Close But No Cigar

The Pride Night Duck Dodge began with a light southwest wind and Full Moon crew Randy “Cheap Streaming” Olsen, Chad “Elysian” Harnish, Daniel “Union Man” Mengedoht, and skipper John “Senior Moment” Mengedoht were able to run down the starting line on port tack and then tack just before the starting horn. This was overall good strategy and, while it didn’t allow full speed to cross the line, Full Moon ended up in the lead or close to it. Full Moon stayed on starboard tack toward the middle of the lake before a relatively late tack toward the AGC buoy.

Full Moon (bottom left) after the start.

The wind had clocked around to the southeast to start the long leg northward. Full Moon broad reached under the genoa for a little while, then gybed and launched the Equalizer. Meanwhile, a white Thunderbird and the Ultimate 20 Mr. Nibbles (from second start) had gone much further east before gybing and were battling each other. They were slowly converging with Full Moon as we all approached the Freeway buoy. Fortunately, the Equalizer performed the usual magic and Full Moon was able to pull ahead to round the buoy in first place!

Full Moon leads around the Freeway buoy.

The next leg was a tight reach at first and Full Moon continued under spinnaker, though the extra sail area wasn’t super-efficient at that angle (we should have lowered the pole even more). The wind then began to shift forward and the Equalizer had to come down, a bit later than it should have. During the drop, Mr. Nibbles, the white T-bird, the San Juan 24 Great Escape and a Far East 18 were able to slip ahead to round the Aurora buoy ahead.

The sun poked through the clouds after the race.

The final leg was upwind but with highly variable wind strength and the game was on to find and stay in the best wind. The white Thunderbird had fallen behind, then threatened for a while but couldn’t get past Full Moon’s wind shadow and eventually tacked toward the Westlake shore. The Far East 18 made significant gains while appearing to have a straight shot to the finish line while Full Moon and Great Escape had headed more toward the middle of the lake and were clearly going to have to tack twice to cross the line. Meanwhile, the white T-bird had found some nice breeze closer to shore. In the end, the Far East 18 took first, Great Escape was second, the white T-bird (which is apparently named Makima) was third and Full Moon fourth, though very close behind. While not the desired result for Full Moon, this was great fun with tactics and strategy and the other boats truly earned their ducks.