This year's Delta Ditch Race was an entirely enjoyable event thanks to the beautiful weather, fair winds, favorable current and a number of most appreciated people.

Should I mention that I missed last year's Ditch Race because the Honda 8 on Mindbender wouldn't start?  This year the motor starts after only slight resistance. - Ooopps, I guess I forgot to tell my crew, Lourens Steger, under no conditions let the motor die.  He assumed a prewarmed motor would start right up again.  It didn't.

But (!) there's an east wind blowing out the Estuary.  "Okay, Lourens, let's sail. We'll start the motor along the way."  A broad reach down the Estuary will make the trip faster than by motor anyway.  We sail off the dock under bare poles and set the jib in the Estuary.  4-5 knots.

Awesome!  How often does the wind let you sail out the Estuary on a broad reach?  That's right.... Maybe 0.05% of the time.  After Jack London Square no wind.  I'm "sailing" while Lourens tries the motor again.

We decline help from a couple of multihulls that motor by, but soon we're fending the boat off of the loading dock.  Miraculously Defiance comes by and tows us out.  We'll actually still make the start. Then Mike dumps us at Berkeley Pier.  (He has to go into Richmond to pick up crew.)  Hey.  I'm NOT complaining. There's some wind, and we can ostensibly sail.

One thing we didn't work out yet is that we have crew waiting in Richmond too, David Keuttel  He's our navigator/ tactician, has the chart, and studied today's tides.  David will have to hitch a ride on Defiance and rendezvous with us on the water. The caveat is we have to catch Defiance after David gets on (which is a good story in itself).

Start of the Race

Defiance makes it out of Richmond Harbor late and crosses the start about 10 mins after our start.  We're about 5 min behind her.  We hoist the screecher and gain steadily on her until she's far enough upwind to set her chute.  Now it starts looking like we might be doublehanding.

The ride up San Pablo Bay starts out slow, but we quickly begin to reel boats in after we round Pt. San Pablo and can heat things up.  Ted looks good in his F-27, and we start to gain on Seabird.  Gary's just in front of him. But Defiance maintains a lead on us.  When the wind picks up a knot or two, we can finally pass Seabird and start making progress on White Knuckles, when we make our biggest tactical error of the day.  After failing to pass a Moore 24 to leeward I have to ease everything out and wait to pass him to windward.  We make the rest of our passes today to windward.  Here it is - ending up on the far right hand (upwind) side of the fleet I catch sight of Buster WAY off to the right busting out speed on us.  One design racing....

Long story short, Ernie and I drag race up the right hand side of the course, end up in poor winds, and have been out of the flood the entire time.  We look over and Seabird is on our beam back in deep water, way downwind of us.  We don't catch her until past the Benicia Bridge.  Defiance is long gone.

Past the bridge the wind comes up another couple of knots. When set on the wind, Mindbender lifts out of the water and comes up on a plane.  The conditions in the Carquinez Straits are gorgeous: crisp breeze, warm and sunny, flat water.  The monohulls are running straight down the channel like freight trains.  Way up ahead we see the purple and white striped spinnaker of Defiance flying high.  A black and teal F-31R spinnaker darts back and forth in front of her (Water Wings), and a blue and white 31R spinnaker darts back and forth behind her (Meteor).

Seabird is running downwind fast with her huge symmetrical spinnaker set at a slight angle to keep things hot.  We lose sight of Defiance and the F-31s as we thread our way through the monohulls here and slowly overtake Seabird.  For some reason Seabird is never an easy boat to pass.  It takes awhile, and it's not until we really pull away from her, near the end of Carquinez, that we seem to start putting distance on her.  Shortly after rounding Port Costa we catch sight of White Knuckles off to starboard.  Gary comes in a little close to shore off to the right before gybing left to meet us on our side of the river.  He maintains his lead on us when he crosses in front of us, but we are just on our hottest angle when his crew misses their gybe back to starboard.  We clear the bridge and enter Grizzly Bay with a solid lead on him as we tear off towards Pittsburg.

Our sail through Suisun Bay is remarkable.  We have just the right amount of wind and just the right amount of water to make things pay.  This is where we pass most of the 'fast' monohulls including the Melges and the Antrim 27 like they were sitting still.  Poor Lourens is a gybe monkey.  I'm hanging off the windward shroud with a Becks in one hand and the tiller in the other, at one point coordinating this while I take a whiz.  A lot of fun...  the sailing.

