Piko wins Jack & Jill class in Banderas Bay Regatta

We had a good day today out on the race course.  We decided to come out and do the Banderas Bay Regatta a month or two ago, and then decided to do the race in the Jack and Jill class, aka male/female double handed, rather than being fully crewed.

We also decided to spend a few dollers and stay in the Marina at Paradise Village for the race so we were more central too all the happenings around the regatta.  Since we are basically staying in extra slips that people have temporaily vacated, we had to move the boat twice since we have been in the marina, though the price is pretty good since we are getting 50% off the normal rate.

Anyway, we got a few things off the boat to help her go a little, like the 325′ of anchor chain we have up front with the bug oversize anchor, the dinghy and some other random stuff.  basically whatever we could fit in the semi empty dock box and in the dinghy that is tied up next to the boat.  There are about 60 boats or so in the regatta and they wanted to have a formal parade out of the marina.  This is a trick as there are really only room for 15-20 boats inside the breakwater, so there  is a lot of close quarter maneuvering going on.  We managed to get out okay and sailed around for a little bit before the start.  Our fleet was the last to start to start, so we got to watch several of our friends while keeping close to the line.

The fairer lauren, cute Lauren, or whatever people call her to distinguish her from me, drove her first start, with some coaching from myself.  I am pretty sure we won the start, crossing the line only a few seconds late, but at speed right where we wanted to me.  We were a little under powered for the upwind leg, as we only had a cruising #3 up in only about 11 kts of wind.  We had a two on board, but it is a full hoist racing sail that doesn’t furl and it is older, we we decided to ease into the first leg.  We thought we were the scratch(fastest) boat for the fleet, but after the race saw that another boat was 6 seconds faster per mile.  Either way, we had to be in the front and gaining space on everyone else if we wanted to win.

After sailing a few miles together, our team work has gotten much better, let alone cute Lauren is becoming a pretty good driver!  We sort of trade off roles are various parts of the race.  She drove the start, which I trimmed, then I drove upwind while she trimmed, then she drove the downwind legs and mark roundings so I could get the sails setup for our hoists, gybes, and douses.

Our course was something close to an olympic triangle.  So a windward mark, then an offset mark you close reach to an then gybe mark to a down wind finish.  Even wanting a few more knots of breeze, we still got to the first mark first in our class, passing boats from several starts in front of us as well.  Have I mentioned that I like our boat/home?  We got the kite up immediately and then slowly started legging out on our competition.  I was worried at that point since we were still too close to a smaller, slower boat at the end of the first leg.  The reach to the second mark was great. It was a nice fast reach with the asym kite up.  Sadly a few boats had overlap on us coming into the second mark, which turned out to not be an issue since somehow the lazy kite sheet got caught in the cleat of the foot cord for our headsail during the gybe.  Although we were not picture perfect for the photo boat at that mark, we got it all straightened out and started heading to the finish.  we had to weave thr0ugh several boats from earlier starts at this point which hurt us a little.

We crossed the finish line and got the bullet for our class, though since we didn’t start a clock we had no idea if we had enough time on the other boats.  We did feel that we sailed the boat well, so we would be happy no matter what.  We were both happy to hear that we did have enough time though, and did end up winning…