There'll alway be a faster gun Part deux
2005-07-14

Look up SNAFU in the dictionary and you will find a picture of last nights race. I know it was our first race of the season, but man, what a mess.
I got down early, brought the boat into a dock and got it prepped to go. The crew started showing up in drips and drabs, not there was much crew to begin with. This race is a 4:30 start and folks always have trouble with that. We were sailing last night with just 5.
Bob Y, my regular jib man was there early as was Jim's widow Marsha. Mush as we call her learned to race with me a million years ago and met her husband another racing friend while we were in Jamestown prior to race to BI. It was good having her back on board again. Martin is 77 and has sailed with me for years as has his daughter Maria, now 25 maybe? The were next to show up.
I wanted to leave early to get the mainsail up and maybe even throw a few tacks. All I needed was my mainsail trimmer Bobby. At 4:00 when he was a no show I was worried. At 4:10 I finally called to no answer on his cell. Five minutes later he calls. He forgot about the early start and was home playing video games. You don't race a 40 footer in 20 knot breeze with what we had there so we had to wait.
Bobby came running down the dock several minutes later and we cast off. We were the last ones to leave and I tore out of the harbor as fast as the diesel would push us.
We had 12 minutes to get the sails up before we would have been disqualified. We started on the main and got it all the way up when someone noticed that the clew (back end connection to the boom) was twisted. There was no time to lower the sail so we tried to fix it on the fly. It was messy, took all of us to accomplish and took what seemed like several hours, but we got it done and headed for the start.
At the Spinnaker class start we had to cut the engine, even though we weren't there yet. We didn't have the course or the time. UGH. I sailed over to the committe boat and there was supposed ot be a board with marks. ALl it said was 5... 5? WTF? 5? We'd figure it out on the fly. We tacked away and tried to figure out where we were in the sequence. Then the gun went off.
I had to duck a bunch of port tack boats, but we actually had an OK start. We rolled a few little boats and finally it was just us and the dreaded Evil 42. They were fully loaded with crew and moving fast, but in the flat water of the inner bay we were hanging well. Once outside it was a different story.
The wind was up as were the waves. MArtin's arm gave out and he couldn;t hang on. We had to put him in the middle of the boat. Maria and Mush weigh maybe, maybe 180 pounds total. Bob Y and Bobby have weight, but have to be in the back as do I. UGH... I just couldn't keep the boat flat and Evil 42 steadily pulled away.
On the next tack we were more bow on to the waves and the wind dropped to maybe 16 or 17. We started holding our own again but the damage was done. We rounded the mark second had problems with the pole set and settled in for the long run back to middle ground. That part was fun. The speedo was always at least in the 7s and we gained a bunch of time back.
At middle ground can we dropped th epole and hardened up for the tight reach to the finish. I didn't think we had enough room to catch them and we didn't. They beat us by over three minutes and a minute and a half corrected. We tacked away, rolled up the jib and passed around libations while we waited for the rest of the fleet.
Eventually three smaller boats came in and I figured they proibably had us too and guessed us for 5th. We watched the finishg of all the rest of the fleet, swapped old sailing stories and talked about Jim. At one time my eyes filled up and Marsha put her arm around to let me know it was OK. It was...
We watched the sun go down, folded the main and headed in. We arrived just in time for results. We were juist as I expected 5th. Just a few seconds were between us and second. That's racing...
Dispite all the mess and comotion, I did have fun though and other than one bad leg I thought I did OK driving. Next time we'll have more crew, so watch out Evil 42. We're coming for you...

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