Now it's coming down to the nitty gritty.  Two years ago, doublehanding Three Sigma with Chris Harvey, we had to make a mad douse flying the chute in the Pittsburg short cut when the boat started into the death rolls, which on a multihull are front to back.  I'm not sure if we're ready for a repeat of that today.  We sail through the short cut uneventfully except for passing a couple of big monohulls.  One of which I believe was the Hobie 33.

As we entered the San Joachim river things start to get pretty heavy.  We stuff the starboard float under solidly before I ask Lourens if we could move to the swimstep.  This is an old John Kocol trick that I assume he pick up from Randy Smyth for picking up a few extra knots.  I just want to keep the bows out the water.  Lourens is a bit confused by my request at first, but then "Hooo...This really helps!"

Raw adrenaline aside, we're having a pretty good time.  We scream past the J120 Convergence which has a huge asymmetric and 30-40 people on the rail.  Someone on that boat has video documentation of this event.  It would have been nice had I avoided putting the bow under again.  It is comforting to know that when she goes down the boat just kind of "blop"s then comes back up and keeps going.  Things widen up as we head further into the river, and just before the Antioch bridge we skate past a little trio of dueling Melges.

On the other side of the bridge and far away we see E.T. (Antrim 27), another Melges 24, and one of the Sierra 26s (the one that can actually go upwind) and chase them up the river.  We don't seem to have closed any distance with Defiance or her pack of F-31s, but I note that the spinnakers are coming down as boats take the turn around False River.  The wind isn't getting any lighter.  A few of the sprit boats lay down before realizing that they just won't be able to carry the chute up the bend.  This is good for us, but for whatever reason I still don't manage to get everything set before it's our turn to douse the chute and get the white sails back up.  Lourens has a lot of experience driving so I feel comfortable handing him the helm as I douse the chute and raise the jib.  But it's howling!

I don't get the jib up that quickly, but heading up onto a close reach under main alone nothing stands a chance.  Even I'm surprised.  The Sierra 26... gone for good.  Yucca... gone for good.  E.T.... gone home.  Melges... adios.

We actually start closing on Defiance, and her mast is getting really close.  She is just around the corner from us when we head downwind again and is closer than we've ever been to her during the race.  I'm preparing to raise the screecher.  Conditions are heavy enough that I don't want to use the chute again doublehanded.  I fully understand when Lourens concernedly asks me "You're not going to put that back up again!?!"  Yes we are.  And we wrap up another couple of the leaders on the broad reach down the other side of the oxbow.  Defiance has her chute back up but we still gain on her.  Next we catch and pass the Mumm 30 Sand Dollar but by now we're in the S-curves and the channel is NARROW.  We don't know it now, but our race is already over.  Although we pass her we just can't leave her behind.  We need sea room to put distance between us and Sand Dollar, but we're forced to gybe back into her wind shadow each time before we can clear her.  Sand Dollar's faster DDW and eventually runs straight past us. Exhausted we throw the screecher out to the side and sail wing and wing on Sand Dollar's tail while I rig the spinnaker again.  Defiance starts putting distance between us again, and even the Sierra 26 makes her way back up.  With Sand Dollar running interference we're stuck at her pace.  We have no room to maneuver - figuratively and litterally.  As the wind lightens up we coast straight DW to the finish and throw in a couple of gybes at the end for show.

At the finish the reception is warm, and we meet up with all our friends at the club house.  Lots of people to thank for a really good time!  A successful day and great fun.  We finished 9th out of the multihulls but beat every monohull boat-for-boat.  This year's multihull fleet was not only big, it was FAST. I only regret not making it to the start on time to see all the F-31Rs that assembled to sail this year's DDR, many of which came from out of the area.

LeiLoe

Meteor

WaterWings

All Photos by Ken Smith ©2003

Finally, I have to thank the ground crew on the race deck, Bob Naber on Devoras, Mike and crew on Defiance, my crew (on both boats), and everyone that came out to sail that makes this such a fun event.

Christopher Sundberg
F-25c #16, Mindbender
Alameda, CA