Race to the Straits

The first weekend in May brings Sloop Tavern Yacht Club’s (STYC) Race to the Straits — an extremely popular two-day shorthanded sailing event that usually goes from Shishole to Port Townsend and back. As Justin Wolfe of J/111 Raku says, “There is just nothing else that compares to racing a big fleet of other shorthanded boats.” STYC had to cancel the event last year, and this year's RTTS involved a substitute event with no party on Saturday night. A pretty big fleet of 67 boats spanned 11 classes, including five J/105s. Saturday's race went to Possession Point off of the southeast end of Whidbey Island. It’s a pursuit start for the fleet, but the J/105s all started together with two other boats rating 93. Winds were forecast to be light southerlies with light rain, turning northerly in the afternoon with a big 15-foot ebb tide almost all day. The winds were a bit stronger than forecast with the long run north going pretty smoothly. Among the J/105s, More Jublilee led early and did a masterful job to extend out on the rest of us with Jaded, Corvo, and Peer Gynt all in second place at one time or another. Creative kind of dropped to the rear of our closely packed fleet. The approach to the Possession Point buoy was a little tricky with a couple of knots of current running from east to west. Peer Gynt rounded second followed closely by the others. Creative was first to tack south and worked into a little lead of the pack behind Jubilee heading toward Edmonds seeking some current relief. Before long, the winds started dying and we could see boats piling up at Edmonds, where the countercurrent along the shore ends. When the northerly first started showing, boats had to choose between better winds to the west or tide relief to the east. East appeared to win out. Then it was a jibing battle south with the continuing balance between current relief and wind. Corvo was not alone in the fleet when she touched bottom off of Richmond Beach. Creative and Jaded were trading places throughout the run, with Creative finally getting a little breakaway when Jaded got a wrap on a jibe; but no one could touch Jubilee.

In Class 10, it was 4.5 hours of sailing with the kite and 30 minutes upwind for Chris and Justin Wolfe on Raku. “There are worse ways to race!” They report, “The last sprint to the finish (about 6 miles) was a drag race with a slightly slower Melges 24 in front of us and a slightly faster Riptide 35 behind us. We didn't win that drag race…. Still a very nice day on the water.” Sunday's forecast was even lighter but with the same big tides and a different course — this time sending fleets down around Elliott Bay. The earliest starters got away in a light easterly that then went west before sort of settling in on a southerly. Once again, there was significant focus on tide relief, especially along the Magnolia shore towards West Point. Rounding the West Point buoy, Jubilee led Creative, Jaded, Peer Gynt and Corvo, though all were close in the fading southerly breeze. We were barely making any headway south against the tide. It took fortitude to hang in there for an extremely long time on port tack to finally get out of some of the current and south enough to make it over near West Seattle and approach Duwamish Head from the west. Jubilee, Jaded, and Corvo were WAY out ahead. We could only see them with binoculars along the West Seattle shoreline. Peer Gynt got flushed backwards towards West Point and Creative finally got some pressure to be able to tack toward the mark from mid channel. The wind shifted a bit more southerly from southeast, setting up a spinnaker reach into Duwamish Head for us on Creative. Our hope now was to reach the halfway point and that the others would not reach the finish. About a mile after the turn at Duwamish, the wind freed enough to set a kite again, which allowed us to reach all the way to the halfway point at Wing Point. Corvo and Jaded were well ahead and nearly up by Alki, but their winds died completely. Meanwhile, our breeze stayed just a bit and we managed to carry through their lee to round Wing Point buoy a few minutes ahead of Jaded. Corvo never got any breeze and took a DNF. No boats in the fleet finished the whole course, though the Wolfe’s J/111 Raku was closest — they estimate they missed completing the full course by about 15 minutes, and were first overall for the weekend. Congratulations to More Jubilee, they were 11th overall and won the J/105 class on both days. Well done! By Al Hughes | Photo courtesy of Sloop Tavern Yacht Club.

Forty boats took to the waters of Puget Sound for the annual May edition of a 'round Vashon Island race. After an unrelentingly wet and cold first event in Seattle Yacht Club’s Tri Island Series, I imagine I wasn't the only sailor whose gear bag was heavy with extra warm layers when I arrived at the boat for the Vashon circumnavigation. As luck would have it, we wouldn’t need those layers, and were actually in for a real treat of (mostly) glorious late spring racing.

The race started in a light but sailable southerly toward the south end of Shilshole Bay. A big left shift made the pin (and probably port tack) the clear choice at the start — you could barely run the line close hauled on starboard. Once the ORC Class in which I was sailing (three TP 52s and the Reichel Pugh 55, Zvi) turned the corner at West Point, we made achingly slow progress toward Alki. In our fleet, TP 52 Smoke and Zvi had better starts and generally more mojo in the light stuff. They extended across Elliott Bay, finding a bit of shore breeze near Alki. The other two TP 52s, Glory and Mist, arrived there later and traded tacks and places a couple of times as they headed southwest around the point; but pretty soon were in glassy waters, trying desperately to avoid seeing 0.00 on the knotmeter.

What left the later boats in the ORC fleet in worse shape became evident when the classes behind them started putting up the colorful sails. A surprise convergence zone and northerly had come to mess with the predominant southerly. It was short lived, thankfully; and once the southerly returned, it stayed steady through the rest of the day. Glory and Mist trade tacks off of Alki.

Making our way across East Passage toward the Vashon shore, the southerly built and brought 30-degree shifts influenced by the Quartermaster Harbor puffs shooting over the strip of land into Tramp Harbor. "We're reaching. We're beating. Who cares, we're moving in the right direction!" Eventually, we had enough wind to merit a sail change from the #1 to the #2 jib. Nice!

There's always a risk of going too close to the beach once you make the turn southwest at Point Robinson... but how far out do you go? Conventional wisdom says, "Not too far." Yet, at least when Glory got there, a starboard tack lift kept going and going, making it tough to head back in.

We had beautiful breeze in the mid teens as we cracked off around Tahlequah. We set the #2 spinnaker, and it would stay up for the rest of the day. By the time we were into Colvos, Smoke and Zvi were long gone, and Glory had extended a bit on Mist. The result was that we really were sailing our own race through the storied passage. We were trying to sail fast, but it was a lowkey scenario — and that left a lot of room to just appreciate sailing with your pals through a beautiful channel on a badass boat... in weather that didn't put most of us in shivering misery as it had a few weeks prior.

The trip from Point Vashon back to the finish off the Shilshole breakwater followed much of the same pattern. Trim for speed and VMG. Jibe cleanly. Watch the compass, work the shifts and stay in phase. While it didn’t turn out to be a winning effort for our boat, we sailed across the finish line in the late afternoon with shades on, jackets off, and big smiles all around. As Vashon races go… I’ll take it! Congrats to the others across all fleets, and great sailing to those in our class — Smoke (1st place), Zvi (2nd), and Mist (corrected just a couple of minutes behind Glory). By Joe Cline | Photos by Erin Noelle Parker