SPRINGING OUT THE GATE stay close to the other Moores until the wind settled in." Four Moore 24s raced: Topper II, Snafu, ¡Mas! and White Trash. "We had gotten burned badly the previous weekend by getting too far away from our group and then watching them sail away without us. Unfortunately, for a long time the other Moores kept tacking south of us, getting remarkable shifts in the light wind. At one point the Moore closest to us pulled ahead by about a half mile in what seemed like just a few minutes. But, we stuck to the plan and eventually found ourselves creeping back into the race from the north side with just a little better pressure. We were watching our friends Steve and Amanda Kleha work the right-hand side aggressively and were trying to emulate that within our tolerance for sailing away from the Moores." The Klehas sail the Archambault 27 Alchimiste. "It paid for the Klehas and they rounded the Lightship with a big lead because they seemed to mostly escape the 30 minutes of no wind in the middle of the course that caught everyone else. We escaped the wind hole first, were the second boat around, and got the kite up right away. With two Moores behind us, one sailing high, the other sailing low, we split the difference and headed to Rodeo Beach. We lost quite a bit of ground to the Moores that sailed tighter angles in the light wind. So, at Point Bonita we had a race again and we weren't winning it! Mark English's ¡Mas! had slipped ahead but then got enough out into the ebb that jibing was painful, so they headed across to Mile Rock and let us off the hook. It
wasn't entirely clear we were going to keep our cool in the face of the pressure from ¡Mas! and Karl Robrock's Snafu. We sailed as tight as we reasonably could to Bonita and scraped the rocks along the Marin shore. Phil Krasner and Steve McCarthy on Phil's Express 27 Wetsu were just ahead and showed us how to do it nicely. We finally jibed and had a powered reach across the current, past the South Tower, and to the finish." The run back to Richmond YC may have been the best part for the White Trash crew — they had a very fast spinnaker reach on smooth water. "Our two beers were gone before we got to Alcatraz,
"I felt like the boat had skis and was getting ready to drop onto a double diamond." so we may need to tune up that part of the strategy. We sailed with the spinnaker all the way to the dock and put the boat away in time to go meet Steve and Amanda for snacks on Treasure Island. "As much as I love the Doublehanded Farallones Race," added Hamilton, "the Doublehanded Lightship is probably more fun and less pain, and you're just about guaranteed to be home before dark." Hamilton was surprised there weren't more entries. Nineteen boats had signed up; 18 made the start. The one no-show had been foiled at Alameda
BOTH PHOTOS KEN BROWN
The scenery's not bad either. Left: Returning from the Lightship on a spinnaker reach, the crew on Ray Paul's beautiful 'Blue' Swan 53 gets a nice view of the Marin Headlands; right: Adam Mazurkiewicz's Express 27 'Yeti' passes Point Bonita, in the OYRA Lightship.
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• May, 2016
Marina when he tried to launch his boat and found the hoist locked. The husband-and-wife team of Steve and Amanda Kleha took line honors and won the fast-boat division. Steve described their strategy: "At our start, 9:05 a.m., we were in the early stages of an ebb. We thought that the ebb starts from the Cityfront and moves its way north. We favored the left upwind, using the South Tower as our interim windward mark. The ebb left a rough, choppy texture to the water. We did our best to stay in that water." Once past the Golden Gate Bridge, Alchimiste continued to favor the left side of the course looking for that certain texture on the water. "We deliberately hit Point Bonita to benefit from compressed ebb there. Once we were in what appeared to be strong ebb, we tacked over to starboard and headed out to the channel, careful not to get any of the counter-current just west of Bonita." The Klehas worked the shifts upwind. "We favored the right side of the course thinking that the wind, when it did fill, would come from that direction, a normal sea breeze. This seemed to work. "Coming back from the Lightship, we favored the north side of the channel to get out of the deep water. There was ebb plainly evident on the crab pots (one of which we almost hit). We were in 24 feet of water on the Potatopatch when a set of large waves scared the shit out of us. We jibed to deeper water, then jibed back. I didn't see any breaking waves all day on the Potatopatch, but these made me reconsider." Alchimiste played the Bonita Chan-