Wow sorry I posted and disappeared, I was expecting e-mail notifications if someone replied -- I need to check my settings.
So on my boat I have:
4 year old sails, a dacron fully battened main and a cruising laminate 135% genoa
Bottom is cleaned monthly and was just recently cleaned
3 blade MaxProp
Wind at the time of this picture was showing about 15-20 Apparent (I don't have TWS on my boat)
Genoa was reefed to 100% and my main had no reefs in it. I was probably about 20 degrees heeled (felt pretty good I was holding her relatively controlled without a main reef in)
Sea state was what you would expect for it to have been blowing 15-25kts from the south all day and flooding against it (read: choppy)
Going upwind I am always on the inside track -- I only go outside track if I'm broad reaching or deeper for a long time, and I'm not putting the kite up.
So typing all of that out I'm like, yeah -- I'm not going to be tacking through 30 degrees or something
I've not done a lot of races recently though and the last one I did, it seemed like I was consistently 10degrees down from the rest of the fleet (also cruisers)
@christian and
@Bob -- The key to going 11.8 knots is to forget to stop tracking when you drive home. It really does wonders for your average "speed over ground", as it were....
Explanation on the routing I took:
That screenshot shows me sailing in a flood, but at the time of the picture, it was basically max ebb (going against me). The current is much stronger in the middle of the channel than ducking in.
For the local sailors, the 'playbook' when you're trying to get around West Point in an ebb is to duck behind West Point, getting as close to shore as you feel you are able / have the wind to for current relief. You can get pretty damn close. We usually have someone watching the depth sounder and calling for tacks like "15feet.... 14.... 13.... 11... 109tacktacktack" but it's a soft bottom if you hit. As the sand bar of West Point sticks out almost all the way to the green buoy, it'll be fun sometimes to see boats sailing one line out to the green buoy, crossing the visible tide line, and start treading water....
@Bolo as another poster says above, no restrictions on entering VTS, just stay out of the way. Some people are much more rigid about "I only cross the traffic lanes perpendicularly and as fast as possible" but me of course knowing better than everyone else, I just keep an eye out for the big boats and get out of the way.
Though, there was one race a few years ago where the fleet did NOT give way to a cargo ship... the cargo ship had to do a complete 360 in the middle of the sound............ and ever since then there is a serious talking-to by the Coast Guard at a lot of the local race skippers' meetings.
On this day, there weren't big boats in my way so I wasn't worried about sailing out to mid-channel, it just felt bad in a spiritual sense to sail halfway to Bainbridge and then turn around again.
Though I did have to duck this guy farther north:
You can see the duck up north here (here's more of the track of that day):
Just for a bit more illustration, here was the day prior (I had to start motoring around the south end of Bainbridge when the wind was blocked by Blake Island/Kitsap:
And the conditions this day looked like this:
link to google video
@Puget sailor -- yes sailing out of EBM! I used to run the Wednesday Night bainbridge race down out of Eagle Harbor when I lived over there. Would love to meet up with you and Bruce and whatever 32s we can find for a bit of "one design"