Corsair Dash 750 Very Windy Race

Feb 4 2024
Long Beach CA

Reefed Main and Jib only. Holding on for life!

This was a race we thought would be cancelled but wasn't and so we decided at the last minute to go and do it. She wasn't really ready for it and it wasn't pretty, but the little boat hung in there pretty nicely.

We won! Sort of... It was a "pursuit" race which means the boats start at different times based on their performance ratings. We started 7 minutes after the boats starting before us and you can see where we pass them. We finished about 15 minutes before anyone else but.... Alas as you can see at the beginning of this movie, we crossed the start line about 10 seconds too early and decided we were having too much fun to go back and fix it. "OCS" as they call it. Sometimes in life, the journey matters more than how it is recorded by the race committee... or so that was what we thought at the time. Maybe not...

This was the same race where sadly one the other boats in our Long Beach Sailing community didn't make it.    • Flyingfiche II dismasted and shipwrecked  . It was definitely the kind of day where I wondered if we would make it and the same thing that happened to them could have happened to us. Fortunately I had had the mast down about a week ago due to losing a halyard recently and took the opportunity to inspect all the bits and pieces that hold the mast up so I was pretty certain it would not be falling down... but still, it happens. My deepest sympathies to the owner and crew of Flying Fiche. Very glad everyone came out of it alive and safe.

Winds were... seemingly a solid and consistent high twenties gusting to 35 or so.

DATA:
For some reason the GPS data on the GOPRO was not captured, so all the data is coming from a CSV export from my Vakaros Atlas which seemed to work alright. According to the GPS clock on that data, the race start horn was about 7 seconds off, but we were still over the line too early anyway.
We started at 12:24 and finished at 1:54 so roughly 1 hour and 30... I wonder if that's some kind of course record for the Two Gates?

I tried out displaying some Wind Info which... seems good sometimes... other times nonsensical. I think it has to do with turbulence based on wind angle.
The sensor is mounted directly about 1/2 meter above the camera. In strong wind like this, there are certain angles where the sails just interfere with the wind hitting the sensor I think.