, started the engine and left the dock under a light morning rain and consistent NE winds. Ted was there to welcome me on the other side of the river. Thanks for the docking help! That would have been tricky…

Ten boats showed up, quite surprising for such weather. Also surprising to see very few boats from last year. We delayed the start by half an hour to allow two boats to show up… We were positively thinking “hey, maybe the rain will stop by then!?” No luck. In the meantime though, my cheering crew showed up! Matt and Andrea had convinced a few crazy Salsa Verdians to come sail with them and watch the race. Well, those people are hard core, let me tell you! Eric, Jon, Nicole, Ulf, Matt and Andrea sailed across the river just to dock and chill around all day with the race committee, screaming green and spicy encouragements to me as I was crossing the start and finish line! What a crew…

So the race…
After listening to Ted’s wise advice “better safe than sorry”, I hoisted the #3 and prepared the #1 on deck… just in case. This year I was lazy, I hoisted the main sail at the dock with Allan’s help to save some time and energy. Which was a good thing… you wil read later.
So there I am just before the start with my main and #3 up. I can tack easily and have a better range of visibility. After all, the only rule in that race is: DON’T HIT ANOTHER BOAT! So yes Ted, good idea!

This year, everyone had to do a starboard start since the committee “boat” was on the dock and there is no water nearby! Too bad for me, I could have used a little practice with port starts (Just kidding Rosanne ) Anyway, I somehow managed to hear the start sequence signal and timed myself a decent start; 4th boat on the line (something like that?) because I let the trimaran some room, too scared to hit him! Hey, 30 feet is a long way for a far sighted person like me with rain in her glasses…

And then I hear “GO AVOCADO WARRIOR” from the dock…

(video from Nicole)

So I’m on my way upwind, well in the pack, but I see Skimmer, the other J30 with his #1… and boy, he’s gaining on me slowly. I can’t let that happen! I gotta hoist my #1 too, it’s not that windy afterall. Well one thing I did not do ahead of time (other than not setting up the camera, sorry guys!) is I did not have another set of sheets. So I secured the helm (well, kinda) and ran forward to remove the lazy sheet from the jib and tie it to the gennoa on the port side. To explain the details: I’m on port tack and the genoa is ready to go in the port track of the foil, on the next tack! I think I’ve got it all figured out, I’m gonna tack really slowly so I can hoist while tacking and as soon as my genny will be up, I will take the sheet and just let the jib sit into the genny (because it does not have a port sheet anymore) and then as soon as I’m stabilized and up to speed, I wil take the jib down and tie the other sheet to the genny. Right? Makes sense no? Well… It did not exactly go like that. Some kind of problem occured when the genny was only half way up. Even if I had saved all the energy I could, I did not have the muscles to overcome the friction that the two sails were having on one another while flapping all over the deck and in iron! Actually, I’m not even sure why it did not want to go up anymore. I pulled and screamed and gave it all I had, I really felt like I was missing a mastman! So I looked at my speed: 1.2kt and I thought “SHIT!” I have to keep going! So I ran forward again and took the genny down, untied the stupid single sheet I had on and retied to the jib so I could finally finish that neverending tack. It felt like an hour had gone by, probably because I was more tired than I had ever been after 1 hour of bicycling or swimming. Anyway, enough complaining, the race continued, and now Skimmer was ahead of me. Not by much, luckily!

The next exciting moment was soon to happen!! When I tacked again on the port tack, surprise surprise… my genny was all over the deck and was catching like an umbrella in the wind! “SHIT” again, I ran forward to try to minimize the mess. I pushed and pulled peices of sails under the only sail tie I had, but everytime I tried, it would rather pop in the wind than stay calm on the deck… of course! And needless to say that time is precious with a bungee cord type auto-pilot! So I gave up again and continued on torwards the upwind mark. Just in time to dodge the trimaran who called me a “starboard”… that was a close one… if my heart was not pumping fast enough by then, this would do it!

Windward mark. I rounded just in front of the trimaran, maybe 30 seconds after Skimmer. Now I’m straight downwind… with my #3… This can’t be. Let’s give this #1 another chance to behave. Luckily, I hoisted the #1 ALL THE WAY UP this time, with a little winching help at the end. I had always wanted to do this: Keep both front sails wing on wing. I thought about it last year on the last leg behind Whisper. If I had had my #1 ready to hoist, that might have been enough to win the race, but I did not have it last time. NOW! YESSS!!!!! I did it I kept them both flying while Skimmer was desperately trying to get some speed off his funky spinnaker, hoisted by the clew! Ha! Back to his roots, that’s the way it’s supposed to be hoisted down there in S. Africa! I was happy to see that other people do this kind of thing sometimes!!! Thanks Tommy!!!
Ok, but the rise of happiness did not end here. It got even better when Tommy almost rounded marker 11 while taking down the dizzy spinnaker. It was my turn to say “bye bye” and take off! At this point we had our own little race, all the faster boats were gone, and Benedek was chasing them with his, properly set-up asymetrical spi… And we were watching from behind, as far as the rain would allow us to see.

At some point later I had to drop the #3 and jibe the #1 to reach a little more towards the last mark, 13. Before jibing G13 the winds pick-up a little, and I knew in the last upwind leg I would be overpowered with that sail, but it was short enough to handle. I had the main out, the backstay all the way in and let the genny drive me back to the finish line. Keeping an eye behind on Skimmer… I finished 4th in my class, 2.5 minute in front of Skimmer, which is my little personnal victory

Then I hear screaming again from the dock “WOOHOO GUACAMOLE!!!”

Benedek finished 1st overall after an awesome race, shaving everybody with his asym! Good job!!!!! Clic to see results

The rest of the day was awesome, like it is so well said in the movie “in the wild”: happiness is only real when shared. Thank you guys for being there, rain or shine! 2009 would not have been the same without you all!
Mag