The big race was a tale of two stories. Here is how we saw it, but there are many other versions being told. The start was modified to include a single horn blast as the 5 (5 Steve!) minute warning. All the boats except Geraldine (John J) waited patiently. Geraldine raised her sails thus being loudly disqualified by the committee on the radio. Mike decided to coat up with sunblock while waiting for the second air horn blast. He was at the bow about half coated in sunblock when the second blast rang out (that is not 5 minutes Steve). We later found out Steve didn't even have a watch, so he just guessed. Since Brenda was at the tiller she became the skipper for the race.
The winds were light and contrary, so it looked like a pretty hard beat to weather. The 19’s were all sporting big genoas and quickly pulled away from the the 16’s. Our 23 and Tool Man's Eclipse started at the back of the pack and worked our way past the fleet of 16's. The race developed into two packs. The 19’s and our 23 in the lead pack and the rest in the following pack. Occasionally we got stronger winds and the bigger boats pulled away. Three quarters of the way to the finish line we found the majority of the boats were heading for the wrong cove and then tacking back out to search for the right one. Salty, Lafayette Bruce and Greene were in a tight battle tacking within talking distance at times. Bruce was flying a brand new 165 headsail and wasn't able to point quite as high as Salty and Greene which made it a two boat race. Salty's 19 was flying a 140 headsail which pulled well and still let him point really high. Our 23 with a 115 headsail and longer waterline was slightly faster when the winds peaked up. We both tacked into the finish line area with Salty beating us by about 60'. Nice job Island Time.
Brenda did a great job skippering while Mike played with the sail trimming (mostly he just enjoyed the ride on the bow) which made for a great team effort. We aren't the racing types, but we must admit it was fun to actually pay attention to our sailing and make Wrinkles strut along.
Posted with Blogsy
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