Slow ride, take it easy...
2004-09-27

I had to spend my morning mending fences that shouldn't have been broken. Someone else not having a sense of humor shouldn't be my problem should it? Apparently it is. Either way, I appologized even though I didn't do anything wrong. I like this job and will do what ever necessary to keep the peace. And life goes on.
We raced yesterday, 93 boats the paper said. It was a pursuit race, slower boats start first. The morning turned out beautiful, much nicer that I expected and I felt pretty good. We had a sportboat try and pinch us out at the starting mark, but he was early and I knew he'd have to go down before the gun went off. He did and we swooped in right on top of him and rolled him. Oops. :-)
The first leg was super and we passed a dozen boats in maybe 6 knots of true breeze. We grabbed a whole bunch more at the R8 turning mark went about a mile more and then the bottom fell out. For the next two hours we drifted slowly south working what ever slight breeze we could find.
Ocasionally we hit a small vein that would boost us to a whopping 2 knots. Hell even when we were doing .8 we were blowing people away. Then they'd find a vien and pass us again. All the boats began to bunch up. Soon, the south end of Prudence 1sland began to resemble a large boat parking lot, or perhaps a still life painting. Then the tide turned and we all headed backwards. Nice...
The first boat dropped out at 1:30. We kept hoping for the sea breeze to kick in. It never did. We bailed at 2:15 and started a majot trend. Boats started dropping like flies. A few die hards hung in until the 4:00 time limit for the first boat to finish. No one came close.
We broke out the food and drink and motored casually back to the club with a long string of sailess boats following behind. All in all a nice day dispite being a bit disapointing. I guess that is the last race of the season. We'll see.

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