Aug. 16/17 DRAKES BAY RACE

[pogen]

Early Sunday morning. Very large panorama image.

 

[Philpott]

Tortuga at rest near the committee boat early Sunday morning. And two boats rafted up with Starbuck - is that Mr Magoo? Or a blue hull?

 

[BobJ]

This was no race for heavier boats. As we limped out of Drakes Bay Dave Morris called out: "Use your biggest 150!" Ah. Thanks, Dave. I need a light air 150.

I still have that carbon #1 you can use. It would look really sexy on DM and enable you to catch yesterday's 8:02 to the office.

 

[Gamayun]

"Hateful"?! Come on. I was merely 'commenting' on how many times we were passing by that danged channel buoy (again) going 4.9 knots in the wrong direction...

That's a beautiful panoramic image. I could only tell where DURA MATER was from the orange kayak next to us when Randy (TORTUGA) came over to say hello. We had rafted up with Allen (KRISSY). What a nice way to spend the weekend!

 

[Wylieguy]

"ESCAPADE" Rafted up with "NANCY" & "STARBUCK"

"QUOTE=Philpott;9672]Tortuga at rest near the committee boat early Sunday morning. And two boats rafted up with Starbuck - is that Mr Magoo? Or a blue hull?[/QUOTE]


The dark blue hull is Nick Sand's Saber 402 "ESCAPADE" out of Sausalito. Nick was nice enough to allow two smaller boats to raft up for the night.

 

[Philpott]

Early Sunday morning. Very large panorama image.

QUOTE] That is an awesome photo, David. What a good lens, too.

 

[Philpott]

Krissy and Dura Mater rafted up at Drakes Bay Sunday Morning: thanks, Randy Leisure, mobile aquatic photographer

 

[johnkearney]

This was no race for heavier boats.

I have to agree with you on this Jackie. After we got out the gate behind you guys on Saturday morning and the flood had started to bite. The tracks that we were seeing on our GPS for our tacks up to the Bolinas Buoy were super sad to look back on. Maybe if we'd been out a few minutes earlier we could have ridden the ebb out the gate and avoided a little bit more of the flood.

John Kearny on Neptunes Car was incredibly tenacious along the coast returning with that beautiful spinnaker of his. I sure hope he was able to finish.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to finish - we were so hopefully that we could as we were making progress good progress back down towards the Bolinas Buoy doing somewhere between 2 and 4 kts after we got our spinnaker flying a few minutes after the start. We were using it as somewhere between a reaching spinnaker and a Code 0 and it seemed to be working pretty well. Unfortunately the light winds that we'd been using in the morning totally disappeared around 1:30, so we bobbed around and ate some lunch for over 30 minutes before retiring from the race.

 

[Gamayun]

Jackie, here's an article about the Velella that were all over the water going to Drake's Bay and have been on the beaches for a couple of weeks:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Beachings-of-exotic-blue-velella-tied-to-wind-5661124.php

 

[pogen]

Interestingly, velella (a.k.a. by-the-wind-sailors) are born as either on port or starboard tack, and spend their whole adult lives that way.

Within the species of Velella, the offspring show polymorphism in the orientation of their sails. A portion of the progeny have sails located from left to right away from the parent, and others have the sail from right to left. Both forms of Velella velella commonly occur. It is hypothesized that the different forms of this marine animal are mixed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as larva, and that wind and wave patterns during development and growth cause them to move towards the coast. (Each form sending them in opposite directions). Near the end of spring, and early summer they arrive on the shores and are commonly cast up on the beaches of the Northern and Southern Hemispere. The distribution of its dimorphic form also takes place in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

 

[Philpott]

So they can't "change teams" as Jerry Seinfeld would put it.

 

[BobJ]

The starboard-tackers lean left so we get a disproportionate number on California's beaches. However, for some reason the beaches in Orange county get more port-tackers.

It's all very strange.

 

[pogen]

I thought NorCal was the land of pinko left-wingers. OC = FoxNews country.

???

Those creatures are confused. They probably don't even realize they are not jellyfish.

 

[Gamayun]

Interestingly, velella (a.k.a. by-the-wind-sailors) are born as either on port or starboard tack, and spend their whole adult lives that way.

It sounds like classical Darwinian evolution at its finest if a large part of the population can avoid certain death and destruction from being blown ashore. Though it might also be similar to halibut with about 40% having eyes on the "wrong" side. Left- or right-handedness...mirror-image twins...the chirality of amino acids and proteins (and why we can smell spearmint and caraway differently)....what a curious world.

 

[Jonathan Gutoff]

Interestingly, velella (a.k.a. by-the-wind-sailors) are born as either on port or starboard tack, and spend their whole adult lives that way.

I've heard the northern hemisphere By-The-Wind -Sailors have their sails on an opposite tack of their southern brothers and sisters. Do they commingle? They like warmer water just like the Mola so maybe it's above normal this summer.