I was pleasantly surprised last night. My normal crew had to be elsewhere. I could not find a crew. My better half volunteered to crew. Now, Hannah is not what I would call a sailor. She will pull lines. She will allow the boat to heal. You get the drift. She was a trooper last night and came out to crew with me. I thank her profusely.
The second surprise was when Jerry Armstrong and his brother-in-law, Mike, volunteered to crew. They normally race "Trigger", an Ericson 23. I guess they wanted to see what sailing a slightly bigger boat would do. I really appreciate that they did crew with me last night. On the final downwind leg of the race Jerry kept the sails trimmed for top speed. Nice job.
The course was T: Start-1-5-1-3-Finish. The wind built about 6:30 to about 8 knots. It was a flukey wind generally from the northwest. We avoided an early start by doing a 360, but "Hail, Yes!" was too close to do a tight 360. We got a decent start, but was last over the line. At least we did not have to go around for being early. We started on starboard tack, close hauled and made our way to off Tomahawk Bay Marina entrance where we tacked to port. Then it happened. The head sail halyard came loose and the jib got baggy. That's when Jerry jumped into action and was figuring out the lines and line switch when the main sail halyard came loose. The chart track shows the green scrigglely on that tack. We rounded the windward mark last, but not far behind. We were able to pass one boat by the time we got to mark 5. Everyone else was going to the Washington shore then tacking to starboard tack. I wanted nothing to do with the shore and its flukey winds. We tacked mid-channel. We also waited longer to tack to the mark, which allowed us to round the mark and go straight to wing on wing. Jerry sorted out the whisker pole by then and did a very good set. But it was a short set because we were able to turn up and do a very broad reach instead, which gave us better speed. This better speed carried us to the final leeward mark ahead of all the boats except "Estella Del Mar" which for some inexplicable reason took off cross river after the mark. Maybe he was sailing another course like we did the first race of this series. At the mark we went from port beam reach to starboard close hauled to barely make inside the finish mark. We got an unexpected horn when we crossed the finish.
Results are in. We finished second. We were 3 minutes 27 seconds behind "Estrella Del Mar". The horn was just for fun.
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