Meadow Point Hurricane in the NOOD

Sunday started out looking worse than Saturday... Windless in Seattle. By the time we arrived to get ready for "on call", the Loose Nuts gang had already discussed and determine their DNC time. They figured if there was no wind (& no racing) by 1pm, they were heading back home. I'm not sure that crossed our minds but it was early. Time for a game (or two) of hearts.
By mid day, the RC couldn't wait any longer. Out we went to see if the air would cooperate for racing. Close to shore, the C division (centerboards) set up to race in the "Meadow Point Hurricane" (MPH). Most got off four quick races. The Moths and I14's... nada.
Eventually, our RC set up a quick... (by that I mean short but by no legal means "quick") S-X-F. That's a start, windward, finish. Half a windward-leeward. With such a short course it seemed like one mistake could send you to the back of the fleet with no chance to recover.
We wanted to be on port at the boat end and after ducking one boat got our wish. We were heading toward the eye of the "hurricane" - although we didn't know it by name at the time. After about a third of the leg, the extra pressure made up for our start and we started to pull away. The farther we went, the better the breeze. Unfortunately, we were getting closer and closer to the C division race area and in particular a drifting 35 footer with her bow pointed toward us as they watched the dingy racing. Once we confirmed with them that we were also racing they were more than happy to move... just not quickly enough. We tacked to avoid her. The smart thing would have been to tack back into the breeze... at least when the 2nd and 3rd place boats crossed behind us.
We were sailing as if this was the first beat rather than the penultimate leg of the race! The other boats were catching on to the MPH and by the time we reached the windward mark we had dropped to third behind Giddit Off (two points behind us) and the One Eyed Chicken. Bob (tied with us) rounded in last place and headed back to the MPH. Hmmm... well, we went after Giddy Up and everyone else who forgot how we got to the windward mark in the first place and aggressively drifted straight down "wind" (if there was wind) toward the finish. In the process we fouled Giddit Off (by that I mean our limp spin sheet brushed their pole or some other imperceptible contact... what in the world we were doing there... I'll never know...). We dropped the kite (ha, it was a parachute at this point) and spun and managed to avoid losing too much ground. Giddy Up separated from up and finished first. Bob was spun out of the MPH on the run and almost passed everyone finishing in second. Our misery ended as we crossed the line in third for the race and third overall. Congrats to Bob and Giddy Up.

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General Contractors Las Cruces said…
Hi thanks for sharing tthis
12:49 PM
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