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2005 Dead Bud
2005-09-28

Sunday dawned beautiful and calm. We got down to the boat early and while I prepped things for racing, M.E. cleaned off the heavy coating of dew that had accumulated over night.
The fridge was loaded with food and drink, the forecast was for breeze and I had crew. The sun warmed things up and I began to take off the layers I had put on to ward off the early morning chill. All was right with the world.
Even the whole crew showed up early. It was to be only our second race of the season so I gess I wasn't the only one who was a little anxious. We only had the #2 on the furler and the tanks were loade dwith water. All of our crusing gear was still on board. We would not be a favored pick. But we were as ready as we were going to be.
I pulled out, never looking at my watch. We were the first to leave the YC, and we were probably a half hour earlier than we should have been. I cruised the hour or so to the starting line at a comfortable pace while the crew either talked, listend to music or in a few cases slept. The water was like glass and we worried that this race whould be like the last three years where nobody beat the time limit and the races didn't count.
There were 105 boats signed up for this years event, but when we got to the Ohio Ledge Bell, we were the only sailboat in the area. This wouldn't last long. I popped the boat into neutral and we waited for the RC boat to arrive. Things got busy quickly after that.
We caught the first gun and all set our watches. This was a persuit race where everybody started at a different time based on their handicaps. The first boat to finish wins. The course was one lap around Prudence Island, 18 miles counter clockwise. The breeze started filling in and we raised the main and shut off the diesel. We were sailing :-) always a good thing.
The upper bay at this point was full of boats. We cruised back and forth checking out the competition and saying Hi to old friends. I've been doing this a long time and there were lots of them.
We watched all the smaller slower boats take off and honestly a little bit of nerves began to set in. We spotted the slowest boats in the race 43 minutes. That is a really long time in sailboat racing. I wondered how we'd ever catch them and how many boats would be in our start. I was rusty and really, really hoped it would just be us. It wasn't.
The RC counted down the times by minute and announced who would be off at the next start. As we lined up for our approach, we heard our name... along with 3 high tech racers and a big old cruiser. To complicate things further, two boats from the previous start were a minute late and also clogging up the line.
We actually had a decent start. We ducked below a Quest 30 and hit the line pretty much right on the money. The breeze was soutwest at 12 and we hardened up and headed for R8 bell just slightly off close hauled. There must have been 70 or 80 boats ahead of us and some of them were just specks on the water.
As we cruised along at 7 knots, I just hoped we'd beat somebody and finish in the top half. Realistic goals... Even with that in mind it didn't look good early. With everybody on a fast point of sail, we passed very few boats on the first leg. Not a good sign.
From R8 to the end of the island was an 8 mile beat. The tide was coming in and we played the left side trying to stay in the breeze but out of the strongest flood. We got hooked up with one of the favorites, a guy from the club that I don't particularly like, in a brand new speedster. At one point I asked him if he would kindly get his high tech racign boat out of the way of my slow family cruiser. He didn't appreciate it all that much. We stayed with him most of the leg, a good sign.
About half way down the island I noticed the view had changed. We were now surrounded by smaller boats, 24 to 30 footers that had started ahead of us. This was also good sign. We clawed up the shoreline passing more boats than passed us. We had several interesting crossings and more than once only cleared boats by a few feet. That's always stressful... Did I guess right or will there be lots of yelling or in the worst case scenario and big BLAM. We managed to avoid either.
At the end of the island we picked our lay line and headed for the RGN. Here we had our first real problem. A 42 foot cruising boat was power reaching at just about our speed on our inside and was pushing us away from the mark. I couldn't get by him, he wouldn't go down, not good. After a few minutes of this I decided to take drastic measures. We stalled the main, gave him a little lead and then ducked his stern by about a foot. There were lots of open mouths on the other boat as we barely scraped by. Once on the inside we were able to get back on course and never saw him again. Bye bye.
We rounded the RGN clean and zipped by T Wharf in clean air and moving fast.
It seemed like there were a million boats still ahead of us as we went wing on wing down towards the finish. We ended up in a pack with a huge Swan, a J-29 owned by a friend and an Evelyn 26 sailed by my cousin.
We jibed several times, passed a few boats and had a few more pass me. By this point there were a lot more boats behind than ahead and I felt pretty good. Bob, my jib trimmer gave the crew a mission, pass 10 boats in the last half mile to the finish. Laura called them off as we went by. Nine, eight, seven, six...
We were running out of bay and the finish was coming up soon. Five, four, three, two... We ended up at the line in a pack of 12 boats. Some how we ened up with the boats that we started the leg with on each side. My cousin was to the left, the J to the right. We all hit the line at the same time and the RC had to sort that mess out. I saw them point, Evelyn, Us J... We had our ten.
At that point, I looked behind us and the Bay was full of sails. It looked like every boat in the workd was out there. We rolled up the jib, cracked open some brews and turned to watch the show. We sailed home under just the main enjoying the rest of the day.
How did we finish? 21st... Not great, but I'll take it. I finished the day with a smile and you can't ask more than that out of life can you?
Happy Hump Day.
Ron

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