Tonight we lent Bert to the race committee…maybe he “accidentally” wrote down an earlier finish time for PERSPECTIVE….we’ll see!
And we had Michael Verduyn on the pointy end of the boat, making a dynamite debut. Michael regularly crews foredeck for Bob Duggan, and we were able to poach him tonight, while his brother Josh raced with Bob on Induljence. On Saturday, both Michael & Josh will be aboard for the OYS regatta. Watch the footage and you’ll see that we are in very good shape.
With Bert on the committee boat, three of us in the cockpit were plenty busy, but we put in a fantastic race, finishing third after Remarkable and Top Gun. A great result, besting Battlewagon, Eclipse and Sandpiper on a picture perfect warm summer evening. 27C, cloudless, blowing a nearly steady 10 knots. Brilliant!
We flew the #2 headsail, backstay about half-way on, slight backwinding in the main during the breezier parts of the course. Great pointing and lots of speed.
Our start wasn’t great — a bit rusty on the timing — so we had a little trouble getting up to speed until the big boats to leeward cleared away. We pushed on well toward the Hamilton shore, enjoying a nice lift and some stronger air. We came at the windward mark with a very short lay line, just far enough ahead of Sandpiper that they had to dip us. Eclipse and Battlewagon were not far ahead. With little time to set the pole, we finished after rounding, took our time and had a nice clean hoist. With the kite filled we overtook Eclipse & Battlewagon, and put in a nice clean jibe to find a good line for the leeward mark.
We doused early to give Michael time to sort things out, and rounded nicely, putting in a tack soon after to claim the preferred side of the course. Our competition was either astern (Sandpiper, Battlewagon) or to leeward (Eclipse) as we tracked toward Hamilton.
Again we approached with a short layline, but this time we managed to maintain our position ahead of the others. Jibe set at the mark (since we doused into the hatch from that side), followed by two jibes and a clean douse. We extended our lead on the others, before the final beat to the finish line.
Again we claimed the Hamilton side of the course, forcing our competitors to try something different in the lighter air to Burlington. Nice crisp tack, but something wasn’t right. We were making 6.1 knots before the tack and could only get to 4.8 after coming about. Lazy Sheet spotted the problem eventually: the staboard jib car had slid all the way aft, so we were spilling air out of the top of the genoa. Once it was trued up, voila, we were back in the sixes.
By now, we spotted Battlewagon who had made up a lot of ground on us (probably while we were sailing slowly). Game on! One last crisp tack to the finish line and we crossed ahead, while they held course for the pin end about a minute later.
A fantastic sunset on a gorgeous summer night with great crew-work and an impressive debut by Michael on the foredeck. And great to have Bert on board at the end for snack time!