March 19, 2012

MEXORC Day 5 Report

Andrews 70 Alchemy by Chuck Skewes Ullman Sails

Today was the Las Marieta’s race, a 26 mile race where all the boats start at the same time. The winds were 9 knots at the start and built to 18 at one point in the race. The line was square to the course making it necessary to start on port. 
Alchemy, Patches, and Vincitore all had great starts and got out in front of the smaller boats right away and off to the favored right side of the race course.  Half way up the beat Patches was able to sail up under both Alchemy and Vincitore taking an early lead.  4 miles from the weather mark there was a 40 degree shift that Alchemy and Katana took advantage of sailing shorter distance allowing Alchemy to follow Peligroso and Patches around the weather mark ahead of Rio, Vincitore, Katana and Cazador.
On the run the north side of the bay proved to have a few knots more wind allowing Patches, Vincitore and Rio to make gains.  It the end Patches won with Alchemy in second.  This finish secured Alchemy's first in class for the regatta regardless of what happens tomorrow in the last race.
Tomorrow’s race is the Gold Cup Race.  This is a windward leeward, triangle, windward, leeward race of about 12 miles total.  The regatta organizers are getting ready for the big awards celebration and a visit from the President of Mexico to award the Copa Mexico trophy for the overall winner of MEXORC.

Class A MEXORC 2012
TP-52 PATHCES by Erik Shampain Ullman Sails

It was a great day for the big boats. Sailing fast in the warm air and flat water really has its advantages. It was a race on port to the beach to meet the right shift and then a long starboard out into the bay to the first rounding mark. Peligroso rounded first, closely followed by Patches with Alchemy in third having passed Rio by tacking early and laying the weather mark from miles away. At the mark it was a gybe set followed by a tight reach on port back into the bay. The wind shifted back left as boats gybed back to starboard nearing the finish line. The wind shifted so far left that Peligroso was forced to drop her spinnaker to make the finish line. This allowed the Patches to not only win the 'A' class but to pass Peligroso just before the finish and cross the line first. Close behind fighting for 3rd and 4th across the line was Rio followed by Vincitore.

Class B MEXORC 2012
1D-48 Trigarante by Bruce Cooper Ullman Sails

Hola Amigos, today was shaping up to be a hand full with the boat getting out of the dock late and nearly missing the tide window to get out without struggle through the shallows at the harbor entrance and then the instruments magically were not working. We made it out of the harbor with all the crew weight on the end of the boom to tilt our keel away from any rocks and sand bars, we made it! The instruments did not make it. No knot meter, no digital compass, nada! This was going to be tough because Bruce’s Spanish is only limited to so few words and the majority of the Mexican Navy crew are limited to so few English words and the knot meter was the universal language on the boat. Bruce says siete punto cinco upwind speed is bueno, the whole crew knows we need to trim and hike to get 7.5 knots of speed! It works really good when the knot meter is working!
2 minutes before the start, I said forget trying to fix the instruments, lets go get the start and mix it up with the big boys (all one start with all the boats from all the classes).Trigarante was launched with the front Class A big boats and leading all the Class B boats with a great tow on Alchemy’s and Rios’s wake for about 15-20 minutes! It’s kind of like getting an extra pull from the speed wave from the bigger faster boats, kind of like drafting in auto racing!?!
Blue Blazes closed gauge and was equal to Trigarante as both boats started to tack near shore to gain angle to the new wind that Class A had already started to sail in. At this point it was getting much windier and many boats switched to smaller sails to handle the higher winds. Blue Blazes and Trigarante knew this was only a very local wind near the Marina La Cruz and stayed with the #1 genoas which proved to be a huge gain against their class. Only a mile past the shore of Marina La Cruz the wind dropped from 16-18 knots back down to 10-12 and all the boats that switched to smaller sails were now underpowered.
The rest of the race for Trigarante was stay close to Blue Blazes and beat her to have a chance of catching and passing her on points for the overall class victory in the final race on Saturday (race #8). Both boats had excellent gybe sets at the buoy and chased each other all the way back to the finish with Trigarante edging out BlueBlazes by 83 seconds on a 140 minute race! Very close!
Muchas Gracias por velear con Ullman Sails,
Tomas Span
Ricky Brockmann
Bruce Cooper