Full Moon returned to racing
action Tuesday (finally!) for Duck Dodge #3. Crew Marcelle “Safety Orange” Van
Houten, Allison “Lulu Lemon” Bahe, Michael “Grand Mal” Medina, Dave “Blue Fleck”
Pulsifer, and skipper John “4 hour” Mengedoht set up for a port tack start near
the pin end but were a bit early and lost some speed while maneuvering to stay
behind the starting line. It was still a decent start, followed by a nice tight
reach to the Freeway buoy, where a large knot of boats rounded together in
tight formation, Full Moon right
behind Dreams (Olson 25) and not far
behind speedy Selchie (Thunderbird).
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| Nice crowd at the Freeway mark. |
With all the traffic, Full Moon delayed
tacking until nearing the fixed green buoy off Gasworks, dodging two large
powerboats in the process. Full Moon
then sailed fairly far west, crossing tacks just ahead of Selchie, which chose to duck behind. After a quick tack, things
looked good for a nice rounding of the Aurora buoy (in traffic again) but a
trimaran could not lay the mark and tacked, forcing Full Moon to take a much wider path to keep clear.
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| Rare shot of Selchie behind (they had a LOT of crew!). |
Once around the buoy, the Equalizer was quickly launched to good effect
on a nice beam reach. Unfortunately, relative giant Runaway (Norlin 34) was ahead and to windward, making a pass to
leeward difficult. Full Moon stayed
in the wind, ahead of Selchie, which
in turn held off Necessary Evil (Catalina
30). Meanwhile, Full Moon slowly
worked east as Runaway faded west,
opening up enough of a lateral gap to allow Full
Moon to get through the wind shadow. At the same time, Full Moon was gaining on Dreams
and managed to squeeze ahead not long before the AGC buoy. Dreams was able to take a better turn at the buoy, though, and lined
up just to windward after rounding, slowly pulling back ahead. The final leg was
then a straight shot north to the finish line where Full Moon took an excellent eighth.
