2nd Wednesday Evening Race

It was hot today and the wind was shifty and light by SF Bay standards, so we threw up the MP sails and had at it. It worked... we got lucky too. But before the start though, we started a war with Mike Goebel. I forgot to empty my pockets before we shoved off and realized I still had a tennis ball in my cargo shorts pocket from work. So, when we passed close to Mike I threw it at him... and missed. Man overboard drill! We retrieved the ball and threw it once more... and missed again. We didn't have good position to go back and get it, but found it a few minutes later and threw it once more... third time a charm, direct hit. Score: Kaiser 1 / Goebel 0. Mike retrieved the ball and fired and missed our stern by a foot and then he retrieved the ball again, but by then it was time to start and war will have to continue another time. The first start was a general recall and thankfully so, we were so far over the line we were in China. The 2nd start I used a little advice from Anders Olsen... I elected to be at the 2nd best spot on the line and got clear air and room to maneuver. It didn't hurt that IOD's were coming down and trying to round the starting pin and messed a bunch of boats up. The wind shifts were unusual in that there were very distinct warm and cool wind oscillations. The warmer winds were coming off the shore and gave port tack a lift and the cooler winds were more straight out of the channel and gave starboard a lift. I didn't tack on every wind shift, but made my educated guesses as to where I wanted to have the boat up the first windward beat. It was flooding so I didn't want to go too far out, but I didn't want to go to far in either, so I played the Goldilocks strategy and made sure our position was just right. It worked, but not as good as it did for Randy and Richard. We were all together at the windward mark and we were 3rd. We passed them both before the leeward rounding and didn't head up as high as we should have around the mark and gave Richard some breathing room. He used it, passed us and made us duck him once, but he got stuck behind the wind shadow of the St. Francis and we stayed out despite the adverse current. The wind pressure was stronger and we won. Richard was 2nd, Tom jr. was 3rd, Team Wilson was 4th and Peter was 5th.
The sunset was magnificent and Cassandra and I were reminiscing about how this sunset reminded us of the skies in Bogense during the Gold Cup in 2006.
We were catching up to the Knarrs too quickly in the harbor and had to spin around once... luckily that made for the cool shot of Peter Jeal's boat.
Tom jr. was close behind and soon the rest of the fleet would be upon us, so we skedaddled.
Not a lot of wind... it won't last, it never does. Everyone was talking about how the wind will return with a vengeance for this Saturday's races over in the Olympic Circle.