Sweet.....
2002-07-25

I woke up to the sound of a madly barking dog and the sight of 20 turkeys filling my back yard. I hope this is not a metaphor for the upcoming day.

Well, last night of course was race night and has been the pattern for this summer, there was lots of breeze from a direction it never blows here this time of year. I guess first I'll tell you a little about the Johhny the Chin system of wind measurement. Breeze is anything from about 8 knots to maybe 16 or so. 17 to perhaps low 20's is blowing stink. Mid 20's to high 20's is blowing snot (you always get wet when it's blowing snot) and anything above 30 is 6 bells of shit. I'm not sure where that came from, but hey it works for me.

Last night it blew snot... The night started out badly. I couldn't get out of work early, there was a major traffic jam on the highway and I was still wandering around in two different color shoes. I get out to the dock and really rush to get the boat set to bring in when I see the last open slip get gobbled up by a guy who has a slip at a different marina. He's a member so I can't bitch, but I'm not a happy boy. I see the pump out dock is open, it's a little short and you really aren't supposed to use it, but WTF, I'm going in.

The channel is clogged up by this huge power boat and I don't have much room to pull the required u turn, but somehow I get it down without hitting anything. 40 feet of boat solo is tough enough to dock by yourself when it is calm, but when there are 2 foot waves in the cove, it becomes a real experience. I managed to get the boat to the dock OK, jumped off and then spent the next 15 minutes wrestling with a 16,000 pound bucking horse. My arms are killing me today. By the time I got things tied up I was sweating like a pig. VERY pleasent.

Well I prepped the boat, but didn't have the time or the energy to take off the cruising sail. It's smaller than the racing sail, but with the brezze we had, I figured (well hoped) it would be fine. The racing sail was fixed and waiting for me at the Rigging Shop. I got to tote that the 1/4 mile back to the boat. It got heavy fast. Before the race even started I already needed a nap. Not a good sign.

The crew showed up late as usual, ratcheting up my stress level, but at least they all showed up. We headed out to battle. I really wanted to do well after last weeks "incident" with Evil 42, but these were their conditions. before we even got to the starting line, we were already wet (see snot reference above). Not a good sign. The the race commitee got the starting sequence all messed up and had to restart the racers 4 times. Starting is definately the most stressful part of the race and when you have 40+ boats all zooming along on the edges of control it can get pretty hairy. Some of these bots are worth half a million dollars or more. It makes you think. We don't have brakes.

Our plan was to play it safe, find a hole and just take it easy. Yeah right... We ended up at the pin end and hit the line just as the gun went off. A beautiful start. I think the crew wanted it as bad as I did because they worked their asses off. Everything went like clock work (well except for my main trimmer who I think has ADD). We were on the better side of the course, moving fast and making ground. By the first mark, Evil 42 was 1/4 mile behind. YEAH us.

We rounded the mark to sail the next long down wind leg. We got the pole set up and started to fly, 8 knots, 9 knots, 9.5, 9.6, we finally got up to 9.8, but never hit 10 that I saw. It was amazing. We got hooked up with the waves and would just surf along for what seemed like forever. The boat was driving like it was on rails. All you could hear was the woosh of the water passing by the hull. Way cool. We extended our lead.

Then we had our only major problem of the night. We couldn't get the pole down and we needed to turn. Not a good combination. I had three people yanking on it but no luck. Would we have to drop out? Grrrrr... I had Bob Y pull the sail in tight and then put one of my biggest guys on it. BANG, the pole dropped and we jibbed immediately. We lost a quite a bit of ground but still were ahead. We were now back upwind and the boat was a mess. I had people every where. We even almost lost Eva who got caught on the low side and couldn't climb back up. We finally settled down with still a bit of a lead. The next two tacks would decide the winner. Our first one was OK, but the second one was perfect. We nailed the finish line at the favored end, got the gun and finished first over all and better still ahead of Evil 42 boat for boat by about two minutes. The crew was over joyed. We were all slapping high fives and popped open up several beers. We rolled up the jib abd watched the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a while, purples and pinks and bright orange bands. It was 360 degrees of nature at it's finest. Of course the breeze died, but we were in no hurry. We were having fun... Evil 42 sailed by and somebody said nice race. We waved. The owner just commented something to the effect that if he had better sails things would have been different. We ignored him.

We got back to the club and the whole crew stayed for the official results. We got lots of congratualations. One of the Race Committee took me aside and said our win was good for the Club. A back handed slap at Evil 42? Probably... We got home late and I slept like crap, but I feel GREAT today. Want to help me was the boat tonight? She deserves it.

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