As can be seen from Al's mainsheet, he is not sailing close-winded, either, but is sailing the rhumb line towards the mark. There are those - including Dr. Stuart Walker - who argue that in this situation, the wise thing to do is to go high and "put money into the bank", like the boat on the right is doing here. I disagree. Unless the right-hand boat is pretty sure that out there off the rhumb line, they'll get better wind or more favourable current, going high here, is not a good move. Other things being equal, three things can happen: 1. the wind can stay in this direction  2. the wind can back and lift port tack even further, or  3. the wind may veer and knock the port boats. In instances 1 and 2, the boat sailing the rhumb line is sailing faster and shorter, but in #3 (other things being equal!!) the boat that sailed high and "put money into the bank" (perhaps a bad metaphor these days??) suffers the unkindest cut of all, as can be seen ...     - for full-size pic, click here

... here!! Just seconds ago, the four boats furthest from the camera were sailing in the direction Dave (4782) is still sailing. Rotate them to Dave's course in your mind or look back at the previous picture and you will see that the right-hand boat, being windward, was (assuming this was a beat!) ahead of the other three who were to leeward of him. Alas, with the rotation caused by this shift, Windward is now last in line. So, to sum up, if (other things remaining equal) you sail high of the mark while you can but then get this shift (above), you not only sailed slower than the boats reaching towards the mark, but also ended up with more distance to sail. Now, tell me! Is that a deal or what!!?? Who wouldn't want to sail slower and further??!!  - for full-size pic, click here

... somewhat of a beat. I don't want to say the wind was shifty, but look at our wake. After all these years, I should have known exactly where the Main Channel entrance was. The gap I thought was the Main Channel was if fact the Middle Channel (above). If I had known that, I might have been more tempted to tack to starboard sooner, where we'd have been sailing considerably closer to the rhumb line, because, other things being equal, you try to sail the tack that takes you more towards the mark (closer to the rhumb line). But in this case, we thought that other things were not equal anyway: An early tack to starboard would have taken us towards an area where the water was like glass (the wind shadow of Darling and McPherson Islands), whereas on port we were sailing towards a windward shore that is pretty low profile (see chart above) and at least we had ripples on the water ahead of us. And besides, 2nd-place ...  - for full-size pic, click here

... Dave Hansman, this being his home course after all. If anyone does, Dave should thus know what this wind does here, and where it pays to go. In fact, we played a few shifts with Dave, but amidst all this fun and frivolity we suddenly saw, way over by the west shore, if not in a cloud of spray, then in far more wind ...

... outmoving us in better breeze. Here was another case of other things not being equal - there was definitely better pressure off to the right. So, instead of trying to "attack" from leeward as we usually do in shifty winds, we tacked once more and crossed the Silverfox wake before tacking yet again, hoping we'd gone far enough to be out of their ...

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