Departure: 6:00pm
Return: 8:10pm
Weather conditions: Partly Cloudy and light breezes
Tide: High
Boat: Wee Blow
Crew: 2 (Woody & Sophia)
I am flying so high from our experience racing yesterday; it was so fun. I'm tempted to give you a blow by blow account of the entire evening, but that could be hard since there wasn't much blow at all. The wind turned extremely faint of heart. It all started out well enough.
First of all, my daughter wanted to come along. My families interest in sailing is fair-weather at best so this was exciting. It was also necessary because this race was for women and kids 18 and under. I'm not sure how PC (politically correct) that is, but I didn't make the rules.
Second of all, I discovered a really slick knot to use to improve my handling of the main sheet on the boat. The knot is called the topsail halyard hitch and I used it to attach the main to them middle of the boom so I could manage it with Sophia at the tiller. It worked really well.
We were pretty nervous as we walked down to the boat. We could see a host of white sails milling about on the water. Sophia started losing her nerve and several times proposed we go home. I was scared myself, but I really wanted to try it out so I wouldn't hear of it. We rigged the boat quickly enough and we were on our way.
Sophia is a great sailor. The rules of the race required that she man the helm at all times. She quickly started remembering how to move the tiller to steer the boat. We had to paddle out of our little cove because the wind wasn't reaching us there - or so we thought. In reality, there probably wasn't much wind at that point either and would have served as a good omen.
My first point of anxiety was finding the start boat and turning in our paperwork. I'm sure we could have just started racing, but I wanted it to be official. We found the boat easily enough and got everything arranged. After that it was practice. We needed to get comfortable steering, trimming and working together.
The race started in 3 phases. The bigger boats go first, then the lasers, and finally the dinghies. Each start signal is sounded at 5 minute intervals with warning signals at 4 minutes and 1 minutes. The triangular course consisted of 3 marks around which we needed to sail keeping the marks to starboard. The first mark was at the northwest end of the harbor, the second mark was midway down the harbor on the east side, and the 3rd mark was at the south end of the harbor. The starting point was in the middle of the harbor on the west side - across from the 2nd mark.Before the race, the wind was decent and we had fun identifying right of way and getting used to everything. However, about 5 minutes before the race, the wind got quite light, and we found ourselves sitting in a dead spot. When the starting signal sounded, we were still fighting our way out and hadn't passed the starting line. Even for a fast boat, starting last, doesn't help. For is, it was the end of the race. We started last, and we stayed last. The wind continued to get lighter and lighter. Several times we found we weren't sailing at all, and once we started moving backwards. In the end we spent 2 hours rounding the first mark; we felt good calling that our race and headed back in under oar power.
Other highlights of the voyage were the snacks, the many compliments we got on the Wee Blow and her sail & the drunken sailor in front of us who kept laughing at everything.
Would I do it again? Absolutely... next week.
Until then.
