We were down to one crew, Bill. The course was "W", Start, Mark 1 (which was actually Buoy 2), Mark 4 (by Rose City Yacht Club), Finish. Wind was out of the west at 8 knots. Thunderstorms were all around us. We saw lightening strikes over the west hills and north Portland, none around us, thankfully.
We started on starboard tack. Walked the line and then hardened up. We had a good start, but La Dolce Vita was two boat lengths behind us and two boat lengths to windward. This made tacking to port not an option right away. We went as far as we could until we had to tack to port. We passed behind La Dolce Vita and Blew Streak just passing a few feet aft of them. But we managed to get ahead of them to the windward mark. We were feeling pretty good. Bill set the pole to starboard with little trouble. All the boats were pretty close together starting away from the windward mark. We edged our way over to the middle of the river. Blew Streak was further over. We managed to shadow them and get further over toward the Oregon side, but still in the middle of the river in deeper water. Blew Streak decided to join the other boats going up the main channel which left us in clear air. We were keeping up and gaining on River Weasel for a while. River Weasel go a good puff of wind upstream of Ryan Point and pulled ahead by 5 boat lengths. We rounded the leeward mark in second place. We noticed River Weasel having problems tacking and gained on her a bit. But when we rounded the mark, Bill was still up front with the pole. I pulled in the main, but the head sail was left to fend for itself. This proved to be trouble. The sail wrapped around the forestay. I put the boat in irons to relieve the wind pressure while Bill untangled the sail. Meanwhile La Dolce Vita passed us. We finished third.
No pictures, no track.
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