Spring 03 Race 2
2003-04-30

It was a beautiful night for a sailboat race. The clouds broke up and the sun came out, it was warm, just great. The forecast was for NNE winds of 5 to 10 knots and that was pretty much right on except they had the direction off by a mere 180 degrees. A dying southerly just like August was what we showed up to.

The crew was a patch work from three different boats. Several of my regulars can't make Tuesdays. Out plan was ot be conservative, not break stuff and finish where ever we finished. With only the #2 on the furler, I didn't have much confidence in the light breeze, but hell we'll give it our best shot right?

The gun for our start went off and we were maybe 10 seconds late. Not too bad considering I never really got a chance to run the line. We were the only ones even that close and the nearest boat was probably a good 10 or 15 seconds behind us. We had clean air and clean lanes, all we had to do was not screw up.

We easily got to the upwind mark first. Then we sailed into a giant windless hole that extended 3/4 of the way up to the next mark. We were mostly dead down wind and moving SLOWLY. The back of the pack began to catch up some, ARGH!

I figured the RC was going to shorten the race, we needed to put on some distance fast. I sailed really high of the mark. The crew was doing as good a job of keeping the sails full and balancing the boat as possible. We finally dropped the pole, jibed the headsail and picked up speed. We rounded 4 minutes ahead of the next boat and we were off.

Once we turned the corner it was all she wrote dispite a blown leach line that we just couldn't get tight. The flapping of the sail edge was driving me crazy, but I had to just make up my mind to ignore it and concentrate on going fast.

The next two legs were pretty much by the book. The only excitement we had was sailing a bit too close to the rocks while trying to keep hooked up with the breeze line. I decided that less breeze and less rocks was a better call. A big thump can wreck your whole day.

We tacked up the final leg and went right up to the lay line. There was a little shift and we actually overstood by a bit, but were going really fast. We hit the pin end, tacked and got the gun simultaneously. We hit the stop watch, rolled up the jib popped out some beers and snack mix and waited.

The breeze was getting progressivly lighter and at 4 minutes I felt really good about things. At 8 minutes I sort of forgot about the rest of the fleet and it took 11 minutes for the second boat in the fleet to finally get a horn. Our first bullet of the season and it was a rout.

We took advantage of the good weather and sailed around for a bit. Then I started the engine and we headed home. As we were pulling into the slip the boat next door had the VHF on. We got to hear the official announcement of or win as we ghosted by. A few glasses of grapes at the club bar and the night was complete. Can we do it again tonight? Please?

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